Princess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia - World War I and The Collapse of The Empire

World War I and The Collapse of The Empire

The outbreak of war caught Xenia and her mother unaware: Xenia was in France while the Dowager Empress was in London. They arranged to meet in Calais where the private train of the Dowager Empress was waiting to take them to Russia, being confident that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany would let them through. Arriving in Berlin they found the line to Russia had been closed. Hearing that the Youssoupovs were also in Berlin, the Dowager Empress ordered that they join the train. An ugly situation occurred in Berlin and finally the train was allowed to travel to Denmark, and then onto Finland.

Arriving back in Russia, Xenia threw herself into war work, providing her own hospital train and opening a large hospital for the wounded. She also chaired the Xenia Institute which provided artificial limbs for the maimed. In 1915, learning that Nicholas intended to take command of the armed forces, she accompanied her mother to Tsarskoe Selo in an attempt to dissuade him. The Dowager Empress had recorded her lack of confidence in her diary, and this was borne out. Xenia returned disheartened to the Yelagin Palace. In February 1916, Xenia travelled to Kiev after an illness to see her mother and sister. Olga finally had her shell of a first marriage dissolved by the Tsar and was married in November 1916 to Nikolai Kulikovsky in the presence of the Dowager Empress in Kiev. Xenia was absent. On 28 October 1916, increasingly depressed by Russia's predicament, Xenia wrote to her the Dowager Empress, speculating what her father would have done. Xenia, her mother, and her sister Olga urged Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia to write to the Tsar warning him about the influence of the Tsarina in government affairs. Nicholas did not even open the envelope. She read it and accused the Grand Duke of "crawling behind mother and sisters." Realising the danger, Xenia and her family moved to Ai-Todor in the Crimea. From there, Xenia heard of Rasputin's murder and was embarrassed by the episode. She wrote to her mother in Kiev, "Sleep little. There is rumour that Rasputin is murdered!" Xenia's son-in-law had been one of the murderers. At the beginning of 1917, Xenia hoped her mother could make her brother see sense about the collapsing situation in Russia. She wrote in despair, hoping she would persuade him. Her mother felt she could not do anything and that she had no intention of returning to St.Petersburg from Kiev.

On 19 February 1917, Xenia was back in St.Petersburg at her Palace. On 25 February, she wrote in her diary, "There are disturbances in the city, there was even shooting into the crowd, say, but everything is quiet on the Nevsky. They are asking for bread and the factories are on strike." On 1 March 1917 she wrote of rumours circulating that Nicholas' train had been stopped, and that he had been forced to abdicate. The Dowager Empress wrote to her about her meeting with Nicholas in Mogiliev, "I still can't believe that this dreadful nightmare is real!" Xenia tried to see her brother but was refused permission by a Russian Provisional Government. Seeing no future where she was in St.Petersburg, Xenia left for Ai-Todor on 7 April 25 March, her forty-second birthday.