by Theo Aronson
In what Alicky considered to be her divine mission she was backed up, indeed guided, by the wily Rasputin. Her faith in him remained absolute. And, lest she might develop any reservations about him, Rasputin never hesitated to remind her of his importance in her life. 'I need neither the Emperor or yourself,' he would say in his apparently artless fashion. 'If you abandon me to my enemies, it will not worry me. I am quite able to cope with them. But neither the Emperor nor you can do without me. If I am not here to protect you, you will lose your son and your crown in six months.'
And, believing him, Alicky carried out all his wishes. Together, and with disastrous results, they managed the affairs of the Empire. The Empress began by trying to chivvy her husband into being firmer, bolder, more autocratic. Be the master and lord, you are an autocrat,' she would write. All that was needed to secure victory on the battlefield and harmony in the country was a strong hand at the helm. 'Never forget that you are and must remain autocratic Emperor,' she commanded. 'We are not ready for constitutional government.' Loathing the Duma, the Empress simply ignored its existence. As Our Friend says, she assured her husband on another occasion, 'responsible government . . . would be the ruin of everything'.
Anyone advocating even a slight relaxation of autocracy had to be got rid of. The Ministers, reckoned the Empress, were simply there to carry out the Tsar's will. If they disagreed, they had to go. One by one, and always on the advice of Our Friend, competent Ministers were dismissed to be replaced by nonentities. But even Ministers of unquestioned loyalty to the autocratic ideal fell from power because of Rasputin's antipathy towards them. One word of criticism about the Man of God's dissolute way of life or dangerous influence in affairs of state was enough to end a career. The vacant places would be filled by almost anyone fortunate enough to have won Rasputin's approval. It was not that he was ambitious for power; he merely wanted to have his own way in everything. In letter after letter to the front, the Empress would urge the dismissal of one Minister or the appointment of another.
'Be firm,' she wrote after yet another of Rasputin's nominees had emerged triumphant, 'one wants to feel your hand – how long, years, people told me the same "Russia loves to feel the whip" – it's their nature – tender love and then the iron hand to punish and guide. How I wish I could pour my will into your veins . . . Be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul – crush them all under you . . . .'
Not content with controlling affairs in St Petersburg, the Empress and Rasputin turned their attention to the front. On the conduct of military affairs, the starets proved no less voluble. There was no aspect of the campaign on which he did not have, or did not give, an opinion. His instructions, coming from God and passed on via the Empress, reached the harassed Tsar in a steady stream. He told the Emperor when to advance, when to retreat and when to stay put. An order, given by the Tsar's Chief of Staff, would be countermanded after the Empress, primed by Rasputin, had buffeted her husband with contrary instructions.
By the year 1916, the Empress Alexandra's mauve boudoir at Tsarskoe Selo had become the nerve centre of the Russian Empire. Industrious, dedicated, convinced that everything she was doing was for the good of Holy Russia, the Empress forged ahead. Not an evil, nor a heartless, nor even an entirely foolish woman, the Empress Alexandra was a supremely misguided one. Serenely unaware of her limitations, obsessed by her inaccurate picture of Russia, she took upon her own shoulders the entire task of managing the Empire. With God's emissary to advise her, what need had she of anyone else?
By the autumn of 1916 the Empress, never popular, was loathed by all strata of Russian society. 'Their hatred of the Empress has reached a terrible pitch;' noted her cousin, Queen Marie of Romania after talking to a group of Russian officers, 'they consider her a misfortune to the country and there is no one today who would not gladly get rid of her by any means.'
Few doubted that the Tsaritsa was Rasputin's mistress. For what other reason would she be so intimate with this coarse-mannered moujik whom even the Church had rejected and whose chief characteristic was his lecherousness? And not only were they accused of being lovers; many believed them to be working together for a German victory. The charge of treason was one to which the German-born Empress was especially vulnerable. Ignoring the fact that she had been raised by her grandmother, Queen Victoria, her critics harped on her German connections. Was not her brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, fighting for the German army? Was not one of her sisters married to the Kaiser's brother? Indeed, was the Kaiser not her cousin?
The capital was full of a story about a general who, while walking down a corridor in the Winter Palace, came across the Tsarevich in tears. 'What is wrong, my little man?' asked the general. In bewilderment the boy answered: 'When the Russians are beaten, Papa cries. When the Germans are beaten, Mama cries. When am I to cry?
The Russian military disasters could only be explained, it was said, in terms of betrayal. Alexandra and Rasputin, aided by the puppets that they had put into power, were working against Russia. The Empress, having badgered her weak-willed husband into entrusting her with secret military information, passed it on to Rasputin who, in turn, gave it or sold it to the Germans. Just as Alicky's cousin, Sophie, was being accused of being in direct touch with the Kaiser, so was Alicky. The Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo was said to be fitted with secret wireless sets by which the traitors communicated with the enemy. There was talk of a direct telephone line to the Kaiser and about an incognito visit of the Empress's German brother to Tsarskoe Selo. On her, and on Rasputin, was blamed the chaotic economic situation: the rising food prices, the shortage of flour and butter, the blatant profiteering. The shortages, it was claimed, were being contrived. With the country starving, it could be handed over, all the more easily, to the Germans.
No one was to know, nor would it have been believed, that Alexandra – in her honest, if inexpert, fashion – was trying to do something about these overwhelming economic problems. Even Rasputin was applying himself to the alleviation of the serious shortages. In a vision, reported the Empress to her husband, Our Friend had seen a solution to the problem. Alexandra was to speak 'earnestly, severely even' to the Tsar about it. For three days no trains other than those carrying flour, butter and sugar must be allowed to pass.
As for the charge that the Empress harboured pro-German sympathies, nothing, according to those who knew her well, could have been more ridiculous. 'The Empress was very English in her feelings,' wrote one of her ladies. 'Her upbringing and her long visits to Queen Victoria had all fostered her love for her mother's country. English was the language which came easiest to her. The Allies' cause was hers. All her recorded conversations and published correspondence show this clearly, and she rejoiced at the Allies' successes nearly as much as at the Russian ones.'
Beyond the walls of Tsarskoe Selo, however, none of this was known. As hunger and dissatisfaction spread, so did the cry against 'the traitoress' become louder. On the streets, they were openly calling the Empress Nemka – 'the German woman', or more graphically, 'the German whore'. A mob had rioted in Moscow, demanding her arrest. Warming to their task, they had attacked the convent in which lived the Empress's sister, the saintly Grand Duchess Elizabeth. 'Away with the German woman!' they had yelled.
Things could obviously not go on like this much longer. If the dynasty were to survive, there would have to be some drastic changes. Queen Marie of Romania, on being visited by her sister Ducky (now married to Grand Duke Cyril) was told something of the situation in Russia. It was, says Marie, 'very dangerous because of the prevailing great hatred of the Empress'. Even the Emperor was becoming the object of widespread contempt; 'there is actually talk,' continues Marie, 'about suppressing them one way or another'.
2
On the first day of January 1917, Rasputin's corpse was found under the ice of one of the tributaries of the frozen River Neva in the capital. Its discovery confirmed the rumours that had been circulating for the past two days. During the course
of a gathering at the palace of young Prince Yussoupov, the starets had been murdered.
The manner of his death had proved to be no less bizarre than that of his life. Prince Yussoupov, having decided that the survival of the monarchy depended on the removal of the starets, had invited Rasputin to visit him in a cellar of his palace. Here, while his fellow conspirators huddled at the head of the stairs, the Prince had fed his guest a plate of cakes liberally sprinkled with cyanide. They had no effect on Rasputin whatsoever. Yussoupov then gave him two glasses of wine, similarly poisoned. These too, seemed to affect the starets not at all. The Prince, by now considerably unnerved, next tried a revolver. He shot Rasputin in the back. The starets fell to the floor, apparently dead. But a few minutes later he leapt to his feet and grabbed his opponent by the throat. The terrified Prince dashed helter-skelter up the stairs. Behind, on all fours, followed the bellowing Rasputin. With Yussoupov having locked himself in his parents' apartments, Rasputin decided to get away. In spite of a stomach full of cyanide and a bullet in his back, he ran 'quickly' across the snow-covered courtyard towards the gate. Twice more he was shot by one of the other conspirators. When he fell, he was savagely kicked on the head. At this stage Yussoupov reappeared. Taking a club, he pounded the prostrate form. When, at last, there was no more movement, they roped the body in a curtain and carried it to the frozen river where they stuffed it through a hole in the ice.
But, incredibly, Rasputin was not yet dead. When his corpse was brought up three days later, it was discovered that he had still had enough strength to free one of his roped hands and that he had actually died from drowning.
At first, the Empress Alexandra could simply not believe that the Man of God had been murdered. Until his body was found, she convinced herself that he had temporarily disappeared, that he would soon return. 'God have mercy,' she wrote distractedly to the Tsar. 'Such utter anguish (am calm and can't believe it) Come quickly . . . .' When she learnt the truth she was devastated. Rasputin, to her mind, was a martyr, the victim of that corrupt and effete society that she had always abhorred. She had him buried in the great park at Tsarskoe Selo. Around his grave, in deep mourning, stood the Tsar and his family.
With the hated Rasputin out of the way, attention was focused on the equally hated Empress. Those who had imagined that the death of Rasputin would put an end to her political influence were proved quite wrong: she played a more active part than ever. To any suggestion that she withdraw from the political scene, the Tsar turned a deaf ear. Nor would he listen to any talk of choosing a government more acceptable to the Duma. Time and again he was warned – by members of the imperial family, by ambassadors, by politicians – that the Empress's attitude was leading, not only the dynasty, but all Russia, to disaster.
But the usually irresolute Nicholas remained firm. Completely in tune with the Empress, he was determined that the autocracy be passed on, untainted by democracy, to his heir.
With the Emperor refusing to listen to reason, there were mutterings about more drastic methods of getting rid of Alexandra. The talk was loudest within the imperial family itself. The Tsar's grand-ducal relations planned a palace revolution: the Empress would be arrested, the Emperor forced to abdicate in favour of his son and Grand Duke Nicholas proclaimed Regent. It all sounded brave enough but nothing ever came of it. In the spring of 1917 the Tsar went back to the front and the Tsaritsa continued to rule through her utterly incompetent Ministers.
There was no way, now, of averting the storm.
It started on 8 March 1917. That day the Empress heard that there had been some disturbances in the streets of the capital. The mob, cold and hungry, had broken into several bakeries. During the following few days she was told that rioting had become more serious and that workers were out on strike. Worried by the turn of events, the Empress was not nearly as worried as she should have been. For one thing she had no real appreciation of the seriousness of the situation. The Prime Minister, one of Rasputin's ineffectual nominees, was playing down the danger. Everything, he assured the Empress, was under control. Street disturbances were hardly anything new.
And then Alexandra had problems closer at hand. On the very day that the first riots broke out, the eldest and youngest of her five children – Olga and Alexis – went down with measles. They were followed by her second daughter Tatiana and her friend Anna Vyrubova. Busy nursing the invalids herself, Alicky could not give all her attention to the trouble in the streets. Only on hearing, on 12 March, that the soldiers in the capital were joining the mob did she come to a full realization of the danger. Immediately she wired the Tsar. He had already heard about the troubles. He wired back that he would be arriving at Tsarskoe Selo two days later, 14 March.
By 13 March almost the entire capital was in the hands of the revolutionaries. The imperial government had collapsed and power had passed to the Duma. On the following day the Tsar's last bastion, the Imperial Guard, pledged allegiance to the Duma. The revolution had triumphed.
That morning the desperately worried Alicky was up early to welcome her husband home. But no train arrived at Tsarskoe Selo station. Nor was there any message from the Emperor. Later she heard that his train had been stopped. Why, she did not know. Throughout the day she received news of the defection of hitherto loyal troops. Already discipline among the men guarding the palace was beginning to slacken. The servants were slipping away. The vast palace was emptying.
By the following morning Marie and Anastasia had caught measles as well. Still there was no word from the Tsar. Several times during the day, telephone calls were put through to the capital, asking for news of the Emperor. There was none. The water was cut off; then the electricity. The silence was unnerving. In the huge, dark, cold rooms, the little band of faithful huddled together apprehensively. They could only wait. 'No one,' claims the admiring Gilliard, 'can have any idea of what the Tsaritsa suffered during those days when she was despairing at her son's bedside and had no news of the Tsar. She reached the extreme limit of human resistance in this last trial . . . .'
Yet, outwardly, she remained calm. She knew how important it was for the others to see her going about her duties as though nothing were wrong. In the presence of her sick children she appeared cheerful. When the remaining members of the household moved into the imperial wing, she helped the ladies make their beds: 'You Russian ladies don't know how to be useful,' she chided. 'When I was a girl, my grandmother, Queen Victoria, showed me how to make a bed. I'll teach you . . . .' She dared not panic. She dared not let them see that she was worried to death about her children, her husband, the appalling situation in which they found themselves. What was happening? What was going to happen?
Not until the evening of 16 March did the Empress hear any news of the Tsar. His uncle, Grand Duke Paul, came to Tsarskoe Selo to see her. He told her that her husband had abdicated the day before. In the drawing-room car of the imperial train, drawn up at Pskov, the Tsar had renounced not only his own rights to the throne, but those of his invalid son. There had been nothing else that he could do. Not only the political leaders in the capital but the generals commanding the various fronts had urged him to abdicate. Without the support of either of these groups, he had had no choice. Having signed his act of abdication, he had travelled back to headquarters for a few days to take leave of the army.
Betraying as little emotion as possible, the Empress heard the Grand Duke out. Only after he had gone did that steely self-control break down. With, according to one witness, her face 'distorted with agony' and her eyes 'full of tears', she tottered towards the windows. Leaning heavily against a writing table she uttered the word 'Abdiqué!' Her next words were scarcely audible. 'The poor dear . . .' she whispered, 'all alone down there . . . what he has gone through, oh my God, what he has gone through . . . And I was not there to console him . . . .'
She was the first of Queen Victoria's grandchildren to lose her throne.
3
The loss of the throne brought forth an immedia
te reaction from yet another of Queen Victoria's grandchildren, King George V of England. The British King was doubly related to the Russian imperial family: both Nicholas and Alexandra were his first cousins. King George's father, King Edward VII, had been the brother of Alexandra's mother, while King George's mother, Queen Alexandra, was the sister of Nicholas's mother – the Dowager Empress Marie. And not only were George and Nicky first cousins; they looked extraordinarily alike and were very similar in taste and temperament. It was thus with considerable alarm that King George heard of his cousin's abdication.
'Events of last week have deeply distressed me,' he wired to Nicholas on 19 March 1917.'My thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I have been in the past.'
Nicholas never received the telegram. By the time it reached Russia, he and his family were already under arrest. This step had been taken by the Provisional Government with the sincere intention of ensuring the Tsar's safety; a murder would not be the way to inaugurate a new and enlightened régime. But as not everyone in Russia was inclined to show the same concern for the Tsar's life, the Provisional Government decided to withhold the telegram. Despite its uncontroversial tone, the telegram could be interpreted as evidence of a British plot to rescue the Tsar. Any such suspicion could jeopardize the Tsar's position. The Soviet – a fiery assembly of soldiers' and workers' deputies sitting side by side with the more moderate Duma – was determined that the imperial family be kept imprisoned in Russia. Therefore the Provisional Government, which was hoping that the family could be spirited away to safety, had to move cautiously. Any attempt to get the Tsar out of the country could be foiled by the Soviet: it would simply instruct its workers to halt the train carrying the imperial party.