The next to go was Sazonov, the Foreign Minister. A brother-in-law of Stolypin, Sazonov was a cultivated man of liberal background and a close friend of both Buchanan and Paléologue. He had been Foreign Minister since 1910 and was completely trusted both by the Tsar and by the Allied governments. Nevertheless, since his signing of the ministerial letter, Alexandra had wanted him removed. She suspected, rightly, that along with his friendship with England and France, he also wanted a responsible government in Russia; both, she believed, would undermine the autocratic Russia she hoped to pass along to her son. Through the winter, she kept up a barrage at “long-nosed Sazonov … Sazonov is such a pancake.” Then, in March 1916, she wrote to Nicholas, “Wish you could think of a good successor to Sazonov—need not be a diplomat. So as … to see we are not later sat upon by England and that when questions of ultimate peace come we should be firm. Old Goremykin and Stürmer always disapproved of him as he is such a coward towards Europe and a parliamentarist—and that would be Russia’s ruin.”
Sazonov’s downfall came in July 1916, and was actually precipitated by the question of autonomy for Poland. At the outbreak of war, Russia had promised a virtually independent, united Polish kingdom, linked to Russia only in the person of the Tsar. The Poles were enthusiastic, and on first entering Galicia, Russian troops were welcomed as liberators. Military defeat and the loss of most Polish territory in 1915 had delayed action on the pledge, at the same time encouraging those Russian conservatives who resisted its enactment, fearing that autonomy for one part of the empire would stimulate other provinces to seek the same thing. Alexandra, spurred by Rasputin, argued that “Baby’s future rights” were challenged. Nevertheless, Sazonov, backed by Britain and France, continued to insist.
On July 12, Sazonov saw Nicholas at Headquarters. “The Emperor has entirely adopted my views…. I won all along the line,” he reported jubilantly to Buchanan and Paléologue. In enormous good humor, the Foreign Minister left for a Finnish holiday during which he planned to draft an Imperial proclamation on Poland. Meanwhile, both Stürmer and the Empress hurried to Headquarters, and while he was still in Finland, Sazonov was abruptly dismissed. Appalled, Buchanan and Paléologue pleaded that the dismissal be set aside. Failing, Buchanan then boldly asked the Tsar’s permission to have King George V grant the fallen minister a British court decoration in recognition of his services to the alliance. Nicholas agreed and was genuinely pleased that Sazonov, whom he liked and had dealt with shabbily, was receiving the honor.
Sazanov’s replacement at the Foreign Ministry was none other than Stürmer, who took on the office in addition to the Premiership. The appointment was a further hideous shock to Buchanan and Paléologue, who would now be dealing daily on an intimate professional level with Russia’s new Foreign Minister. Each Ambassador reacted in character: Buchanan stiffly wrote London that “I can never hope to have confidential relations with a man on whose word no reliance can be placed.” Paléologue, after an interview, confided to his diary, “His [Stürmer’s] look, sharp and honeyed, furtive and blinking, is the very expression of hypocrisy … he emits an intolerable odor of falseness. In his bonhomie and his affected politeness one feels that he is low, intriguing, and treacherous.”*
The key ministry in troubled times was not Foreign Affairs or even the presidency of the ministerial council. It was the Ministry of Interior, which was responsible for the preservation of law and order. Under this office came the police, the secret police, informers and counterespionage—all the devices which, as a regime grows more unpopular, become all the more necessary to its preservation. In October 1916, the Tsar suddenly appointed to this critical post the Vice-President of the Duma, Alexander Protopopov. The choice was a disaster, yet, ironically, Nicholas made it at least in part as a gesture to Rodzianko and the Duma.
Alexander Protopopov was sixty-four, a small, sleek man with white hair, a mustache and bright black eyes. In his native Simbirsk, the Volga town which also gave Russia Kerensky and Lenin, Protopopov’s social position was far higher than that of either of his famous fellow townsmen. His father was a nobleman and landowner who also owned a large textile factory; the son went to cadet cavalry school, studied law and became a director of his father’s factory. An important local personage, he was elected to the Duma, where, although he showed little political distinction, his smooth and ingratiating air made him thoroughly popular. “He was handsome, elegant, captivating in a drawing room, moderately liberal and always pleasant…. There was a slightly cunning air about him but this seemed very innocent and goodnatured,” wrote Kerensky, who also sat in the Fourth Duma.
Protopopov’s charm and his membership in the large, moderately liberal Octobrist Party saw him repeatedly elected to the Duma vice-presidency. Rodzianko, as President, respected his deputy’s abilities. In June 1916 he suggested to Nicholas that Protopopov would make a good minister. “For the post [of Minister of Trade] he proposed his tovarish Protopopov,” Nicholas wrote to Alexandra, adding, “I have an idea that our Friend mentioned him [Protopopov] on some occasion.” But no changes were made at that time, and Protopopov remained as the second man in the Duma. In this capacity, he led a delegation of Duma members on good-will visits to England and France in July 1916; on the way home, he stopped at Stockholm and had a mysterious talk with a Swedish financier known to be close to the German Embassy. Upon arriving in Russia, he traveled to Headquarters to make an official call on the Tsar. “Yesterday I met a man I like very much, Protopopov, Vice President of the State Duma,” Nicholas wrote. “He traveled abroad with members of the Duma and told me much of interest.”
All of the ingredients necessary for Protopopov’s elevation to the Ministry now were present: he had charmed the Tsar with his manner, he had been recommended as a solid worker by Rodzianko and, most important of all, he had the sweeping endorsement of Rasputin and therefore of the Empress. Protopopov’s acquaintance with Rasputin stretched back over several years. The prospective Minister was not in good health. He suffered from a disease variously described as progressive paralysis of the spine or advanced syphilis, depending on the informant’s feelings about Protopopov. When doctors were unable to help, Protopopov went to Badmayev, a quackish Siberian herb doctor then fashionable in Petrograd. Badmayev knew Rasputin, and Protopopov, who was fascinated by mysticism and the occult, was introduced into an outer ring of the starets’s circle. Now, struck by the news that Nicholas was pleased by his amiable protégé, Rasputin seized the initiative and began proposing that Protopopov be named Minister of Interior.
“Gregory earnestly begs you to name Protopopov,” Alexandra wrote in September. “He likes our Friend for at least 4 years and that says much for a man.” Two days later, she repeated: “Please take Protopopov as Minister of Interior. As he is one of the Duma, it will make a great effect and shut their mouths.” Nicholas balked and chided his wife for accepting every one of Rasputin’s whims: “This Protopopov is a good man…. Rodzianko has for a long time suggested him for the post of Minister of Trade. [But] I must consider this question as it has taken me completely by surprise. Our Friend’s opinions of people are sometimes very strange as you know yourself—therefore this must be thought out very carefully.” Nevertheless, a few days later the Tsar gave in and telegraphed, “It shall be done.” In a letter, he added, “God grant that Protopopov may turn out to be the man of whom we are now in need.” Overjoyed, the Empress wrote back, “God bless your new choice of Protopopov. Our Friend says you have done a very wise act in naming him.”
The appointment caused a sensation. In the Duma, Protopopov’s acceptance of office under Stürmer was regarded as a scandalous betrayal. When an old friend in the Duma bluntly told the new Minister that his appointment was a scandal and that he ought to resign immediately, Protopopov, bubbling with excitement over his promotion, replied candidly, “How can you ask me to resign? All my life it was my dream to be a vice-governor and here I am a minister.”
Rodzianko was angriest of all. S
haking with rage, he confronted the turncoat and lambasted him for his treachery. When, in servile tones, Protopopov explained, “I hope I shall succeed in bringing about some changes,” Rodzianko replied scornfully, “You haven’t sufficient strength for the fight and will never dare to speak outright to the Emperor.” Soon afterward, Protopopov returned to Rodzianko, hinting that, with his help, the Duma President might be appointed Premier and Foreign Minister in place of Stürmer. Rodzianko, fully aware that neither Nicholas nor Alexandra would dream of such an appointment, stated his terms: “I alone shall have the power to choose the Ministers … the Empress must remain … at Livadia until the end of the war.” Hastily, Protopopov suggested that Rodzianko speak to the Empress herself.
Once he was in office, Protopopov’s behavior became wholly eccentric. Although a minister, he kept his seat in the Duma and appeared at meetings wearing the uniform of a general of gendarmes, to which, as head of the police, he was entitled. Beside his desk he kept an icon which he addressed as a person. “He helps me do everything; everything I do is by His advice,” Protopopov explained to Kerensky, indicating the icon. Even more astonishing was the sudden transformation of Protopopov the Duma liberal into Protopopov the arch-reactionary. He was determined to become the savior of tsarism and Orthodox Russia. Not only was he not afraid of revolution; he hoped to provoke it in order to crush it by force. At meetings, Rodzianko wrote, “he rolled his eyes repeatedly, in a kind of unnatural ecstasy. ‘I feel that I shall save Russia. I feel that I alone can save her.’”
In addition to controlling the police, Protopopov also assumed responsibility for the most critical problem facing Russia, the organization of food supplies. The idea was Rasputin’s. Not without logic, he proposed that authority should be transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture, which was floundering, to the Ministry of Interior, which had the police to enforce its orders. Seizing the idea, the Empress issued the transfer command herself. It was the only episode in which Alexandra did not bother first to get the Tsar’s approval. “Forgive me for what I have done—but I had to—our Friend said it was absolutely necessary,” she wrote. “Stürmer sends you by this messenger a new paper to sign giving the whole food supply at once to the Minister of Interior…. I had to take this step upon myself as Gregory says Protopopov will have all in his hands … and by that will save Russia…. Forgive me, but I had to take this responsibility for your sweet sake.” Nicholas acquiesced, and thereby, as Russia moved into the critical winter of 1916–1917, both the police and the food supply remained in the trembling, ineffectual hands of Alexander Protopopov.
Although her informal mandate from Nicholas was only to oversee internal affairs, Alexandra also began to trespass on the area of military operations. “Sweet Angel,” she wrote in November 1915, “long to ask you heaps about your plans concerning Rumania. Our Friend is so anxious to know.” That same month: “Our Friend was afraid that, if we had not a big army to pass through Rumania, we might be caught in a trap from behind.”
With supreme self-confidence, Rasputin soon passed from asking questions about the army to transmitting instructions as to the timing and location of Russian attacks. His inspiration, he told the Empress, had come to him in dreams while he slept: “Now before I forget, I must give you a message from our Friend prompted by what he saw in the night,” she wrote in November 1915. “He begs you to order that one should advance near Riga, says it is necessary, otherwise the Germans will settle down so firmly through all the winter that it will cost endless bloodshed and trouble to make them move … he says this is just now the most essential thing and begs you seriously to order ours to advance, he says we can and we must, and I was to write to you at once.”
In June 1916: “Our Friend sends his blessing to the whole orthodox army. He begs we should not yet strongly advance in the north because he says if our successes continue being good in the south, they will themselves retreat in the north, or advance and then their losses will be very great—if we begin there, our losses will be very heavy. He says this is … [his] advice.”
At Headquarters, General Alexeiev was less than charmed to hear of this new interest in the army. “I told Alexeiev how interested you were in military affairs and of those details you asked for in your last letter,” Nicholas wrote on June 7, 1916 (O.S.). “He [Alexeiev] smiled and listened silently.” Alexeiev’s silence concealed his worry over the possible leakage of his plans. After the abdication, he explained, “When the Empress’s papers were examined, she was found to be in possession of a map indicating in detail the disposition of the troops along the entire front. Only two copies were prepared of this map, one for the Emperor and one for myself. I was very painfully impressed. God knows who may have made use of this map.”
Although the Tsar thought it quite natural to admit his wife to military secrets, he did not want them passed to Rasputin. Repeatedly, after giving her a number of military details, he would write, “I beg you, my love, do not communicate these details to anyone. I have written them only for you…. I beg you, keep it to yourself, not a single soul must know of it.” Almost as frequently, Alexandra ignored her husband’s request and told Rasputin. “He won’t mention it to a soul,” she assured Nicholas, “but I had to ask his blessing for your decision.”
Rasputin’s intervention in military affairs appeared most conspicuously during the great Russian offensive of 1916. Following Polivanov’s miracles in supply and manpower, wrought during the winter of 1915–1916, the Russian army erupted in June 1916 with a heavy attack on the Austrians in Galicia. The Austrian line sagged and broke. Brusilov, the Russian commander, inflicted a million casualties, took 400,000 prisoners, pulled 18 German divisions away from Verdun and prevented the Austrians from exploiting their great victory over the Italians at Caporetto. In August, Rumania, sensing an Allied victory, entered the war against Germany and Austria.
Yet, all this was done at heavy cost to Russia. Through the summer, as Brusilov ground forward, Russian losses reached 1,200,000. As the army moved forward, leaving behind a carpet of dead, it seemed to the Empress and to Rasputin that Russia was choking in her own blood. As early as July 25 (O.S.), she wrote: “Our Friend … finds better one should not advance too obstinately as the losses will be too great.” On August 8 (O.S.): “Our Friend hopes we won’t climb over the Carpathians and try to take them, as he repeats the losses will be too great again.” On September 21 (O.S.), Nicholas wrote: “I told Alexeiev to order Brusilov to stop our hopeless attacks.” Alexandra replied happily, “Our Friend says about the new orders you gave to Brusilov: ‘Very satisfied with Father’s [the Tsar’s] orders, all will be well.’”
Meanwhile, at Stavka, Alexeiev had discussed the operation with the Tsar, and even as the Empress was congratulating herself, Nicholas was writing: “Alexeiev has asked permission to continue the attack … and I have permitted it.” Surprised, Alexandra responded: “Our Friend is much put out that Brusilov has not listened to your order to stop the advance—says you were inspired from above to give that order … and God would bless it. Now he says again useless losses.” On the 24th (O.S.), Nicholas wrote, “I have only just received your telegram in which you inform me that our Friend is very disturbed about my plan not being carried out.” Carefully, he explained that an additional army had been massed which “doubles our forces … and gives hope for the possibility of success. That is why … I gave my consent.” He added that the decision, “from a military point of view is quite correct,” and implored, “these details are for you only—I beg you, my dear. Tell him [Rasputin] only ‘Papa has ordered that sensible measures be taken.’”
But the Empress was now in full cry. On the 25th (O.S.), she wrote: “Oh give your order again to Brusilov—stop this useless slaughter. … Why repeat the madness of the Germans at Verdun. Your plan, so wise [was] approved by our Friend…. Stick to it…. Our generals don’t count the lives any—hardened to losses—and that is sin.” On September 27 (O.S.), two days later, Nicholas finally gav
e in: “My dear, Brusilov has, on the receipt of my instructions, immediately given order to stop.” As a result, Brusilov’s great offensive ground to a halt. After the war, General Vladimir Gurko, who participated in the operation, wrote, “The weariness of the troops had its effect … but there can be no question that the stoppage of the advance was premature and founded on orders from Headquarters.” The hard-bitten Brusilov responded impatiently, “An offensive without casualties may be staged only during maneuvers; no action at the present time is taken at random and the enemy suffer as heavy losses as we do … but to defeat the enemy or to beat him off, we must suffer losses and they may be considerable.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 45