By Tuesday morning, March 13, except for a last outpost of tsarism in the Winter Palace, which General Khabalov held with 1,500 loyal troops, the city was in the hands of the revolution. In the afternoon, the revolutionaries in the Fortress of Peter and Paul across the river gave Khabalov’s men twenty minutes to abandon the palace or face bombardment; having lost all hope, the dejected loyalists marched out and simply melted away.
In the anarchy that followed, wild celebrations were mingled with violent outbursts of mob fury. In Kronstadt, the naval base outside the city, the sailors brutally slaughtered their officers, killing one and burying a second, still living, side by side with the corpse. In Petrograd, armored cars, with clusters of rebel soldiers perched on their tops, roared up and down the streets, flying red flags. Firemen, arriving to put out the fires blazing in public buildings, were driven away by soldiers and workmen who wanted to see the buildings burn. Kschessinska’s mansion was sacked by the mob from top to bottom, the grand piano smashed, the carpets stained with ink, the bathtubs filled with cigarette butts.*
On Wednesday, March 14, even those who had wavered flocked to join the victors. That morning saw the mass obeisance to the Duma of the Imperial Guard. From his Embassy window, Paléologue watched three regiments pass on their way to the Tauride Palace: “They marched in perfect order,” he wrote, “with their band at the head. A few officers came first, wearing a large red cockade in their caps, a knot of red ribbon on their shoulders and red stripes on their sleeves. The old regimental standard, covered with icons, was surrounded by red flags.” Behind came the Guard, including units from the garrison at Tsarskoe Selo. “At the head were the Cossacks of the Escort, those magnificent horsemen who are the flower … and privileged elite of the Imperial Guard. Then came His Majesty’s Regiment, the sacred legion which is recruited from all the units of the Guard and whose special function it is to secure the personal safety of their sovereigns.”
Even more spectacular was the march of the Marine Guard, the Garde Equipage, most of whom had served aboard the Standart and personally knew the Imperial family. At the head of the marines strode their commanding officer, Grand Duke Cyril. Leading his men to the Tauride Palace, Cyril became the first of the Romanovs publicly to break his oath of allegiance to the Tsar, who still sat on the throne. In the presence of Rodzianko, Cyril pledged allegiance to the Duma. Then, returning to his palace on Glinka Street, he hoisted a red flag over his roof. Writing to his Uncle Paul, Cyril coolly explained, “These last few days, I have been alone in carrying out my duties to Nicky and the country and in saving the situation by my recognition of the Provisional Government.” A week later, Cyril gave an interview to a Petrograd newspaper: “I have asked myself several times if the ex-Empress were an accomplice of William [the Kaiser],” he said, “but each time forced myself to recoil from the horror of such a thought.”
Cyril’s behavior drew a terse, prophetic comment from Paléologue: “Who can tell whether this treacherous insinuation will not before long provide the foundation for a terrible charge against the unfortunate Empress. The Grand Duke Cyril should … be reminded that the most infamous calumnies which Marie Antoinette had to meet when she faced the Revolutionary Tribunal, first took wing at the elegant suppers of the Comte d’Artois [the jealous younger brother of Louis XVI].”
Petrograd had fallen. Everywhere in the city, the revolution was triumphant. At the Tauride Palace, two rival assemblies, both convinced that tsarism was ended, were embarking on a struggle for survival and power. Yet, Russia was immense and Petrograd only a tiny, artificial mound, scarcely Russian, in a corner of the Tsar’s empire. The two million people of Petrograd were only a fraction of the scores of millions of subjects; even in Petrograd, the revolutionary workers and soldiers were less than a quarter of the city’s population. A week had gone by since Nicholas had left for Headquarters and the first disorders had broken out. In that week, he had lost his capital, but still he kept his throne. How much longer could he keep it?
The Allied ambassadors, desperately concerned that the fall of tsarism would mean Russia’s withdrawal from the war, clung to the hope that the Tsar would not topple. Buchanan still talked in terms of Nicholas “granting a constitution and empowering Rodzianko to select the members of a new government.” Paléologue thought that the Tsar had a chance if he pardoned the rebels, appointed the Duma committee as his ministers and “appeared in person … and solemnly announced on the steps of Our Lady of Kazan that a new era is beginning for Russia. But if he waits a day it will be too late.” It was Knox who sensed more accurately the ominous future. Standing at a corner of the Liteiny Prospect, watching the burning of the district court across the street, he heard a soldier say, “We have only one wish: to beat the Germans. We will begin with the Germans here and with a family that you know called Romanov.”
* Krupskaya’s mother died while Lenin was in Switzerland. There is a story that one night Krupskaya rose exhausted from her vigil beside her dying mother and asked Lenin, who was writing at a table, to awaken her if her mother needed her. Lenin agreed and Krupskaya collapsed into bed. The next morning she awoke to find her mother dead and Lenin still at work. Distraught, she confronted Lenin, who replied, “You told me to wake you if your mother needed you. She died. She didn’t need you.”
* One elegant Petrograd mansion was saved by the quick wits of its owner, the artful Countess Kleinmichel. Before the mob arrived, she barred her doors, shuttered her windows and placed in front of her house a sign which read: “No trespassing. This house is the property of the Petrograd Soviet. Countess Kleinmichel has been taken to the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul.” Inside, Countess Kleinmichel then packed her bags and planned her escape.
28
Abdication
Nicholas, leaving home for Headquarters on the night of March 7, was subdued and downhearted. Twice, from the train, he sent melancholy telegrams tinged with the loneliness that overwhelmed him on leaving his family after two months at Tsarskoe Selo. In Mogilev, he missed the buoyant presence of the Tsarevich. “Here in the house it is so still,” he wrote to Alexandra. “No noise, no excited shouts. I imagine him sleeping—all his little things, photographs and knicknacks, in exemplary order in his bedroom.”
Nicholas’s last letters as Tsar, written as it were from the brink of the abyss, have often been cited as evidence of his incorrigible stupidity. The most famous remark of all, invariably quoted in even the briefest estimate of Nicholas’s character, is the line: “I shall take up dominoes again in my spare time.” Taken by itself, the remark is devastating. Any tsar with so little wit as to sit playing dominoes while his capital revolts deserves nothing: neither his throne nor understanding.
Yet, there is more to it than that. It was the Tsar’s first night back at Army Headquarters and he was writing to his wife of familiar things. Immediately before this much-quoted line, he is talking about his son. He says that he will greatly miss the games they had played every evening; in lieu of them, he will take up dominoes again to relax in his spare moments. Even more significantly, the letter was written not against a backdrop of revolution, but at a moment when Nicholas believed that the capital was quiet. The date on the letter is March 8, the day on which the first bread riots occurred in the city. The first reports of these disorders arrived at Headquarters on the morning of the 9th; Nicholas did not learn until the 11th that anyone in Petrograd considered them serious.
Despite the weeks of rest with his family, Nicholas returned to Mogilev still mentally fatigued and physically exhausted. A vivid warning signal on the state of his health flashed on Sunday morning, March 11. As he stood in church, Nicholas suffered “an excruciating pain in the chest” which lasted for fifteen minutes. “I could hardly stand the service out,” he wrote, “and my forehead was covered with drops of perspiration. I cannot understand what it could have been because I had no palpitation of the heart…. If this occurs again, I shall tell Fedorov [the doctor].” The symptoms are those of a coro
nary occlusion.
If the revolution in the streets of Petrograd came as a shock to everyone in the city, it is not entirely surprising that the Tsar, at Headquarters five hundred miles away, was neither more alert nor more prescient. Indeed, Nicholas had less information than those who continued blithely to attend dinners, parties and concerts in the capital. He depended on reports passed to him through a chain of officials which included Protopopov in Petrograd and General Voeikov at Headquarters. Both Protopopov and Voeikov served him badly, deliberately underplaying the seriousness of the situation as it developed. Protopopov was defending his own position; disorders which he could not control were a damning reflection on his abilities as Minister of Interior. Voeikov, at the other end of the line, was a conservative, unimaginative man who simply could not face the prospect of walking into the presence of the Tsar and announcing a revolution.
From Thursday, March 8, until Sunday, the 11th, Nicholas heard nothing which caused him serious alarm. He was told that the capital was afflicted with “street disorders.” “Street disorders” were not a matter to worry Nicholas: he had faced them innumerable times in the twenty-three years of his reign. There were officials to deal with them: Khabalov, the Military Governor, and above him Protopopov, the Minister of Interior. The Tsar of all the Russias, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, need not bother himself with an affair which was a matter for the city police.
On the night of the 11th, after the troops had been called out and had fired into the crowd and two hundred people lay dead, Nicholas was told that the “street disorders” were becoming nasty. Reacting quickly, he sent an order to Khabalov commanding that the disorders, “intolerable in these difficult times of war with Germany and Austria,” be ended immediately. That same night, he wrote to Alexandra, “I hope Khabalov will be able to stop these street disorders. Protopopov must give him clear and definite instructions.”
On Monday, the 12th, the news was much worse. “After yesterday’s news from town, I saw many frightened faces here,” Nicholas wrote. “Fortunately, Alexeiev is calm, but he thinks it is necessary to appoint a very energetic man, so as to compel the ministers to work out the solution of the problems—supplies, railways, coal, etc.” Late that night, a jolting telegram arrived from the Empress—“Concessions inevitable. Street fighting continues. Many units gone over to the enemy. Alix.” At midnight he ordered his train, and at five a.m. he was under way for Tsarskoe Selo. Nevertheless, even at this point Nicholas did not proceed straight to the capital. Knowing that the most direct route was heavily used by troop supply trains, he chose a longer route to avoid dislocations. He still could not believe that his presence was so urgently required that supplies for the army and hungry civilians should be shunted aside.
As the Imperial train traveled north on Tuesday, the 13th, rumbling through village stations where local dignitaries still stood saluting on the platform to honor the passage of the Tsar, the grim news continued to come. Telegrams from the capital announced the fall of the Winter Palace and the formation of an executive committee of the Duma under Rodzianko. At two a.m. on the morning of the 14th, the train was at Malaya Vishera, just a hundred miles south of the capital, when it was slowed to a halt. An officer boarded the train and informed Voeikov that revolutionary soldiers with machine guns and artillery were just up the track. Nicholas was awakened, and in the middle of the night, alternative possibilities were discussed. If they could not go north to Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo, they might go east to Moscow, south to Mogilev or west to Pskov, headquarters of the Northern Group of Armies, commanded by General Ruzsky. The discussion leaned in the last direction. Nicholas concurred and declared, “Well, then, to Pskov.”
It was eight o’clock in the evening when the Imperial train glided slowly into the station at Pskov. The platform, usually lined with a guard of honor, was deserted except for General Ruzsky and his deputy, General Danilov. Ruzsky, entering the Tsar’s car, brought more bad news: the entire garrison of Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo had gone over, including the Guard, the Cossack Escort and the Garde Equipage with Grand Duke Cyril marching in front. Ivanov’s expedition, sent ahead to restore order, had reached Tsarskoe Selo earlier in the day, where the trains had stopped and been surrounded by revolutionary soldiers calling on Ivanov’s men to join them. Ivanov himself had received a telegram from Alexeiev advising that order had been restored in the capital, and that if there was no further bloodshed, the monarchy might be saved. Alexeiev had suggested that he withdraw; Ivanov had done so, and his little force had quickly melted away.
The report that his personal guard had defected was a heavy blow to Nicholas. Along with the revelation of personal betrayal, it clearly indicated the end of hope for support from within the city, while the loss of Ivanov’s men displayed the futility of sending more troops from the front. Nicholas’s freedom of action was narrowing rapidly, and as he sat listening to Ruzsky, he made a decision. He asked Ruzsky to telephone to Rodzianko and offer what he had so long refused: a ministry acceptable to the Duma, with a prime minister, presumably Rodzianko, who would have full power over internal affairs. Ruzsky left the railway car and hurried to the telegraph.
Rodzianko, answering Ruzsky’s message, was surrounded by people pushing, shouting, asking advice and yelling instructions. Above the din, the harassed Rodzianko wired melodramatically to Ruzsky: “His Majesty and yourself apparently are unable to realize what is happening in the capital. A terrible revolution has broken out. Hatred of the Empress has reached a fever pitch. To prevent bloodshed, I have been forced to arrest all the ministers…. Don’t send any more troops. I am hanging by a thread myself. Power is slipping from my hands. The measures you propose are too late. The time for them is gone. There is no return.”
Rodzianko spoke truly in describing his own position. A compromise reached that morning between the Duma committee and the Soviet had produced the nucleus of a Provisional Government. Miliukov, leader of the Cadet Party in the Duma, was Foreign Minister; Kerensky, representing the Soviet, became Minister of Justice; Guchkov, leader of the Octobrists, was War Minister. The Prime Minister, however, was not Rodzianko, to whom the Soviet would not agree, but Prince George Lvov, the liberal and popular chairman of the Zemstvo Red Cross. Rodzianko continued to take part in the government’s discussions, but his influence, like that of the Duma itself, faded rapidly.
Rodzianko was entirely accurate when he said that it was too late for concessions. Already the Duma committee and the Soviet had agreed that Nicholas must abdicate in favor of his son, with the Tsar’s brother Grand Duke Michael as Regent. Even those on the committee who wished to preserve the throne—Guchkov, Miliukov and Basil Shulgin, a Right-wing deputy who participated in all the discussions—had concluded that if the Imperial system and the Romanov dynasty were to be saved, Nicholas would have to be sacrificed. “It is of vital importance that Nicholas II should not be overthrown by violence,” declared Guchkov. “The only thing which can secure the permanent establishment of a new order, without too great a shock, is his voluntary abdication.”
On this matter, the leaders of the new government in Petrograd already had been in touch with the leaders of the army. On the 14th, as the Tsar’s train was approaching Pskov, Rodzianko had talked to Alexeiev at Headquarters. Alexeiev himself found abdication the only solution and agreed to collect the opinions of the generals commanding the different fronts. By the morning of the 15th, these replies had come back to Alexeiev and were forwarded to Ruzsky in Pskov. They were grimly unanimous: Nicholas must abdicate. Admiral Nepenin of the Baltic Fleet had stated: “It is only with the greatest difficulty that I keep the troops and fleet under my command in check.” Grand Duke Nicholas, in the Caucasus, telegraphed that he begged “on my knees” for his cousin’s abdication.
In Pskov, after breakfast on the morning of March 15, Ruzsky brought the generals’ telegrams to the Imperial train and laid them before the Tsar. Nicholas was overwhelmed. His face became white, he turned away from R
uzsky and walked to the window. Absent-mindedly, he lifted the shade and peeped out. Inside, the car was absolutely still. No one spoke, and most of those present could scarcely breathe.
If the anguish felt by Nicholas at this last, climactic moment of his reign is impossible to know, the logic of his reasoning is relatively clear. If he rejected the advice of the political leaders in Petrograd and of his generals, what could he do next? He knew from the defection of the Guard and from Ivanov’s experience that it would not be easy to find loyal regiments to march on the city; without the support of his generals, it probably would be impossible. If he could find the men and fighting broke out, there was a risk to his family, still at Tsarskoe Selo, now firmly in the hands of the Provisional Government. On top of this, Nicholas had no real stomach for a bloody, pitched battle in the streets of his capital. Years of rule, years of war, years of personal strain and anguish had left him few inner resources with which to face the prospect of plunging his country into civil war.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 52