The Last Tsar

by Edvard Radzinsky

  The revolutionary Burtsev, who scarcely loved the tsar, confirmed this in his research on the Protocols:

  “If in the beginning, when the Protocols first appeared, Nicholas II regarded them in good faith and was even delighted over them, he quickly recognized them as an obvious provocation.”

  Vera Leonidovna:

  “In short, before the revolution they had done everything in their power to push the tsar to the right, and suddenly he started to dig in his heels. There was even talk of reforms. That was when they realized that the weak tsar could not withstand a revolution—and he had decided to abdicate. All this forced the camarilla to act. My friend felt that by the end of 1904 there was a secret plot at court—and Bloody Sunday was a part of it.”

  (Indeed, Zubatov passed on to Witte the secret conclusions of the Department of Police: a storm was brewing in the country. Anticipating that storm, the rightists were indeed greatly annoyed with the tsar.)

  Beginning in 1904, Nicholas began to change—suddenly and recklessly. After the death of the reactionary Plehve, he named as his new minister of internal affairs Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, a landowner, an aristocrat, and a liberal. During the final months of 1904, Svyatopolk-Mirsky persuaded the tsar to discuss measures for assuaging public opinion. Before when public opinion had been mentioned, Nicholas had answered just as the autocrat of all Russia would be expected to: “What do I care for public opinion?” Now he was taking the problem seriously. The events of the Japanese war had changed him. He understood the peril of the storm. Instead of trying to return to the ruthless ways of his father, as the camarilla had expected, he decided on something else. He liked this new minister, who instead of suppressing the people was proposing reconciliation. Accord was dear to Nicholas’s heart. At the end of the year Nicholas convened a broad meeting of all the leading statesmen of Russia. Both Witte and Pobedonostsev were there. Nicholas gave a speech about the revolutionary trend that kept intensifying each year in Russia. He posed what was for him a new question: Do we need to meet society’s demands?

  The question was rhetorical, for he had already made his decision. As usual, however, he wanted others to force him to make it. One after another the officials rose and demanded concessions. Pobedonostsev was isolated. Now Nicholas was more or less compelled to agree and go against both his teacher and his father’s behests. A decision was made to work out a law “on designs and improvements for governmental procedure.” Everyone understood that this was the beginning of reforms. Perhaps a constitution. Witte was instructed to write the law—it was a total victory for the liberals. Everyone was moved: The minister for communications, Prince Khilkov, could not hold back tears. In the name of those present, the chairman of the State Council thanked Nicholas: Russia had been saved by peaceful means.

  Then came the response of the rightists: on January 1, in protest against the policy of Svyatopolk-Mirsky, one of their leaders, Dmitry Feodorovich Trepov, the Moscow police chief, quit.

  A week later this strange, bloody bacchanalia occurred: Bloody Sunday.

  Let us assume that a camarilla plot did indeed exist. Then why this bloody slaughter? Perhaps they had gotten the idea of simply frightening the tsar to nudge him, at last, to the right, and at the same time put all society in its place.

  Or was it all actually much more serious? A weak tsar, a lost war, an advancing revolution, and on top of it all the mirage of a detested constitution. Did they decide enough was enough? And in the best traditions of the secret police use a bloody provocation to discredit the weak tsar at a single blow? And then? Then Bloody Sunday was a beginning that should have led to replacing Nicholas in the future.

  Destabilization for the sake of future stabilization: the advent of a strong monarch?

  As Vera Leonidovna suggested, one can find a strange link—an intrigue—through subsequent events.

  Bloody Sunday bore its fruits: Svyatopolk-Mirsky stepped down. Nicholas conceded: on January 11 the reactionary Trepov was named governor-general of Petersburg.

  But this was only a beginning. After Petersburg a blow against Moscow followed. In Moscow was Nicholas’s chief adviser and support—Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.

  “A dreadful crime has been committed in Moscow: at the Nikolsky Gate Uncle Sergei, riding in his carriage, has been killed by a bomb and his driver mortally wounded.… Unhappy Ella! God bless and help her!…

  “On February 4, on Senate Square in the Kremlin, the Socialist Revolutionary Kalyaev lay in wait for Sergei Alexandrovich. He hurled a bomb into the carriage.”

  From prison, Kalyaev described it in his last letters:

  “At me—I smelled smoke and fragments coming right at my face, my cap was ripped off.… Then about five paces away I saw shreds of the grand duke’s clothing and his naked body.”

  The viceroy of Moscow (as he was called at court) had been blown up by a bomb: his head was gone; all that was left was a hand and part of a foot.

  Ella ran out of the palace and threw herself on the bloody bits, crawling on her knees among the remnants of her husband. What the revolutionary Kalyaev did not know was that the bomb with which he had killed the grand duke had been prepared with the help of a workshop belonging to the Department of Police. The actual assassination had been organized by a secret agent of the department, head of the Socialist Revolutionaries’ terrorist group, the provocateur Azef.

  Again the shadow of the secret police behind the event?

  ——

  From the diary of Konstantin Romanov, the poet K.R.:

  “5 February.… Thunderstruck, for the first minute I could not think at all, only as I came around did I understand what I had been deprived of and begin to cry. I had to prepare my wife—she loved Sergei very much. Both she and I felt that I should go to Moscow to see my poor friend’s body, to see poor Ella, who has no family around her….

  “9 February.… The sovereign and both empresses are inconsolable that they cannot pay their final respects to the deceased. It is too dangerous for them to leave Tsarskoe. All the grand dukes have been informed in writing that not only can they not go to Moscow, but they are forbidden to attend the funeral at Kazan and St. Isaac’s cathedrals [in St. Petersburg].”

  Meanwhile in Moscow a majestic tragedy was being played out.

  Ella spent all the days before the burial in ceaseless prayer. On her husband’s tombstone she wrote: “Father, release them: they know not what they do.”

  She understood the words of the Gospels heart and soul, and on the eve of the funeral she demanded to be taken to the prison where Kalyaev was being held. Brought into his cell, she asked, “Why did you kill my husband?”

  “I killed Sergei Alexandrovich because he was a weapon of tyranny. I was taking revenge for the people.”

  “Do not listen to your pride. Repent … and I will beg the sovereign to give you your life. I will ask him for you. I myself have already forgiven you.”

  On the eve of revolution she had found a way out: forgiveness! Forgive through the impossible pain and blood—and thereby stop it then, at the beginning, this bloody wheel. By her example, poor Ella appealed to society, calling upon the people to live in Christian faith.

  “No!” replied Kalyaev. “I do not repent. I must die for my deed and I will.… My death will be more useful to my cause than Sergei Alexandrovich’s death.”

  Kalyaev was sentenced to death. “I am pleased with your sentence,” he told the judges. “I hope you will carry it out just as openly and publicly as I carried out the sentence of the Socialist Revolutionaries’ party. Learn to look the advancing revolution right in the eye.”

  Kalyaev met death fearlessly.

  Nicholas had lost Moscow.

  The camarilla knew what came next in their intrigue: Nicholas must soon be deprived of his chief adviser. The empress-mother was leaving for Denmark, where her father was mortally ill. Now one last figure remained by the tsar, Uncle Vladimir Alexandrovich. But the third blow was known. The Department of Police
had been informed that the son of Vladimir Alexandrovich, Kirill, had broken up the marriage of the tsaritsa’s brother Ernie (that “fine couple”). Victoria Melita had divorced her husband, and now Kirill had decided to marry her and create an open family scandal. This would provoke harsh countermeasures; he would be punished, which meant that his father, Vladimir Alexandrovich, would have to step down as commander of the Petersburg garrison.

  From a letter of Nicholas to his mother in Denmark:

  “This week there was a drama in the family over Kirill’s unfortunate marriage. You certainly remember my conversations with him, as well as the consequences he would necessarily suffer: exclusion from the service, being forbidden to enter Russia, deprivation of all crown monies, and loss of the title of grand duke. Last week I learned that he has married.… I had a very unpleasant talk with his poor father, and no matter how he defended his son, I insisted. We left it that he would ask to leave the service. In the end, I agreed.

  “At the same time I have been overtaken by doubt. Is it good to punish someone publicly several times in a row?… After long thought, which gave me a headache, I decided … to telegraph that I am returning Kirill his lost title.… Ugh! What tiresome, unpleasant days these have been. Now it is as if a mountain has fallen from my shoulders.”

  WHO PULLED THE STRINGS?

  If we suppose that the camarilla did intend to replace Nicholas with a strong tsar, then who would that have been? After all, by law, in the event of abdication, the minor Alexei would ascend to the throne. But Alexei was mortally ill; Alexei could be avoided. The next legal pretender was Michael. But he had no more the nature of a tsar than his brother.

  The intriguers knew they could avoid Michael as well, for Michael was romantically involved and thinking about marrying, moreover marrying a certain Mrs. Wulfert, who was anything but of royal blood. Naturally, the Department of Police was informed of the affair. According to the law on succession, by marrying he would forfeit his title of grand duke.

  “My dear mama!… Misha wrote that he is asking my permission to marry. That he can wait no longer. Naturally, I shall never consent to this marriage. I feel with all my being that our dear papa would have acted in the same way. I feel it is quite impossible to change the law in this one case during such a dangerous period. Help me, dear Mama, to restrain him. May the Lord protect you.”

  For whom, then, was all this plotting?

  Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich—Nikolasha, Nicholas the Long—who was so similar in build to his cousin the deceased emperor.

  The young Romanovs called him the “terrible uncle.” Those who saw him in military parades could never forget him, so imposing was his presence.

  Hussars on jet black horses wearing black helmets topped by a horsehair comb gallop toward the small mounted figure—toward the tsar, who is reviewing the parade. And amid this terrible avalanche is Nicholas the giant, who has merged with his horse.… Just a few steps from the emperor, the commander’s magnificent leonine roar: “Halt!” And in an instant the inexorable avalanche halts. There is only the heavy breathing of people and horses.

  Yes, he had the look of a tsar. He was known for his right-wing views. Nicholas Nikolaevich was being led to their goal: he was replacing all the uncles. He, not the retired Vladimir, was now in command of the Petersburg garrison. Alix, who was linked by friendship to the wife of Nicholas Nikolaevich, was also favorably disposed toward him.

  Did Nicholas Nikolaevich himself know? Or, as sometimes happens, did “he know but not know”? Just as his ancestor Alexander I “knew but did not know” that they wanted to kill his father Emperor Paul and put Alexander himself on the throne? In any event, Nicholas Nikolaevich served the tsar honestly during all these days of upheaval. It all went right past him.

  This is a seductive version of Bloody Sunday, but dreadfully romantic. Russians love a good plot—camarillas, Masons, whatever—where in fact there is usually just plain sloppiness. Someone mistrusted someone else; someone failed to warn someone else. So someone decided to take out more insurance, called up the troops, and removed the tsar from Petersburg. Great and terrible events in Russia are usually due to someone’s stupidity or laziness.

  “LEARN TO LOOK THE ADVANCING ENEMY RIGHT IN THE EYE”

  From the very start, the wave raised by Bloody Sunday was more like a tsunami.

  From the diary of K.R.:

  “February 6, 1905.… I simply cannot believe how quickly we are moving toward unknown, exotic calamities. There is mischief everywhere, all are confused.… The government has yet to feel a strong hand. Not that there is one.”

  All the elements would be there: barricades out of overturned trams, a general strike, mutiny in the army. In the Crimea an insurrectionist cruiser would approach the shores, and at their estates the horrified grand dukes would wait for the firing to begin. The red rooster of arson—the “light show”—would rampage through the landowners’ estates.

  In Petersburg, in the noisy crowd at the World of Art exhibit, arms crossed haughtily, stood the famous terrorist Boris Savinkov. Openly. No one dared turn him in.

  Vera Leonidovna:

  “Absolutely everyone went on strike. It was like a holiday. At the Mariinsky Theater the ballet struck, and even the brother of his [Nicholas’s] mistress Mathilde, Iosif Kschessinski, struck.… I knew him well. By the way, after the revolution this participation in the strike became his indulgence, his safe conduct. Kschessinski even became an honored artist of the Russian Republic, this brother of the tsar’s mistress. The last time I saw him was on the eve of the war. He starved to death in blockaded Leningrad. A habitué of good restaurants, a gourmand who feasted on silver platters—he starved to death!”

  “DEAR MAMA, YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW MUCH I HAVE SUFFERED”

  By the fall of 1905, the tsar’s family, cut off by the general strike, was living in Peterhof, and their sole means of communication with Petersburg was by steamer. “Even if you have to swim to get here,” the tsar joked sadly. The issue of Nicholas’s fall seemed decided.

  Returning from abroad, Witte, who reached the tsar by steamship, listened to Benckendorff, the sympathetic marshal of the court, about how difficult it was going to be for the tsar’s family, with the five children, to find a safe haven among their royal relatives in Europe. Still, Nicholas sailed the ship of state out of this storm.

  In the summer of 1905, as the revolution gathered steam, the tsar, who outwardly clung to the rightists, had made an unexpected move. In June American President Theodore Roosevelt offered his services to help Russia and Japan reach an accord. To America the tsar sent the liberal Witte. At first the rightists were jubilant—Witte’s mission appeared hopeless. The Japanese had won too much; it was inconceivable that he would conclude a peace on honorable terms. But he did. And on the best possible terms, given the circumstances. Witte returned to Russia triumphant. Nicholas rewarded him with the title of count.

  Two choices remained to the tsar: proclaim Nicholas Nikolaevich military dictator (and himself gradually withdraw, as, evidently, the camarilla intended) or decide in favor of what his father had instructed him to fight—reforms and a constitution.

  The latter is what the returned Witte proposed to him: “Russia has outgrown its existing governmental forms. “There is still a chance—you must give the people their constitution, otherwise they will wrest one away.”

  Nicholas possessed sufficient flexibility. He agreed to a constitution.

  And hesitated. Behind Witte’s back, Nicholas continued to importune Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich to become dictator. Witte was angry; he saw in this a pathetic spinelessness. Nicholas did not want to understand: the world had fallen apart. Like the prodigal son, Nicholas was ready to part with everything his forefathers had created. The great autocratic empire was to end with him.

  Once again he wanted others to beg him to do what he himself had long since decided on.

  It fell to Nicholas Nikolaevich to do the begging. Even if he
knew about the intrigue, he could not have profited from its results. The army was at the front in Manchuria (everything was as it would be in 1917, when the army was fighting on the fronts of the world war). There was no one to crush a revolution. Agreeing to become dictator was tantamount to finishing off the dynasty.

  On the day Nicholas signed the constitution, he had a terrible headache. He thought of the Japanese who had once sliced his brow. The minister of the court, Count Fredericks, told Witte when he arrived that the tsar had again asked Nicholas Nikolaevich to become dictator, whereupon Nikolasha had pulled out a gun and said: “Either I shoot myself right now, or you sign.”

  Now Nicholas had the right: he signed.

  “17 October [!].… Nikolasha and Stana had breakfast. We sat and talked, waiting for Witte to arrive. I signed the Manifesto at 5 o’clock. Since that day my head has been very heavy and my thoughts confused. Lord, save Russia, and bring her peace.”

  On the returning steamer, Nicholas Nikolaevich embraced Witte triumphantly: “Today, October 17th, is an important date. Exactly seventeen years ago, also on the 17th at Borki, God saved the dynasty. I think that now the dynasty is being saved from a no lesser danger.”