By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Grand Duke Kirill From Right To Left And Then Move To The Right Again

At the end of February 1917, the tsarist government of Russia collapsed in a whirlwind of demonstrations by the workers and soldiers of Petrograd. The moderate socialists, or Mensheviks, then attempted to prevent the conflicts between the newly formed liberal Provisional Government (the "bourgeois" camp) and the Petrograd Soviet (the "democratic" camp) from escalating into civil war-and how, in October of that same year, they finally failed. Placing narrative history in a broad social and political context, she creates an absorbing study of idealists who tried in vain to reflect as well as to contain the unfolding revolutionary process.

During the February Revolution of 1917, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (1876-1938) came with his regiment to swear allegiance to the Russian Provisional Government, wearing a red band on his uniform. This caused grave offense to some in the Imperial Family and led to some members shunning him as the legitimate heir to the Throne. 

The Petrograd Soviet challenged its members throughout its brief reign, a body representing the capital city's workers and soldiers, which claimed popular legitimacy. In late September 1917, the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party led by Vladimir Ilych Lenin took over the Petrograd Soviet. On November 6 (October 24 by the Julian calendar then in use in Russia), Lenin moved to resolve the conflict of power with the Provisional Government by force.

Grand Duke Kirill of Russia also defied the command of his cousin, Czar Nicholas II, by marrying the divorced Grand Duchess Victoria Melita of Hesse and by the Rhine. Tsaritsa Alexandra had always believed in it; and so too did Kirill's wife, Victoria Melita. Like her sister-in-law, she had always nursed great ambitions for her family and mourned the loss of power and position. It was Victoria Melita's determination and tenacity that pushed the weaker and often vacillating Kirill into taking a stand, much as Alexandra had dominated Nicholas. Indeed, in 1917 it had been Victoria Melita who, sensing the danger, had insisted they get out of Russia fast while their relatives prevaricated, to their ultimate cost. For much of their first years in exile, Kirill and Victoria Melita had lived mainly in Coburg at the Villa Edinburg, left to her by her mother, the former Duchess of Coburg.

Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the eldest son of Alexander III's next-youngest brother, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, controversially assumed the role of head of the Imperial Family in 1924 and appointed himself emperor-in-exile in 1926 (though they wielded zero political influence in Russia). He passed that not-quite-literal crown to his son Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, who passed it to his daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who plans on her son George, her only child, taking the title one day. 

Because of the continuing persecution of the church by the Bolsheviks, a new patriarch, Tikhon of Moscow (1865-1925), granted autonomy to the émigré dioceses for as long as that situation prevailed. Thus three factions came about with Bishop Evlogii appointed in Berlin was appointed head of the Provisional Administration of the Russian Parishes in Western Europe in 1921, while in Serbia, émigré Orthodox bishops founded the "Karlovtsy Synod," or Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. These factions inevitably undermined the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

Kirill And His Wife Joining The Far Right In Germany

For this purpose, Grand Duke Kirill (Cyril) Vladimirovich moved from the French Riviera to Germany.

Grand Duke Kirill and his wife Viktoria channeled approximately 500,000 gold marks to support nationalist German–Russian undertakings. Also, the right-wing, anti-Semitic American industrialist and politician Henry Ford gave considerable sums of money to Kirill’s representative in America, the Aufbau member and Knight of St. John Boris Brazil. Brazol then transferred funds to Kirill and Viktoria to finance far-right organizations in Germany, notably the National Socialist Party, and Aufbau.

Aufbau linked important voelkisch Germans, most notably Hitler and General Ludendorff, whom Scheubner-Richter introduced to each other in the framework of Aufbau, with prominent White émigrés. Important White émigré members of Aufbau included First Secretary Scheubner Richter himself, Vice President Biskupskii, Deputy Director Schickedanz, Ukrainian faction leader Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Vinberg, Shabelskii-Bork, Taboritskii, Rosenberg, and Rosenberg’s collaborator in Eckart’s newspaper In Plain German, Kursell. In addition to serving in Aufbau, Schneubner Richter, Schickedanz, Kursell, and Rosenberg, they played active roles in the National Socialist Party. Aufbau’s second secretary, the German Max Amann, was also the National Socialist Party secretary.

After it consolidated itself into a powerful conspiratorial force in the first half of 1921 under Scheubner-Richter’s de facto leadership, Aufbau tried and failed to unite all White émigrés behind Grand Prince émigrés Romanov in league with National Socialists. Aufbau hoped to lead all White émigrés in Europe in an anti-Bolshevik crusade that would replace Soviet rule with nationalist Russian, Ukrainian, and Baltic states. Instead of unifying all White émigrés, Aufbau engaged in a bitter internecine struggle with the Supreme Monarchical Council under the former Union of the Russian People faction leader Nikolai Markov II.

A constitutional monarchy might follow the downfall of the Bolshevik regime, and monarchists naturally hoped that it would, but the critical need was to overthrow the Bolsheviks, not divide the opposition Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich, still widely respected as the former Supreme Commander, gave voice to that view when he issued his own manifesto in the wake of Kirill’s.

The aim, he said, was to re-establish the rule of law in Russia without stipulating the form of government, in effect, another restatement of Michael’s manifesto. Kirill had jumped the gun. In any case, why Kirill as Emperor?

The so-called Supreme Monarchist Council, which claimed to represent majority monarchist opinion, before he died, favored Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich the son of Michael Alexandrovich (who had been appointed by Nicholas II), and as it happened, so did the British government.

Clinging to the small print of imperial laws, the high-minded Council held that Kirill, and his two younger brothers, were excluded from the succession because their German-born mother had not converted to Orthodoxy at the time of her marriage, as required by law.

It did not help that Kirill had married not only a divorcée but, contrary to the law of the Russian Orthodox Church, his first cousin. Moreover there was also the abiding memory for many monarchists of the red flag on the tower of his palace in Petrograd in March 1917 and his arrival at the Tauride Palace wearing a red bow as he marched his marines to pledge their support to the Duma, in breach of his oath of allegiance.(1)

Kirill would never admit fault then, nor fault now as he named himself Emperor, and wife “Ducky” as the Empress. He also promoted his son Vladimir from prince to ‘Grand Duke’ and “Tsarevich”, a move which would further cement the divisions in the Romanov family. To be a Grand Duke under the imperial law meant that you were the son or grandson of a Tsar; Vladimir was a great-grandson of Alexander II and as such was entitled to be styled only as a prince. As for making him the Tsarevich and next-in-line to the throne, for many the door was then not only shut but slammed in his face. It has never been opened since. The division among the Romanovs which followed Kirill’s grasp for the crown persists to this day, with his grand-daughter Marie’s claim to be “Head of the House of Romanov” mocked by most. Kirill attempted to buy his place in the sun by handing out titles to those who did support him.

 

Curator Of The Russian Throne

Another controversy that caused a great deal of distress in the émigré colony's were memoirs, of the singer Alexander Vertinsky, who observed that the Paris community largely lived in groups by profession and that there was “no common Russian center in the city.” All attempts to organize clubs that would unite these disparate elements of the emigration “failed at the very start.” The reason for this, Vertinsky added, was the “diversity of political convictions. All circles hated each other, taking advantage of every there was no disputing that technically Kirill was the rightful heir, as third in line after the tsarevich Alexey and Nicholas’s brother Mikhail, both of whom most Russians now accepted had also perished in 1918. 

However, many émigrés, particularly those in the Supreme Monarchist Council created in exile in 1921, were hostile to Kirill’s claim on moral grounds. They had not forgotten his self-serving action, as they perceived it, in March 1917, when he had rushed to declare his allegiance to the Provisional Government the day before Nicholas abdicated. To confirm this, Kirill had marched his Guards Equipage from Tsarskoe Selo to the new seat of government, the Duma, at the Tauride Palace in Petrograd. Worse, in so doing he had abandoned Tsaritsa Alexandra and her five sick children at the Alexander Palace, in breach of his solemn oath of loyalty to the sovereign. It was a precipitate act that many were never able to forgive, nor Kirill to live down. Kirill had not, in fact, been the only candidate for the throne. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, his cousin who was fifth in line, had also been favored. While Dmitri Pavlovich himself might have fantasized about this possibility on the pages of his diary and how he would rule modern-day Russia as an enlightened emperor, he never took the suggestion very seriously. 

In an attempt to counter Kirill’s claim, on July 23, 1922, the makeshift Assembly of the Land was hastily convened in the Priyamursk region near Vladivostok by General Mikhail Diterikhs of the White Army, at which Kirill’s uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, was nominated, in his absence, as emperor. 

Popularly known as Nikolasha, the grand duke neither accepted nor refused this rather empty gesture. In any event, the Whites were routed two months later. Not long after Kirill’s August 8, 1922, declaration, the controversies over the Romanov throne had first filtered through to the Western press. In typical tabloid style, the Daily Herald ran a banner headline: “Nick and Cyril in Race for Crown - Each Wants to Be the New Tsar - Monarchist Plotting - White Lights Shine in Secret Meeting.” The article described how a recent meeting held near Salzburg had brought together leading White Russian émigrés who sought to oust the Soviet regime in Russia and bring the country “back to Tsardom.” At the meeting it was agreed that Nikolasha “would issue an appeal to the soldiers in the Red Army, admonishing them to restore the glorious days of Tsarist rule,” although “considerable ill-feeling was evinced on the choice of a Tsar.” But at this juncture at least, the press concluded that Nikolasha had won the “contest” to be tsar “by a nose.”1

The difficulty remained, however, that many monarchists were still nervous about accepting any nominated successor until absolute, irrefutable evidence was provided that Nicholas II; his heir, Alexey; and his brother Grand Duke Mikhail were all dead. The practicalities of exactly how the Russian people would be encouraged to rise up against their Soviet oppressors remained extremely nebulous. Kirill realized it was foolish to envisage some kind of military intervention from outside, and Nikolasha too insisted that “the future of the structure of the Russian state” could be decided “only on Russian soil, in accordance with the aspirations of the Russian people.”2

Kirill’s desire to be the latter-day savior of Russia left many unimpressed; Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna asserted that his following was “never large as he did not succeed in finding a formula which would make him acceptable to the greater number of royalists … who put Russia’s interests before the re-establishment of a monarch.” She felt that Kirill and his supporters - known as the Legitimists - were unrealistic, that they “still clung to past traditions as the only consolation in a shattered world.” Kirill was “a figurehead upon which to fasten their hopes”; equally, although Nikolasha commanded greater respect in the émigré community, his faction was, noted Maria Pavlovna, “hardly more fruitful of important results” than Kirill, for he was “surrounded by a wall of old-timers whose ideas had not broadened in the slightest,” despite the revolution.3

In August 1924 Kirill decided that having waited six years, it was now time to proclaim himself as emperor and his son Vladimir as his heir. He composed a declaration in booklet form, “Who Shall Be the Emperor of Russia?” timed to accompany a manifesto of August 31 declaring his assumption of the title of Emperor of All the Russias. Kirill had become very concerned about events in Russia since the formal establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922. “Russia is perishing. In deep anxiety the country is waiting for its deliverance,” he declared, adding that he now considered it his duty as “Eldest Member and Head of the Imperial House” and guardian of the imperial throne to urge “the reunion of all Russians - true to their Oath and loving their Country - around the same and only banner of legality, under whose protection there can be neither quarrels nor dissension.”4 In declaring all this, he was, nevertheless, deeply apprehensive about the reaction of the émigré community; “Nothing can be compared with what I shall now have to endure on this account,” he told Grand Duchess Xenia, “and I know full well that I can expect no mercy from all the malicious attacks and accusations of vanity.”

Another opposition to Kirill, intensified in October 1924, with the dowager empress Maria Feodorovna, the most revered and highest-ranking Romanov, stubbornly refusing to endorse him. From her home at Hvidøre in Denmark, she wrote an open letter to Nikolasha expressing her pain at the news. Kirill’s proclamation was “premature,” she declared; she would not, could not, accept that her beloved sons Nicholas and Mikhail were dead.

Above Grand Duke Kirill and his wife Grand Duchess Victoria Melita, taken in 1923.

In October 1938 Grand Duke Kirill died at Neuilly-sur-Seine outside Paris, having lost his wife, Victoria Melita, in 1936. Monarchists now looked to Kirill’s son Vladimir Kirillovich as head of the imperial house.

In December 1919, Denikin transferred General Wrangel to the command of the Volunteer Army. 

A hostile response came shortly afterward when, from exile in Serbia, General Wrangel, former leader of the White Army, voiced his concern that Kirill’s declaration would provoke conflict in monarchist circles. Wrangel refused to put the veterans of his army at Kirill’s disposal, instead, on September 1, 1924, forming them into the Russian All-Military Union (the Russkii Obshchiy Voinskiy Soyuz, known by the acronym of ROVS), dedicated to purging Russia of the Bolsheviks. 

In September 1927, Wrangel and his family emigrated, settling in Brussels, Belgium, where he worked as a mining engineer. Wrangel published his memoirs in the magazine White Cause (Белое дело) in Berlin in 1928.

 

1) Kirill, like every other Grand Duke, had sworn an oath of loyalty to “serve His Imperial Majesty, not sparing my life and limb, until the very last drop of my blood,” yet on Wednesday, March 1, 1917, he joined the revolution, while Nicholas was still Tsar, and raised a red flag flying on its roof. Later in Germany, he would mingle with the Nazis. Anticipating his arrival in Germany, Walther Nicolai agreed to establish an anti-Bolshevik intelligence agency so that General Ludendorff, Kirill, and Hitler would have a reliable source of information on events in the Soviet Union. The money for the intelligence service, code-named Project S, came from Kirill.

 

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