Other than on official business, Michael went to ‘detestable’ Petrograd primarily for the theatre, ballet or a concert. In the last three months of 1915, he visited the capital six times,7 but never to parties there, or to mingle with the bankers, diplomats, politicians, and businessmen who thronged Petrograd; he kept himself within a small circle of close friends. Natasha would go there regularly, for lunch and shopping, but invariably she went on her own.
In the year since her return, Natasha had established an ever-widening circle of friends as she had never been able to do when she had arrived there in 1911 as mistress. Marriage, and having a husband who was a war hero, opened doors that had never opened before. And, to the fury of Tsarskoe Selo, her circle now included three young Grand Dukes who had become regulars at her home in Gatchina. One was Dimitri, eleven years her junior, who had fallen in love with her at first sight in exactly the same way as had Michael. He had seen her on the platform at Baranovichi as she was returning from Lvov in December 1914, and he was returning from Stavka, where he now served as a staff officer. Despite his own gallantry award won in the first weeks of the war, Dimitri was cursed with tuberculosis, and was never allowed a battlefield posting again.
Next day, having found out that she was his cousin’s wife, and discovering that she lunched regularly in the Astoria Winter Garden, he turned up there, and introduced himself.8 After that he became a regular visitor to Gatchina. A surprising new friend? In March 1915 the handsome Dimitri had followed her to Moscow, knocked on the door of her suite at the National Hotel, and then confessed that he was in love with her.9
It was very flattering to have a second Grand Duke in love with her — more than flattering, extraordinary — but also very awkward. She had come to be very fond of Dimitri, he 24 and she 35, but there could only be one man in her life, and that was, and always would be ever after, Michael. In accepting that, Dimitri told her that he ‘had decided to run away from me’, she wrote to Michael.10 Nonetheless, he kept in touch, writing to her regularly as ‘your devoted friend’ and coming to the Gatchina house frequently, though without saying anything again that might embarrass her.
Grand Duke Boris had also become a member of what a bitter Alexandra called her ‘bad set’. Meeting her for the first time when he came to Sunday lunch with his brother Andrew — an established friend of Natasha — in August 1915, he told Michael she was charmante.11 With three Grand Dukes driving out to Gatchina, and with Dimitri’s sister Grand Duchess Marie also becoming a regular guest, it was beginning to look as if Gatchina was becoming a rival court. Certainly that is how it appeared to the resentful eyes at Tsarskoe Selo.
Petrograd society was also left in no doubt that Madame Brasova, as she still was, seemed to be rising high. On October 18, 1915, it would have its first sight of Michael and Natasha together in public when they went to a ballet at the imperial Maryinski. The last time Natasha had been there, three years earlier, was when she had been humiliated by a Blue Cuirassier officer, shouting at her for having ‘compromised the Grand Duke’; another officer who had dared to go into her box in 1911 had been thrown out of the regiment in disgrace. Now she would have sweet revenge.
The chandelier-lit Maryinski, packed with uniformed officers, men in white tie and tails, and bejewelled ladies, had seen Michael and Boris go into the ornate imperial family box at the rear of the theatre, and Natasha, barred from sitting there, go into a nearby box. But at the interval, the imperial box emptied, and moments later the two Grand Dukes were in her box on the first tier, sipping champagne, and making clear to all those staring up at them that wherever Natasha sat was where they preferred to be. A month later, she was back and the same thing happened, except that Andrew was there also, so that there were now three Grand Dukes joining her in the interval in row 11 of her first tier box.12
But Natasha’s circle had widened far beyond Petrograd society. At her regular table in the Astoria Winter Garden, she was often to be seen lunching there with Duma deputies. The gossipy French ambassador had already heard enough in his round of the salons and at his own table to know that ‘she has been parading very strong liberal opinions for some time. Her circle is frequently open to deputies of the Left. In court quarters she has already been accused of betraying Tsarism — a fact which pleases her enormously, as it makes her views notorious and lays the foundations of her popularity. She becomes more independent every day and says the most audacious things — things which in the mouth of any other would mean twenty years in Siberia!’13
In so saying, Paléologue was reflecting the prejudiced views of the dinner tables he frequented, and one persistent source of his intelligence was Princess Paley, who also denigrated Michael no less than she did Natasha. Paléologue had never met either, and never would, so when he said of Michael that he ‘had fought bravely’ he also dismissed him as ‘the feeblest of men’,14 a description almost certainly borrowed from Princess Paley since she would so describe Michael herself. In her cultivation of salon hostesses, she saw her role as promoting the views of her patroness Alexandra, who took no part in the Petrograd social round, and Michael and Natasha were therefore constant targets for her sniping tongue. It won her plaudits in Tsarskoe Selo, and served to confirm her absolute loyalty to the court.
Dimitri Abrikosov, who as a young man in Moscow had been an early admirer of Natasha, and was now in the diplomatic service in Petrograd, became one of her regular lunch guests at Gatchina, and was at the table there one Sunday, with Grand Dukes Boris and Andrew, when the discussion turned to the defeats suffered by the Russian armies and the scandal over the shortage of munitions. Natasha suddenly exploded. ‘It was you Romanovs who brought Russia to such a state!’ The room hushed ‘and the Grand Dukes looked down at their plates’. Afterwards Abrikosov took Natasha aside and told her that ‘it was no wonder she was regarded at court as a revolutionist’.15
She was anything but, and while she had become friends with a number of Duma deputies they were by no means ‘deputies of the left’. Her first Duma friend and regular lunch companion was Count Kapnist, a monarchist albeit one who like most wanted constitutional government, not autocracy — a view which Natasha strongly supported, however distorted that view became when embellished for the benefit of Tsarskoe Selo. But not everything said about her was gossip.
One of the most remarkable statements with which the names of Michael and Natasha were linked politically came at a conference of the majority Progressive Bloc on October 25, 1915, when relations between crown and Duma were at rock bottom. The conference, with the Duma suspended by Nicholas, was in effect the Duma by another name.
The first speaker, a non-party liberal, M. M. Fedorov, was quoted as saying: ‘Grand Duke Michael has been told about the situation by a person close to his wife. He has spoken to the Tsar, and says that the Tsarita, Goremykin, and Rasputin are prepared to go as far as closing the Duma.’ That was true: Alexandra did not want it suspended, as it was; she wanted it to be shut down permanently, never to be heard of again.
Fedorov then went on to say: ‘To the question of whether or not he would be prepared to succeed to the throne, the Grand Duke replied “May this cup pass me by. Of course, if this were, unfortunately to come about, I sympathise with the British system. I can’t understand why the Tsar won’t take it calmly.”’16
Aleksandr Kerensky, a leading socialist destined to play a decisive role in the drama to come, was also to recount an incident so astonishing and so unlike Michael that at face value it cannot seem true. ‘In the autumn of 1915’ he would recall in his memoirs, ‘I was visited by an old friend, Count Pavel Tolstoy, the son of one of the Tsar’s equerries. He was a close friend of the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael, whom he had known since childhood.’ So far, so good. He then went on: ‘He told me that he had come at the request of the Grand Duke, who knew that I had connections with the working class and left-wing parties and who wanted to know how the workers would react if he took over from his brother, the Tsar.’17
Michael would never have authorised nor suggested such an approach to Kerensky. At the same time, Kerensky had no reason to invent it. The question is therefore whether Count Tolstoy went to see him on his own initiative, or was sent there by someone else — and the only person who was likely to have done that was Natasha. Since Kerensky dodged the answer, nothing of this encounter reached Michael’s ears and so it never went any further. However, the probable truth is that Natasha was behind this, and that when Tolstoy reported that he had drawn a blank, the question was buried.
Although Michael never sought nor desired his brother’s downfall, he feared for his future if Nicholas did not bring about change, curb the power of Alexandra and dismiss Rasputin. Shortly after returning from his week at Mogilev, Michael sat on the verandah at Nikolaevskaya Street one Sunday evening and talked to Dimitri Abrikosov about the future. Everyone else had gone for a drive.
‘He told me that he often thought how difficult it was for his brother, who sincerely wanted to do only what was good for the people, but who was hindered by his wife. Several times he had tried to convey to his brother what people were saying about him, and about the dangerous influence of the Empress…’ Michael thought that ‘Nicholas was indifferent to his fate, leaving everything in the hands of God, but under the influence of Rasputin, God had assumed a strange shape.’ As dusk came, Abrikosov turned on the light. ‘I was shocked by the utter despair on the pale face before me…’18 Abrikosov, in the weeks he had come to know Michael, came to think of him as far superior to Natasha, despite the greater force of her personality. ‘I have never met another man so uncorrupted and noble in nature’, was his final judgement.19
Whatever he told Abrikosov in confidence, Michael never said anything critical of his brother in public. When the British consul Bruce Lockhart met him in Moscow, at a conference about improving the railway system — critical to the war effort — he observed that Michael ‘talked quite freely about the war’ but made only one comment which could be thought to have political overtones.
‘Thank God’, he said, ‘the atmosphere at the front is so much better than the atmosphere of St Petersburg’. The diplomat left Michael thinking that here ‘was a prince who would have made an excellent constitutional monarch’.20
This was also the image which Natasha indirectly projected among her contacts in the Duma by her own support of the reforms the ‘constitutionalists’ sought. If Michael were Regent, in place of Alexandra, all would be accomplished. Much was inferred, but what could not be ignored was the stark contrast between the wife of the Tsar and the wife of the Tsar’s brother. Both were strong-minded and opinionated; one hated the Duma and wanted unrestricted autocratic power; both were thought of as having a decisive influence over their husbands. Inevitably Natasha was seen as an ally by those who saw Alexandra as an enemy.
Public recognition of the difference between the two — and indeed the difference between the brothers — came in February, 1916, at the re-opening of the Duma at the Tauride Palace. Abrikosov escorted Natasha there and into the box reserved for distinguished guests, though several members of the Duma were also seated there. Abrikosov noted that ‘from the respect they showed her it was obvious she was becoming known in Duma circles’.21
That day was an historic occasion, for the Tsar had agreed to be present. On the few times he had addressed the Duma over the past ten years he had always done so at the Winter Palace — now, for the first time he was not demanding that they went to him, but instead he was going to them. Although it was widely hoped that this was to be signal for a new relationship between crown and Duma it would prove, in fact, no more than a ploy to smooth over the introduction of his newly-appointed prime minister, Boris Stürmer, pushed forward by Alexandra and blessed by Rasputin.
The old prime minister Goremykin had finally been retired in January; Stürmer, at sixty-eight, was only ten years younger, but Alexandra has pressed his appointment on Nicholas because he ‘very much values Grigory wh. is a great thing’.22 In the real world he was damningly seen as ‘worse than a mediocrity’ with a ‘third-rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea of State business’.23
To give himself moral support at the Duma, Nicholas took along Michael; it was their first State appearance together in the capital since Michael’s marriage and exile. Michael, pushed to the sidelines since his return to Russia, was now being brought centre-stage for the convenience of the moment. In the eight years in which she had known Michael, this was the first time that Natasha, sitting in her box, had ever seen the two brothers together. It would be the only day she — or any of the Duma members present — would do so.
That morning Michael and Natasha had breakfasted with Duma deputy Count Kapnist, who had then escorted Natasha to the Duma and the waiting Abrikosov while Michael went off to the Pavilion at the Tauride Palace to join his brother at the ceremonial entrance into the adjacent Catherine Hall. Nicholas was ‘deadly pale and his hands were trembling with agitation’.24 He was not looking forward to the ceremony.
The Catherine Hall was packed, with diplomats as well as Duma members, the mood hopeful that the Tsar’s visit would prove the beginning of change for the better, an expectation encouraged by the presence of Michael, whose support for the Duma was taken as fact by those lobbied by Natasha over the past year. Duma members wanted the Tsar to be no less supportive. As the influential Kadet leader Pavel Milyukov put it to Paléologue, what Nicholas had never understood was that his party was not ‘the opposition against His Majesty but His Majesty’s Opposition’.25 Perhaps today he would alter that view. Most hoped so.
After a Te Deum, throughout which Nicholas stood pale, his mouth tightened and his discomfort obvious, he made a short welcoming speech, ‘stopping and stumbling over every word’. To Paléologue it was ‘painful to watch’.26 It was also disappointing for those members who hoped that he was going to announce some important reform. There was nothing of that; what he had offered was a gesture, but no more.
When Nicholas left, Michael stayed on, taking a seat in the semi-circular assembly hall for the whole of the three-hour session, which closed with the Progressive Bloc calling for a government of ‘public confidence’.
Michael thought that Serge Shidlovsky, the Progressive’s leader, ‘spoke well’, but he was unimpressed by the new prime minister Stürmer, ‘who could hardly be heard’.27 Mikhail Rodzyanko, president of the State Duma, was also dismissive of Stürmer, who left the speaker’s tribune ‘amid dead silence…from the very outset Stürmer revealed himself as an utter nonentity’.28
That evening, Michael and Natasha were also at the opening session of the 192-strong Council of State, of which half the members were appointed by the Tsar and the others by an amalgam of institutions, including the Church, universities, landowners and the nobility. Once again, Nicholas turned up briefly, was escorted into the meeting room by Michael, made another short and no more successful speech, and then departed back to Tsarskoe Selo, having been received in ‘an atmosphere of cold officialdom’.29
Having said goodbye to his brother, Michael returned to the assembly room and joined Natasha’s box where she was sitting with her friend Count Kapnist. As earlier in the day, he stayed for the full session.30
Merely by being there, in the company of a Duma deputy, Michael was making his own political statement and endorsing as clearly as he could his support for a new start in Russian government. But at Tsarskoe Selo that would be thought of only as confirmation that it was time for him to get back to the war. As Alexandra had already told Nicholas, ‘I assure you that it is far better that he should be in his place there, than here with her bad set’.31
In turn, that ‘bad set’ was wondering how best to get rid of Alexandra.
7. WAR ON TWO FRONTS
MICHAEL went back to the war immediately after the reopening of the Duma in February 1916. Promoted to lieutenant-general, the 2nd Cavalry Corps, his new command, co
mprised the six regiments of his old Savage Division, as well as a Cossack division and a Don Cossack brigade. The corps was part of the Seventh Army under General Shcherbachev and its front was on the far left of the Russian line, south of Tarnopol and therefore in the same general area where Michael had been in 1915.1
Michael had spent Christmas with his family at Brasovo, their first time at his country estate since the spring of 1912.2 Nicholas had at last given up his control of Michael’s assets, his manifesto in October 1915 removing the ‘madman’ order imposed after his marriage. In the three years in which Brasovo had been subject to the guardianship order it had been sadly neglected, as Michael discovered. His former ADC Mordvinov, appointed by the Tsar, had proved a bad manager and he was dilatory in rendering his accounts, in handing over estate papers, and jeopardising urgent repair work.3
Natasha complained endlessly about inefficiencies in his personal office in Petrograd, based in rooms set aside in his embankment hospital, and about the way in which, in his absence, his various retainers, servants, and appointees were either incompetent, greedy, or light-fingered. Every month Michael had money transferred to England to pay the rent and bills on his Paddockhurst estate — the lease would not end until September 1916 — but ‘they never send it on time, there is always a delay of about two weeks.’ 4 When their hospital in Gatchina was temporarily closed for repairs, Natasha reported that the supply manager continued ordering provisions for it, selling them to local shopkeepers and keeping the cash. He succeeded in stealing a whole ‘railway car full of meat, cereals and flour’.5
Petitions to his office from wounded soldiers were also causing difficulties. A month after Michael returned to the front they were running at some sixty per day and rising. Michael was generous but, as Natasha warned, the word had got round, so that every soldier satisfied brought in other soldiers eager to claim the same. ‘You can’t support the entire wounded army on your own money’, Natasha pointed out. There had to be a budget ‘otherwise there will never be enough’.6
The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II Page 9