Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia (; – 24 November 1960) was the youngest child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II.
Olga was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg. Olga's relationship with her mother, Empress Marie, the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, was strained and distant from childhood. In contrast, she and her father were close. He died when she was 12, and her brother Nicholas became emperor. In 1901, at 19, she married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, who was privately believed by family and friends to be homosexual. Their marriage of 15 years remained unconsummated, and Peter at first refused Olga's request for a divorce. The couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had fallen in love several years before. During the First World War, Olga served as an army nurse and was awarded a medal for personal gallantry. At the downfall of the Romanovs in the Russian Revolution of 1917, she fled with her husband and children to Crimea, where they lived under the threat of assassination. Her brother Nicholas and his family were shot and bayoneted to death by revolutionaries.
Olga escaped revolutionary Russia with her second husband and their two sons in February 1920. They joined her mother, the Dowager Empress, in Denmark. In exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother and was often sought out by Romanov impostors who claimed to be her dead relatives. She met Anna Anderson, the best-known impostor, in Berlin in 1925. After the Dowager Empress's death in 1928, Olga and her husband purchased a dairy farm in Ballerup, near Copenhagen. She led a simple life: raising her two sons, working on the farm and painting. During her lifetime, she painted over 2,000 works of art, which provided extra income for both her family and the charitable causes she supported.
In 1948, feeling threatened by Joseph Stalin's regime, Olga and her immediate family relocated to a farm in Campbellville, Ontario, Canada. With advancing age, Olga and her husband moved to a bungalow near Cooksville, Ontario. Colonel Kulikovsky died there in 1958. Two years later, as her health deteriorated, Olga moved with friends to a small apartment in East Toronto. She died aged 78, seven months after her older sister, Xenia. At the end of her life and afterwards, Olga was widely labelled the last Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia.
Early life
Olga was the youngest daughter of Emperor Alexander III and his consort, Empress Marie, formerly Princess Dagmar of Denmark. She was born in the purple (i.e., during her father's reign) on 13 June 1882 at the Peterhof Palace, west of central Saint Petersburg. Her birth was announced by a traditional 101-gun salute from the ramparts of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and similar salutes throughout the Russian Empire.Vorres, p. 3 Her mother, advised by her sister, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, placed Olga in the care of an English nanny, Elizabeth Franklin.
The Russian imperial family was a frequent target for assassins, so for safety reasons the Grand Duchess was raised at the country palace of Gatchina, about 50 miles (80 km) west of Saint Petersburg. Although Olga and her siblings lived in a palace, conditions in the nursery were modest, even Spartan.Phenix, pp. 8–10; Vorres, p. 4 They slept on hard camp beds, rose at dawn, washed in cold water, and ate a simple porridge for breakfast.
Olga left Gatchina for the first time in 1888 when the imperial family visited the Caucasus. On 29 October, their return train approached the small town of Borki at speed. Olga's parents and their four older children were eating lunch in the dining-car when the train lurched violently and came off the rails. The carriage was torn open; the heavy iron roof caved in, and the wheels and floor of the car were sliced off. Survivors claimed the Tsar crawled out from beneath the crushed roof, and held it up with "a Herculean effort" so that the others could escape;Vorres, p. 11 a story subsequently considered unbelievable.Harcave, p. 32 There were 21 fatalities. Empress Marie helped tend the wounded and made makeshift bandages from her own clothes. An official investigation found that the crash was an accident,Phenix, p. 20 but it was widely and falsely believed that two bombs had been planted on the line.Vorres, p. 12
The Grand Duchess and her siblings were taught at home by private tutors. Subjects included history, geography, Russian, English, and French, as well as drawing and dancing.Vorres, pp. 18–20 Physical activities such as equestrianism were taught at an early age, and the children became expert riders.Phenix, pp. 12–13; Vorres, pp. 26–27
The family was deeply religious. While Christmas and Easter were times of celebration and extravagance, Lent was strictly observed—meat, dairy products and any form of entertainment were avoided.Vorres, p. 30
Empress Marie was reserved and formal with Olga as a child, and their relationship remained a difficult one.Phenix, p. 8; Vorres, p. 25 But Olga, her father, and the youngest of her brothers, Michael, had a close relationship. Together, the three frequently went on hikes in the Gatchina forests, where the Tsar taught Olga and Michael woodsmanship.Vorres, p. 24 Olga said of her father:
Family holidays were taken in the summer at Peterhof and with Olga's grandparents in Denmark.Phenix, pp. 11, 24; Vorres, pp. 33–41 However, in 1894, Olga's father became increasingly ill, and the annual trip to Denmark was cancelled.Vorres, pp. 48–52 On 13 November 1894, he died at the age of 49. The emotional impact on Olga, aged 12, was traumatic,Phenix, pp. 30–31; Vorres, pp. 54, 57 and her eldest brother, the new Tsar Nicholas II, was propelled into a role for which, in Olga's later opinion, he was ill-prepared.Vorres, p. 55
Court life Olga was due to enter society in mid-1899 at the age of 17, but after the death of her brother George at the age of 28, her first official public appearance was delayed by a year until 1900.Phenix, p. 45; Vorres, pp. 72–74 She hated the experience, and later told her official biographer Ian Vorres, "I felt as though I were an animal in a cage—exhibited to the public for the first time."Vorres, p. 74 From 1901 Olga served as the honorary Commander-in-Chief of the of the Imperial Russian Army. The Akhtyrsky Hussars, famous for their victory over Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Kulm in 1813, wore a distinctive brown dolman.Kulikovsky-Romanoff, p. 4
By 1900, Olga, aged 18, was being escorted to the theatre and opera by a distant cousin, Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, a member of the Russian branch of the House of Oldenburg.Belyakova, p. 86 He was 14 years her senior and known for his passion for literature and gambling.Belyakova, p. 84 Peter asked for Olga's hand in marriage the following year, a proposal that took the Grand Duchess completely by surprise: "I was so taken aback that all I could say was 'thank you'," she later explained.Vorres, p. 75
Their engagement, announced in May 1901, surprised family and friends, as Peter had shown no prior interest in women, and members of society assumed he was homosexual.Phenix, p. 52 At the age of 19, on , Olga married 33-year-old Peter. After the celebration the newlyweds left for the Oldenburg palace on the Field of Mars. Olga spent her wedding night alone in tears, while her husband left for a gambling club, returning the next morning.Belyakova, p. 88 Their marriage remained unconsummated,Olga said: "I shared his roof for nearly fifteen years, and never once we were husband and wife" (Vorres, p. 76); see also Massie, p. 171 and Olga suspected that Peter's ambitious mother had pushed him into proposing.Vorres, pp. 75, 78 Biographer Patricia Phenix thought Olga may have accepted his proposal to gain independence from her own mother, the Dowager Empress, or to avoid marriage into a foreign court.Phenix, p. 46 The couple initially lived with her in-laws Alexander Petrovich and Eugénie Maximilianovna of Oldenburg. The arrangement was not harmonious, as Peter's parents, both well known for their philanthropic work, berated their only son for his laziness. Olga took a dislike to her mother-in-law; although Eugénie, a close friend of the Dowager Empress, gave her daughter-in-law many gifts, including a ruby tiara that Napoleon had given as a present to Joséphine de Beauharnais. A few weeks after the wedding Olga and her husband travelled to Biarritz, France, from where they sailed to Sorrento, Italy, on a yacht loaned to them by King Edward VII of the United Kingdom.Belyakova, p. 89
On their return to Russia, they settled into a 200-room palace (the former Baryatinsky mansion) at 46 Sergievskaya Street (present-day ) in Saint Petersburg.Vorres, p. 81 (The palace, a gift from Tsar Nicholas II to his sister, now houses the Saint Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry.) Olga and Peter had separate bedrooms at opposite ends of the building, and the Grand Duchess had her own art studio. Unhappy in her marriage, she fell into bouts of depression that caused her to lose her hair, forcing her to wear a wig. It took two years for her hair to regrow.
Near the Oldenburgs' estate, Ramon in Voronezh province, Olga had her own villa, called "Olgino" after the local town.Vorres, pp. 78–79 She subsidized the village school out of her own pocket, and established a hospital.Kulikovsky-Romanoff, p. 3 Her daughter-in-law later wrote, "She tried to help every needy person as far as her strengths and means would permit." At the hospital she learned basic medical treatment and proper care from the local doctor.Vorres, p. 79 She exemplified her strong Orthodox faith by creating religious icons, which she distributed to the charitable endeavours she supported. At Ramon, Olga and Peter enjoyed walking through the nearby woods and hunted wolves together.Belyakova, p. 91 He was kind and considerate towards her, but she longed for love, a normal marriage, and children.
In April 1903, during a royal military review at Pavlovsk Palace, Olga's brother Michael introduced her to a Blue Cuirassier Guards officer, Nikolai Kulikovsky.Crawford and Crawford, p. 51; Phenix, p. 62; Vorres, pp. 94–95 Olga and Kulikovsky began to see each other and exchanged letters regularly. The same year, at the age of 22, she confronted her husband and asked for a divorce, which he refused – with the qualification that he might reconsider after seven years.Phenix, p. 63; Vorres, p. 95 Nevertheless, Oldenburg appointed Kulikovsky as an aide-de-camp, and allowed him to live in the same residence as Oldenburg and the Grand Duchess on Sergievskaya Street.Crawford and Crawford, p. 52; Phenix, p. 73; Vorres, pp. 94–95. The relationship between Kulikovsky and the Grand Duchess was not public,Vorres, pp. 95–96 but gossip about their romance spread through society.A Cuirassier's Memoirs by Vladimir Trubetskoy, quoted in Phenix, p. 73.