My latest article: Fabergé eggs and King Willem-Alexander

Easter will soon be upon us, and in the April issue of Majesty (Vol. 38, No. 4) I mark the occasion with an article on the imperial Fabergé eggs, the splendid works of art that were created as Easter eggs for the Russian empresses Maria Fyodorovna and Alexandra Fyodorovna, a tradition that, along with the Russian monarchy, came to an end 100 years ago this year.
As April will also see the fiftieth birthday of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands (on 27 April) I have also contributed a profile of him. The magazine went on sale in Britain two weeks ago and is on sale in Norway from today.

Book news: The male consorts of female monarchs

While much has been written about female monarchs, there has until now been no study of the roles and challenges of the men who were in the unusual position of consorts to female rulers. Therefore I am glad to be one of the contributors to the new book The Man Behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History, edited by Charles Beem and Miles Taylor, which has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan of New York.
My contribution is a chapter on Prince Consort Henrik of Denmark and his struggle for recognition of the role he has tried to carve out through his more than four decades as the first ever male consort of a Danish monarch. But this is only the last chapter of a book that covers a number of male consorts in Navarre, Spain, England/Britain, Sweden, Russia, Austria, Portugal, Brazil, India, the Netherlands and Denmark from the end of the thirteenth century till today.
The table of contents:

Introduction: The Man Behind the Queen; Charles Beem and Miles Taylor
1. The King Consorts of Navarre, 1284-1512; Elena Crislyn Woodacre
2. Ferdinand the Catholic: King and Consort; David Abufalia
3. "He to be Entitled Kinge": King Philip and the Anglo-Spanish Court; Sarah Duncan
4. Why Prince George of Denmark Did Not Become a King of England; Charles Beem
5. From Ruler in the Shadows to Shadow King: Frederick I of Sweden; Fabian Persson
6. Count Ernst Johann Bühren and the Russian Court of Anna Ioannova; Michael Bitter
7. Francis Stephen: Duke, Regent and Emperor; Derek Beales
8. Prince Albert; The Creative Consort; Karina Urbach
9. Commemorating the Consort in Colonial Bombay; Simin Patel
10. Ferdinand II of Portugal: A Conciliator King in a Turmoil Kingdom; Daniel Alves
11. Gaston d'Orléans, Comte d'Eu: Prince Consort to Princess Isabel of Brazil; Roderick Barman
12. The Rise and Fall of Siddiq Hasan, Male Consort of Shah Jahan of Bhopal; Caroline Keen
13. Royalty, Rank, and Masculinity: Three Dutch Princes Consort in the Twentieth Century; Maria Grever and Jeroen Van Zanten
14. Prince Philip: Sportsman and Youth Leader; Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska
15. The Prince Who Would Be King: Henrik of Denmark's Struggle for Recognition; Trond Norén Isaksen

At the road's end: Prince Nicholas Romanov (1922-2014), head of the Romanov Family Assocation

It has been reported that Prince Nicholas Romanov, the head of the Romanov Family Assocation, died on Monday, shortly before his 92nd birthday. A great-great-grandson of Emperor Nikolay I of Russia, Nicholas Romanov was the eldest son of Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia and Countess Praskovia Sheremeteva.
Born on 26 September 1922, he grew up in France and Italy, where he actively opposed the Fascist regime during the Second World War. He eventually acquired Italian citizenship and married an Italian, Countess Sveva della Gherardesca, in 1951. The couple had three daughters.
Nicholas Romanov worked as a businessman and farmer, eventually settling in Switzerland. He paid his first visit to Russia in 1992, the year after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In 1979 he was co-founder of the Romanov Family Assocation, which organises male-line descendants of the House of Romanov. Nicholas Romanov was vice president from its founding until he succeeded Prince Vasili Alexandrovich in 1989.
Under the rules in force when Russia was a monarchy Nicholas Romanov, being born of an unequal marriage, would have had no succession rights. However, the Romanov Family Assocation has, if I understand it correctly, claimed that these rules have been so to speak suspended since the execution of the last Emperor in 1918, claiming that the rights of the princes who contracted unequal marriages were not renounced as there was no emperor to demand their renuncations.
Nicholas Romanov's claim to head the Romanovs was disputed by Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who assumed the headship of the imperial family upon the death of her father Vladimir Kirillovich in 1992, claiming that there were no male dynasts left.

New books: Europe’s female monarchs

When Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Britain in 1979, it was the first time since Ekaterina II of Russia died and Maria I of Portugal went insane in the 1790s that a European government was led by a woman, states the American historian William Monter in his new book The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800, published by Yale University Press.
Some might perhaps object that there had been several female monarchs in between, but, Monter argues, the advent of constitutional monarchy in the early nineteenth century meant that these queens regnant were not executive heads of state. The women who reigned over European kingdoms during the preceding five centuries were, on the other hand, also heads of government.
There were thirty of them, ranging from the sixteen-year-old Jeanne II, who became Queen of Navarre in 1328, to the forty-two-year-old Maria I of Portugal, whose effective reign came to an end with her mental breakdown in 1792 and the regency of her son from 1799. Except from France, the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States, female monarchs were found all over Europe, covering the map from Oslo in the north to Palermo in the south, and from Lisbon in the west to Nicosia in the east.
There had, as her numeral alone suggest, been female monarchs even before Jeanne II, and Monter gives an overview of female rule both before 1300 and outside Europe before embarking on his main subject. In Europe, female monarchs before 1300 were mostly found in Latin countries during the twelfth century, and must then be considered anomalies. After 1300, they became a more regular, although still rare occurrence, and, Monter points out, “centered in Christian Europe”, while vanishing from most Asian monarchies. The author identifies two ways through which most female monarchs acceded to their thrones: inheritance from fathers and usurpation by regents.
Monter shows how his list of thirty female monarchs through five centuries might meaningfully be split into two halves to find that most of the fifteen rulers during the first 250 years “were younger women who generally ruled in close association with and often politically subordinated to their husbands”. After 1550, on the other hand, the majority of the female monarchs “governed her kingdom autonomously for at least part of her reign”, while husbands as co-rulers became rarer and were eventually reduced to subordinated positions – if the female monarchs were married at all.
Fernando of Aragón and Isabel of Castile are without doubt the most famous – and arguably the most successful – couple to have served as joint monarchs, but the author highlights the pioneering role of the now mostly forgotten Kingdom of Navarre, which saw unusually many female monarchs, for the concept of joint rule between a queen regnant and her husband (Danish readers might well note that the part of France from which hails the family of Henrik the Prince Consort, who has often voiced the idea that he ought to be King Consort, was subject to the monarchs of Navarre).
When Jeanne II became Queen of Navarre in 1328, she and her husband insisted on a joint coronation, despite official Navarrese opposition, and the reins of power were thereafter left in the hands of the King Consort, Philippe of Evreux. This, which Monter calls “the Navarrese solution to female inheritance”, became the norm throughout Europe for most of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – although there were of course exceptions. But, the author points out, this solution failed everywhere but in Navarre, and in Navarre itself it eventually unravelled following the death in 1441 of Queen Blanche, whose widower clung on to the throne until his death 38 years later, preventing their son from ascending the throne.
Female regents are not included in this book; although rulers, they held power only temporarily and were not monarchs in their own rights. Nevertheless Monter chooses to take a closer look at some female regents which he considers of great importance for the development whereby it was gradually accepted that women ruled on their own even while married. This, Monter considers, was “greatly assisted by various printed, painted, sculpted, and engraved endorsements of women’s capacities for ruling, [...] the most audacious of these [...] sponsored or commissioned not by female monarchs (whose sovereignty was permanent and divinely ordained) but by eight female regents, each of whom governed a major state for at least five years between 1507 and 1633”.
1550 marks the turning point in Monter’s book. The six queens regnant between 1550 and 1700 were married for a total of only 20 % of their reigns (nineteen of eighty-eight years), and two of them (Elizabeth I of England and Christina of Sweden) never married at all. In England, the husband of Mary I, Philip II of Spain, was accorded the title of King, but a prenuptial agreement left him no independent powers, an act which Monter considers “a watershed in the history of marriages of royal heiresses”.
While the first husband of Mary Queen of Scots was given the crown matrimonial, her second husband received the title of king, but without the right to act on his own, and her third husband did not receive the royal title. At the same time, the Navarrese pattern “broke down in Navarre itself”, where Jeanne III d’Albret, despite strong opposition from the estates, insisted on a joint role with her husband and got her way. But the Queen’s conversion to the Reformed church caused the marriage to break down, and Queen Jeanne and King Antoine found themselves on opposing sides in the religious wars (in which the King was killed).
There were two notable exceptions to the general trend at this time. The joint rule of William III and Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland was in reality William III’s sole rule, and when the Swedish estates refused to agree to a joint rule, Queen Ulrika Eleonora abdicated in favour of her husband, who became King Fredrik I. But, as the author points out, “England after 1688 looks less like the dawn of modern liberalism than the last gasp of the Middle Ages”. And when William III died and Queen Anne came to the throne, her husband received neither title nor powers.
Like Queen Anne, Western Europe’s two other female monarchs of the eighteenth century – Maria Theresia of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia and Maria I of Portugal – “exercised power while finding various ways to keep their husbands in politically useful but subordinate roles”. And none of the four Russian empresses of the eighteenth century was married at any stage of her reign. So within five centuries, Europe moved from a situation where female monarchs were generally dependent on their husbands to a situation where male consorts, if they existed at all, were generally sidelined and the female monarch exercised her powers on her own. Thus it seems quite ironic that, after the 1790s, 180 years would pass before a woman again became the actual rather than merely symbolic head of a European government.
Monter finds that women did not generally rule very differently from men; “for all the talk about female inferiority and frailty, having a woman as divine-right sovereign made very little practical difference in the way governments actually operated”. However, the reigns of female monarchs were much likelier than those of male monarchs to be prematurely or dramatically terminated. The statistics also show that only 40 % of female monarchs, as opposed to 70 % of male monarchs, were succeeded by their direct descendants.
Monter’s analytical powers seem to be at their sharpest in the earlier parts of the book; towards the end it tends to read too much like a collection of short biographies of female monarchs. The book also suffers from its lack of a final and concluding chapter where the author might have summed up his findings; instead he treats the readers to an epilogue about how female monarchs have been represented in twentieth century films, pointing out that while “[s]uccessful women rulers from Hatsheput to Thatcher have been rulers first and women second [...], popular representations of them have always reversed these aspects because romance sells infinitely better than political power in female hands”.
There are some factual mistakes to be found and, when attempting to cover such a vast field, the author cannot possibly have as sure a grasp on all countries and persons involved. There are, obviously, also some language barriers to struggle with. A Norwegian historian like myself might notice that this colours some of what he writes about the Scandinavian female monarchs. And when covering such a vast topic in little more than 200 pages, there will necessarily be some summarising and generalising which causes some nuances to be lost – for instance one might argue that there were certain variances in Navarre which are lost and that the author’s view of “the Navarrese solution” is somewhat too static.
But although one may occasionally disagree with some of the author’s view, the main impression is that this is a significant contribution to the historiography of European monarchies as well as of female rule. There have in recent years been several studies devoted to female monarchs – among them Charles Beem’s The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History (2006) and Karin Tegenborg Falkdalen’s Kungen är en kvinna – Retorik och praktik kring kvinnliga monarker under tidigmodern tid (2003), both of them excellent – but William Monter’s book is the first study to cover all Europe and such a large time span. This enables him to see individual queens regnant in an international context and to describe general trends which have until now not been clearly identified. That alone makes this book a study of great value which might well inspire many future works on the challenges which arose when women were kings.

My latest articles: Queen Margrethe, Elsa Cedergren and three reviews

In mid-January Queen Margrethe II of Denmark will celebrate her forty years on the throne with three days of festivities. On occasion of the jubilee I have written an article titled “Renaissance Queen”, which deals with what I consider some of the most interesting aspects of her reign and which appears in the January issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty (Vol. 33, No. 1), published on 20 December.
Also out just before Christmas was this year’s final issue of Royalty Digest Quarterly (no 4 – 2011), which includes my biographical article on the humanitarian and activist Elsa Cedergren (1893-1996), the youngest daughter of Prince Oscar Bernadotte and sister of the famous Folke Bernadotte. It seems Elsa Cedergren is now primarily remembered for having been the (so far) only Bernadotte to reach the age of 100, but there were certainly much else of interest about her.
To the same magazine I have also contributed reviews of Philip Eade’s excellent Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life and Ilana D. Miller’s The Four Graces: Queen Victoria’s Hessian Granddaughters. (Concerning the latter title the editor has, curiously, chosen to add a second “review” by Charlotte Zeepvat, who appears to be a friend of the author and is thanked profusely in the book’s preface for her help and support.)
The Society for Court Studies has also brought out this year’s second issue of their journal The Court Historian (Volume 16, 2), which contains several very interesting articles and to which I have been happy to contribute a review article about the exhibition “Härskarkonst – Napoleon, Karl Johan, Alexander” (“Staging Power – Napoleon, Charles John, Alexander”), which was held at the National Museum in Stockholm from September 2010 to January 2011.
These bring the total number of my published works this year up to nineteen, consisting of seven topical or biographical articles, four op-eds, six reviews, one obituary and one letter to the editor.

New books: Royal splendour from across Europe

On the occasion of the wedding of Sovereign Prince Albert II and Princess Charlène of Monaco this summer the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco held an exhibition titled no less than “Magnificence and Grandeur of the Royal Houses in Europe”. I did not see the exhibition, but a while ago I got hold of the eponymous catalogue, edited by Catherine Arminjon, which bears testimony to a sumptuous exhibition of royal treasures from across Europe.
The catalogue is arranged geographically, starting with Portugal and Spain before moving north to France, Britain, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden and then south again from Russia via Poland, Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Austria, the Hungarian Esterházys, the Savoys of Turin and the Bourbons of Naples before ending up in Monaco.
Thus Liechtenstein is the only of the current European monarchies not included in the exhibition, which is a pity given that the princely collection is one of the grandest in Europe, probably second only to that of Britain. The British Royal Collection has also not lent anything to the exhibition, so the British section is made up of loans from mostly French collections (a bust from the Victoria & Albert Museum is the only British-owned item included).
But the other extant monarchies have all lent items from their royal collections – some more generously than others. Being Norwegian I notice that the loans from this country are actually quite impressive, even including Queen Maud’s coronation gown.
Covering all this in one exhibition or one volume would obviously be impossible and the solution chosen is to focus on one monarch (or couple) per country – Denmark and Prussia being the exceptions by including respectively both Christian IV and Christian IX and the entire Hohenzollern dynasty from Friedrich I to Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The chosen person(s) is often, but not always, the founder of a dynasty – Felipe V of Spain, Adolphe of Luxembourg, Léopold I of the Belgians, Haakon VII of Norway.
For each country there is one main essay, generally followed by one or two shorter and more specific texts and finally a catalogue of the items relating to the country in question. The essays are diverse in their contents, with some authors choosing to write short biographical essays while authors set focus on one topic in particular.
As is the case with all anthologies, some essays are obviously more successful than others. Among the better ones one could mention Philippe Maarschalkerweerd on the education of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Andrea Merlotti on the achievements of King Vittorio Amadeo of Sardinia and Sicily, Gustaf Janssens on King Léopold I of the Belgians’s brand of constitutional monarchy, Peter Kristiansen on King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway, Magnus Olausson on the public persona of King Gustaf III of Sweden and Lorenz Seelig on the artistic patronage of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.
The only main essay which does not measure up is, unfortunately I must say, the Norwegian one, which has been written by Widar Halén, director of design and decorative art at the National Museum in Oslo. It seems obvious that Halén has very little knowledge and understanding of the topic he has been asked to write about and has done little about this.
His essay is, bewilderedly, entitled “The new Norwegian monarchy and its context”, and from the text it seems clear that he does indeed think that there was an entirely new Norwegian monarchy in 1905. Thus he refers to “King Oscar II of Sweden” as if Norway had been a Swedish province rather than an independent kingdom in a personal union with its eastern neighbour. He also claims that independence came only in 1905 and that the monogram of Haakon VII “was soon being brandished as a symbol of freedom, particularly during World War II”. In fact this happened only during World War II. It seems obvious that Halén has understood little of what really happened in 1905.
He adds some nonsense about the mediaeval book The King’s Mirror saying that “to serve and honor the king is to pay homage to God”. If this “is seen simply as a description of the king’s immunity and exceptional status, its significance for modern Norway is more readily understood. It was on this basis ten that the Norwegian people chose Prince Carl of Denmark and Princess Maud, daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, as king and queen of Norway”. Reading this, one can but wonder what on earth he is talking about.
To these examples of his own confusion he adds several factual mistakes, such as the claim that Queen Maud died at Appleton House, that the accession of a new monarch was proclaimed from the palace balcony in 1958 (sic) as well as in 1991 or that the Constitution of 17 May 1814 irrevocably abolished the nobility. Using Snorre Sturlason’s Heimskringla as a historical source is highly questionable, to put it mildly.
If asked to write an essay on a topic about which one knows little, one can either decline, or try to learn something about it in order to make the best out of it, or put one’s own confusion into print. Sadly the Norwegian essay of this catalogue is an example of the latter option.
There are inevitably some mistakes to be found also in other parts of the catalogue and the English language is sometimes flawed. Occasionally there is a quaint expression, sometimes a sentence does not make sense, but I am left wondering whether this is due to the translators or a result of the various authors with varying command of the language having been required to write in English.
The catalogue is beautifully designed and having read it, the main impression is that it makes for an interesting grand tour through the history of Europe’s monarchies, taking in some of the most interesting stories to be found along the way and giving an impression of the splendour associated with the royal courts of Europe in recent centuries.

People from the past: Iver Winfeldt Buch, Norwegian court jeweller in St Petersburg

This week is the last chance to see the Norwegian National Museum’s exhibition “Sacral Treasures from the Kremlin Museums in Moscow”, which blends the Norwegian museum’s unusual collection of Russian icons with loans from the Kremlin, such as further icons, priestly vestments and precious items used during the liturgy in the imperial cathedrals.
While the many Swedes who left their mark on St Petersburg are fairly well-known, this exhibition reminds us of one the less well-known Norwegians who were also active in the capital of imperial Russia.
Included in the exhibition are two items made by the court jeweller Iver Winfeldt Buch (1749-1811). The picture above (a press photo copyright of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design) shows one of them, a golden chalice set with 435 diamonds and three gems showing the birth of Jesus, the baptism of Jesus and the removal of the Virgin Mary’s house to Loreto – possibly from Ekaterina II’s own collection of gems. The chalice was commissioned by the Empress in 1795 and presented to the Monastery of St Sergey.
Iver Winfeldt Buch was born in Drammen in 1749. He came to St Petersburg in 1770 and was received into the guild of foreign gold and silver smiths in 1776. According to a family legend related by his relative Ada Polak, a renowned Norwegian art historian who died in London last autumn at the age of 96, Buch first worked for a court jeweller who was exiled to Siberia after he had exchanged one of the largest diamonds in an imperial tiara with an imitation while he was repairing it.
Buch is said to have taken over his workshop and eventually came to own one of the largest such stores in the Russian capital. He was appointed court jeweller to Ekaterina II and later to Pavel I.
Prince Potemkin was also among his customers and following Potemkin’s death Empress Ekaterina II presented the Monastery of St Alexander in St Petersburg with another jewelled chalice by Buch in commemoration of the Prince. In addition to liturgical items he is known to have made jewellery, silver furniture and chandeliers for the imperial palaces.
He was appointed consul for Denmark-Norway in St Petersburg and visited Norway again in 1804. He died in 1811, supposedly in poverty, having spent his fortune on his passion for long journeys.

Book news: Some books of 2011

The book harvest of 2010 was in my opinion unusually good and now that 2011 has dawned we might use the opportunity to take a look at some of the books expected this year.
In Sweden, Britt Dahlström, whose latest book was about the books of the queens in the Bernadotte Library, is writing a book on Prince Wilhelm as an author. Bo Eriksson has written Svenska adelns historia, a history of the Swedish nobility, which will be published by Norstedts in the spring.
Dianne Rauscher, one of the authors behind the biography of King Carl XVI Gustaf which caused such an outcry two months ago, is at work on a biography of Queen Silvia, whose title is intended to be Silvia – Drottning till varje pris (“Silvia: Queen at Any Price”). A critical approach to the Danish monarchy can also be expected in Kim Bach’s book Frederik den sidste (“Frederik the Last”), due in April.
That month’s British royal wedding can surely be counted on to lead to a flood of commemorative books, while Hugo Vickers, whose best book is in my opinion his biography of Princess Alice of Greece, has written a book on the Duchess of Windsor, Behind Closed Doors, which is expected in April. With Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee in 2012 in mind, BBC’s former political editor Andrew Marr is writing a biography of her, but I am not sure if it will be published this autumn or in the jubilee year itself.
The Norwegian biographer Ingar Sletten Kolloen, perhaps best known for his two volumes on Knut Hamsun, is writing the authorised biography of Queen Sonja, which is due to be published by Gyldendal in the autumn. The fifth of Tor Bomann-Larsen’s six volumes on King Haakon VII and Queen Maud is also expected towards the end of this year.
2011 has been declared the official “Polar Year” in Norway, marking the centenary of Roald Amundsen’s reaching the South Pole and the 150th anniversary of Fridtjof Nansen’s birth. This will occasion two biographies of Nansen, one by Carl Emil Vogt and one by Harald Dag Jølle. Edvard Hoem is also expected to complete the third and final volume of his biography of the author and hyperactive activist Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.
In politics, the Norwegian Socialist Left Party’s 50th anniversary will be marked by a book on its history by Frank Rossavik, whose biography of former Labour politician and TV boss Einar Førde drew much acclaim some years ago. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney will publish his memoirs.
Julia Gelardi, who seems to have made collective biographies of royal ladies her speciality, will in March release her third such book, From Splendour to Revolution, this time about four Russian imperial ladies – Empress Maria Fyodorovna, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (the elder), Queen Olga of the Hellenes and Duchess Marie of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
A Danish art historian, Thyge Christian Fønss, will release a book on the iconography of Queen Margrethe II, due out in the autumn ahead of her 40th anniversary on the throne in January next year. This might be an interesting book as Queen Margrethe is not only artistically conscious but, alongside Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, she is probably the most frequently painted monarch of our age.
The increasingly confused Swedish tabloid journalist and self-proclaimed “historian” Herman Lindqvist will of course release at least one book, this time a biography of Louis XIV, Ludvig XIV – Solkungen, which will be published by Bonniers in April. Judging by the standards of his latest works, this book will probably bring surprising, new revelations such as that although commonly called “Ludvig” in Swedish, the Sun King’s name was actually Louis and that Louis was in fact the first man on the moon.
Some books which were expected in 2010 but did after all not appear might perhaps do so in 2011. Among them are Jane Ridley’s Bertie: A Biography of Edward VII, Rene Brus’s Crown Jewellery and Regalia of the World, Adam Zamoyski’s The War on Terror, 1815-1848 and Ilana Miller’s The Four Graces: Queen Victoria’s Hessian Granddaughters, which keeps getting postponed every time the publication date gets near.

New books: Nikolaj II of Finland

It is not very often that I read Finnish books, the obvious explanation being the utterly incomprehensible Finnish language. But occasionally Finnish books are also published in the minority language Swedish, which is the case with Jorma and Päivi Tuomi-Nikula’s new biography Nikolaj II – Storfursten av Finland about the last Grand Prince of Finland, perhaps better known as Emperor Nikolaj II of Russia.
201 years ago Russia defeated Sweden and took Finland, which became an autonomous Grand Duchy (Grand Principality would have been a more accurate English translation) under the Russian Emperor. In their book, the Tuomi-Nikulas have wanted to look at who the person Nikolaj II was and to weave this together with the history of his reign in Finland. They have succeeded in producing a highly readable as well as informative biography.
The story of Nikolaj II’s life is well-known from a multitude of books published in the 92 years since his execution, but few of his previous biographers have given much thought to Finland.
The authors argue that the popularity of the emperors had never been greater in Finland than in 1894, a year which had seen the festive unveiling of the statue of the beloved Alexander II in Helsinki, followed by mourning for Alexander III and rejoicing for the new emperor. Nikolaj II had already visited Finland five times before his accession and his promise to respect Finland’s autonomy and privileges was well-received by the Finns. But only five years later, the Finns would utter the name of Nikolaj II as a curse.
There was soon disappointment that the new emperor did not follow his father’s tradition of holidaying in Finland every summer, but the greatest trouble was caused by the attempts at integrating Finland more fully into the Russian Empire.
This policy was to be carried out by Nikolaj Ivanovich Bobrikov, who was appointed Governor-General of Finland in 1898. Bobrikov intended to introduce Russian laws in Finland and to make sure that Russian was the language used in public administration. In 1899 the Emperor issued a manifesto saying that he could make decisions about laws regarding mutual Finnish and Russian concerns without consulting the Finnish national assembly. This was seen as contradicting the promise he gave upon his accession to respects the laws of Finland and 1899 entered Finnish history as the year of the violation of the oath.
He followed up by banning separate Finnish stamps from being used and the abolishment of a separate Finnish army in 1900, which meant that Finnish soldiers could now be sent anywhere on behalf of Russia. In 1903 Bobrikov was given dictatorial powers for three years, which meant that he could ban meetings, dissolve associations and exile people as he pleased.
The assassination of Bobrikov in June 1904 (the murderer was hailed as a national hero) was followed by a wave of political murders and crimes. But the Finns also found more peaceful and cleverer ways of making their point – such as telling Bobrikov that the façade of the House of the Estates needed to be repaired, only to put up a relief showing Alexander I in his role as the Emperor who had granted Finland its privileges, which the Governor-General could not really protest against.
Or they covered the statue of Alexander II (“the liberator”) in flowers as a silent protest at the current Russian policy. Bobrikov forbade the press to print photos of the flower-bedecked monument, but the Finns issued the photos as postcard. One of the best of the many excellent illustrations in this book is such a postcard, where a group of people “happens” to be standing next to the monument smiling gleefully at the photographer.
The wave of politically motivated crime around 1905 was eventually followed by a détente, which coincided with the smaller Russian revolution of 1905 and increasing acts of terrorism on Russian soil. This caused the imperial family finally to begin to spend their summer holidays in Finland, which they continued to do until 1914 – the authors point out the irony in Nikolaj II accusing the Finns in his speech from the throne in 1908 of not being friendly enough towards Russia and its government while at the same time realising that Finland was the part of his realm where he was probably most safe.
However, the détente did not last. In 1909 Nikolaj II dissolved the Finnish national assembly as a reaction to its Speaker Pehr Evind Svinhufvud having criticised the way the Russian government dealt with Finnish matter and in 1910 he issued a manifesto which gave all Russian citizens the same rights in Finland as Finns, which was seen as another attempt at russification of Finland.
The outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914 saw the Dowager Empress Maria Fjodorovna, who described herself as “Finland’s best and most faithful friend” and had been staunchly opposed to her son’s Finnish policy, travelling back to St Petersburg through Finland and being greeted with ovations and great warmth by the Finns. This, the authors write, was also a reminder to the Emperor that he might have shared in his mother’s popularity were it not for his repressive acts against Finland.
However, the outbreak of war led to the Finns’ old loyalty towards the Emperor being re-awakened, but this did not last to the end of the year, when plans for russifying Finland entirely were revealed. From then on the name of Nikolaj II again became a curse and it was widely hoped in Finland that Germany would defeat Russia.
In March 1915 Nikolaj II visited Helsinki for a single day. He would never see the Grand Duchy again. The Finns declared their independence on 6 December 1917 and were recognised by Lenin on 30 December. Prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse-Cassel was elected King of Finland, but he renounced his throne following the German defeat in WWI without ever having set foot in his kingdom.
The authors show sympathy in their portrayal of Nikolaj II, but make no secret of his failures and shortcomings. Altogether they have succeeded in writing a book which deepens one’s understanding both of why Russian rule over Finland failed and why the Romanov dynasty did not survive.

My latest article: The Royal Palace, Sweden and Russia

It is commonly stated in the literature on the Royal Palace in Oslo that its architect, Hans D. F. Linstow, was primarily influenced by Danish and German architecture. However, in her interesting book Monumentalarkitektur i Oslo (2008), Kari Hoel, professor of art history at the University of Oslo, argued that Swedish architecture had also been an inspiration and pointed towards Elghammar Manor in Sudermania, Sweden, as a building with a strong resemblance to the original designs for the Royal Palace (which were altered before completion). Professor Hoel is convinced that Linstow during one of his visits to King Carl Johan had seen the book Elghammar’s architect Giacomo Quarenghi had published about his works and drawn inspiration from it.
In an article in the latest issue of Kunst og Kultur (no 3-2010), the leading Norwegian art journal published by the National Museum, I investigate the theory further. While Kari Hoel only considered the façade I have also looked at the interiors and am thus able to point out that the Ceremonial Hall at the Royal Palace, which was one of the first interiors designed by Linstow, is almost an exact replica of the Grand Gallery at Elghammar. Obviously this strengthens the assumption that Linstow was familiar with Elghammar.
However, Elghammar, which was commissioned from Quarenghi by Curt von Stedingk when the latter was Sweden’s ambassador in Russia, is quite untypical of contemporary Swedish architecture. The Swedish building closest to Elghammar in style was the Bonde Mansion in Stockholm, which has been attributed to Erik Palmstedt (demolished in 1899). I point out some similarities between the Bonde Mansion and the Royal Palace which speak of another connection.
Also very interesting is Krontorp Manor in Wermlandia, which is almost a miniature version of Elghammar. It stands out clearly from Swedish manor architecture and has more in common with Norwegian manors of the early 19th century. Krontorp was commissioned by a courtier to house King Carl Johan on his travels between his two capitals and the interesting thing is that the building, which was erected at the same time as the Royal Palace in Oslo was begun, traditionally has been attributed to none other than Linstow.
Some art historians have in recent years argued that Krontorp’s architect might rather have been Fredrik Blom, Carl Johan’s favourite Swedish architect, but I point out several factors speaking against Blom and in favour of Linstow. If the Linstow attribution is correct, Krontorp could be seen as the “missing link” between Elghammar and the Palace.
I also look at some other relevant buildings of interest – among them the Palladian Villa Pisani in Stra, which may well have inspired Quarenghi – and reach the conclusion that while Elghammar and Krontorp are certainly related to the Royal Palace in Oslo, they are untypical of Swedish architecture of the time in the same way as Quarenghi’s works are in many ways untypical of Russian architecture of the epoch – however, Linstow’s architecture certainly has things in common with Quarenghi’s. Any architectural influences from Sweden and Russia on the Royal Palace should therefore be seen as coming from individual buildings rather than larger national trends.
The article includes twelve illustrations of altogether nine buildings. Among them are the façades of, from the top, Elghammar Manor, the Royal Palace as it was projected, and Krontorp Manor.

Several exhibitions on royal history this autumn

I have just returned from Stockholm, where the National Museum was busy getting everything in place for their grand exhibition “Härskarkonst – Napoleon, Karl Johan, Alexander” (“Staging Power – Napoleon, Karl Johan, Alexander”), which will be opened by King Carl Gustaf tomorrow in the presence of former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
The exhibition is expected to be the highlight of the Bernadotte bicentenary and will look at Emperor Napoléon I of France’s, King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway’s and Emperor Alexander I of Russia’s relations to art and how they used the arts to strengthen their own positions. More than 400 works of art – paintings, costumes, jewellery, furniture and more – are included in this exhibition.
Some examples worth mentioning are Jacques-Louis David’s iconic painting of Napoléon crossing the Alps, a leaf from the golden wreath with which Napoléon crowned himself emperor and the magnificent emerald necklace which was given to Stéphanie de Beauharnais when she married the future Grand Duke of Baden in 1805.
A richly illustrated catalogue, in Swedish and English versions, is available from the National Museum from this week. The exhibition will last until 23 January and will thereafter be shown in a modified version at the State Hermitage in St Petersburg.
The National Museum’s exhibition of Bernadotte portraits, “Bernadotter i svart och vitt” (“The Bernadottes in Black and White”), which opened in June, also remains open until 23 January, but on the coming Sunday some of the exhibited photos will be replaced with others (for preservation reasons).
It was earlier reported that the Royal Collection would show an exhibition on Carl XIV Johan’s family life at the Royal Palace in Stockholm from 1 October, but this has been postponed to 2 December.
There will however be several other exhibitions related to royal history to be seen this autumn. The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace has just extended their magnificent “Victoria & Albert: Art & Love”, which was due to close on 31 October, to 5 December.
As earlier mentioned the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Palace in Copenhagen will stage an exhibition to mark the 350th anniversary of the introduction of absolute monarchy in Denmark-Norway, while Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen will hold the exhibition “Pomp og pragt - Kongemagt og enevælde” (“Pomp and Splendour - Royal Power and Absolute Monarchy”) on the same topic. The exhibition at Frederiksborg will run from 16 October to 20 February, while Rosenborg’s lasts from 16 October to 27 February.
A book related to these two exhibitions has also just been published by Gads Forlag of Copenhagen. Magt og pragt – Enevælde 1660-1848 is written by the noted historians Thomas Lyngby, Søren Mentz and Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen.
On the coming Saturday the Amalienborg Museum in Copenhagen will inaugurate their new exhibition “Den elegante fornyer” (“The Elegant Reformer”), which is a belated commemoration of the centenary of Queen Ingrid’s birth in March. This exhibition will close on the late Queen’s birthday, 28 March 2011. The Danish Royal Collection has by the way just got a new website (external link), which is a significant improvement on the old one.
In Antwerp one will soon be able to see the exhibition “Voor eer en glorie - Napoleon en de juwelen van het Keizerrijk” (“For Honour and Glory - Napoleon and the Empire’s Jewels”) at the Diamond Museum in Queen Astrid Square. This exhibition on the jewellery of the Napoleonic age will be open from 1 October to 31 December.
Here in Oslo the exhibition “Slottet og Linstow – Den nye hovedstadens grunnstein” (“The Palace and Linstow – The Cornerstone of the New Capital”) at the National Museum’s architecture department is now in its closing days. The exhibition, which is the first since 1922 to be devoted to Hans D. F. Linstow, the city planner and architect of the Royal Palace, will close on 10 October.
Meanwhile another branch of the National Museum, the National Gallery, last week opened “Sakrale skatter fra Kreml-museene i Moskva” (“Sacral Treasures from the Kremlin Museums in Moscow”), which shows some 90 icons, textiles and ritual and liturgical objects used in the imperial cathedrals of Russia. This is said to be the most valuable exhibition ever held at the National Museum. It will stay open until 16 January.
The photo show Grand Duchess Stéphanie Napoléon’s emerald necklace, which is normally kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The press photo is copyright the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Remains of Ivan VI found in Russia?

According to a TT/Inferfax article in Dagens Nyheter yesterday (external link) Russian scientists believe they have found the remains of Emperor Ivan VI in the town of Kholmogory, 75 kilometres southeast of Arkhangelsk.
Ivan VI was the great-grandson of Ivan V, brother and co-monarch of Pyotr I (“Peter the Great”), and succeeded his great-aunt Empress Anna on the Russian imperial throne in October 1740. Thirteen months later he was however overthrown by Jelizaveta Petrovna, Pyotr I’s daughter, and imprisoned with his family.
Eventually he was moved to the fortress in Shlisselburg, where he was murdered during an attempt to free him on 5 July 1764. It has been believed that he was buried in Shlisselburg, but according to one of the Russian scientists quoted in the article, Anatoly Karanin, they are quite certain that the remains found in Kholmogory are his.
Kholmogory was one of the places where Ivan VI had been imprisoned before being moved to Shlisselburg, where his parents died in 1746 and 1776 respectively. His four siblings were released only in 1780 and sent to Denmark, where they lived in Horsens under the supervision of their father’s sister, Queen Dowager Juliane Marie of Denmark-Norway.

At the road’s end: Two imperial deaths

Two nonagenarian members of Europe’s once-great imperial dynasties have died this month:

A spokesman for the Romanov dynasty today announced that Grand Duchess Leonida Georgijevna of Russia died in Madrid last night, aged 95. She was the widow of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia, who was by many considered the head of the imperial house of Russia, and mother of the current pretender, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirevna.
She belonged by birth to the Bagration dynasty, which reigned in Georgia until 1810. However, the fact that she belonged to the senior branch which had not been reigning since 1505, caused her husband’s rivals for the headship of the Romanov dynasty to argue that their marriage was not in compliance with the imperial rules.
A great-great-granddaughter of the last Duke of Mukhrani, she was born Princess Leonida Bagration-Mukhraneli in Tbilisi on 23 September 1914. The family left the Soviet Union in the early 1920s with the help of Maxim Gorkij.
Her first husband, the American Sumner Moore Kirby, whom she married in 1934 and divorced in 1937, subsequently died while held prisoner in a German concentration camp in 1945. They had one daughter, Helen. She married Grand Duke Vladimir in 1948 and will be buried at his side in St Petersburg.

Archduke Rudolph of Austria-Hungary died in Brussels on 15 May at the age of 90. He was the sixth of the eight children of the last Emperor and Empress of Austria-Hungary, Karl I and Zita, and was born in Prangins, Switzerland on 5 September 1919, less than a year after his family had lost their thrones. He was named for his grandfather’s cousin, the crown prince who famously committed suicide in Mayerling in 1889.
In 1953 he married Countess Xenia Tschernyschev-Besobrasow, with whom he had four children, and following her death in a car accident in 1968 he remarried Princess Anna Gabriele of Wrede, who gave birth to a daughter. Archduke Rudolph made a career in banking.
The death of Archduke Rudolph leaves his elder brothers Otto (aged 97) and Felix (who will be 94 in a week) as the only surviving children of the last Habsburg emperor.

President Medvedev in rainy Oslo

President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana Medvedeva today began their two-day state visit to Norway. The Crown Prince and Foreign Minister met them at the airport and escorted them to the official welcoming ceremony in the Palace Square.
Following lunch with the royal family, the President met the Speaker of Parliament and attended a business seminar together with the Prime Minister. Wreaths were laid at the National Monument at Akershus Fortress (where these photos were taken) and at Russian war graves. The President also visited the Defence Museum, where he decorated war veterans. The Queen and Mrs Medvedeva also found time to visit the Vigeland Park and the National Gallery and now the state banquet at the Royal Palace is about to start.
At the end of this visit the President and his wife will continue south to pay a state visit to Denmark.
Few countries have had such impact on the history of Norway as our northeastern neighbour. President Medvedev is the fifth Russian leader to visit Norway, following Nikita Khruschev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

Recent magazine articles on Bernadottes

This month’s issue of the Swedish history magazine Populär Historia (no 3-2010) has an article by journalist Sara Griberg on Princess Maria, the Russian Grand Duchess who was married off to Prince Wilhelm in 1908 and left him five years later.
Although the Grand Duchess lived until 1958, the article concentrates on Maria’s few years in Sweden. Like most Swedes writing about Maria, Griberg uses Maria’s own and her son Lennart Bernadotte’s memoirs as the main sources, but Griberg also considers the differing account given in Bengt Jangfeldt’s biography of Axel Munthe.
She also mentions the Russo-Swedish espionage case which coincided with the royal divorce and which rumours claimed Princess Maria was involved with, but, perhaps naturally for such a format, Sara Griberg does not investigate it further.
The article includes a photo of Maria at work in the fashion industry in Paris in 1923, but it is quite startling to see that the woman standing next to her, dressed in typical 1920s fashion, is identified as Empress Maria Fyodorovna!
The biographer of that Empress, Coryne Hall, has meanwhile published an article of Queen Ingrid in the March issue of the British magazine Majesty (vol 31, no 3), coinciding with the late Queen’s centenary at the end of this month. The article lists the basic biographical facts in a rather dry manner, but not a word is said about Queen Ingrid’s personality.
There is also nothing about her significance or influence, except for a statement that the Act of Succession was changed in Princess Margrethe’s favour “due in no small part to Ingrid’s influence”. In fact this remains an unsubstantiated rumour which has been denied on several occasions.
Much more interesting is an interview in that same magazine with Lady Elizabeth Anson, the step-daughter of Prince Georg of Denmark and great-niece of the late Queen Elizabeth, who runs the company Party Planners. She says she came up with the idea when attending her own coming-out party at the Danish Embassy in London, but that her wish to pursue this career met with strong resistance from Prince Georg, who got her a job as a hotel receptionist instead.
Eventually she did start her own business together with her friend Jessica Scott-Ellis and among her first royal commissions were a cocktail party thrown by her great-aunt for Princess Benedikte of Denmark and the 21st birthday of Prince William of Gloucester. Lady Elizabeth greatly enjoyed working with Patrick Plunket and following his death she was asked to take over his job as Deputy Master of the Household. That she turned down the offer on the spot “was obviously considered very rude” and she was out of royal favour for some years.
In 2000 the Queen Mother did however ask Lady Elizabeth to arrange the huge party at Windsor Castle to celebrate her 100th birthday as well as the 70th birthday of Princess Margaret, 50th of Princess Anne and 40th of the Duke of York. After that she has received many more royal commissions and although she is now 68, she has no plans to retire.

Cities of the world: St Petersburg in 20 pictures

The Winter Palace

The Church on Spilt Blood, built on the spot where Aleksandr II was assassinated

A sphinx, aged 3,300

Soviet architecture

Where there is a Winter Palace, there is also a Summer Palace

The Smolny Cathedral, Rastrelli’s baroque masterpiece

Perfect proportions – Architect Rossi Street

The river Neva

Art nouveau at the Vitebsky Station

Decembrist Square seen from St Isaac’s Cathedral

By the river Fontanka

The golden spire of Saints Pyotr and Pavel’s Cathedral

Mikhailovsky Palace (Russian Museum)

The Kazan Cathedral

The Singer building on Nevsky Prospekt

Yelagin Palace

The former Stock Exchange and the Rostral Columns at the Spit of Vasilievsky Island

Tauride Palace, presented by Ekaterina II to Potyomkin

St Isaac’s Cathedral

The Palace Square with the Alexander Column and the General Staff Building

New books: Bernadottes and Romanovs

A book on the Bernadottes and the Romanovs in itself sounds like a good idea. It was the then Crown Prince Carl Johan’s alliance with Emperor Aleksandr I in 1812 which ultimately brought about the union with Norway and which greatly helped secure his position as an upstart monarch. Russia remained a key ally throughout most of Carl XIV Johan’s reign, until his son, Oscar I, broke with his father’s pro-Russian policy by concluding the November Treaty with Britain and France in 1855.
But as the subtitle indicates, the scope of Gunna Wendt’s new book Die Bernadottes und die Romanoffs. Europäische Dynastien auf der Mainau (published by Verlag Huber in Frauenfeld), is narrower than so.
At the centre of her story stands a marital rather than a martial alliance – in fact the only such alliance concluded between the Bernadottes and the Romanovs. In 1908 Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, the second son of King Gustaf V and Queen Victoria, was married off to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, a granddaughter of Emperor Aleksandr II. It was arguably the grandest match the Bernadottes ever made as well as the most disastrous. Princess Maria ran away after five years and divorce followed in 1914. Maria wrote about the marriage with great bitterness in her memoirs, while Wilhelm passed the whole thing over in his.
The fruit of the marriage was an only son, Prince Lennart, who, having lost his royal title by marrying a commoner in 1932, became known as the multi-talented Lennart Bernadotte and lived to a great age – he died on Mainau five years ago this month, aged 95.
This book has been written in connection with the exhibition “100 Jahre Lennart Bernadotte – Zurück zu den Wurzeln”, which was held at Mainau this year to celebrate his centenary. The author, who has earlier written a biography of Lennart Bernadotte’s second wife, Sonja, cooperated with her, Lennart’s cousin Prince Michel Romanoff and the French author Jacques Ferrand, in preparing the exhibition, but sadly all of them, except Wendt, died before its opening.
The book begins with a chapter on Carl XIV Johan. It is obviously based mostly on Fritz Corsing’s 1946 biography, but it is well written and Wendt offers some interesting perspectives on the founder of the Bernadotte dynasty.
After this we hear quite little about the Bernadottes and comparatively more about the Romanovs, as the author charts the life story of Lennart Bernadotte and some of his Russian relatives – his great-grandfather Aleksandr II, his maternal grandfather Grand Duke Pavel Aleksandrovich, his mother Maria Pavlovna and his uncle Grand Duke Dimitry Pavlovich, as well as Grand Duke Pavel’s three children from his second, morganatic marriage. One of them, Princess Irina Paley, was the mother of Prince Michel Romanoff, a first cousin who came to be a close friend of Lennart Bernadotte.
What many of those persons had in common was that their lives turned out quite differently from what they had expected. Grand Duke Pavel was banished from Russia because of his morganatic marriage, but was allowed to return at the outbreak of World War I, only to be executed by the Bolsheviks because of “the sins of his family” in 1919. Grand Duke Dimitry escaped this fate by having been banished from St Petersburg because of his involvement in the murder of Rasputin.
Lennart Bernadotte himself was thrown out of the royal family and had to make his own living by the use of his many talents. And his mother, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, refused to live in a loveless marriage with Prince Wilhelm and became one of the Russian royals who best succeeded in creating a new existence for herself following the revolution. It must however be said that Gunna Wendt puts somewhat too much faith in Maria Pavlovna’s memoirs, particularly when it comes to her version of her marriage and divorce.
The Bernadottes have produced more interesting and talented characters than most royal dynasties, yet they remain in the shadow of Lennart Bernadotte’s closest Russian relatives throughout this book. The relations between the two dynasties would also be worth a study, but is mostly bypassed by Wendt.
All in all this is an easily read and mostly correct book, but some significant voids make it less interesting than it might have been.

What to see: The Smolny Institute, St Petersburg

The Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens was set up by Empress Ekaterina II, who planned it in cooperation with her influential advisor on education issues, Ivan Betskoy (often said to have been her real father). The Empress intended the Institute to share accommodations with the Smolny convent, as some sort of Enlightenment counterweight to the nunnery, and therefore decided to house it in a building to the right of the Smolny Cathedral (the name derives from the fact that the cathedral had been built on the former tar yard, Smolny Dvor).
Ekaterina II’s grandson, Aleksandr I, decided to enlarge the school and had a larger building erected to the right of the cathedral. It is this building we know as the Smolny Institute. It was built by Giacomo Quarenghi (1744-1817) between 1806 and 1808 and the architect rightly came to consider it one of his finest buildings.
The Smolny Institute has an impressive temple front with eight Ionic columns, resting on seven arcades and carrying a tympanum. The Institute also has two projecting wings, each crowned with a tympanum, in a way reminiscent of some of the other buildings of this great master of Russian neoclassicism, such as the Assignation Bank in St Petersburg and Quarenghi’s original designs for Elghammar Manor in Sweden, which were executed in a somewhat modified form.
The girls’ school closed down in August 1917 and the building was shortly thereafter taken over by the Petrograd Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Thus it was there that Lenin and his followers plotted the coup which brought the Bolsheviks to power in October 1917. After the communist takeover the Institute remained the seat of government until Lenin moved the capital to Moscow in March 1918. This explains why one of the city’s few remaining statues of Lenin, in the famous “taxi-hailing pose”, can be found outside. The monument was done by V. Kozlov in 1927, three years after Lenin’s death.
After Lenin’s departure for Moscow, the Smolny Institute became the headquarters of the Regional and City Committees of the Communist Party. The First Secretary Sergey Kirov, whom Stalin had apparently come to view as a potentially dangerous rival, was murdered there in December 1934, an event which provided the excuse for Stalin’s purges. Today the building is the seat for the Governor of St Petersburg.

An interview with Mikhail Gorbachev

Twenty years after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Ginny Dougary of The Times has interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, the last (and first) President of the Soviet Union, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for allowing the peaceful revolutions. In the interview, which appeared in yesterday’s edition of the newspaper, Gorbachev talks about the events which brought down the Communist system, his views on Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and Margaret Thatcher, the Western view of Russia and the loss of his wife Raisa Gorbacheva, who died ten years ago this month.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6816872.ece

What to see: Yelagin Palace, St Petersburg

One of the nicest but least known of the former imperial palaces of Russia is the Yelagin Palace, which is situated on the Yelagin Island on the northern outskirts of St Petersburg – its empire style interiors and its location on the outskirts of the (former) capital makes it somewhat reminiscent of the French Malmaison or the Swedish Rosendal.
In the late 18th century the island belonged to Ivan Perfilevich Yelagin, one of Empress Ekaterina II’s courtiers, who had a house built on the eastern tip of the island. In 1817 the house and the island were bought by Emperor Aleksandr I, who gave the architect Carlo Rossi (1775-1849) the task of transforming the house as a present to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna. This was the first important commission in St Petersburg given to the man who would become one of the most important neoclassical architects in Russia and thereby put his distinct mark on the then capital.
The house new palace was built between 1818 and 1822. However, the Dowager Empress herself did apparently not show much interest in her new island and palace – she did after all live in considerable splendour at the wonderful palace at Pavlovsk. She later ceded the Yelagin Palace and island to her third son, who made it his official summer residence when he became Emperor Nikolaj I.
It remained an imperial residence until the revolution in 1917. In 1942 it was badly damaged by German shelling. Although it opened as a museum in 1987, it is only during this decade that the interiors have been restored to their former splendour. The central room is the Oval Hall, seen in the third and fourth photo, which is flanked by a blue and a red drawing-room (picture 5 and 6, respectively). Other important interiors are those of the dining room (in the seventh photo) and a drawing-room decorated in the Pompeian manner (last picture) – the latter is somewhat reminiscent of the Hall of Columns in the Mikhailovsky Palace, another important Rossi work.