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

by Robert K. Massie

  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.”

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  “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 Nicholas 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 misi
nterpret 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.”

  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 kn
ew 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.”