Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

  The news that the former Tsar and his family were walking under guard in the park attracted crowds who lined the iron fence to watch, whistle and jeer. At one point, an officer of the guard went up to Nicholas and asked him to move to avoid provoking the crowd any further. Nicholas, surprised, replied that he was not afraid and said that “the good people were not annoying him in any way.”

  The line of guards with fixed bayonets, the restriction of movement to a corner of the park and, especially, the humilation of his father were hard for Alexis to understand and to bear. He had seen his father treated only with respect and reverence, and he blushed with shame whenever an incident occurred. Alexandra, too, flushed deeply when her husband was insulted, but she learned to keep silent. When the weather was fine, she sat near the pond on a rug spread beneath a tree. Usually, she was surrounded by a ring of curious soldiers. Once when Baroness Buxhoeveden, who had been sitting next to the Empress, got up, one of the men dropped with a belligerent grunt onto the rug beside Alexandra. “The Empress edged a little bit away,” wrote the Baroness, “making a sign to me to be silent, for she was afraid that the whole family would be taken home and the children robbed of an hour’s fresh air. The man seemed to her not to have a bad face, and she was soon engaged in conversation with him. At first he cross-questioned her, accusing her of ‘despising’ the people, of showing by not travelling about that she did not want to know Russia. Alexandra Fedorovna quietly explained to him that, as in her young days she had had five children and nursed them all herself, she had not had time to go about the country and that, afterwards, her health had prevented her. He seemed to be struck by this reasoning and, little by little, he grew more friendly. He asked the Empress about her life, about her children, her attitude towards Germany, etc She answered in simple words that she had been a German in her youth, but that that was long past. Her husband and her children were Russians and she was a Russian, too, now, with all her heart. When I came back with the officer … to whom I had risked appealing, fearing that the soldier might annoy the Empress, I found them peacefully discussing questions of religion. The soldier got up on our approach, and took the Empress’s hand, saying, ‘Do you know, Alexandra Fedorovna, I had quite a different idea of you. I was mistaken about you.”

  In May, a new officer assumed command of the Tsarskoe Selo garrison. Colonel Eugene Kobylinsky was a thirty-nine-year-old veteran of the Petrograd Life Guards who had twice been wounded at the front and then reassigned to one of the hospitals at Tsarskoe Selo. Kobylinsky was not a revolutionary, simply an officer doing the duty assigned him by General Kornilov. Although in name he was their jailer, in fact Kobylinsky was deeply loyal to the Imperial family and, during the twelve months that he was with them, did much to buffer them from shocks. Nicholas well understood Kobylinsky’s situation, and from Siberia he wrote to his mother that Kobylinsky was “my last friend.”

  There were limits, however, to what any officer could do with the obstreperous soldiery, and unpleasant incidents continued to happen. In June, Alexis was playing outside with the toy rifle which he had played with in the garden at Stavka. Suddenly, the soldiers spotted the gun and began to shout to each other, “They are armed.” Alexis, hearing the hubbub, went to this mother, who was sitting on the grass. A minute later, the soldiers arrived and demanded “the weapon.” Gilliard tried to intervene and explain that the gun was a toy, but the soldiers insisted and walked off with the gun. Alexis, in tears, looked from the Empress to the tutor; both were helpless. The gun was turned over to Colonel Kobylinsky, who was furious that his men had bothered the child. Carefully, he took the gun apart and, carrying it under his coat, returned it piece by piece to the Tsarevich. Thereafter, Alexis played with his rifle only behind the door of his room.

  Despite harassment and humiliation, the family continued to go out every day, happy for the chance to spend time in the fresh air. In the middle of May, they began digging up part of the park lawn to plant a vegetable garden. Together, they carried the grassy sod away, turned the soil, planted the seeds and brought water in tubs from the kitchen. Many of the servants helped; so did some of the soldiers, who discovered more pleasure in working beside the Tsar than in mocking him. In June, once the seeds were in, Nicholas turned to sawing up the dead trees in the park for firewood. Soon, piles of wood, neatly stacked, began to appear all over the park.

  At night, tired from this exercise, the family sat quietly together before going to bed. One stifling evening in July, he was reading to the Empress and his daughters when an officer and two soldiers burst into the room shouting excitedly that a sentry in the park had seen someone signaling from the open window by flashing red and green lights. The men searched the room and found nothing. Despite the heat, the officer ordered the heavy curtains to be pulled shut—and at this moment the mystery was unraveled. Anastasia had been sitting in a window ledge doing needlework as she listened to her father. As she moved, bending to pick things up from a table, she had covered and uncovered two lamps, one with a red and the other with a green shade.

  Harmless in themselves, these incidents revealed the underlying tension which prevailed at Tsarskoe Selo. Day and night, the sentries paced their rounds, believing that at any moment a rescue attempt might be made, for which, if successful, they would be held responsible. The prisoners waited inside the palace, living from day to day, uncertain as to who and where were friends, wondering whether the following morning would find them released or flung into a Soviet dungeon.

  From the beginning, they most expected to be sent abroad. This was what every representative of the Provisional Government—Guchkov, Kornilov and Kerensky—had promised; that they would be powerless to keep this promise, no one could know. “Our captivity at Tsarskoe Selo did not seem likely to last long,” said Gilliard, “and there was talk about our imminent transfer to England. Yet the days passed and our departure was always being postponed.… We were only a few hours by railway from the Finnish frontier, and the necessity of passing through Petrograd was the only serious obstacle. It would thus appear that if the authorities had acted resolutely and secretly it would not have been difficult to get the Imperial family to one of the Finnish ports and thus to some foreign country. But they were afraid of responsibilities, and no one dared compromise himself.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “His Majesty’s Government Does Not Insist”

  GILLIARD could not have known it, but, from the earliest days of the revolution, an overriding preoccupation of the Provisional Government had been to get the Tsar and his family to safety. “The former Emperor and the Imperial family were no longer political enemies but simply human beings who had come under our protection. We regarded any display of revengefulness as unworthy of Free Russia,” said Kerensky. In keeping with this spirit, the new government had immediately abolished capital punishment in Russia. As Minister of Justice, Kerensky initiated this law, partly because he knew it would help forestall demands for the Tsar’s execution. Stubbornly, Nicholas objected to the law. “It’s a mistake. The abolition of the death penalty will ruin the discipline of the army,” said the Tsar. “If he [Kerensky] is abolishing it to save me from danger, tell him that I am ready to give my life for the good of my country.” Nevertheless, Kerensky held to his view. On March 20, he appeared in Moscow before the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and listened to an angry cacophony of cries for the Tsar’s execution. Boldly, Kerensky replied, “I will not be the Marat of the Russian Revolution. I will take the Tsar to Murmansk myself. The Russian Revolution does not take vengeance.”

  Murmansk was the gateway to England and it was to England that all of Kerensky’s fellow ministers hoped that the Tsar could be sent. As early as March 19, while Nicholas was still with his mother at Stavka, Paul Miliukov, the new Foreign Minister, was saying anxiously, “He should lose no time in getting away.” On the 21st, when Buchanan and Paléologue confronted Miliukov with the news of the Tsar’s arrest at Mogilev, Miliukov eagerly explained that N
icholas had simply been “deprived of his liberty” in order to ensure his safety. Buchanan officially reminded Miliukov that Nicholas was a relative of King George V of England, who was expressing a strong interest in his cousin’s welfare. Seizing upon the relationship, Miliukov agreed that the Tsar must be saved and begged Buchanan to wire London immediately asking for asylum for the Imperial family. Imploring Buchanan to hurry, he explained, “It’s the last chance of securing these poor unfortunates’ freedom and perhaps of saving their lives.”

  Buchanan was equally concerned, and the following day his urgent telegram was placed before the British War Cabinet. At the head of the table at 10 Downing Street sat the Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. The fiery Welshman had little sympathy for the Russian autocracy. In a famous speech made in August 1915, he had thundered grim approval of Russia’s terrible defeats: “The Eastern sky is dark and lowering. The stars have been clouded over. I, regard that stormy horizon with anxiety but with no dread. Today I can see the colour of a new hope beginning to empurple the sky. The enemy in their victorious march know not what they are doing. Let them beware, for they are unshackling Russia. With their monster artillery they are shattering the rusty bars that fettered the strength of the people of Russia.”

  When Imperial Russia fell, Lloyd George exuberantly telegraphed the Provisional Government: “It is with sentiments of the profoundest satisfaction that the people of Great Britain … have learned that their great ally Russia now stands with the nations which base their institutions upon responsible government.… We believe that the Revolution is the greatest service which they [the Russian people] have yet made to the cause for which the Allied peoples have been fighting since August 1914. It reveals the fundamental truth that this war is at bottom a struggle for popular Government as well as for liberty.”

  In his own heart, Lloyd George was highly reluctant to permit the deposed Tsar and his family to come to England. Nevertheless, he and his ministers agreed that, as the request for asylum had come not from the Tsar but from Britain’s new ally, the Provisional Government, it could not be refused. Buchanan was signaled that Britain would receive Nicholas but that the Russian government would be expected to pay his bills.

  On March 23, Buchanan carried this message to Miliukov. Pleased but increasingly anxious—the unauthorized descent on Tsarskoe Selo by armored cars filled with soldiers had occurred the day before—Miliukov assured the Ambassador that Russia would make a generous financial allowance for the Imperial family. He begged, however, that Buchanan not reveal that the Provisional Government had taken the initiative in making the arrangement. If the Soviet knew, he explained, the project was doomed.

  But the Soviet, rigidly hostile to the idea of the Tsar leaving Russia, already knew. Kerensky had told them, in Moscow, that he would personally escort the Imperial family to a British ship. On March 22—the same day that Nicholas returned to his family, that Rasputin’s corpse was disinterred, that the British Cabinet decided to offer asylum—the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet was shouting hoarsely, “The Republic must be safeguarded against the Romanovs returning to the historical arena. That means that the dangerous persons must be directly in the hands of the Petrograd Soviet.” Telegrams were wired to all towns along the railways leading from Tsarskoe Selo with instructions to the workers to block the passage of the Tsar’s train. At the same time, the Soviet resolved that the Tsar should be taken from Tsarskoe Selo, properly arrested and clapped into the bastion of the Fortress of Peter and Paul until the time of his trial and execution. The fact that this last resolution was never carried out was attributed by one scornful Bolshevik writer to the domination of the Soviet at that point by irresolute Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.

  For the moment, the question of the Tsar’s fate became a stand-off between the Soviet and the Provisional Government. The Soviet lacked the strength to penetrate the Alexander Palace and simply drag the family off to the Fortress. The government, on the other hand, was not sufficiently master of the country, and especially of the railways, to embark on an enterprise such as moving Nicholas to Murmansk. This journey, from Tsarskoe Selo, south of the capital, through the heart of Petrograd, meant running the very real risk that the train would be stopped, the Imperial family pulled off and carted away to the Fortress or worse.

  Unwilling to take this risk, Kerensky, Miliukov and their colleagues decided to postpone the trip until the psychological atmosphere improved. In the meantime, they appeased the Soviet. On the 24th, the day after the British offer of asylum arrived, the Provisional Government pledged to the Soviet that the deposed sovereigns would remain in Russia. On the 25th, Miliukov informed Buchanan that he could not even deliver to the Tsar a personal telegram from King George which declared harmlessly, “Events of last week have deeply distressed me. My thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I always have been in the past.” When Buchanan argued that the telegram had no political significance, Miliukov replied that he understood this, but that others would misinterpret it as part of a plot to escape. The only indication Nicholas and Alexandra ever had of this telegram was Kerensky’s comment during his first visit to Tsarskoe Selo that the King and Queen of England were asking for news of their Russian relatives.

  Days passed and the impasse remained. On April 2, Buchanan wrote to the Foreign Office, “Nothing has yet been decided about the Emperor’s journey to England.” On April 9, Buchanan talked to Kerensky, who declared that the Tsar’s departure would be delayed for several more weeks while his papers were examined and he and his wife were questioned. In England, meanwhile, the news that asylum had been offered had been received coldly by the Labor Party and many Liberals. As opposition to the invitation began to mount, the British government began backing away. On April 10, a semi-official Foreign Office statement coolly announced that “His Majesty’s Government does not insist on its former offer of hospitality to the Imperial family.”

  On April 15, even Buchanan began to withdraw his support for asylum, explaining to London that the Tsar’s presence in England might easily be used by the extreme Left in Russia “as an excuse for rousing public opinion against us.” He suggested that perhaps Nicholas might be received in France. Hearing this, Lord Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador in Paris, wrote a scathing personal letter to the Foreign Secretary, brimming with vicious misinformation about the Empress Alexandra. “I do not think that the ex-Emperor and his family would be welcome in France,” wrote Bertie. “The Empress is not only a Boche by birth but in sentiment. She did all she could to bring about an understanding with Germany. She is regarded as a criminal or a criminal lunatic and the ex-Emperor as a criminal from his weakness and submission to her promptings. Yours ever, Bertie.”

  From April until June, the plan remained suspended. Kerensky admitted later that, during this period, the suspension had nothing to do with the views of English Liberals and Laborites but was determined by the internal political situation in Russia. By early summer, however, conditions in Russia had changed and the moment seemed ripe for a discreet transfer of the Imperial family to Murmansk. Once again, the Russian government approached England on the matter of asylum.

  “[We] inquired of Sir George Buchanan as to when a cruiser could be sent to take on board the deposed ruler and his family,” said Kerensky. “Simultaneously, a promise was obtained from the German Government through the medium of the Danish minister, Skavenius, that German submarines would not attack the particular warship which carried the Royal exiles. Sir George Buchanan and ourselves were impatiently awaiting a reply from London. I do not remember exactly whether it was late in June or early in July when the British ambassador called, greatly distressed.… With tears in his eyes, scarcely able to control his emotions, Sir George informed … [us] of the British Government’s final refusal to give refuge to the former Emperor of Russia. I cannot quote the exact text of the letter.… But I can say definitely that this refusal was due
exclusively to considerations of internal British politics.” Apparently, Bertie’s letter from Paris had done its poisonous work, for Kerensky remembers the letter explaining that “the Prime Minister was unable to offer hospitality to people whose pro-German sympathies were well-known.”

  Subsequently, confusion, accusations and a sense of guilt appeared to permeate the recollections of all those involved in this inglorious episode. Both Sir George Buchanan and Lloyd George flatly contradicted Kerensky, insisting that Britain’s offer of asylum was never withdrawn and that the failure of the project was solely due to the fact that the Provisional Government—in Buchanan’s words—”were not masters in their house.” Meriel Buchanan, the Ambassador’s daughter, later overrode her father’s account, explaining that he had offered it in order to protect Lloyd George, who was responsible for the refusal. She recalled that a telegram refusing to let the Tsar come to England did arrive in Petrograd on April 10; she remembered the words her father used and the anguished expression on his face as he described the telegram. Lloyd George did not respond formally to her charge, but she noted that the former Prime Minister “is reported to have said in an interview that he does not remember refusing the late Emperor admission to England, but that, if the matter had been considered, he probably would have given such advice.” In his memoirs, Lloyd George left no doubt of his lack of sympathy for Imperial Russia or its Tsar. The Russian Empire, he said, was “an unseaworthy Ark. The timbers were rotten and most of the crew not much better. The captain was suited for a pleasure yacht in still waters, and his sailing master had been chosen by his wife, reclining in the cabin below.” Nicholas he dismissed as “only a crown without a head … the end was tragedy … but for that tragedy this country cannot be in any way held responsible.”