Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Sophia's Birth
During the winter pregnant Alexandra and her two men, an odd troika, roamed the
underground theaters that were springing up all over the city like mushrooms. Alexandra gave
up her disguise as a now visibly pregnant Novella d’Andreae. She had nothing to hide nor
prove. She decided to work in the maternity ward of the hospital, to enroll in additional courses
in gynecology, and look for another woman doctor with whom to establish a private family
practice after the baby’s arrival. As she grew bigger she laughed, "I am a good advertisement
for my future practice. I should carry a sign on my belly with my name and credentials."
Her pregnancy was uneventful, the baby peaceful and unproblematic. Aunt Sophia
offered to come, but Alexandra talked her out of it.
When her labor started on the eighth of May, Konrad took her in a taxi to her hospital,
where she was well taken care of by her colleagues. She succeed in relaxing herself
completely. The delivery was fast and easy.
Once again she saw the lights and floated across the last, hard phase of giving birth.
She enjoyed these sensations, they were like old friends.
As she had expected, it was a girl.
They named her Sophia, after Alexandra’s and the child's natlideda.
Two bouquets of flowers awaited her in her room after her delivery, one from Konrad,
another from Vladimir.
To make Alexandra’s life easier, Konrad agreed to engage a wet nurse for little Sophia
after the second month. A cleaning lady took care of the heavy housework, and Elisabeth,
Otto’s beloved Nana, became Alexandra’s indispensable adjutant at home.
During Spring 1906 St. Petersburg had stabilized. Witte’s energetic sweep of the
radicals in the factories did put an end to the recurring strikes. With new medical care for the
workers and better housing provided by the owners of the factories, the life of the workers
improved. The restless, gifted young found it much easier to enter and rise through the
universities. A steadily increasing number of women and Jews from the West-Russian Pale,
who had been strictly limited by quotas, were now able to gain a hold in the universities and the
arts.
The ugly Marxist uprising in Moscow in December 1905 which Witte had put down,
became the only bloodstain on his reign. After successfully securing the state loan sponsored
by a consortium of Jewish banks in France, Germany and Holland, Witte handed in his
resignation. A week later the first Duma was opened by Nicholas II with great pomp at the
Winter Palace. It lasted only a few months before the Emperor dissolved it over a constitutional
disagreement on the limits of power between parliament and the crown.
Stolypin became the new president of the council of ministers. Lacking Witte’s humanist
scruples, Stolypin began his reign with a ruthless cleansing of revolutionary troublemakers. He
had them arrested, executed, or exiled. Thousands disappeared. Lenin, Trotsky and the entire
leadership of the Bolsheviks were exiled or sent to Siberia. Among them was Sasha Manovsky.
To avoid a scandal, Manovsky had been persuaded to leave "voluntarily" for Paris.
Georgia had a new viceroy, Vorontsev, a moderate, unusually sensible man, who tried
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