The Last Grand Duchess
Russia's Last Grand Duchess
Alexander III (1845-1894),
Tsar of Russia, 1881-1894, and his wife, Empress Marie, had four children,
two sons, Nicholas and Michael, and two daughters, Xenia and Olga. Nicholas
Romanov, who became Russian Tsar, 1894, the year his father died, lived
in unbelievable opulence. At the height of his power, the Imperial Palace
outside St. Petersburg, where he was raised and ascended to power, had
900 rooms and 5,000 indentured servants. It was here that Olga, 14 years
younger than her brother Nicholas, grew up exposed to the intrigues of
the infamous Mad Monk Rasputin who became the “spiritual advisor” to her
sister-in-law. After Olga married Peter of Oldenburg, this unhappy marriage
was dissolved by her brother, one of the last acts he performed as Tsar
before he abdicated, 1917. Soon after, Olga, a woman of passion, married
Lt. Col. Nicolai Kulikovsky, a commoner who completely swept her off her
feet. After Nicholas II and his entire family were brutally assassinated,
1918, Olga and her family were given asylum in Denmark. Fearing Communist
aggression and expansion in the Baltic at the end of World War II, after
years of happiness she left Denmark, 1948, and immigrated to Canada with
her husband and two sons. Briefly farming near Campbellville, Ontario,
the family settled, 1950, Cooksville (Mississauga), Ontario. Olga became
a member of Christ the Saviour Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Toronto, where
her portrait, as Last Grand Duchess of Russia, hangs in the Cathedral,
today, and where her works as an artist embellish the beautiful interior
iconostasis. In 1960, after 10 years living in Cooksville, Olga was taken
in by close Russian friends and died six months later, age 82, in an apartment
above a hair dressing salon on Gerrard Street in Toronto’s east end. In
the view above, Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess of Russia, Olga Romanov-Kulikovsky,
stands next to an icon of Mary which she painted for Christ the Saviour
Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Toronto, in the mid-1950s. Left, she stands
in her Cooksville, Ontario, home beside a portrait of her father, Czar
Alexander III. [Photos, top and left, courtesy Galina Kamarow] Centre photograph
depicts final resting place of Olga Romanov-Kulikovsky, the Last Grand
Duchess of Russia (1882-1960), York Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario. [Photo
courtesy, C.J. Humber]