Paul Vinogradoff

“ Nevertheless, Alexandra Feodorovna proved to be the evil genius of the Russian dynasty, by her blind and obstinate support of reactionary tendencies and of worthless adventurers, at a time when a wise and firm policy of reform was more needed than ever. All the better representatives of the dynasty the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovitch, the Grand Duchess Victoria, warned the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of the imminent danger of that regime of fleeting ministerial shadows which set in after the catastrophe of the War Office in 1915. ”

“ The courtiers and bureaucrats in the immediate surroundings of the Tsar, men like Sipiaguin, Nicolas Maklakov, and Sabler, took advantage of these prepossessions in order to keep up a constant hostility against progressive reformers and western adaptations. But the most dangerous representative of mystic reaction was the Tsar's consort, the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. ”

“ The Empress considered him as the God-sent representative of the Russian nation, of that mass of peasants which, as she was convinced, was the firm mainstay of autocracy in Russia. And in the later years of Nicholas II.'s reign, the years of great trial and danger, Alexandra Feodorovna stepped in more and more often to direct the Tsar's choice of his ministers and to prevent him from making concessions to the spirit of the time. ”