Grand Duke Romanov Alexander Mikhailovich was born on April 13, 1866 in Tiflis. Most of his life was connected with the development of the fleet and aviation. This member of the royal dynasty was remembered for his design projects, short-lived leadership of maritime trade and vigorous activity during the period of emigration after the Civil War.
Childhood and youth
The Grand Duke was the son of Mikhail Nikolayevich and the grandson of Emperor Nicholas I. He was a cousin to Tsar Alexander III. The last autocrat Nicholas II was his cousin. Alexander's mother, Olga Fedorovna, was German by birth. She was the daughter of the Baden Duke of Leopold.
In childhood, the future Tsar Nicholas II had several closest friends. One of them was considered Alexander Mikhailovich. The Grand Duke and the heir to the throne were almost the same age with a difference of two years. Like many minor representatives of the Romanov dynasty, Alexander chose a military career. He entered the capital's Maritime College, which he graduated in 1885. The young man received the rank of midshipman and was credited to the Guards crew. The choice was not accidental. The guards crew was a prestigious naval unit as part of the imperial guard.
Trip around the world
In 1886, Romanov Alexander Mikhailovich went on a world tour, starting it as a warrant officer. The Grand Duke circled the planet on the armored corvette Rynda. On Christmas Eve, the ship entered the territorial waters of distant Brazil. Alexander Mikhailovich even paid an official visit to the Emperor Pedro II there. The monarch met the Russian guest in his alpine residence Petropolis, where he waited for the zenith of the hot southern summer. Just a couple of years later, Pedro abdicated, and Brazil became a republic.
The Grand Duke made a stop in South Africa. There he became acquainted with the life and hard work of Dutch farmers. From Cape Town began the longest transition "Rynda" - in Singapore. The ship spent 45 days in the open sea, and all this time his crew did not meet a hint of approaching land. According to the memoirs of Alexander Mikhailovich, every second house in the Chinatown of Singapore was an opium brothel, where lovers of the then popular drug gathered.
The cousin of the then king met his 21st birthday on the way to Hong Kong. Then he spent about two years in Nagasaki, from where he traveled to India, Australia and the Philippines. In Japan, the Grand Duke visited the emperor there and even learned the basics of the local language. Rynda returned to Europe in the spring of 1889, passing through the Suez Canal in Egypt. Before being at home, the Grand Duke visited the English Queen Victoria, who received Romanov with cordiality, even despite the difficult period of British-Russian relations.
Alexander Mikhailovich had his own yacht Tamara. On it, he also made several trips. In 1891, "Tamara" visited India. Soon after that journey, Alexander Mikhailovich became commander of the destroyer Revel. In 1893, he and his squadron went to North America. The frigate Dmitry Donskoy and other Russian ships were sent to the New World on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its discovery by Columbus.
Marriage
In 1894, there was already Alexander Mikhailovich - the Grand Duke - with the rank of senior lieutenant. Shortly after this promotion, he got married. The wife of Alexander was Ksenia Alexandrovna. The Grand Duchess was the younger sister of Nicholas II. She knew her future husband from early childhood - he regularly visited Gatchina, where the children of Alexander III grew up.
Slender tall brunette was the only love of young Xenia. The first about her feelings, she told her brother Nikolai, who called Alexander’s friend just Sandro. The wedding of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess took place on July 25, 1894 in Peterhof. The couple had seven children - six sons and one daughter (Irina, Andrey, Fedor, Nikita, Dmitry, Rostislav and Vasily).
Fleet Care
In 1891, Alexander Mikhailovich began publishing the Military Fleets directory, which became an extremely popular publication in the Russian fleet. In the same year, his mother, Olga Fedorovna, died. The Grand Duke paid much attention to the state of the Pacific Fleet. In order to strengthen it, Alexander spent several years preparing a program for his strategic reform. The document was presented to Nicholas II in 1895.
At that time, the Far East was restless - unrest occurred in China, and Japan rapidly modernized and began to claim the title of the main power of the region. What did Alexander Mikhailovich do under these conditions? The Grand Duke suggested proceeding from the fact that the rapidly developing Japan would declare war on Russia sooner or later. In his youth, he spent two years in the Land of the Rising Sun, and during this time he could see for himself the progress that the island empire had made in a short time.
However, the warnings of the Grand Duke provoked irritation in St. Petersburg. More senior military and dynasty members regarded Japan as a weak adversary and did not consider it necessary to prepare for a complex campaign. Time has shown that they were wrong. However, the program was never adopted. In addition, due to disagreement about the future of the fleet, Alexander Mikhailovich himself was resigned for a short time. The Grand Duke returned to service in 1898, becoming an officer on the battleship of the coast guard "Admiral General Apraksin."
Design Achievements
The service at Apraksin gave the Grand Duke invaluable experience, which formed the basis of his design work. In 1900, the military completed a sketch of the naval battleship of the coast guard Admiral Butakov. He became a rethinking of Apraksin. Together with Alexander Mikhailovich, the chief ship engineer of the capital port Dmitry Skortsov worked on the project.
Another fruit of the design work of the Grand Duke is the project of the squadron battleship with a displacement of 14 thousand tons. He received sixteen guns. The identical project was completed simultaneously with the famous shipbuilding engineer Vittorio Kuniberti with Alexander Mikhailovich. This sketch became the foundation for the construction of Regina Elena class ships. The difference between the idea of ​​Kuniberti and the Grand Duke was only that the idea of ​​the Italian, in contrast to the variation of Romanov, was nevertheless realized.
In the cabinet
In 1903, good news came to the palace of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. He was promoted to rear admiral. Before that, the Grand Duke was a captain on the squadron battleship Rostislav for two years. Now Alexander Mikhailovich focused on the bureaucracy. He joined the Merchant Shipping Council. Alexander persuaded the king to transform this department. In November 1902, the Council became the Main Directorate of Merchant Shipping and Ports, and in fact - the Ministry.
The inspirer and chief protector of the new department was Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich himself. The Russian fleet needed a separate institution that could protect its commercial interests, Romanov believed. However, no matter how well-intentioned the nobleman was guided, he had to face serious resistance from the other ministers. They did not like the fact that a member of the royal family interfered in the work of the government. Almost the entire Cabinet was in opposition to Alexander Mikhailovich. His colleagues did everything to convince the emperor to dissolve the Main Directorate. This was done in 1905. Thus, the brainchild of the Grand Duke did not exist for three years.
War with japan
With the onset of the Russo-Japanese War, the Navy of the Russian Empire faced a severe test. Alexander Mikhailovich, who gave him most of his life, took a lively part in that campaign. He began to lead the activities and training of auxiliary vessels belonging to the Voluntary Fleet. Then he headed a committee that organized the collection of donations to strengthen military squadrons.
In 1905, following the liquidation of his own ministry, Alexander Mikhailovich became the commander of a detachment of destroyers and mine cruisers, put into operation on public funds. When the question arose of sending the Second Pacific Squadron to the shores of the Far East, the Grand Duke opposed this decision, considering the ships insufficiently prepared. Already after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the cousin of the tsar took part in the preparation of programs and plans for the restoration of the fleet defeated during the campaign.
Admiral and patron of aviation
In 1909, the Grand Duke became vice admiral. In the same year, his father, Mikhail Nikolaevich, died. For two decades he was the Viceroy of the Caucasus, another 24 years - the chairman of the State Council. Mikhail Nikolaevich had six children, and Alexander lived longer than all his brothers and sisters.
In 1915, the Grand Duke became an admiral. However, his activity concerned not only the fleet. Alexander Mikhailovich did a lot for the development of domestic aeronautics. It was on his initiative that the Sevastopol Officer Aviation School was established in 1910. Moreover, the cousin's uncle was the chief of the Imperial Air Force. During World War I, the Grand Duke inspected both ships and aircraft.
Revolution and Civil War
The February revolution drastically changed the life of all the Romanovs. Members of the imperial family were removed from the army. Alexander Mikhailovich was fired from service, retaining his uniform. The interim government allowed him to settle in his own Crimean estate. Perhaps only a timely move to the south saved citizen Romanov. Ksenia Alexandrovna and their children moved to Crimea with him.
Alexander Mikhailovich did not leave Russia until the last moment. During the Civil War, Crimea several times passed from hand to hand. When power was temporarily transferred to the Bolsheviks on the peninsula, the Romanovs were in mortal danger. Then Crimea came under German occupation. After the Brest Peace, it was not long held by the white allies of the Entente. It was then that Alexander Mikhailovich decided to leave Russia with his family. In December 1918, he sailed on a British ship to France.
Emigration
In Paris, Alexander Mikhailovich became a member of the Russian Political Conference. This structure was created by opponents of the Soviet regime in order to represent the interests of their country at the Versailles Conference. At the end of 1918, the First World War ended and now the victorious countries were going to decide the fate of Europe. Russia, which honestly performed its duty to the Entente before the Bolsheviks came to power , was deprived of representation in Versailles because of a separate peace with Germany. Supporters of the white movement tried to intercept the banner that fell, but to no avail. Alexander Mikhailovich himself used all his resources to convince foreign powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks, but also unsuccessfully.
Attempts by emigrants, as you know, have failed. Among many, the Grand Duke went to Europe, hoping to soon return to his homeland. He was still far from being an old man who had recently stepped over a fifty-year threshold, and was counting on a better future. However, like other white emigrants, Alexander Mikhailovich remained in a foreign land until the end of his days. He chose France as his place of residence.
The Grand Duke was a member of many emigrant organizations. He presided over the Union of Russian Military Pilots and took part in the activities of the Russian Military Union created by Peter Wrangel. Romanov helped a lot of children who found themselves in exile in the most vulnerable position.
The last years of the life of a cousin uncle Nicholas II went to compose his own memoirs. In printed form, the memoirs of the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (“Book of Memoirs”) were published in 1933 in one of the Paris publishing houses. The author died shortly after the appearance of his work on store shelves. He died on February 26, 1933 in the resort town of Roquebrune on the Cote d'Azur. The Maritime Alps became the resting place and the remains of the wife of Grand Duke Ksenia Alexandrovna. She survived her husband for 27 years, having died on April 20, 1960 in the British Windsor.
The memoirs of the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich today are an interesting monument to the crucial era of Russian history. After the fall of communism, the memory of Romanov himself in his homeland, as well as of many other representatives of the royal dynasty, was finally restored. In 2012, in St. Petersburg, he was installed a bronze bust. The author of the monument was the sculptor and member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Arts Albert Charkin.