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 artillery 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 each.
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 scrapbook. 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.
The hours passed, but the train, ordered for one a.m., did not appear. The railwaymen, suspicious and hostile, had refused to shunt the cars together, then refused to couple them. Kerensky himself went repeatedly to telephone the yards. Kobylinsky, exhausted and still unwell, collapsed into a chair and fell asleep. At one point, Benckendorff got Kerensky’s attention and asked him before witnesses how long the Imperial family would stay in Tobolsk. Kerensky confidently assured the Count that, once the Constituent Assembly had met in November, Nicholas could freely return to Tsarskoe Selo or go anywhere he wished. Undoubtedly, Kerensky was sincere. But in November he himself was a fugitive from the Bolsheviks.
Between five and six a.m., the waiting group at last heard the blare of automobile horns in the courtyard. Kerensky informed Nicholas that the train was ready and the baggage loaded. The family entered the automobiles, and the little procession was surrounded by a mounted escort of Cossacks. As they left the palace grounds, the early-morning sun cast its first rays on the sleeping village. The train, wearing Japanese flags and bearing placards proclaiming “Japanese Red Cross Mission,” was standing on a siding outside the station. The family walked beside the track to the first car, where, for lack of steps, the men lifted Alexandra, her daughters and the other women onto the car platform. As soon as all were aboard, the train began moving eastward, toward Siberia.
32
Siberia
If the train which Kerensky provided for the Tsar’s journey to Siberia was not of Imperial quality, it was nevertheless a luxurious vehicle for the transfer of prisoners. It consisted of comfortable wagon-lits of the International Sleeping Car Company, a restaurant car stocked with wines from the Imperial cellar, and baggage compartments filled with favorite rugs, pictures and knickknacks from the palace. In their portable jewel chests, the Empress and her daughters brought personal gems worth at least a million roubles ($500,000). In addition to the ladies and gentlemen of their suite, the Imperial family was accompanied to Siberia by two valets, six chambermaids, ten footmen, three cooks, four assistant cooks, a butler, a wine steward, a nurse, a clerk, a barber and two pet spaniels. Colonel Kobylinsky also rode aboard the Tsar’s train, while most of his 330 soldiers followed on a second train.
The train routine deferred entirely to the established habits of the Imperial family: breakfast at eight, morning coffee at ten, lunch at one, tea at five and dinner at eight. Between six and seven every evening, the train came to a stop in open country so that Nicholas and the children could walk the dogs for half an hour along the track. Alexandra did not attempt these excursions. She sat fanning herself in the heat by an open window and was delighted one afternoon when a soldier reached up and handed her a cornflower.
For four days, the train rolled eastward, clicking monotonously over the rails through the heat and dust of European Russia. The passengers saw no one. At every village, the station was surrounded by troops, the blinds in the coaches were drawn and no one was permitted to show himself at the window. Only once was the train forced to halt by curious local officials. At Perm, on the edge of the Urals, a tall, white-bearded man entered Kobylinsky’s compartment, introduced himself as head of the railroad workmen in that district and said that the comrades wanted to know who was on the train. Kobylinsky produced his paper bearing Kerensky’s signature, and the workers immediately stood aside.
On the evening of the third day, as the train was crossing the Urals, the air grew noticeably cooler. East of this low range of forested hills lay the beginnings of the Siberian steppe. From the windows of the puffing, rattling train, the Empress and her children saw for the first time the meadowland stretching to the horizon. In late afternoon, the immense dome of sky overhead turned bright crimson and gold as the last rays of sunset glowed on the white trunks of the birches and the green stems of marsh grasses.
Near midnight on August 17, the train crawled slowly into Tyumen on the Tura River. At a dock across from the station, the river steamer Rus was waiting. Tobolsk lay two hundred miles to the northeast, a two-day journey on the Tura and Tobol rivers. Nicholas spent the voyage pacing the steamer’s upper deck and staring at the villages scattered along the bar
e river shores. One of these villages was Pokrovskoe, Rasputin’s home. As Pokrovskoe glided past, the family gathered on deck to look. They saw a prosperous village with flowers in the windowboxes and cows and pigs in the barnyards. Rasputin’s house was unmistakable: two stories tall, it loomed above the simple peasant huts. The passengers were fascinated to see this remote but famous hamlet. Long before, Rasputin had predicted to the Empress that one day she would visit his village. He had not foretold the circumstances, and the family accepted this glimpse as a fulfillment of the prophecy.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 59