Rare window into life of tsarist Russia (many letters to Swiss tutor)

BBC ^ | December 5, 2010 | Imogen Foulkes

[decimon]

A rare window into life in imperial Russia is due to open on Monday, when hundreds of letters, postcards, photographs and even menus from the court of Tsar Alexander III are put up for auction in Geneva.

The documents were all sent by Alexander's children, Nicholas (who later became Nicholas II), George, Michael, Olga and Xenia to their Swiss tutor Ferdinand Thormeyer.

Mr Thormeyer was born and brought up in Geneva, but emigrated to Russia as a young man where - in 1886 - he became a tutor of French language and literature to the imperial children.

Throughout his time with them the children wrote him letters, partly as a way of practising their French.

But when Mr Thormeyer left Russia in 1899, they continued to write to him and to his family; Olga's letters only stopped when she died in exile in 1960.

[laconic]

I don’t deny that Nicholas and Alexandra were genuinely religious and good family people. It is just that their incompetence brought on the great disasters of the 20th century. From taking over leadership of the Army (at 500 miles away from the front), to dismissing the most talented government leaders on the whims of a crazy mystic, to hiring the most bizarre people (selecting someone named “Boris Sturmer” as PM when you’re losing millions to the German Army) they made one horrendous decision after another. I admit, they and Russia were treated very badly by their allies in WW1, whose bacon they saved repeatedly.