Crowns in Conflict

by Theo Aronson

  Bolstering his position still further was the fact that his political creed confirmed the imperial couple's own view of Holy Russia: that the peasants and not the amoral aristocracy or the liberal intelligentsia or the industrial workers were the true people; and that autocracy was a divinely ordained institution.

  In turn, Nicholas and Alexandra came to believe that for the dynasty to survive, for it to become stronger and reach the heights of glory, they must be guided, in all things, by this humble Man of God.

  For all his belief in a divinely sanctioned autocracy, Tsar Nicholas II was, by the year 1913, a constitutional monarch or, at least, a semi-constitutional monarch. The change had been forced on him in 1905. Throughout that year Russia had been torn by murders, bombings, strikes, riots, mutinies and uprisings. The Tsar's remedy – that terror must be met by terror – had solved nothing. So, in order to avert a full-scale revolution, Nicholas had been talked, very reluctantly, into granting a constitution. By the Imperial Manifesto of 30 October 1905, Russia was promised 'freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association' and was granted an elected parliament – a Duma.

  The experiment was hardly a success. Shocked by the rowdy scenes and revolutionary demands of its members, the Tsar – acting within his rights – dissolved the first two Dumas. The third Duma, elected on a revised roll favouring the country gentry, was a far more conservative body. A fourth Duma, elected in 1912 on very much the same lines, was equally amenable. Even Nicholas became reconciled to it. 'The Duma started too fast,' he explained to the British historian, Sir Bernard Pares. 'Now it is slower, but better. And more lasting.'

  Not that the Tsar was unduly hampered by the deliberations of the Duma. The constitution had left him with considerable powers. Compared with other constitutional monarchs, such as George V, Victor Emmanuel III, Albert I or even Kaiser Wilhelm II, Nicholas was still very much the autocrat. Although no law could be passed without the consent of the Duma (and a built-in conservative majority usually ensured that it was) the Tsar retained his prerogative over defence and foreign affairs. Ministers remained servants of the crown, appointed and dismissed directly by the crown, with the crown free to accept or reject a minister's advice.

  When one prime minister, feeling that he had lost the Tsar's confidence, threatened resignation, Nicholas would not hear of it. 'This is not a question of confidence or lack of it,' he said, 'it is my will. Remember that we live in Russia, not abroad . . .'5

  In short, Nicholas II, in spite of his lack of any qualities of leadership, was still trying to run his empire like a latter-day Peter the Great. Trusting no one, he refused to delegate power. The result was that he was obliged to battle, almost single-handed, with all the complexities of his vast empire: its cumbersome bureaucracy, its burgeoning industry, its sensitive foreign relations, its widespread social unrest, its revolutionary violence, its powerful secret police, its complicated network of spies and informers and double agents.

  When he did manage to find a man of the calibre of Peter Stolypin, who served as prime minister from 1906 to 1911, it was only to see him shot before his very eyes, at the Kiev Opera House. Yet such was the labyrinthine political structure of imperial Russia that, while Stolypin's assassin was known to be both a revolutionary and a police informer, he was suspected, with good reason, of being a tool in the hands of certain reactionaries.

  In some ways, though, these years before the First World War were not entirely without their successes. Stolypin's celebrated 1906 land reform bill, by which millions of peasants were able to withdraw from unproductive village communes and to own their own land, was a deeply significant measure, drawing the teeth of much peasant dissatisfaction. What with half a dozen years of good harvests, a rapidly expanding industry and an increase in foreign trade, the economy boomed. The newly established Duma, for all its limitations, gave the country some semblance of democracy. Education was reformed, censorship was made less draconian, there was a blossoming in the worlds of the arts and the sciences. St Petersburg society attained new heights of brilliance and extravagance.

  So eased was the political situation that Alexander Kerensky, a newly elected Labour deputy in the fourth Duma and an avowed anti-monarchist (in whose hands, moreover, the fate of the imperial family would one day rest) could claim that there was no longer any need for clandestine activity. 'The public was now accustomed to a free press, to political meetings, to political parties and clubs,' he declared. 'Trade unions, professional unions and co-operative societies were firmly rooted as part of daily life . . . freedom of speech for the deputies was absolute . . . the old secretive, underground, conspirative methods of revolutionary activity had passed into the limbo of history.'

  It was no wonder that Lenin, the exiled and more militant revolutionary, often felt so despairing. Trailing disconsolately from one foreign city to another, consulting ever less hopefully with his dwindling band of supporters, he sometimes toyed with the idea of giving up his subversive activities altogether. With the improvement in both the political and economic climate of Russia, conditions were much less favourable for the sort of social upheaval on which he was pinning his hopes.

  'I do not expect to live to see the revolution,' he wrote dolefully on one occasion.

  Paradoxically, the Tsar benefited hardly more from this upturn in the national fortunes than did Lenin. The trouble was Rasputin. The new freedom, both of political discussion and of the press, meant that the activities of the starets soon became common knowledge. The capital seethed with stories: about his increasing arrogance, his outspoken conversation, his outrageous manners, his sexual appetites. It was claimed that he and the Tsaritsa were lovers. A series of letters, said to have been written by Alexandra to Rasputin, passed from hand to hand. Their fulsome phrases ('I only wish one thing: to fall asleep, to fall asleep for ever on your shoulders and in your arms . . . Come quickly, I am waiting for you and I am tormenting myself for you')6 gave strength to the rumours. No story about the Tsaritsa and the starets was too scurrilous to be believed.

  Nor were these comments confined to the gutter press. For Rasputin's political manoeuvrings were causing as much concern as his reported sexual exploits. Gradually, the starets had been turning his attention to distinctly more mundane political matters than the glorification of God and Tsar. Or rather, he set about achieving this by very dubious means. Working always through the Tsaritsa, Rasputin began organising jobs, contracts and honours for his protégés and backers. In time, his clique – or what was often referred to as 'the Tsaritsa's party' – would include bishops, generals, leading officials, ministers, even prime ministers. Ultimately, Rasputin was to become the most influential man in Russia.

  One by one, in growing alarm, the various leading institutions and personalities of the empire began to speak out against Rasputin. The Church formally investigated his activities. The Duma debated his growing influence in national affairs. Two prime ministers drew up reports on his behaviour. Several members of the imperial family, including the Dowager Empress, voiced their concern.

  It was all to no purpose. Alexandra refused to listen. She remained stubbornly convinced that the starets was a simple Man of God, sent to ease her 'long Calvary' and to ensure that her son lived to inherit the throne. Against anyone who dared criticise Rasputin, she moved with all the vigour of her nature. When the press attacked him, she talked the Tsar into ordering a ban on any mention of his name. When the Duma debated his political activities, she insisted that the prime minister put a stop to it. If anyone complained to the Tsar about him, she engineered their downfall. Even Kokovtsov, the prime minister, was dismissed because he had drawn up a damning report on the favourite.

  The starets had only to drop a hint in Alexandra's ear for her to act. 'Our Friend's' advice, on every conceivable subject, became sacrosanct. The Tsaritsa would not rest until she had talked her complaisant husband into carrying out all Rasputin's wishes.

  It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that by the y
ear 1913 Rasputin, through the fervent Alexandra and her weak-willed husband, controlled the destiny of Russia.

  6

  Royal Meetings

  'ONE SHOULD NEVER FORGET', the Kaiser's friend, Count Eulenburg, once remarked, 'that a discussion between two princes is propitious only when it confines itself to the weather.' Eulenburg's dry observation had been admirably borne out by the discussions which took place between Wilhelm II and Nicholas II in the summer of 1905. For in the same year that the Tsar had been forced into granting his subjects a constitution, he had been coerced, by the indefatigable Wilhelm II, into signing a treaty of alliance with Germany. The two monarchs – the Kaiser in his yacht Hohenzollern and the Tsar in his yacht Stella Polaris - had met at Bjorkoe, off the coast of Finland, that July, and it had been aboard the Stella Polaris that this extraordinary agreement had been concluded.

  The incident had marked a climax in the relationship between Tsar and Kaiser. For several years before this Wilhelm II, who was not only nine years older than Nicholas II but an altogether more assertive personality, had taken it upon himself to act as the Tsar's mentor. In letter after letter he had bombarded Nicholas with advice on a limitless range of subjects. Indeed, it was in no small measure due to the Kaiser's urgings that Nicholas had embarked on a disastrous war against Japan in 1904.

  For the truth was that in no field was the Tsar's weakness more apparent than in that of foreign affairs. Where Wilhelm II's foreign policy was conducted only too publicly, Nicholas II's was carried out with all the secrecy and duplicity of his nature; and of the nature of his state. Relying heavily on spies, secret police, undercover agents, clandestine treaties and verbal agreements, Tsarist diplomacy was of the most dangerous variety. And where the Tsar was as irresolute a man as Nicholas II, it was more dangerous still.

  Determined to take full advantage of the Tsar's pliability, the Kaiser had come up with this latest idea: a historic treaty of friendship between their two empires that would serve as 'a cornerstone of European politics'. In this way, Wilhelm hoped to weaken the alliance between Russia and France (concluded in 1893 by Nicholas's father, Alexander III) and free the Second Reich from what he called 'the terrible Gallo-Russian pincers'.

  It was for this reason that the Kaiser had arranged that secret meeting with the Tsar while they were cruising with their families off the Finnish coast that summer. Dressed in his admiral's uniform, Wilhelm crossed from the Hohenzollern to the Stella Polaris. In his pocket was a copy of the agreement. He was met by Nicholas, looking altogether less bellicose in the navy blazer and white trousers of an English yachtsman. It did not take the Kaiser long to interest the Tsar in his proposal. Having just suffered defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, Nicholas was feeling particularly friendless. The two monarchs went into what had been Alexander Ill's cabin and there, while Wilhelm 'sent up a fervent prayer to God', Nicholas read through the treaty.

  'There was a dead calm,' reported the Kaiser in his inimitable fashion to Chancellor von Bülow, 'only the gentlest murmur from the sea, and the sun shone bright and clear into the cosy cabin, while right before my eyes lay the Hohenzollern in her dazzling whiteness, with the Imperial Standard fluttering high in the morning breeze. I was just reading, on its black cross, the words Gott Mit Uns, when I heard the Tsar's voice beside me say: "That is quite excellent. I agree!" . . . My heart beat so hard that I could hear it; but I pulled myself together and said with every appearance of casualness: "Should you like to sign it? It would be a very nice souvenir of our meeting!"

  Nicholas duly signed it and, in the certainty that the ghosts of 'Frederick Wilhelm III, Queen Louise, Grandpapa and Nicholas I' were looking on in approval, the Kaiser clasped the Tsar in his arms. That the treaty marked a significant turning point in the history of Europe, Wilhelm had no doubt whatsoever. No longer would Germany have to face the prospect of fighting a war on two fronts. His eyes, he tells us, were filled with 'tears of pure joy'.

  The Tsar's ministers, when they came to hear about the treaty, were not anything like as joyful. Patiently, it was explained to Nicholas that he could not support France against Germany in one treaty, and Germany against France in another. The treaty would have to be repudiated. Yet when Nicholas tried to do this, in an embarrassed letter to Wilhelm, he was rewarded with one of the Kaiser's outraged telegrams.

  'We have joined our hands together religiously,' wired Wilhelm. 'We have given our signatures before God, who has heard the promise we swore. I consider, therefore, that the treaty is still in force. If you desire some alterations of detail, propose them to me. But what is signed is signed! God is our witness!'

  But the Kaiser was having trouble nearer home as well. Chancellor von Bülow wanted nothing to do with the treaty. For one thing, with Germany's long-standing friend, Austria–Hungary, often at odds with Russia in the Balkans, the agreement was not really practical. For another, the chancellor could not approve of his master acting without the advice, or even knowledge, of his ministers. In fact, the incident illustrated the limits of the Kaiser's powers. In theory, Wilhelm II had the right to form an alliance with whomsoever he pleased; in practice he could not do so without his chancellor's approval.

  As Bülow did not approve, he threatened to resign. A more resolute monarch might have let him go and appointed a more sympathetic chancellor, but Wilhelm II was far from resolute. In an instant he changed from exultant diplomat into deflated neurotic.

  'For the best and most intimate friend I have to treat me in this way without offering any adequate reason has given me such a terrible blow that I am quite broken down . . . I appeal to your friendship for me. Do not let us hear any more about resigning. Wire "all right" when you get this letter and I shall know you are going to stay. For the day after your request for release arrived there would no longer be a Kaiser alive! Think of my poor wife and children!'

  Bülow did not resign; Wilhelm's poor wife and children were saved; and the treaty was dumped into the wastepaper basket of history. The Franco-Russian alliance remained firm.

  Yet for all the importance of the Franco-Russian alliance, it was not in western Europe that Russia's emotions were most deeply involved. The marriage between autocratic Russia and republican France had been largely one of convenience: Alexander III had needed, not only to counterbalance the military might of Wilhelm II's Germany, but to take advantage of a French offer of enormous loans, at low rates of interest, in order to extend his railways and enlarge his army.

  It was, rather, to the southeastern corner of Europe, to that conglomeration of little states known collectively as the Balkans, that Russian eyes were most longingly turned. With the Ottoman empire, which had until very recently held sway over the area, becoming yearly more decrepit, Russia's interest in the Balkans was once more beginning to quicken. Here, reckoned the Tsar, lay his empire's true sphere of interest. As a boy, Nicholas had been taught to believe, not only in a God-given Autocracy but in some future realisation of the age-old Russian dream of expansion southwards. By gaining control of the pinnacled city of Constantinople, Russia would dominate the Dardanelles and have access to the Mediterranean. And by establishing herself as protector of the largely Slav population of the Balkans, she would become the leading power in the area.

  Nicholas would have been familiar with the writings of Nikolai Danilevski who, in his celebrated book Russia and Europe, argued that Russia was destined to defeat a decadent Europe and to form a great Slav federation with its capital in Constantinople.

  In these imperial ambitions, Russia was brought face-to-face with the Austro-Hungarian empire. It, too, saw the Balkans as a legitimate sphere of interest. An ominous echo of Danilevski's arguments was sounded by Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria–Hungary. 'I have always considered that Austria's mission in the east of Europe is a law of nature . . .' he once wrote, 'my conviction is stronger than ever that we have a great future in these regions.'1

  The result was an intense rivalry between the empires of Nicholas II and Franz Jos
eph I. Conducted with all the intrigue, ambiguity and baroque complexity characteristic of the diplomacy of both regimes, this power-political game was a particularly dangerous one. Not without good reason were the Balkans known as 'the powder keg' of Europe.

  In 1908, this Austro-Russian rivalry in the Balkans had brought Europe to the threshold of war. A highly complicated and utterly unscrupulous manoeuvre, by which Austria annexed the Balkan provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and left Russia – despite a secret agreement between the two countries – empty handed, led to talk of mobilisation of their armies. A flurry of letters between the emperors of Russia, Austria and Germany did nothing to calm the highly charged atmosphere.

  War was averted only when Germany, coming to the aid of her Austrian ally, issued Russia with something very like an ultimatum. The Tsar, who was in no position to wage war, was obliged to back down.

  The results of this Russian humiliation were far-reaching. The whole Bosnia–Herzegovina affair had been, in a way, a dress rehearsal for 1914. 'German action towards us has been simply brutal,' complained the Tsar to his mother, the Tsaritsa Marie, 'and we won't forget it.'

  From now on, Russia not only began preparing for a future war against Austria and its German ally but she set about strengthening her alliance with France. At the same time Germany drew still closer to Austria, even to the extent of sanctioning its disastrous Balkan policies. The still-fluid situation was beginning to crystallise.

  It was left to someone far removed from this almost eighteenth-century world of autocratic emperors, country house diplomacy and gold-laced ambassadors to give a chillingly realistic assessment of the situation. 'A war between Austria and Russia', wrote Lenin to his friend Maxim Gorky in 1913, 'would be a very useful thing for the revolution . . .'2