Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family

by Robert K. Massie

  In addition, each of the Vladimir sons had separate personal reasons for prickly relations with the Tsar and the Empress. Cyril was married to the divorced wife of Alexandra’s brother Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse. Andrei kept as his mistress the ballerina, Mathilde Kschessinska, who had been in love with Nicholas II before his marriage. Boris, the middle Vladimir son, had proposed to his cousin Olga, the Tsar’s eldest daughter. The Empress, in writing to her husband, expressed some of the flavor of her rebuff to Boris: “What an awful set his wife would be dragged into … intrigues without end, fast manners and conversations … a half-worn, blasé … man of 38 to a pure fresh girl 18 years his junior and live in a house in which many a woman has ‘shared’ his life!! An inexperienced girl would suffer terribly to have her husband 4–5th hand—or more!” As the proposal had been transmitted not only in the name of Boris, but in that of his mother as well, Marie Pavlovna bore great bitterness toward Alexandra.

  Rodzianko got a taste of this bitterness, and the conspiracy growing out of it, when in January 1917 he was urgently invited to lunch at the Vladimir Palace. After lunch, he wrote, the Grand Duchess “began to talk of the general state of affairs, of the Government’s incompetence, of Protopopov and of the Empress. She mentioned the latter’s name, becoming more and more excited, dwelling on her nefarious influence and interference in everything, and said she was driving the country to destruction; that she was the cause of the danger which threatened the Emperor and the rest of the Imperial family; that such conditions could no longer be tolerated; that things must be changed, something done, removed, destroyed….”

  Wishing to understand her meaning more precisely, Rodzianko asked, “What do you mean by ‘removed’?”

  “The Duma must do something. She must be annihilated.”

  “Who?”

  “The Empress.”

  “Your Highness,” said Rodzianko, “allow me to treat this conversation as if it had never taken place, because if you address me as the President of the Duma, my oath of allegiance compels me to wait at once on His Imperial Majesty and report to him that the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna has declared to me that the Empress must be annihilated.”

  For weeks, the grand-ducal plot was the talk of Petrograd. Everyone knew the details: four regiments of the Guard were to make a night march on Tsarskoe Selo and seize the Imperial family. The Empress was to be shut up in a convent—the classic Russian method of disposing of unwanted empresses—and the Tsar was to be forced to abdicate in favor of his son, with the Grand Duke Nicholas as Regent. No one, not even the secret police who had collected all the details, took the Grand Dukes seriously. “Yesterday evening,” Paléologue wrote on January 9, “Prince Gabriel Constantinovich gave a supper for his mistress, formerly an actress. The guests included the Grand Duke Boris … a few officers and a squad of elegant courtesans. During the evening the only topic was the conspiracy—the regiments of the Guard which can be relied on, the most favorable moment for the outbreak, etc. And all this with the servants moving about, harlots looking on and listening, gypsies singing and the whole company bathed in the aroma of Moët and Chandon brut impérial which flowed in streams.”

  The Imperial government was crumbling and among those who watched the process with dismay were some who were not Russian. The war and the alliance had conferred on the Ambassadors of France and Britain, Maurice Paléologue and Sir George Buchanan, positions of vast importance. Through the two Embassies in Petrograd and across the desks of the two Ambassadors flowed major questions of supply, munitions and military operations, as well as matters of diplomacy. As it became increasingly apparent that Russia’s domestic political crisis was affecting her capacity as a military ally, Buchanan and Paléologue found themselves in a delicate situation. Accredited personally to the Tsar, they had no right to speak on matters affecting Russian internal policy. Nevertheless, by the winter of 1917 both Ambassadors found themselves begged on all sides to use their access to the Tsar to plead for a government acceptable to the Duma. Personally convinced that nothing else could save Russia as an ally, they both agreed. Paléologue’s attempt, put off by Nicholas’s vagueness and gentle courtesy, failed completely. On January 12, Buchanan, in turn, was received at Tsarskoe Selo.

  Sir George Buchanan was an old-school diplomat, distinguished by discretion, silvery hair and a monocle. Seven years’ service in Russia had left him weary and frail, but with a host of friends and admirers, including the Tsar himself. His only handicap in fulfilling his post was his inability to speak Russian. This made no difference in Petrograd, where everyone who mattered also spoke French or English. In 1916, however, Buchanan visited Moscow, where he was made an honorary citizen of the city and given a priceless icon and a massive silver loving cup. “In the heart of Russia,” wrote R. H. Bruce Lockhart, the British Consul General, who was assisting in Buchanan’s visit, “he had to say at least a word or two in Russian. We had carefully rehearsed the ambassador to hold it up and say to the distinguished audience, ‘Spasibo’ which is the short form of Russian for ‘thank you.’ Instead, Sir George, in a firm voice, held up the cup and said, ‘Za pivo’ which means ‘for beer.’”

  At Tsarskoe Selo, Buchanan was surprised to be received by the Tsar in the formal audience chamber rather than in Nicholas’s study, where they usually talked. Nevertheless, he asked whether he could speak frankly, and Nicholas assented. Buchanan came straight to the point, telling the Tsar that Russia needed a government in which the nation could have confidence. “Your Majesty, if I may be permitted to say so, has but one safe course open to you—namely, to break down the barrier that separates you from your people and to regain their confidence.”

  Drawing himself up and giving Buchanan a hard look, Nicholas asked, “Do you mean that I am to regain the confidence of my people or that they are to regain my confidence?”

  “Both, Sire,” Buchanan replied, “for without such mutual confidence Russia will never win this war.”

  The Ambassador criticized Protopopov, “who, if Your Majesty will forgive my saying so, is bringing Russia to the verge of ruin.”

  “I chose M. Protopopov,” Nicholas interjected, “from the ranks of the Duma in order to be agreeable to them—and this is my reward.”

  Buchanan warned that revolutionary language was being spoken not only in Petrograd but all over Russia, and that “in the event of revolution only a small portion of the army can be counted on to defend the dynasty.” Then he concluded with a surge of personal feeling:

  “An ambassador, I am well aware, has no right to hold the language which I have held to Your Majesty, and I had to take my courage in both hands before speaking as I have done…. [But] if I were to see a friend walking through a wood on a dark night along a path which I knew ended in a precipice, would it not be my duty, Sire, to warn him of his danger? And is it not equally my duty to warn Your Majesty of the abyss that lies ahead of you?”

  The Tsar was moved by Buchanan’s appeal and, pressing the Ambassador’s hand as he left, said, “I thank you, Sir George.” The Empress, however, was outraged by Buchanan’s presumption. “The Grand Duke Serge remarked that had I been a Russian subject, I should have been sent to Siberia,” Buchanan wrote later.

  Although Rodzianko had disdained Marie Pavlovna’s suggestion that the Empress be “annihilated,” he agreed with the Grand Duchess that the Empress must be stripped of political powers. Earlier in the fall, when Protopopov had come to him and mentioned that the Tsar might appoint the Duma President as Premier, Rodzianko had stated as one of his terms that “the Empress must renounce all interference in affairs of state and remain at Livadia until the end of the war.” Now, in the middle of winter, he received a visit from the Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Michael. Michael, the handsome, good-natured “Misha,” was living with his wife, Countess Brassova, at Gatchina, outside the capital. Although after the Tsarevich he was next in line for the throne, he had absolutely no influence on his brother. Worried and realizing his own help
lessness, he asked how the desperate situation might be saved. Again Rodzianko declared that “Alexandra Fedorovna is fiercely and universally hated, and all circles are clamoring for her removal. While she remains in power, we shall continue on the road to ruin.” The Grand Duke agreed with him and begged Rodzianko to go again to tell the Tsar. On January 20, Nicholas received him.

  “Your Majesty,” said Rodzianko, “I consider the state of the country to have become more critical and menacing than ever. The spirit of all the people is such that the gravest upheavals may be expected…. All Russia is unanimous in claiming a change of government and the appointment of a responsible premier invested with the confidence of the nation…. Sire, there is not a single honest or reliable man left in your entourage; all the best have either been eliminated or have resigned…. It is an open secret that the Empress issues orders without your knowledge, that Ministers report to her on matters of state. … Indignation against and hatred of the Empress are growing throughout the country. She is looked upon as Germany’s champion. Even the common people are speaking of it….”

  Nicholas interrupted: “Give me the facts. There are no facts to confirm your statements.”

  “There are no facts,” Rodzianko admitted, “but the whole trend of policy directed by Her Majesty gives ground for such ideas. To save your family, Your Majesty ought to find some way of preventing the Empress from exercising any influence on politics…. Your Majesty, do not compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country.”

  Nicholas pressed his head between his hands. “Is it possible,” he asked, “that for twenty-two years I tried to act for the best and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?”

  The question was astonishing. It was completely beyond the bounds of propriety for Rodzianko to answer, yet, realizing that it had been asked honestly, man to man, he summoned his courage and said, “Yes, Your Majesty, for twenty-two years you followed a wrong course.”

  A month later, on February 23, Rodzianko saw Nicholas for the last time. This time the Tsar’s attitude was “positively harsh” and Rodzianko, in turn, was blunt. Announcing that revolution was imminent, he declared, “I consider it my duty, Sire, to express to you my profound foreboding and conviction that this will be my last report to you.”

  Nicholas said nothing and Rodzianko was curtly excused.

  Rodzianko’s was the last of the great warnings to the Tsar. Nicholas rejected them all. He had pledged to preserve the autocracy and hand it on intact to his son. In his mind, urbane grand dukes, foreign ambassadors and members of the Duma did not represent the peasant masses of the real Russia. Most of all, he felt that to give way during the war would be taken as a sign of personal weakness which would only accelerate revolution. Perhaps when the war was ended, he would modify the autocracy and reorganize the government. “I will do everything afterwards,” he said. “But I cannot act now. I cannot do more than one thing at a time.”

  The attacks on the Empress and the suggestions that she be sent away only angered him. “The Empress is a foreigner,” he declared fervently. “She has no one to protect her but myself. I shall never abandon her under any circumstances. In any case, all the charges made against her are false. Wicked lies are being told about her. But I shall know how to make her respected.”

  Early in March, after two months of rest with his family, Nicholas’s spirits began to improve. He was optimistic that the army, equipped with new arms from Britain and France, could finish the war by the end of the year. Complaining of the “poisoned air” of Petrograd, he was anxious to return to Stavka to plan the spring offensive.

  Protopopov, meanwhile, sensing the approach of a crisis, tried to mask his fears by recommending forcible countermeasures. Four cavalry regiments of the Guard were ordered from the front to Petrograd, and the city police began training in the use of machine guns. The cavalry never arrived. At Stavka, General Gurko was disgusted at the prospect of fighting the people and countermanded the order. On March 7, the day before the Tsar left for Headquarters, Protopopov arrived at the palace. He saw the Empress first; she told him that the Tsar insisted on spending a month at the front and that she could not change his mind. Nicholas entered the room and, taking Protopopov aside, said that he had decided to return in three weeks. Protopopov in agitation said, “The time is such, Sire, that you are wanted both here and there…. I very much fear the consequences.” Nicholas, struck by his minister’s alarm, promised if possible to return within a week.

  There was one moment, according to Rodzianko, when Nicholas wavered in his determination to refuse a responsible ministry. On the eve of his departure, the Tsar summoned several of his ministers, including Prince Golitsyn, the Prime Minister, and announced that he intended to go to the Duma the next day and personally announce the appointment of a responsible government. That same evening, Golitsyn was summoned again to the palace and told that the Tsar was leaving for Headquarters.

  “How is that, Your Majesty?” asked Golitsyn, amazed. “What about a responsible ministry? You intended to go to the Duma tomorrow.”

  “I have changed my mind,” said Nicholas. “I am leaving for the Stavka tonight.”

  This conversation took place on Wednesday, March 7. Five days later, on Monday, March 12, the Imperial government in Petrograd collapsed.

  27

  Revolution: March 1917

  In the grip of an intense thirty-five-degree-below-zero cold, the people of Petrograd shivered and were hungry. Outside the bakeries, long lines of women stood for hours waiting for their daily ration of bread while the snow fell gently on their coats and shawls. Workers, whose factories had closed for lack of coal, milled in the streets, worried, grumbling and waiting for something to happen. In their stuffy, smoke-filled barracks, soldiers of the garrison gathered around stoves and listened from supper until dawn to the speeches and exhortations of revolutionary agitators. This was Petrograd in the first week of March 1917, ripening for revolution.

  On February 27, the Duma reconvened and Kerensky shouted defiance not only at the government but at the Tsar. “The ministers are but fleeting shadows,” he cried. “To prevent a catastrophe, the Tsar himself must be removed, by terrorist methods if there is no other way. If you will not listen to the voice of warning, you will find yourselves face to face with facts, not warnings. Look up at the distant flashes that are lighting the skies of Russia.” Incitement to assassination of the Tsar was treason, and Protopopov began proceedings to deprive Kerensky of his parliamentary immunity so that he could be prosecuted. Rodzianko told Kerensky privately, however, “Be sure we shall never give you up to them.”

  In the mood which lay over the capital, even Kerensky’s inflammatory speech did not seem abnormal. On the very day of the speech, Buchanan, whose political antennae were acutely sensitive, concluded that the city was quiet enough for him to slip away on a much-needed ten-day holiday in Finland.

  The underlying problem was the shortage of food and fuel. The war had taken fifteen million men off the farms, while at the same time the army was consuming huge quantities of food. The railroads which brought supplies into the capital were collapsing. Barely adequate in peacetime, the Russian railroads had now the added load of supplying six million men at the front with food and ammunition, as well as moving the men themselves according to the dictates of Army Headquarters. In addition, hundreds of coal trains had necessarily been added to the overtaxed system. Before the war, the entire St. Petersburg industrial region, with its giant metallurgical industries, had used cheap Cardiff coal imported up the Baltic. The blockade required that coal be brought by train from the Donets basin in the Ukraine. Creaking under this enormous military and industrial load, the railroads’ actual capacity had drastically decreased. Russia began the war with 20,071 locomotives; by early 1917, only 9,021 were in service. Similar deterioration had reduced the number of cars from 539, 549 to 174, 346.

  The cities, naturally, suffered more than the countryside, and Petrograd, f
arthest from the regions producing food and coal, suffered most. Scarcities sent prices soaring: an egg cost four times what it had in 1914, butter and soap cost five times as much. Rasputin, closer to the people than either the Tsar or his ministers, had seen the danger long before. In October 1915, Alexandra had written to her husband: “Our Friend … spoke scarcely about anything else for two hours. It is this: that you must give an order that wagons with flour, butter and sugar should be obliged to pass. He saw the whole thing in the night like a vision, all the towns, railway lines, etc…. He wishes me to speak to you about all this very earnestly, severely even…. He would propose three days no other trains should go except those with flour, butter and sugar—it’s even more necessary than meat or ammunition.”

  In February 1917, winter weather dealt Russia’s railroads a final blow. In a month of extreme cold and heavy snowfall, 1,200 locomotive boilers froze and burst, deep drifts blocked long sections of track and 57,000 railway cars stood motionless. In Petrograd, supplies of flour, coal and wood dwindled and disappeared.

  Ironically, there were not, in the winter of 1917, any serious revolutionary plans among either workers or revolutionaries. Lenin, living in Zurich in the house of a shoemaker, felt marooned, depressed and defeated. Nothing he tried seemed to succeed. The pamphlets he wrote drew little response, while the hair oil which he bought in quantity and rubbed assiduously into his skull failed to stimulate even the slightest growth of hair.* In January 1917, addressing a group of Swiss workers, he gloomily declared that while “popular risings must flare up in Europe within a few years … we older men may not live to see the decisive battles of the approaching revolution.” Kerensky, the Duma’s most vociferous advocate of revolution, said later, “No party of the Left and no revolutionary organization had made any plan for a revolution.” None was needed. Revolutionary plots and political programs became insignificant in the face of the growing hunger and bitterness of the people. “They [the revolutionaries] were not ready,” wrote Basil Shulgin, a monarchist deputy, “but all the rest was ready.”