King George’s attitude on the matter vacillated. At first, he wanted to help his relatives, but by March 30, his private secretary was writing to the Foreign Secretary, “His Majesty cannot help doubting not only on account of the dangers of the voyage, but on general grounds of expediency, whether it is advisable that the Imperial family should take up their residence in this country.” By April 10, the King was concerned about the widespread indignation felt in England against the Tsar. He realized that if Nicholas came to England he would be obliged to receive his cousin, an act which would bring considerable unpopularity down on him. Accordingly, he suggested to Lloyd George that, because of the outburst of public opinion, the Russian government should perhaps be informed that Britain was obliged to withdraw its offer.
Later, of course, when the murder of the Imperial family had outraged the King, memories tended to blur. “The Russian Revolution of 1917 with the murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family had shaken my father’s confidence in the innate decency of mankind,” recalled the Duke of Windsor. “There was a very real bond between him and his first cousin, Nicky.… Both wore beards of a distinctive character and as young men, they had looked much alike.… It has long been my impression that, just before the Bolsheviks seized the Tsar, my father had personally planned to rescue him with a British cruiser, but in some way the plan was blocked. In any case, it hurt my father that Britain had not raised a hand to save his cousin Nicky. ‘Those politicians,’ he used to say. ‘If it had been one of their kind, they would have acted fast enough. But merely because the poor man was an emperor—’ ”
In Switzerland, Lenin’s first reaction to the revolution in Russia was skepticism. Only seven weeks had passed since his statement on January 22, 1917, that “we older men may not live to see the decisive battles of the approaching revolution.” Even the news of the Tsar’s abdication and the establishment of a Provisional Government left him with reservations. In his view, the replacement of an autocracy by a bourgeois republic was not a genuine proletarian revolution; it was simply the substitution of one capitalist system for another. The fact that Miliukov and the Provisional Government intended to continue the war confirmed in his mind that they were no more than tools of Britain and France, which were capitalist, imperialist powers. On March 25, Lenin telegraphed instructions to the Bolsheviks in Petrograd, “Our tactics: absolute distrust, no support of the new government, Kerensky especially suspect, no rapprochement with the other parties.”
Lenin became desperate to reach Russia himself. “From the moment the news of the revolution came, Ilyich did not sleep and at night all sorts of incredible plans were made,” Krupskaya recalled. “We could travel by airplane. But such things could be thought of only in the semi-delirium of the night.” He considered donning a wig and traveling via France, England and the North Sea, but there was the chance of arrest or of being torpedoed by a U-boat. Suddenly, through the German minister in Berne, it was arranged that he should travel through Germany itself to Sweden, Finland and then to Russia. The German motive in this bizarre arrangement was sheer military necessity. Germany had gained little from the fall of tsarism, as the Provisional Government meant to continue the war. Germany needed a regime which would make peace. This Lenin promised to do. Even if he failed, the Germans knew that his presence inside Russia would create turmoil. Accordingly, on April 9, Lenin, Krupskaya and seventeen other Bolshevik exiles left Zurich to cross Germany in a “sealed” train. “The German leaders,” said Winston Churchill, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.”
On the night of April 16, after ten years away from Russia, Lenin arrived in Petrograd at the Finland Station. He stepped from his train into a vast crowd and a sea of red banners. In an armored car, he drove to Mathilde Kschessinska’s mansion, which had been commandeered as Bolshevik headquarters. From the dancer’s balcony, he addressed a cheering crowd, shouting to them that the war was “shameful imperialist slaughter.”
Although Lenin had been welcomed with the blaring triumph due a returning prophet, neither the Petrograd Soviet as a whole nor the Bolshevik minority within the Soviet were by any means ready to accept all of his dogma. In the early days of the revolution, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who dominated the Soviet believed that some degree of cooperation should be shown the Provisional Government, if only to prevent the restoration of the monarchy. Besides, Marxist theory called for a transitional period between the overthrow of absolutism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet might argue whether Nicholas belonged in his palace or in a cell, but its over-all policy was to support the policies of the Provisional Government “insofar as they correspond to the interests of the proletariat and of the broad masses of the people.” Even some Bolsheviks supported this program.
Lenin would have none of this. Speaking to the All-Russian Conference of Soviets on the morning after his return, he issued his famous April Theses, demanding overthrow of the Provisional Government, the abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. Most important, he demanded an end to the war and urged the troops at the front to begin fraternizing with the enemy. Amazement and consternation greeted Lenin’s words; he was interrupted in the middle of his speech by shouts, laughter and cries of “That is raving! That is the raving of a lunatic!” Even Molotov, who had remained one of the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd, and Stalin, who returned on March 26 from three years’ exile in Siberia, were caught off guard. Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper which they had been editing, had been agreeing that a protracted period of bourgeois government was necessary before proceeding to the final stage of the socialist revolution. Lenin’s enemies hastened to gibe. He had been away too long, they said, living comfortably in exile; he had taken no part in the overthrow of tsarism; he had been transported back to Russia under the protection of the most autocratic and imperialistic regime remaining in Europe, As word got around that the Soviet had disowned him, the Provisional Government was vastly relieved, “Lenin was a hopeless failure with the Soviet yesterday,” said Miliukov gleefully on April 18. “He was compelled to leave the room amidst a storm of booing. He will never survive it.”
Yet Lenin scarcely noticed his defeat. A brilliant dialectician, prepared to argue all night, he gained ascendancy over his Bolshevik colleagues by sheer force of intellect and physical stamina. On May 17, Trotsky, who had been living on East 162nd Street in New York City and writing for Novy Mir, an émigré Russian newspaper, while studying the American economy in the New York Public Library, returned to Petrograd. Nominally a Menshevik, within weeks of his return he and Lenin were working together. Of the two, Lenin was leader.
Through the spring and summer, Lenin hammered away at the Provisional Government. The Marxian subtleties of the April Theses were laid aside; for the masses, the Bolsheviks coined an irresistible slogan combining the two deepest desires of the Russian people: “Peace, Land, All Power to the Soviet.” In May, when Miliukov once again proclaimed that Russia would honor its obligations and continue to fight, a massive public outcry forced him from office. Guchkov also resigned and, early in July, Prince Lvov decided that he could no longer continue as Prime Minister. Kerensky became simultaneously Prime Minister and Minister of War.
In constantly urging that Russia continue to fight, Russia’s allies played directly into Lenin’s hands. Terrified that Russia’s withdrawal from the war would release dozens of enemy divisions for use in the west, Britain, France and the newly belligerent United States exerted heavy pressure on the shaky Provisional Government. Beginning in June, the U.S. government extended loans of $325 million to the Provisional Government. But Elihu Root, who led President Wilson’s mission to Russia, made clear that the terms were: “No war, no loan.”
Pressed by the Allies, the Provisional Government began to prepare another offensive. Kerensky made a personal tour of the front to exhort the soldiers. In early July, Russian ar
tillery opened a heavy bombardment along forty miles of the Galician front. For the first time, supplies and munitions were plentiful, and the thirty-one Russian divisions attacking the Austrians quickly broke through. For two weeks, they advanced while Kerensky exulted and Nicholas, at Tsarskoe Selo, radiated happiness and ordered Te Deums to celebrate the victories. Then, on July 14, the news darkened. German reserves arrived and checked the advance. On the Russian side, Soldiers’ Committees debated the wisdom of further attacks and whole divisions refused to move. When the enemy counterattacked, there was no resistance. The Russian retreat became a rout.
In Petrograd, news of the debacle provided the spark for an atmosphere already electrically charged. On July 16, half a million people marched through the streets carrying huge scarlet banners proclaiming “Down with the War!” “Down with the Provisional Government!” Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not prepared for the rising, and the Provisional Government crushed it, mainly by circulating among the loyal regiments a document purporting to prove that Lenin was a German agent and that the uprising was intended to betray Russia from the rear while the Germans advanced at the front. The disclosure was temporarily effective. The Bolshevik strongholds—Kschessinka’s house, the offices of Pravda, the Fortress of Peter and Paul—were stormed and occupied. Trotsky gave himself up to the police, and Lenin, after spending the night hidden in a haystack, escaped over the border into Finland disguised as a fireman on a locomotive. The first Bolshevik uprising, later known as “the July uprising,” was over. Admitting that it had been halfhearted, Lenin was to describe it later as “something considerably more than a demonstration but less than a revolution.”
Despite his narrow victory, the rising made plain to Kerensky the danger of any further delay in moving the Imperial family away from Petrograd. Even before the rising, the new Prime Minister had come to warn Nicholas, “The Bolsheviks are after me and then will be after you.” He suggested that the family would be safer in some distant part of Russia, far from the seething revolutionary passions of the capital. Nicholas asked if they might go to Livadia. Kerensky replied that Livadia might be possible, but he explained that he was also investigating a number of other spots. He suggested that the family begin packing in secret to avoid arousing the suspicions of the palace guard.
The thought that they might soon be leaving for Livadia was a tonic to the family’s spirits. In their excitement, they talked openly about it until Benckendorff begged them to keep silent. Yet, as Kerensky weighed the advantages and disadvantages of the Crimea, it became increasingly obvious that it could not be managed. It was remote, the Tartar population was favorable and many of the Tsar’s relatives, including the Dowager Empress, were already there, but it was a thousand miles away across the breadth of Russia. To reach Livadia, a train would have to pass through densely populated industrial towns and rural provinces where a revolutionary peasantry was already terrorizing landlords and expropriating land. Under these conditions, Kerensky felt no greater certainty that he could safely deliver his prisoners to Livadia than that he could place them aboard a British cruiser in Murmansk. The same considerations ruled out the country estate of Grand Duke Michael near Orel in central Russia, which Kerensky himself was inclined to favor.
Eventually, by elimination, he settled on Tobolsk, a commercial river town in western Siberia. The choice had nothing to do with a vengeful poetic justice. Rather, it was a matter of security on the railways. The Northern Route across the Urals to Siberia passed through wide expanses of virgin forest, with towns and villages thinly scattered along the track. Once in Tobolsk, the Imperial family would be relatively safe. “I chose Tobolsk,” Kerensky later explained, “because it was an out-and-out backwater … had a very small garrison, no industrial proletariat, and a population which was prosperous and contented, not to say old-fashioned. In addition … the climate was excellent and the town could boast a very passable Governor’s residence where the Imperial family could live with some measure of comfort.”
On August 11, Kerensky returned to the palace and, without telling Nicholas where he was being taken, warned that they would leave within a few days and should take plenty of warm clothes. Nicholas immediately understood that their destination was not to be Livadia. When Kerensky, embarrassed, began to explain vociferously why the family’s safety required this decision, Nicholas interrupted him with a penetrating look. “I have no fear. We trust you,” he said quietly. “If you say we must move, it must be. We trust you,” he repeated.
Preparations went ahead rapidly. The Tsar and the Empress chose the people they wanted to accompany them: Countess Hendrikov and Prince Dolgoruky as lady- and gentleman-in-waiting; Dr. Botkin; and Pierre Gilliard and Mlle. Schneider, the tutors. Baroness Buxhoeveden was to remain behind for an operation and would join the family in Tobolsk. To his immense regret, Count Benckendorff had to remain behind because of his wife’s severe bronchitis. Asked whom he wished to replace the Count, Nicholas named General Tatishchev, an aide-de-camp. Without hesitation, Tatishchev packed a small suitcase and reported to the palace.
August 12 was the Tsarevich’s thirteenth birthday, and at the Empress’s request a holy icon was brought for the celebration from the Church of Our Lady of Znamenie. The icon arrived in a procession of clergy from the village which was admitted to the palace, proceeded to the chapel and there asked prayers for the safe journey of the Imperial family. “The ceremony was poignant … all were in tears,” wrote Benckendorff. “The soldiers themselves seemed touched and approached the holy icon to kiss it. [Afterward, the family] followed the procession as far as the balcony, and saw it disappear through the park. It was as if the past were taking leave, never to come back.”
The following day, August 13, 1917, was the last which Nicholas and Alexandra were to spend at Tsarskoe Selo. Through the day, the children rushed excitedly about, saying goodbye to the servants, their belongings and their favorite island in the pond. Nicholas carefully instructed Benckendorff to see that the vegetables they had raised and the piles of sawed wood were fairly distributed among the servants who helped with the work.
Within the government, Kerensky’s plan had been kept a successful secret. Only four men including the Premier knew about the transfer to Tobolsk. The subject was never discussed at Cabinet meetings; Kerensky managed all the details by himself. On the night of departure, Kerensky left a Cabinet meeting at eleven p.m. to supervise the final arrangements. His first task was to speak to the troops selected to act as guards when the family reached Tobolsk. For this assignment, three companies—six officers and 330 men—had been culled from the 1st, 2nd and 4th Regiments of Sharpshooter Guards on duty at Tsarskoe Selo. Most of the men selected were noncommissioned officers who had been at the front. Many had been decorated for bravery. On Kerensky’s orders, they had been issued new uniforms and new rifles and told that they would receive special pay. Despite these blandishments, some of the men were reluctant to go. Through the barracks ran a current of restlessness, grumbling and uncertainty.
With Colonel Kobylinsky, who was to command the detachment, Kerensky made for the barracks, gathered the new guard around him and addressed them persuasively: “You have guarded the Imperial family here; now you must guard it at Tobolsk where it is being transferred by order of the Provisional Government. Remember: no hitting a man when he is down. Behave like gentlemen, not like cads. Remember that he is a former Emperor and that neither he nor his family must suffer any hardships.” Kerensky’s oratory worked. The men, partially shamed, prepared to leave. The Prime Minister then wrote a document for Kobylinsky which said simply: “Colonel Kobylinsky’s orders are to be obeyed as if they were my own. Alexander Kerensky.”
By evening, the family had finished packing and was ready to leave except for trunks and chests scattered through the palace. Fifty soldiers, ordered to pick up the baggage and assemble it in the semicircular hall, flatly refused to work for nothing. Benckendorff, disgusted, eventually agreed to pay them three roubles eac
h.
In the middle of these preparations, as the semicircular hall was filling with trunks and suitcases, Grand Duke Michael arrived to say goodbye to his older brother. Kerensky, who had arranged the meeting, entered the Tsar’s study with the Grand Duke and watched the brothers embrace. Not wishing to leave them completely alone, he retreated to a table and began thumbing through the Tsar’s scrap-book. He overheard the awkward conversation: “The brothers … were most deeply moved. For a long time they were silent … then they plunged into that fragmentary, irrelevant small-talk which is so characteristic of short meetings. How is Alix? How is Mother? Where are you living now? and so on. They stood opposite each other, shuffling their feet in curious embarrassment, sometimes getting hold of one another’s arm or coat button.”
The Tsarevich, nervous and excited, had spotted Michael upon his arrival. “Is that Uncle Misha who has just come?” he asked Kobylinsky. Told that it was, but that he could not go in, Alexis hid behind the door and peeked through a crack. “I want to see him when he goes out,” he said. Ten minutes later, Michael walked out of the room in tears. He quickly kissed Alexis goodbye and left the palace.
The night was confused and sleepless. Alexis, holding his excited spaniel Joy on a leash, kept running from the semicircular hall into the family rooms to see what was happening. The Empress, sitting up all night in her traveling clothes, was unable to hide her anxieties. “It was then,” wrote Kerensky, “that I first saw Alexandra Fedorovna worried and weeping like any ordinary woman.” The soldiers, milling about carrying trunks into the hall and out to the railroad station, kept their caps on and cursed and grumbled at the work they were doing. Their officers sat at a table drinking tea with Countess Benckendorff and the other ladies. When the Tsar approached and asked for a glass, the officers stood up and loudly declared that they would not sit at the same table with Nicholas Romanov. Later, when the soldiers were not looking, most of the officers apologized, explaining that they feared being brought before the soldiers’ tribunal and accused of being counterrevolutionaries.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty Page 59