Matilda Kshesinskaya, the ballerina of her age, has become the stuff of legend
Matilda Kshesinskaya, the ballerina of her age, has become the stuff of legend
"It was the house of the ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya, Nicholas II's lover. The tsar ordered this house built for her, and also a subterranean passage connecting it to his Winter Palace [now the Hermitage], on the opposite bank of the Neva," they might say.
While the legend is highly romantic it is a complete fabrication, save that Matilda Kshesinskaya (1872-1971) was indeed a ballerina and did live there.
A daughter of the outstanding ballet dancer Felix Kshesinsky who starred in the Mariinsky Theater, she made her debut as a ballerina on the stage of the Conservatory Theater (across Teatralnaya Ploshad from the Mariinsky). Many years later, in 1917, her last performance in Russia would take place on the stage of the same Conservatory Theater.
By 1890 "Malechka," as she was called by friends and relatives, was already a well-known ballerina, and two years later was one of the best dancers at the Mariinsky Theater. Tchaikovsky singled her out for admiring comment when she danced the main role in his "Sleeping Beauty" in 1892.
About that time Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, later Tsar Nicholas II, became fascinated by the beautiful young ballerina. But his infatuation did not last long. As soon as Nicholas became engaged to Princess Alice of Hessen, later Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna, he forgot about Kshesinskaya.
Matilda Kshesinskaya was never the tsar's lover, as often told. It was Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, General of the Artillery and Chairman of the Russian Theatrical Society -- and Nicholas II's uncle -- who developed a passionate love for Kshesinskaya that lasted to the day of his death 25 years later.
Sergei Mikhailovich met Matilda Kshesinskaya at the outset of her career. The ballerina later wrote in her memoirs, "At that time he turned out to be my true friend, and would remain my true friend all his life long -- both in our happy years and in the days of the revolution, in the days of trial."
It was Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich who bought a picturesque dacha in Strelna (near Peterhof) for Kshesinskaya near the turn of the century. It was ruined under the Soviets and has disappeared.
As for the house at 1/2 Kronverkskiy Prospect, there never was a tunnel leading to the Winter Palace, and Kshesinskaya paid for her home herself, buying the empty lot for 88,000 roubles (then about $186,000) and building the house from scratch. Such sums were within the reach of the prima ballerina of the pre-revolutionary Mariinsky Theater, unlike later Soviet dancers who earned about $20 a month.
Kshesinskaya moved in during the summer of 1906, with her young son Vladimir. Vladimir Krasinsky (born 1902) was an illegitimate child. Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich loved him as if he were his own son, although well aware that the father was in fact Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, second cousin to Nicholas II.
Kshesinskaya and Andrei Vladimirovich met for the first time in February 1900, at the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the ballerina's Mariinsky debut. Later she would write in her memoirs of that meeting, "I was greatly impressed, he was so wonderfully handsome and so shy... From that day, a feeling was in my heart ... I was falling in love with him..."
But the faithful Sergei Mikhailovich continued to love the enchanting Kshesinskaya all the same.
In the cold fall of 1917, when Kshesinskaya's house had already been looted by Bolsheviks, Sergei Mikhailovich begged the prima ballerina to become his wife. She refused.
Instead, she and her son traveled to Kislovodsk (in the northern Caucasus) to join Andrei Vladimirovich. Sergei Mikhailovich remained in Petrograd. He would be exiled and later, like so many of the tsar's relatives, killed by the Bolsheviks.
Matilda Kshesinskaya wrote in her memoirs: "I respected Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich without limit for his being so attached to me, I was thankful for everything he had done for me during all these years, but I had never loved him as I loved Andrei. Sergei Mikhailovich always knew this perfectly well, so he forgave...
"I saw how sad were the eyes of Sergei Mikhailovich when he was seeing me off at Nikolayevsky Railway Station... We parted, never to see one another again."
Kshesinskaya's fate was luckier than her admirer's. She and her son managed to flee Russia for Paris, where she became the wife of Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich.
She appeared in her last ballet performance at the age of 64, at Covent Garden, London. For many years she continued to teach at the ballet school she founded. She died aged 99.
And what became of the Kshesinskaya mansion? Occupied and looted by Bolsheviks in March 1917, it became their headquarters for three months. Later, when the Bolsheviks settled in the Smolny Institute, Kshesinskaya's house remained deserted.
After the October Revolution it housed several offices, but in 1935 the Museum of Sergei Kirov (the recently murdered Communist leader of the city) was founded in the Kshesinskaya mansion. When the Kirov museum was transferred to his former home in the mid-50's the Museum of the October Revolution moved in to the mansion and the neighboring house. Recently the Museum of the October Revolution metamorphosed into the Museum of Russian Political History.