Elizabeth II Was Ours Too: Russian Relations of the Queen of Great Britain

Gone is the era that, it would seem, has always been and will never end. First Gorbachev, now Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. Of course, we are talking about fundamentally different figures. The late first and last president of the USSR was a practicing politician, a global leader whose actions (and inaction) radically changed the world. Elizabeth II should by no means be considered a political figure. She was a symbol, a link of times, a queen who “reigns but does not rule.” However, there is still something in common between these two figures.

The history of our country and the whole world in recent decades cannot be imagined without Gorbachev. The history of Great Britain and the whole world in recent decades cannot be imagined without Elizabeth II.

During the Queen’s only visit to Moscow in October 1994, as a freelancer at MK and a student at Moscow State University, I managed with titanic efforts to get a special press pass for the welcome ceremony for Elizabeth II at Vnukovo airport. It was as if I felt that this was my only chance to touch a very important part of world history, even from a distance of several tens of meters. Today, that part of history is gone forever.

Elizabeth II was not supposed to be queen. When she was born back in 1927, the young princess was the heir to the throne of the third line – after her uncle, Prince Edward of Wales and father George, Duke of York.

However, having ascended the throne in 1936, King Edward VIII managed to lose it very quickly. The official reason for his renunciation of the crown a few months later was the king’s passionate love for the divorcee, an American of dubious (at least from the point of view of the British establishment) Wallis Simpson origin.

However, there were other reasons as well. Edward was distinguished by mental instability, he tried to get into politics, flirting alternately with leftist ideas, then with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Soon the British political establishment united around Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and de facto deprived the king of the slightest freedom of action. On the eve of his abdication, he could not even fly abroad – the government categorically forbade him to do so.

After the change of kings, the former monarch, however, had the opposite problem – the inability to return to his homeland. The only exception (albeit conditional) was the period of the Second World War. Hitler seriously wanted to kidnap the former king in order to put him back on the throne if the Germans conquered Great Britain. And Edward was sent out of harm’s way as a governor to the British Bahamas (imagine what it was like for the former king, the former emperor of India to “lead” the islands, whose population even in 2022 is only 400 thousand people).

But before the war even ended, the Duke of Windsor (the title given to the former king) was returned to the life of an exile, a life he led until his death in 1972.

Both the father of the future Queen Elizabeth II, King George VI, and Elizabeth II herself learned this lesson well. Previous British monarchs, up to Edward VIII’s predecessor King George V, albeit discreetly, intervened in British politics. And, by the way, not only in the British.

George V was a relative of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II. The two royals were almost twins: I never learned to tell them apart in official portraits.

But when in 1917 the Provisional Government of Russia was ready to send the former emperor into exile in England, King George vetoed the idea. The British monarch was afraid that the arrival of Nicholas II in foggy Albion would contribute to the overthrow of the monarchy in Great Britain. Therefore, then Prime Minister David Lloyd George was ordered to take on the role of scapegoat. Like, he did not allow it, and King George, as an exemplary constitutional monarch, was forced to make this decision. The truth became known only many years later – after the opening of the secret archives…

Will we learn something secret about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II in the future? I suspect not. All the iconic British political events of her time are already well described by historians and memoirists in great detail.

She did not influence politics, did not influence at all. But she powerfully influenced the morale of her country.

After the Second World War, Great Britain was, from the point of view of the British themselves, a rather gloomy, poor and badly damaged place. Suffice it to say that the coupon system for food, clothing and other essentials in the UK was canceled even later than in the USSR.

The country badly needed reasons for optimism. And Elizabeth, began to give the country these reasons, while still being the crown princess. In 1947, she married a not very wealthy man grandson of the Grand Duchess of the Russian Empire (and part-time Queen of Greece) Olga – naval officer Philip Mountbatten.

For tailoring a wedding dress, a certain number of coupons for clothes were issued to the future queen (the British are very scrupulous about such formalities – at least outwardly). But emotionally, even such a modest (relatively, of course) royal wedding still became a very joyful event in the life of the country.

When King George VI died unexpectedly at the age of 56 in 1952, the figure of the new queen riveted everyone’s attention. Britain then rapidly grew rich – the post-war devastation is a thing of the past. And for some time it seemed that the political power of the country was also reborn.

Young, very beautiful and impeccably able to conduct the queen was perceived as a symbol of this rebirth. Britain suddenly felt young—as young as Elizabeth.

Hopes for the revival of the British Empire turned out to be false. During the 50s and 60s, the country gradually lost all its colonies, and in the 70s it entered a phase of an acute economic crisis.

Elizabeth II herself also had to endure difficult times in terms of personal popularity. She was sometimes let down by her image makers—the decision to allow TV people to film scenes from her family’s domestic life proved to be very beneficial in the short term, but, as it turned out later, contributed to “destroying the mystique of royal power.”

Sometimes the queen was let down by her own children and their wives – however, this is known to almost everyone on the planet. But life is not a complete idyll for everyone – even for queens who have spent more than 70 years on the throne.

That seven-decade-long era is now over. And it’s extremely sad. In a sense, Elizabeth II managed to become the grandmother of the whole world. It is unlikely that anyone will be able to surpass her achievement.

Read the material “The death of Elizabeth II came after talking with Liz Truss”