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Alexander III's youngest child, czar Nicholas II's little sister grand duchess Olga Alexandrovna, was born in porfirorodnyj. That means: she was born when her father was a ruling monarch. When Nicholas and her other siblings were born Alexander was only czarevich.
Olga Alexandrovna was 34 at the time of the revolution. She became, as the time went by, a very eccentric old lady who died in great poverty in 1960, Toronto, Canada. She managed fine without the privilege of a grand duchess. Even though she wasn't a intellectual or had have any grander education, she had, through her life, a glow of a very characteristic Russian intellectual kind: Why spend time cooking when it could be spend much better, on walks, painting or even daydreaming. She was proud of who she was; when a small girl in Canada asked her if it were true that she was a princess, Olga Alexandrovna said: I'm really not a princess, I'm a Russian grand duchess! But she also said, without sentimentality: I have realised that it's 1000 times better to be a poor immigrant among poor peasants then among rich royalties and aristocracy.
The history about Alexander III's youngest daughter is the story about a princess in great wealth which one can feel great sympathy for. She finds happiness, and soon she is thrown deeper and deeper in materialist poverty, but then Olga finds a secure life again, only to see new problems and humiliations, and then again the poverty makes itself heard, more and more. Olga Alexandrovna dies alone in a state of destitution, but she have achieved a very peculiar integrity, a original poor old lady in Toronto, inspiring respect with all her good sides, prejudice, flaws and human qualities like others.
All this we know thanks to a Canadian art historian named Ian Vorres, who came to stand very close to the grand duchess during her last years. Olga had got many generous offers in exchange for her writing her memoirs, but she always said: No thank you! The young Ian Vorres, a Greek originally, contacted her because he was wondering if she would lend her Icons to an exhibition about orthodox religious art. That won her confidence. Finally he wrote a book which is her memoirs, written and commented by him. He have done a honest work, red what was needed, and then written the grand duchess word without alter something, he wrote about Olga's eccentricities and probably left some things out, in devotion to her thinking that some parts was best not to remember.
Olga Alexandrovna had five siblings, one brother died very small, another, George, was torn away by the tuberculosis before he turned 30. Nicholas (II), was fourteen years older than Olga, he was the heir apparent, kind and a good but rarely present friend. Xenia, who was seven years older than Olga stood him closest. The booth youngest children Michail, born 1878, and Olga, born 1882, always stood in the shadows to their older siblings. For some years ago grand duchess Olga's photo album was sold on auction, it contained very good pictures. They show a secure, innocent world with sport, cameras, animals (from small dogs to tame bears). The pictures also show that the youngest of the imperial children were very close. But Michail, the "benign" playboy, quickly disappeared to a more free life with officer education, cheerful ladies, late nights and the new invention called automobile. And Olga was left with her mother, the dowager empress Marie Feoderovna.
One can ponder upon how Marie Feoderovna could control her youngest daughter as she did. But the empress relation to her children weren't always the best. She was very displeased with her daughter in law, empress Alexandra Feoderovna, who she thought had made the supreme czar of all Russia to a living room occupant.
Olga Alexandrovna was like her father, Alexander III, who disliked grand parities and rather stayed at home, her mother was quite the opposite. Olga liked to play violin, paint and take photos. She liked pets more than ladies in waiting, and she was a gymnast. These utterly sympatic tendency did proberbly not make her mother happy. And then the time for marriage came. It occurred in a way that makes present people think of what a person Marie Feodorovna was. Because when other female members of the dynasty was married, it was arranged marriages, like when Marie Pavlovna was married to prince William of Sweden, when affairs of state was in the plan.
But what in god's heaven was Marie Feodorovnas plan in marring her daughter to the fourteen year older prince Peter von Oldenburg, from one of the half imperial families in the outskirts of the Romanov family? He was a known gambler, and as it discreet could be said: "not interested in ladies".
In all occasions the groom spend the wedding night at the gambling table together with his officer friends. "During the fifteen years the marriage lasted prince Oldenburg and I was never husband and wife!" Olga said 50 years later. Prince Oldenburg didn't suppress his wife, he was only satisfied with being married to the czars sister, and he played away 1 million rubels, that Olga had inhered from her brother George. A short time after the marriage, Olga suffered from a depression, and it would last for a year. When the depression was over she could enjoy her own self-esteem.
Among others she would take strolls alone outside, which no grand duchess had done before her. There she went with her two dogs, and a lady in waiting not to far behind her. And a little bit after the lady in waiting the grand duchess' car followed them in very slow tempo. She walked alone.
Most of the time she painted or played on her violin, until her brother, Michail took her on a military parade in 1903. There she met a handsome young captain, and the czars little sister was caught by the big love, and it would last through her whole life.
She let her bother introduce her to the captain, and he wasn't uninterested. Olga Alexandrovna went strait home to her hypochondriac prince, and found him in the library and explained to him that she had found someone to love and wanted a divorce. Prince Peter von Oldenburg, who with his hobbies must have been familiar with embarrassing situations, said that she would get seven years to think about it. The prince certainly didn't wanted a divorce, it would have been a huge scandal. The prince appointed, after a short time, captain Nicholas Kulikovsky to his personal adjutant and ordered him to stay at the prince's house. And therefor the two lovers lived under the same roof, the prince didn't care what they were doing, just as long as no one else did either.
When the war came captain Kulikovsky went to the front. Olga went to her husband and told him that she also left for the front, as a nurse, and that she wouldn't come back. Not to him.
As a nurse she followed the front. It's obvious that the work as a nurse meant something to many of the female Romanovs during this time. They weren't totally unknowing of the accusations of doing nothing, now they could show that they were active and working. And it was a honourable and patriotic task, with many horrible situations.
In November 1916, Olga and captain Kulikovsky married. Because the marriage with prince Oldenburg never was consummated it was easy to annul. After thirteen years Olga got her captain, they were married in a little chapel in Kiev, and her mother was present. One year later Russia had seen a revolution and a Bolshevik take-over. Olga Alexandrovna and Kulikovsky followed the dowager empress and grand duke Alexander Michailovich to Crimea and lived through the dramatic period at villa Aj-Toder and Dulber.
The mood wasn't always so high among the imprisoned Romanovs. Alexander Michailovich became his own shadow and Xenia Alexandrovna went through a hard depression. And on top of all this, treated the dowager empress captain Kulikovsky with demonstrative despise, she wouldn't accept that her daughter had married a non royal.
It was however an advantage to have a husband who's name was Kulikovsky and that he wasn't a prince or a grand duke. When the others came to villa Dulber they were prisoners while Olga and Kulikovsky was free citizens, along with there little son Tichon, who had been born that summer. They went from the Crimea to Caucasus and lived in large poverty, while the civilwar was in full storm. One got to know an interesting detail about the Romanov family when the went to se the white general Denikin. He couldn't see them, because of political reasons. Not even the white's could take the burden that it meant to have connection to the Romanovs, even if it only was the ex czars little sister.
After Denikin's fall the family fled to Novorossijsk, along with the Black Sea. The got typhus and was in great phase of humiliation. When they met an old friend on an English ship the got a priceless gift: genuine English uniform cloth so the could sew new cloths.
In Novorossijsk they also met aunt Michen, i.e. Marie Pavlovna the elder, the widow of grand duke Vladimir. Olga admitted 40 years later that it hadn't been much friendship between their families, but now in Novorossijsk, she kissed aunt Michen for the first time with joy. Marie Pavlovna came to Novorossijsk in her own train, with her own attendance and personal ladies in waiting. How she manage that is indeed a mystery. Olga still remembered how her mother just had problems with the journey from Kiev to Crimea with a special guard of loyal Cossacks.
Olga, her husband and their two children left Russia on a tradeship in February 1919. They went through Prinkipo, Constantinopel and Belgrade finally arriving in Denmark, where Marie Feoderovna waited for them. And with her new humiliation waited. Kulikovsky was again treated as an intruder.
In 1925 Olga left for Berlin, against her mothers wish. There she met during four days the woman, who according to many opinions was the czars youngest daughter, Anastasia. Olga had last met the real Anastasia in 1916, when the grand duchess was fifteen. Olga Alexandrovna didn't recognise her as Anastasia, one of the reasons were that this woman (Anna Anderson) didn't speak a word Russian, French or English, which were the languages that was spoken in the imperial family. Anna Anderson spoke fluently German since her suicidal attempt in a Berlin canal, 1920. "My niece's didn't speak a word German" Olga explained, as she said , like most others, that Anna wasn't the real Anastasia, but she did feel sorry for the deranged woman.
When Olga's mother died in 1928 and was buried in Roskilde Cathedral, not only members of the Romanov family was gathered in the small Danish town, but also members of all the royal families in Europe, among these were grand duke Cyril. "He could have had the good sense to keep away", Olga said harshly, yet 40 years after the revolution, Cyril had when he broke his oath to the czar made him self guilty of the most dreadful treason anyone in the Romanov family could think about.
The legendary "Romanov fortune" that was said to be kept in the west was probably just fiction. Marie Feoderovna's assets were a box of jewels that the prisonguards had missed on the Crimea. She had draged it with her around the world, and now Xenia took it to London for auction.
Olga had during her mothers last years had a difficult time, bound to a sick woman with a willpower like now one else that ignored that she had two little boys to look after. Then the family moved from Hvidore, Marie Feoderovnas villa to the own property Knudsminde in Ballerup.
The two boys got their education on the Russian gymnasium in Paris and then they joined the Danish guards and married to two Danishes women. On the summers Olga Alexandrovna went to Sweden an visited the Swedish heir apparent, Gustaf Adolf on Sofiero, his little castle at the coast of Öresund where he spend his summers. She had already been on Sofiero on the old king Oscar II's time (1872-1907) but had not been comfortable there earlier. Now it was a happy stay, and she lived long on them. There was also a rule on Sofiero that was a relief to a poor relative in exile - it was decided that no one needed to leave a tip to the servants.
People probably thought that the czar's little sister and her faithful knight and husband Nicholas Kulikovsky had found peace and quiet for the rest of their lives and that they could spend their last decades in Denmark. But that didn't happen. After the "unrest" of the second world war they left Knudsminde. They left in 1948, she was 66 and Kulikovsky was 67, and moved to Canada, there they arrived after a short stay in London. But way did they moved?
It can easily be misunderstood. Olga had during the war invited people that had been wearing the German occupational uniform. But they weren't Germans. They were Russians. During the war there were near one million former soviet citizens in German service, in Germany there lived nearly 16 million soviet citizens. There were a lot of dreadful and tenuating circumstances that I won't bring up, that made them join Hitler. So if Olga Alexandrovna invited Russians in German uniform into her home that didn't made her a German co-conspirator in the name of nazism. Quit the contrary, it was Russian pity for her unfortunate countrymen.
But after the war the judgement against those who could be condemned as co-conspirators and traitors. It is hard to get information about what exactly Olga and Nicholas Kulikovsky had done and what concrete expressions in treats that were made on them. But it was commonly known in countries that had been occupied that those who could be blamed for some sort of contact with the Germans were blamed, harshly. It was the crowds way on hide their own passivity.
There are no evidence that any Romanov should had "joined" Hitler, they were much to big patriots for that. If something like that had happened it would have been easy to know, because Stalins propaganda machine would never have neglected such a opportunity to "blackpaint" the Romanovs.
But this were to no joy to Kulikovsky and his family the years after the war. When they arrived in Canada the bought a little farm in Halton County 80 kilometres outside of Toronto. Olga still had her faithful old servant Mimka.
When their sons left they had to sell the property because Nicholas Kulikovsky was far to old to run a farm. The bought a little house in Toronto. In 1954 Mimka died and in the spring 1958 Kulikovsky.
Czar Alexander III's youngest daughter had even as a grand duchess in the imperial Russia been indifferent to fashion. She was now an old bad dressed lady, whose achievements in the kitchen was described as "primitive and charming", she had certainly not cooked when Mimka was alive. In 1954 the duchess of Kent visited her, and when the English royal couple visited Toronto in 1959 Olga was invited to the royal yacht, Britannia. Her friends forced her to buy a new dress for 30 dollars, the low price was the only thing that pleased Olga in this that she called "unnecessary action".
Even in Canada she was troubled by peculiar persons who claimed themselves as relatives. A woman, in hard competition, was the most original, she wrote from Montevideo and claimed that she was the grand duchess Olga of Russia and that the woman in Canada was just an impostor.
Olga never got free of the horror for murderers, she was careful with doors and always looked under the bed before going to sleep. When finally age and sickness took out it's right, she died in the home of Russian immigrant couple, captain Martemajanov and his wife, in one of the poorest parts of Toronto. But at least there were icons and the Russian language was spoken. On the 24th of November 1960 the last "grand duchess of Russia" who really been it died. It came a lot of immigrants to the funeral, and round the casket stood a guard of honour, old officers and soldiers from the Achtyrsh regiment, there Olga had been colonel of honour.
The eccentric old lady had been an undoubted Russian patriot, and she gladly defended her family against all accusations. She had no illusions about the path of history, and some restoration of the Russian monarchy she never believed in. To think about something like that was a waste of time.
