Abstract

The activities of the first palace commandant (head of the royal guards) P.P. Hesse and his role in the entourage of Nicholas II still continues to be a historiographic gap. The study of this issue will facilitate the solution of the question as to how independent the state course of the last tsar was in the initial period of his reign. In 1884, P.P. Hesse was appointed commander of the Consolidated Guards Battalion, which protected the royal residence. Impeccable reputation, bravery, as well as the acquaintance with the heir to the throne, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, were the reasons for the appointment of the general in 1896 to the post of the palace commandant, although contemporaries were inclined to ascribe this promotion to the influence of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, as well as to an advantageous marriage of the general. P.P. Hesse took part in the process of appointing the following Ministers of the Interior: I.L. Goremykin, D.S. Sipyagin, V.K. Plehve and P.D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky. However, the general’s efforts to promote his own candidates to a prominent position were futile. P.P. Hesse was also involved in deciding foreign policy issues. In the western direction (France), the general was kept informed by P.I. Rachkovsky, head of the Police Department of foreign agents. Nominally, Hesse was a member of A.M. Bezobrazov Far East clique. However, the measures he took were directed against the aggressive policy of Russia in the Far East. On the eve of the first Russian revolution, in December 1904, the palace commandant advocated liberal political reforms, in particular, the appointment of public representatives to the State Council, which, nonetheless, was rejected by the tsar. After the events of January 9, 1905 and the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich in February 1905, the general changed his attitude about the necessity of reforms and began to speak from a moderately liberal position. The study of the biography of the courtier allows us to conclude that at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries attempts by the entourage of the tsar to influence his decisions most often failed.