The Romanov succession

“We are eight here,” Prince Leon said, “but some of us represent the proxies, so to speak, of large blocs of interest. I have commitments from General Deniken and his group, and of course I speak for the house of the Grand Duke Feodor. Prince Michael”-he inclined his head toward the old man in the chair beyond Vassily’s-“is here to speak for the house of the Grand Duke Dmitri. Baron Oleg Zimovoi has undertakings from his followers to honor the decisions we make here.”

The council’s spectrum was remarkably full-Oleg on the far left with his following of thousands of White Russian Socialists, the rest of them scattered across the center toward the right where Anatol the monarchist held the extreme position. They’d found a unanimity for which Alex could find no parallel in his experience.

It would have made a singular group portrait. Nearest the door sat Vassily-stern and arrogant, a political man only in his virulent old-fashioned hatred for Bolshevism. Then Count Anatol, the icy conservative with bored contempt in his eyes. Sir Edward Muir, who shared the firsthand memories of a brutal civil war that had seared and scarred them all. Prince Leon at the focal point beside him, his bad leg stretched out. Alex next: the youngest man in the group. Then there was General Anton Savinov-genial and rotund, a middle-aged Muscovite with a big-boned phlegmatic face and an easygoing chuckle-it had been some years before Alex had realized he was slightly drunk all the time. He’d been a hero-Wrangel’s right arm in the Kuban in 1919. That was the penultimate experience of these men’s lifetimes; the final experience had been the talking about it, the judging of everything else in the light of it.

At the edge of the circle sat the venerable Prince Michael Rodzianko-royal first cousin to the Grand Duke Dmitri who lived on a vast lakefront estate in Switzerland.

And finally Baron Oleg Zimovoi. There was no one who pretended to be fond of Oleg: he was everyone’s enemy, everyone’s scapegoat. He was a hard man, physically and morally tough, an old Socialist who had battled his way through life conceding nothing: physically an assembly of cubes and blocks in testimony to his stolid Byelorussian ancestry. His energies had been dissipated for years in the attempt to persuade the monarchist factions that there was a valid distinction between his brand of democratic Socialism and the Bolshevik brand of despotic Communism. It was a distinction the conservative White Russian wings did not choose to take seriously; Oleg had been regarded for years as a misguided pest, an intellectual fool or even a potential traitor. He was tolerated because of his lineage and because he spoke for thousands of Socialists among the White Russian exiles. He maintained a flat in Barcelona, churning pamphlets out of his typewriter and speaking out recklessly against Hitler, Stalin, Franco and the rest of his political demons. At any time there might be the measured tramp of Guardia Civil jackboots in his hall, the rap of a nightstick against his door.

They were a dramatically dissimilar lot. But they had one extraordinary thing in common. Each of them had enjoyed great power and had lost it. The remembrance of that power-now twenty years gone-remained in their bearings and their souls. The twenty lonely years had weeded out all the weak blunderers who had made a travesty of Imperial Russia’s last years; only this hard brilliant cadre remained, waiting for a sign that they were needed once more.

Prince Leon said, “The first thing we must do is dismiss every wishful fantasy. We have got to speak realistically-it is no good dismissing the facts out of hand.”

Vassily Devenko opened his eyes briefly. “The Bolsheviks have made suicidal blunders. That is fact-not wishful fantasy.”

Prince Leon paused as if that remark had taken him by surprise; it was merely a rhetorical trick and then he addressed himself to Alex: “You saw their army in Finland. How do you view them?”

“It couldn’t be poorer,” Alex said. “Their army’s got no morale at all. Unless you count fear.”

“Yes. The entire population’s disaffected.”

Sir Edward Muir said, “Are you quite sure you’re not seeing what you wish to see? I’ve gathered that Joe Stalin is in very firm control.”

“No,” Baron Oleg Zimovoi said-very quiet, very firm. “A year ago that was true. Today, no.”

Count Anatol Markov’s voice came into it with the dryness of a mistral soughing in autumn leaves. “A totalitarian system survives only so long as it can hold the monopoly of power. Communications, the means of indoctrinating the people, the ability to browbeat everybody into collaboration-so that if you refuse to betray your neighbor you will be arrested right along with him. That is Stalin’s leverage-fear, the threat of the Siberian camps. As long as he maintains it he stays in power. But he is not maintaining it. It’s crumbling.”

Prince Leon resumed: