Thank you, FA, for blowing the whistle on today's questionable playground behavior. From what I've noticed, while typing up my own response, we need at least three time-out benches.
I see Alexei as a typical child growing up under extraordinary circumstances.
Kids (and, it appears, adults) will get away with what they can if there's no one around to reprimand or discipline them.
Also, children know that in certain situations they can "push the envelope" and they won't be disciplined . . . that parents and/or supervisors will find it uncomfortable to make an issue out of it. Or that an attempt at discipline might even exacerbate the issue, the theory being that ignoring the behavior might be best--but, as we know, this isn't usually the case.
Alexei was being watched and judged on an almost continual basis. He was the Tsarevich, he was the youngest, he was the only boy, and his health was poor. Any one of these factors would have caused a certain amount of special handling from other family members; the four of them together insured it.
Yes, there are numerous reports of his bad behavior. There are just as many reports of his good behavior. He was a work in progress, like any child, with the additional problems I've just mentioned. His parents, who already had dealt with four stair-step daughters exhibiting four very different personalities, now had a rambunctious yet exceedingly vulnerable little boy cub to deal with. Nicholas could not always be with Alexei and the boy's earliest years were largely under the direction of his mother, who wanted him to be disciplined and a well-mannered "Baby Tsar" (as she called him) but also indulged him due to his frequent hemophilia episodes. I cannot think that any other mother--or any other parent, for that matter--would have responded differently under those circumstances.
I don't doubt that the negative reports of his behavior are true. And if you've seen the current exhibit--first in New Mexico, then New Jersey, and next in Ohio--you will note that in the brief film on display a sequence featuring Alexei marching in unison with a number of other boys shows the young Tsarevich suddenly slapping the face of the boy next to him. What the motivation for that action was we cannot know, but there it is on film, preserved all these years later.
As Alexei matured his behavior matured, and his time spent with his father at Stavka seems to have been especially good for him. But of course he was still a child, full of energy, and one of my favorite film clips from this time shows him beaning unsuspecting adults with snowballs, then laughing with guilty embarrassment when someone points out that his actions are being recorded on film!
I've worked with children displaying all sorts of behavior due to all sorts of motivations. A certain number of these antics can be written off as part and parcel of being a kid. Then there's the issue of hemophilia, and how difficult it is for any child with a handicap to come to terms with being his or her difference. And then there's the matter of rank vs. equality. Some of you may recall that Alexei's Great Uncle Edward VII had difficulties in this area when he was a child.
Although Alexei's father once remarked--probably only half in jest!--that his son might one day be called "Alexei the Terrible," indications are that he was evolving into a compassionate and thoughtful individual. (And not nearly as disruptive as, say, the adolescent Felix Yussovpov.) Some of the children I grew up with who behaved in a bratty manner eventually left that behavior behind; others did not. I think Alexei, had he survived to adulthood, would have developed into someone with considerable empathy for others; what he did have going for him were two parents who loved each other, loved him, and wanted him to grow up to be a Tsar who was not only well-mannered but--within their own late Victorian standards--moral and upright.
