Read about It. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 35 стр.

riage, the fruit of her hours of prayer, God’s blessing on her, on her         into renewed attempts to win His mercy by the fervent passion of her
husband and on the people of Russia.                                           prayers.
        All who saw the Empress with her infant son in those first                    Hour after hour, she prayed, either in the small room off her bed-
months were struck with her happiness. At thirty-two, Alexandra was            room or in the palace chapel, a darkened chamber lined with silken tap-
tall, still slender, with gray-blue eyes and long red-gold hair. The child     estries. For greater privacy, she established a small chapel in the crypt
in her arms appeared to be glowing with health. The Tsarevich certainly        of the Fedorovski Sobor, a church in the Imperial Park used by the
was one of the handsomest babies one could imagine, with lovely fair           household and soldiers of the Guard. Here, alone on the stone floors, by
curls, great gray-blue eyes under the fringe of long curling lashes and        the light of oil lamps, she begged for the health of her son.
the fresh pink color of a healthy child. When he smiled, there were two               In periods when Alexis was well, she dared to hope. «God has
little dimples in his chubby cheeks.                                           heard me,» she cried. Even as the years passed and one hemorrhage fol-
        Because she had waited so long and prayed so hard for her son,         lowed another, Alexandra refused to believe that God had deserted her.
the revelation that Alexis suffered from hemophilia struck Alexandra           Instead, she decided that she herself must be unworthy of receiving a
with savage force. From that moment, she lived in the particular sunless       miracle. Knowing that the disease had been transmitted through her
world reserved for the mothers of hemophiliacs. For any woman, there           body, she began to dwell on her own guilt. Obviously, she told herself,
is no more exquisite torture than watching helplessly as a beloved child       if she had been the instrument of her son’s torture, she could not also
suffers in extreme pain.                                                       become the instrument of his salvation. God has rejected her prayers;
        Hemophilia means great loneliness for a woman. At first, when a        therefore she must find someone who was closer to God to intercede on
hemophilic boy is born, the characteristic maternal reaction is a vigor-       her behalf. When Gregory Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who was re-
ous resolve to fight: somehow, somewhere, there must be a specialist           ported to have miraculous power of faith healing, arrived in St. Peters-
who can declare that a mistake has been made, or that a cure is just           burg, Alexandra believed that God had at last given her an answer.
around the corner. One by one, all the specialists are consulted. One by              Russians are a compassionate people, warm in their love of chil-
one, they sadly shake their heads. The particular emotional security that      dren and deeply perceptive in their understanding of suffering. Why did
doctors normally provide when confronting illness is gone. The mother          they not open their hearts to this anguished mother and her stricken
realizes that she is alone.                                                    child?
        Having discovered this and accepted it, she begins to prefer it that          The answer, incredibly, is that Russia did not know. Most people
way. The normal world, going about its everyday life, seems coldly un-         in Moscow or Kiev or St. Petersburg did not know that the Tsarevich
feeling. Since the normal world cannot help and does not understand,           had hemophilia. When he missed a public function, it was announced
she prefers to cut herself off from it. Her family becomes her refuge.         that he had a cold or had suffered a sprained ankle. No one believed
Here, where sadness need not be hidden, there are no questions and no          these explanations and the boy became the subject of incredible rumors.
pretensions. This inner world becomes the mother’s reality. So it was          Alexis was said to be the victim of anarchists» bombs. At last, after Dr.
for the Empress Alexandra in the little world of Tsarskoe Selo. Alexan-        Fedorov warned Nicholas that the hemorrhage in the stomach could be
dra, trying to control the waves of anxiety and frustration that kept roll-    fatal at any hour, Count Fredericks received permission to begin pub-
ing over her, sought answers by throwing herself into the Church. The          lishing medical bulletins. Still, there was no mention of the cause.
Russian Orthodox Church is an emotional church with a strong belief in                Official announcements of the grave illness of the Heir to the
the healing power of faith and prayer. As soon as the Empress realized         Throne plunged Russia into national prayer. Special services were held
that no doctor could aid her son, she determined to wrest from God the         in great cathedrals and in small churches in lonely villages. Before the
Miracle which science denied. «God is just,» she declared, and plunged         blessed icon in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan in St. Petersburg,

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