Chapter 9: Letters and Light
Spring broke slowly over St. Petersburg, the Neva River cracking open under pale sunlight as ice drifted like broken glass. The city smelled of damp stone, chimney soot, and thawing ambition. At the Smolny Institute, a bell rang for the midday recess, and hundreds of young girls in gray uniforms flowed into the courtyard. Among them stood a girl holding a folded note bearing the seal of the Tsarevich.
Alexander watched from the carriage window across the street, coat collar turned up, hat low. A little dramatic perhaps, but he preferred his visit to go unnoticed. For now.
"Smolny," he said softly to his aide, "teaches etiquette, French, piano… and very little arithmetic."
"It's a finishing school, Your Highness," the aide replied.
"Yes. It finishes their chances of understanding their country."
He stepped down from the carriage and made for the side gate. The headmistress, an austere woman named Madame Belyaeva, was already waiting, having received his request by courier hours earlier.
"Your Highness," she curtsied stiffly. "To what do we owe this honor?"
Alexander offered a polite smile. "I'm conducting a quiet study of educational standards across the Empire. Smolny seemed… essential to understand."
They walked through the halls, neat and hushed, lined with paintings of noble ladies and imperial benefactors. He paused before a classroom where a teacher instructed students in calligraphy.
"How many of your girls return home to manage estates?"
"Many," the headmistress said.
"And how many are taught bookkeeping, land management, or the mathematics of interest?"
Belyaeva hesitated. "It is not part of our... traditional instruction."
Alexander raised a brow. "Tradition is a fine spice, Madame, but a poor meal."
Later that day, he met with Count Yegor Tolstoy, the Minister of Education, at the Winter Palace library. Scrolls, inkpots, and books spilled across the table—some authored by German reformists, others by Enlightenment thinkers still frowned upon in Orthodox circles.
"You wish to overhaul the village schools?" Tolstoy asked cautiously. "Introduce sciences, hygiene, and civics?"
"Yes," Alexander said simply. "Not just for the gentry. For the peasantry."
"You will provoke the Church."
"I'll invite the Church," Alexander said. "Let them keep their scripture, their catechisms. But let a child learn to read those on a full stomach, with clean hands and a basic grasp of numbers."
Tolstoy drummed his fingers. "You will need instructors. Hundreds. Thousands."
"I plan to propose stipends for teacher apprenticeships—retired soldiers, literate clerks, even priests. I want a school within walking distance of every village by the time I'm thirty."
Tolstoy stared. "The budget—"
"I'll fund the pilot with revenue from government leases and the small industrial projects I've started. I only need your cooperation—not your full coffers."
That night, Alexander returned to his study in the Gatchina Palace. He poured himself tea and began drafting a letter to a rising writer in Moscow who had written an impassioned pamphlet on education for the poor—Fyodor Dostoevsky.
"I have read your words with interest and purpose. If you are willing, I would meet you to discuss a vision: one where the son of a cobbler learns not only to count but to build. And the daughter of a washerwoman learns not only to sew, but to read. Russia is not a land of nobles—it is a land of people. And I mean to prepare them for the century ahead."
He sealed the letter. The clock struck midnight.
He had no throne. No power beyond his name and his charm.
But if the seed of reform could be planted in the minds of the next generation, then perhaps it did not matter whether he ruled tomorrow.
Because the children of today might rule the Russia he dreamed of.