Romanovs Part 4: The Fall

Hot History

This episode explores the period between 1905 and 1915, detailing the terminal decline of the Romanov dynasty. It tracks the intersection of

Key takeaways

• The 12.5% probability of Alexei inheriting hemophilia was a genetic 'curse' passed through Queen Victoria's lineage.
• Bloody Sunday in 1905 served as a psychological turning point, shifting Russian public sentiment from faith to rage.

Main topics

• Hemophilia and Royal Genetics
• The 1905 Revolution and Bloody Sunday

Notable quotes

There is no God any/ There is no Tsar.

Conclusion

The episode demonstrates how the combination of biological vulnerabili

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi guys, I hope you are enjoying our series on the Romanovs. I know I am loving covering it for you guys. It's like eight or nine hours at this point of so much Romanov, Russian, Rasputin, revolution juiciness. I do have a favour to ask of you, though, if you wouldn't mind doing me a solid. I would love it if you guys could follow, subscribe, share, comment, whatever it is that you can do to show this show love. We love you. are entirely self-funded, we are entirely self-produced, and all of our support comes directly from you guys, which we are always so thankful for. Plus, my divas, I heard a stat the other day that men are statistically more likely to subscribe to their favorite podcasters and YouTubers than women, which I simply cannot abide by. So if you can hit that subscribe button below, if you can hit follow, if you can hit share, I would be deeply grateful. But let's roll the medieval whimsical tune and get into the Rasputin of it all. Speaker 1 (1:12) Hi guys, and welcome back to Hot History, your corner of the internet where we cover all the things in history that you probably should know, but don't. I'm Mainsley Harvey, your Hot Historian here today, ready to dive back into our series. Guys, we are like at part four out of six now, I think. We are in the thick of it, talking about the last hours of Russia, the Romanovs. So today's going to be a big one. So if you need a pee, Go pee. You need a coffee, go get one, because we are locking the fuck in. Starting by rewinding back to where we left off last week on August 12th, 1904, where Zarina Alexandra brings the long-awaited Romanov heir, Alexei, into the world. Everyone in the palace, in Russia, abroad, in Europe, really, guys, is overjoyed by this news. With the birth of four daughters up until this point leaving the Romanovs in dynastic crisis and increasing tensions over the disastrous war with Japan causing strikes and all matter of discontent from the Russian people, the birth of a son, an heir, a Tsarevich, was essential in not only calming the dynastic waters but saving political face for the Tsar and Tsarina, who finally were able to escape from the crushing pressures of a male heir. However. While Alexei made the impression at first of a strong and healthy child, this was a farce, with the six-week-old baby boy suffering from uncontrolled bleeding where his umbilical cord was cut, which actually wasn't noticed at first because his nannies were wrapping him so like within his nappies so tightly, it's called swaddling. And at first it's kind of recognized in the initial hours they're going this is fairly benign, but when the bleeding continued. Day after day, Alexandra knew that her worst fears had been realised. For the Tsarevich of Russia, her long-awaited son had haemophilia, the royal disease. Now, this was something that Alexandra was no stranger to. She was very familiar with it, as her own brother and former heir of her family's throne in Germany had actually died from the affliction, which was passed down from Queen Victoria to her own mother, Princess Alice. Which always kind of made me think, guys, like, if Victoria and Alice and Alex had hemophilia, why didn't they die? Like, why are all these men dying? So, I want to do, I'm going to step away. from Hot History for a minute. Take a bit of the Hot History hat off, right? We're going to put our sexy scientist hat on and get a bit technical here in the science chat, because I want you guys to fully understand the kind of realities behind this disease and the probability of Alexei as the sole son and heir getting this. So let's get a bit sciencey here for a second. Now, the specific strain and the type of hemophilia that we're talking about is hemophilia B. And this is caused by a mutation in the F9 gene on the X chromosome. And the reason it didn't affect Victoria or Alice or Alex is because women usually have two X chromosomes, meaning if one is affected with hemophilia, there's a second one to balance it out. But men have an X and a Y. So if they inherit a hemophilia affected X chromosome from their mother, there is no others to offset it because the other is a Y, right? As such, the affected person will be deficient in clotting factor 9, which means the blood doesn't clot properly and every bump, knock or cut can be life-threatening. Which begs the question then, how exactly does it work from Queen Victoria to Alexei? Well, as we said, Alexandra, as a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, was a carrier of a haemophilic X chromosome, meaning every son she conceived had a 50 % chance of inheriting that specifically affected X chromosome. and a 50 % chance of inheriting the unaffected X chromosome. So a real roll of the dice, which again, perhaps like one of the biggest what-ifs in Romanov history really is what if this poor boy had received Alexandra's unaffected X. Now, I don't want to spend too long in the science here. We've got to put our hot historian, you know, hats back on. But just to show you how fateful Alexei's condition was. I want to explain how the condition actually passed down, because not every one of Victoria's female descendants was a carrier, which is a big misconception in all of this. So, out of Victoria's nine children, one of her sons, Leopold, was afflicted and died of haemophilia in 1884 at age 30, passing on the gene to his own daughter, who in turn became an automatic carrier, passing the disease on to her son, Prince Rupert of Teck, who also... died. Interestingly here, guys, her daughter, Mary of Tech, did not inherit the gene, which is just as well, because she was the one who ended up marrying King George V of the UK. So if she had inherited it, we could have had a lot of dead British royals on our hands. As for Victoria's other children, her youngest daughter, Beatrice, passed the mutation into the Spanish royal family, with two of her sons being afflicted. And as we know, guys, Alice, her other daughter, was also a carrier, who passed the gene on to Alexandra and her sister Irene. So not even all of Alex's own sisters were carriers, just she and one other. Which again, guys, like, I know throughout this whole series there's been this underpinning of talk about superstition and omens and divine timing and all of that. But even at a cellular level, it's hard to deny that this family wasn't doomed. with a 50 % chance that Queen Victoria as a carrier would pass the disease to her own daughter Alice, who then had a 50 % chance of passing it to Alexandra, who then had a 50 % chance that she herself, the third afflicted in the line at this point, would pass it on to Alexei, who had no other X chromosome to protect him. So you have at least three genetic occurrences with hemophilia all happening before you get to Alexei, which means the retrospective probability of Queen Victoria's haemophilia mutation traveling down to Alexei was 12.5%. Yeah, a 12.5 % chance that the only male heir to the Tsar of Russia is affected by this life-threatening and dynasty-ending disease, which in this whole saga always gives me the biggest goosebumps because haemophilia does genuinely seem... like a curse against monarchy itself. Or, to be specific guys, against primogeniture-based monarchy. Which, I do have to admit, I am like just off the back of my research and episodes about witchcraft. If you haven't watched them, there's a two-part series, definitely go and do it. But the worst of the witch trials happened in Germany, which is where Queen Victoria came from. So was there a bit of like juju curse going on? I don't know. But either way... This royal disease seems sure to end dynasties which rely on only men being in power. Which, for the Romanovs guys, who very much exist within this system, Alexei's diagnosis is the single worst piece of news the couple could be given. With the dynastic crisis they believed they'd freed themselves from, only restarting once more. It's heartbreaking, guys. And again, like we talk over and over about humanizing these people. In this moment, I do feel really terrible for Alex in particular, who took on immense levels of guilt, blaming herself for passing this disease onto her son, which like, of course, it's not her fault. It's just genetics. But it's a really terrible situation, which is not only shocking and devastating to kind of receive this news. But Alex and Nikki now realize they have to live in constant panic that one, Alexei is going to injure himself and potentially die. And two, which is most importantly here, guys, that people would find out. Because this was now, in no uncertain terms, the most important secret in Russia. Held so tightly by the imperial family that Nicholas didn't even tell his mother in the early days. only revealing it to her once it became impossible to hide through the swaddling, which is the other really crushing element here. Haemophilia is hard to keep secret, as it is highly visible. For example, when Alexei was three and a half, he tripped, lightly knocking his face on a wall, and the swelling was so bad that his whole face blew up to the point he couldn't even open his eyes. You pair that with the fact that blood is, you know, bright red and he's constantly bleeding after injury. And this secret becomes pretty hard to hide, leaving the imperial family no real choice but to hide Alexei away, with Alex becoming so depressed that she too became a relative recluse in the months after his birth, holing up at the Alexander Palace, where according to historian Orlando Fiez, who we love to quote throughout this, he's an incredible Romanov and Russian historian, he said she largely turned her back on society, which increased the already existent idea that she was cold and arrogant. But guys, as large as this discovery looms, this terrible news, it was dwarfed by the fact the nation was well and truly in peril. For according to the BBC, at this point, over three quarters of the Russian population were unhappy with their position in the empire and began expressing themselves in a series of riots, strikes and protests against the horrific living and working conditions alongside the thing everyone fucking hates, the tax system. which had no form of income tax for the rich, instead relying on taxes from peasant farmed produce. So the aristocracy, right, with all their mansions and estates and land and diamonds aren't being taxed for their personal fortunes, but a percentage of the grain and the oats and the barley being farmed by the peasants was being chipped off to fund things like the 1903 Romanov Ball we spoke about last week. and the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. Of course, amongst other things, it's never always quite so black and white as, you know, every single cent is going to excess and grandeur, and it's important we talk about that. But all of the cents were coming from other sources, including the state vodka monopoly, peasant redemption payments, where freed serfs had to pay back the government for fronting the cost of their freedom. land and property taxes, which did include the aristocracy, although they were given large tax breaks under charters brought in by Catherine the Great, and of course the standard taxes on produce sold, with zero personal taxations of the aristocracy in sight. So the people are rightfully pretty fucking pissed that they're giving all this dosh to the Tsar, who's spending it on balls, wars, and God knows what else. So... At this point, we have real problems with the taxation system relating to peasants and the way they were able to live after they were liberated by Nicholas's grandfather. But we also have the workers, right? We spoke about them in last episode and how kind of industrialization has come through and given people massive, massive working hours in extremely dangerous conditions for very minimal pay, which to the surprise of no one, very rightfully so, meant that you now had huge factories of discontented people lobbying for change. Although there was no actual real avenue to do this because trade unionism was also banned. So at this point around this 1904-1905 period, okay, there is a ticking time bomb in Russia between the peasants and the workers, which was also exacerbated by Jewish people being sanctioned, Zemstovs, which were the local councils that we spoke about last week, losing a lot of their power, critics of the government disappearing and being murdered, and the Russo-Japanese War going horribly wrong. And that is before we even get to radical groups like the People's Will who assassinated Alexander II, who are still more prevalent than ever. So in essence, my divas, uh, everything's fucked, right? And really, really dangerous, with Nicholas's minister for the interior being assassinated months earlier. So the people decide if the Tsar wouldn't grant the workers actual pay, they'd have to take it for themselves, which led to January 1905, where 100,000 workers led by a priest named Father Capon went on strike. marching to the Winter Palace to present their petition to Nicholas directly. In this, they believed that in appealing firsthand to the Tsar, the father of the nation, right, their great protector, rather than his ministers, they would be able to pledge their allegiance to him as their protector while calling for change, which all went down on Sunday, January 22nd, 1905, a day that would forever be known as Bloody Sunday. Now, despite the protest giving peace and love and even being fit for a family outing, with some children attending with their parents, holding portraits of the Tsar and singing hymns, the protesters ultimately knew that this was risky, with the government urging Kupon to call it off on January 7th when they first caught wind of the plan. One marcher, Ivan Vasiliev, left a note for his wife who was sleeping, saying, if I fail to return and am killed, do not cry. bring up Venura and tell him I died a martyr for the people's freedom and happiness. This, as it turned out, would be correct. Favagna never returned home. You see, the big mistake here, and really the kind of key thread that we see throughout here, is that the workers put their faith in Nicholas to be reasonable. They see him constantly throughout this tale as a man of God and believe that their cause was justified, so he would see reason. But it would all be for naught, because the Tsar wasn't even in St. Petersburg. Yeah, you see guys, hearing of the planned demonstration, Nikki decides best thing for me to do, fuck off, right? And leave this mess to my 12,000 police and military men to manage, who tried and failed to disperse the group, firing two warning shots into the air before then unloading a third with a shrill ring straight into the peaceful crowd. Instantly, people began screaming as the guards opened fire, with 40 protesters killed in seconds. What followed was a hysterical mess, with children being hit and killed, women lying injured and bleeding in the streets, and modern estimates saying that 100 to 200 people were dead almost instantly. Father Capone was also in the middle of this, crying to the skies, saying, quote, there is no God any longer. There is no Tsar. It was brutal. Guys, it was banal. It was as bloody as it comes. After which, there was nothing but blind rage as protesters went around the streets of St. Petersburg smashing windows, beating up police, and throwing rocks at soldiers, which Fies says was, quote, the turning point of the whole revolution, for their mood suddenly changed from disbelief to anger. And let's be like, so fucking for real in this, guys. This is 100 % justified. The Tsar knew about this planned peaceful protest, and instead of either trying to stop it by meeting with delegates ahead of time for a constructive plan, or remaining and letting them come to the palace, he just leaves. Again, like, the fundamental flaw with Nicholas, there are many, but the fundamental flaw with Nicholas... He has a malignant inability to read the fucking room. It is so preposterous that it genuinely borders on insanity. Like, again, just for context, clocking back in here, okay? You are losing a foreign war. The peasants can barely eat while you're still taxing them. The workers are demanding change, which they've blown up one of your ministers to try and enact a few weeks earlier. And, although no one knew this at the time, Your brand new air is riddled with a pretty much terminal disease and you still don't think you need to change. And not just that you don't need to change, but that you don't even need to be there to hear what they've got to say to see what's going on. It's just like idiocy on an industrial level, guys. And while I do think in the early days, like in the last episode where we were covering those first few years of the rule, I do think we can cut Nicholas a bit of slack. Like again, terrible man, terrible decisions, terrible advisory, but he is very young. He is surrounded by very, very bad advisors. He's incredibly unprepared. So I do think we can give him some slack in situations in the like events from last episode, but this all on you diva. Okay. Not the shooting as such, because he didn't necessarily order that, but his mismanagement of this situation because of his fundamental belief again, in his divine right to rule. I don't need to change because God said that I'm a good boy and can rule is. Fucking abominable. Okay, like he won't even hear what they've got to say. I cannot fathom it. And it's no wonder that Father Capone, who went into exile afterwards, later wrote to Nicholas saying that the Russian people had totally lost faith in him, which is evident in the weeks after Bloody Sunday, when 400,000 workers continued to strike, becoming the largest ever labor protest in Russian history. So, absolute disaster, with what is largely considered the Tess Revolution in 1905. So how does Nicholas, if at all, respond to this after the fact? Well, firstly, I want to reiterate here that he did not personally order troops to fire on the crowd. Like, that wasn't his kind of directive or order, and when he found out about this, he did write, quote, Lord, how painful and sad. So I'm not saying in any way, shape, or form that he's some kind of murderous Napoleon in the street shooting people up with cannons. In fact, his diary entry from January 22nd reads, Quote, this is a painful day. There have been serious riots in Petersburg. So he does seem to be genuinely concerned and knew this couldn't go unchecked. So he dismissed the Minister of the Interior, again, just shifting blame. And I'm not even going to attempt to say this guy's name. It's so like fucking long and I'm trying my best with my Russian, but please just know he was Minister of the Interior. And he did eventually agree to meet delegates of this union at Saskoycello, who told him of their plight. In response, he said. quote, the life of a worker is not easy. But then in that exact same breath said what they did is a criminal act saying they were a, quote, rebellious mob. So even in this meeting, guys, where these delegates and their friends like have been shot and killed, Nicholas expresses just the right amount of polite sympathy, but still insists on pushing his autocratic excellence, which again reveals the heart of the issue here. Nicholas. is incapable of understanding exactly what's going on in his own country. He cannot comprehend what these workers' lives are like and why they were trying to achieve change,