Secret Lives of the Tsars

by Michael Farquhar

  Michael Rodzianko, president of the Duma, had long shared the imperial family’s concerns about the empress. “Alexandra Feodorovna is fiercely and universally hated, and all circles are clamoring for her removal,” he told the tsar’s younger brother Michael. “While she remains in power, we shall continue on the road to ruin.”

  On January 20, 1917, at Michael’s urging, Rodzianko brought these worries to the emperor in a private meeting at Tsarskoe Selo. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I consider the state of the country to have become more critical and menacing than ever. The spirit of all the people is such that the greatest upheavals may be expected.… All Russia is unanimous in claiming a change of government and the appointment of a responsible premier invested with the confidence of the nation.… Sire, there is not a single honest or reliable man left in your entourage; all the best have either been eliminated or have resigned.… It is an open secret that the Empress issues orders without your knowledge, that Ministers report to her on matters of state.… Indignation against and hatred of the Empress are growing throughout the country. She is looked upon as Germany’s champion. Even the common people are speaking of it.”

  At this point the tsar interrupted. “Give me facts,” he insisted. “There are no facts to confirm your statements.”

  “There are no facts,” Rodzianko acknowledged, “but the whole trend of policy directed by Her Majesty gives ground for such ideas. To save your family, Your Majesty ought to find some way of preventing the Empress from exercising any influence on politics.… Your Majesty, do not compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country.”

  In a sign of burgeoning despair and resignation, Nicholas pressed his head between his hands. “Is it possible,” he said, “that for twenty-two years I tried to act for the best and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?”

  With little more to say than the absolute truth, Rodzianko responded: “Yes, Your Majesty, for twenty-two years you have followed the wrong course.”

  The March Revolution of 1917 was sparked not by Lenin, Trotsky, or any other radical party—they had simply not made plans for one. It started in the streets, with a basic lack of bread. Day after day, people formed long lines in subzero temperatures to buy essentials at wildly inflated prices, only to be turned away when the meager supplies ran out. Confronted with this daily privation, they began to take on what the French ambassador described as a “sinister expression” on their faces, until hunger and frustration finally exploded into rage. “They [the radical left] were not ready [for revolution],” wrote Basil Shulgin, a monarchist deputy in the Duma, “but the rest were.”

  On March 8, people began smashing into bakeries, chanting, “Give us bread!” Their numbers grew the following day, as Cossack patrols began to share with the mob gestures of solidarity. “Don’t worry,” they declared, “we won’t shoot.” By Saturday, March 10, the protesters were joined by hordes of workers who went on strike that day, effectively shutting down the capital. Together they marched through the streets, waving red flags for the first time and shouting, “Down with the German woman! Down with Protopopov! Down with the war!”

  With the capital seething with rising turbulence, the tsar’s ministers desperately sought a solution to the food shortages. Failing that, they offered to resign as a group—all except Protopopov, the minister most responsible for the desperate supply situation, who still believed the spirit of Rasputin would guide him to a resolution of the problem. The emperor refused their offer, as well as their suggestion that a ministry acceptable to the Duma be appointed to replace them.

  Several days before the crisis started, Nicholas had left Petrograd (as St. Petersburg had been renamed)*4 to return to military headquarters—and he was clearly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Maurice Paléologue, the French ambassador, reported a most disconcerting meeting he had with the tsar in the weeks before his departure: “The Emperor’s words, his silences and reticences, his grave, drawn features and furtive, distant thoughts and the thoroughly vague and enigmatic quality of his personality, confirm in me … the notion that Nicholas II feels himself overwhelmed and dominated by events, that he has lost faith in his mission … that he has … abdicated inwardly and is now resigned to disaster.”

  Former prime minister Vladimir Kokovtsov had a similar impression after meeting the emperor on February 1. “During the year that I had not seen him, he became almost unrecognizable,” Kokovtsov recalled. “His face had become very thin and hollow and covered with small wrinkles. His eyes … had become quite faded and wandered aimlessly from object to object.… The whites were of a decidedly yellow tinge, and the dark retinas had become colorless, grey, lifeless.… The face of the Tsar bore an expression of helplessness. A forced, mirthless smile was fixed upon his lips.”

  As the budding revolution continued to intensify that Saturday in the capital, the emperor issued the following command to General Sergei Khabalov, the military governor of Petrograd, from headquarters five hundred miles away: I ORDER THAT THE DISORDERS IN THE CAPITAL, INTOLERABLE DURING THESE DIFFICULT TIMES OF WAR WITH GERMANY AND AUSTRIA, BE ENDED TOMORROW. NICHOLAS. He may as well have ordered cats to bark, for as Khabalov later testified, “this telegram was like being struck with the head of an axe. How was I to bring the disorders to a halt tomorrow?”

  Falsely assured by Protopopov that the situation in Petrograd was manageable, the emperor sought a simple solution to what he believed was a simple problem—just send in the troops. But the military presence in the capital was a desiccated vestige of what it had once been. “The regular soldiers of the pre-war army—the proud infantry and cavalry of the Imperial Guard, the veteran Cossacks and regiments of the line—had long since perished in the icy wastes of Poland and Galacia,” wrote Massie. “The best men who remained were still in the trenches facing the Germans.” What was left was a motley assortment of raw recruits—older men from the suburbs and backward country boys, unfit for the front and commanded by untested officers fresh out of military school. Confronted with the prospect of shooting at their own people, most of the soldiers simply refused.

  Although two hundred people throughout the city were killed on Sunday, March 11, thousands more were spared. A company from the Volinsky regiment, ordered to shoot into a crowd, fired into the air instead, while another company of the Pavlovsky Life Guards opted to shoot their commander instead. Soon a mass mutiny would erupt among the entire Petrograd garrison.

  That night Duma president Rodzianko sent the emperor an urgent telegram. “The position is serious,” he wired. “There is anarchy in the capital. The government is paralyzed. Transportation of food and fuel is completely disorganized.… There is disorderly firing in the streets. A person trusted by the country must be charged immediately to form a ministry.” Rodzianko then concluded, “May the blame not fall on the wearer of the crown.”

  Upon reading the telegram, Nicholas—still kept blissfully in the dark by Protopopov—turned to his chief of staff, General Michael Alexeiev, and announced derisively, “That fat Rodzianko has sent me some nonsense which I shall not even bother to answer.”

  The next morning, Monday, the tsar’s government still held the last vestiges of its power it would lose that evening. Meriel Buchanan, daughter of the British ambassador, looked out her window over the capital and, as she later wrote, saw “the same wide streets, the same great palaces, the same gold spires and domes rising out of the pearl-colored mists, and yet … everywhere emptiness, no lines of toiling carts, no crowded scarlet trams, no little sledges.… [Only] the waste of deserted streets and ice-bound river … [and] on the opposite shore the low grim walls of the [Peter and Paul] Fortress and the Imperial flag of Russia that for the last time fluttered against the winter sky.”

  Paléologue also recorded his impressions of that pivotal day in Russian history: “At half past eight this morning, just as I finished dressing, I heard a strange and prolonged din which seemed to come from the Alexander Bridge. I looked out;
there was no one on the bridge, which usually presents a busy scene. But almost immediately, a disorderly mob carrying red flags appeared at the end … on the right bank of the Neva and a regiment came toward them from the opposite side. It looked as if there would be a violent collision, but on the contrary, the two bodies coalesced. The army was fraternizing with the revolution.”

  In what amounted to a grand denouement to that momentous Monday morning, the mighty Fortress of Peter and Paul, along with all its artillery, fell to the rebels at noon. Meanwhile, as government buildings burned and rebellious soldiers, their bayonets decorated with red ribbons, marched side by side with surging mobs, the tsar’s cabinet met for the last time. Protopopov, the unwitting architect of the unfolding disaster, was urged to resign. Upon doing so, he declared dramatically, “Now there is nothing left to do but shoot myself.” (It so happened that the Bolsheviks would take care of that the following year.)

  During that final assembly—before the ministers adjourned and gradually gave themselves up to be arrested (and protected) by the Duma—Grand Duke Michael left to send a final appeal to his brother at headquarters to form an acceptable government. He was left waiting for nearly an hour before Alexeiev called back and responded for Nicholas: “The Emperor wishes to express his thanks. He is leaving for Tsarskoe Selo and will decide there.”

  That afternoon a triumphant crowd marched into the Duma, housed at the Tauride Palace, built by Catherine the Great’s favorite, Potemkin. “I must know what I can tell them,” the leftist Duma leader Alexander Kerensky shouted to Rodzianko. “Can I say the Imperial Duma is with them, that it takes the responsibility on itself, that it stands at the head of government?”

  Rodzianko had little choice but to agree. Still, he expressed deep reservations to Basil Shulgin for what was tantamount to a revolt by the Duma (which Nicholas had ordered suspended) against the emperor. “Take the power,” Shulgin counseled. “If you don’t, others will.” And indeed they did, for that very evening a second, rival assembly took their seats across from the Duma in an opposite wing of the palace: the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies.

  “Thereafter,” wrote Kerensky, who emerged as the bridge between the Duma and the Soviet, “two different Russias settled side by side: the Russia of the ruling classes who had lost (though they did not realize it yet)… and the Russia of Labor, marching towards power, without suspecting it.”

  Nicholas and Alexandra—he at headquarters; she at Tsarskoe Selo—only gradually learned what was happening in the capital that Monday. Over the next three days, however, the full impact of what had occurred slammed into them with devastating force. On Tuesday, March 13, the Winter Palace—that magnificent edifice of imperial power and splendor—fell under the threat of the heavy guns aimed at it from the rebelcontrolled Fortress of Peter and Paul across the river. The palace, Massie wrote, had been “the last outpost of tsarism” in the capital. Just outside the city, mutinous sailors at the Kronshtadt naval base slaughtered their officers, one of whom was still very much alive when he was tossed into a grave and buried. But perhaps most threatening, to the empress at least, a band of unruly soldiers set out for Tsarskoe Selo with the stated intent to seize “the German woman,” along with her son, and drag them back to Petrograd.

  Alexandra had been warned of the danger, but with half her children sick with the measles, she refused to leave. Her brave stance became irrelevant when the railroads were commandeered by the rebels, after which she couldn’t escape even if she wanted. Instead, fifteen hundred loyal soldiers took up positions around the Alexander Palace to protect the frightened family inside. “Oh, Lili,” the empress exclaimed to her friend, “what a blessing that we have the most devoted troops. There is the Garde Equipage; they are our personal friends.” It was a mantra she kept repeating—so little did she know.

  That night, as the tension grew, the empress ventured outside to meet and encourage the men charged to protect her family. “The scene was unforgettable,” Baroness Buxhoeveden recalled. “It was dark, except for a faint light thrown up from the snow and reflected on the polished barrels of the rifles. The troops were lined up in battle order … the first line kneeling in the snow, the others standing behind, their rifles in readiness for a sudden attack. The figures of the Empress and her daughter [Marie] passed from line to line, the white palace looming a ghostly mass in the background.”

  The marauding soldiers, who had spent the day drinking themselves into a frenzy, arrived that night. One sentry was shot less than five hundred yards from the palace. Yet they were ultimately discouraged by the sight of machine guns manned on the roof of the palace and the masses of soldiers protecting the royal residence. By the next day, however, Alexandra’s devoted “friends” had white ribbons tied to their rifles—an indication of a truce with the rebels, who were left free to loot and pillage the surrounding village.

  Throughout the rest of that tumultuous night, barely sleeping as the sounds of rifle shot burst through the stillness, the empress clung to one hope: “Tomorrow the Emperor is due to come. I know that when he does, all will be well.” Nicholas, however, had been detained elsewhere.

  The emperor was traveling home from headquarters on Tuesday when his train stopped in the town of Malaya Vishera—just one hundred miles south of the capital. There had been reports that rebels controlled the railroad ahead and so it was decided to divert the imperial train west to Pskov, headquarters of the Northern Group of Armies. Nicholas arrived on Wednesday night, only to receive the shattering news that his own personal guard had defected.

  Paléologue witnessed that fateful event earlier in the day, as the Imperial Guard strode toward the Tauride Palace to declare allegiance to the Duma. “They marched in perfect order, with their band at the head,” the ambassador wrote of the first three regiments to pass. “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 regiment standard, covered with icons, was surrounded by red flags.… Then came His Majesty’s Regiment, the sacred legion which is recruited from all the units of the Guard and whose special function is to secure the personal safety of the sovereigns.”

  Also marching was the Garde Equipage, the “personal friends” the empress was so pleased to see protecting her at the palace. And leading them was their commanding officer, Grand Duke Cyril, the tsar’s first cousin and the son Miechen earnestly hoped would replace him on the throne. Having bowed before the Duma, Cyril returned to his palace and hoisted a red flag over his roof. But the grand duke’s treachery did little to endear him to the new order. “Only rats leave a sinking ship!” sniffed one radical newspaper.

  As events rapidly began to crush in around him, the emperor determined at last to make some concessions, including the appointment of a ministry acceptable to the Duma and a prime minister who would maintain total control over internal affairs. The opportunity to implement reforms had long since slipped away, however, and now Nicholas II was no longer in control.

  “His Majesty … [is] apparently unable to realize what is happening in the capital,” Rodzianko telegraphed upon receiving Nicholas’s proposals. “A terrible revolution has broken out. Hatred of the Empress has reached 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 [as it ultimately did]. The measures you propose are too late. The time for them is gone. There is no return.”

  The tsar’s fate had already essentially been decided for him. As the Provisional Government’s new war minister, Alexander Guchkov, declared, “The only thing which can secure the permanent establishment of a new order, without too great a shock, is his voluntary abdication.” Either that, or Nicholas risked plunging his country into civil war—a prospect entirely repellent to the sovereign, who, if nothing else, was a true patriot. Confronted with this stark choice, the emperor consulted with his generals—all of whom
were unanimous in urging him to renounce the throne. The tsar’s cousin Grand Duke Nicholas, “Nikolasha,” the imposing former commander in chief whose position the emperor had assumed, begged him “on my knees” to abdicate.

  The decision was made. Nicholas, who had been silently staring out of a window, suddenly turned around and in a resolute voice declared, “I have decided that I shall give up the throne in favor of my son, Alexis.” Then, after crossing himself, he personally addressed the men surrounding him: “I thank you … for your distinguished and faithful service. I hope it will continue under my son.”

  Thus the young boy of twelve, cursed with an incurable and frightening disease, reigned for six hours as Russia’s uncrowned sovereign, Emperor Alexis II. But in the time it took to prepare the proper documents, Nicholas had a change of heart. He recognized what trauma would accompany the accession of his precious son—torn away from his family, set to rule as a mere figurehead over a strife-ridden nation, controlled by unscrupulous men who cared neither about him nor the hideous affliction that might kill the child at any unguarded moment.

  With these fears in mind, Nicholas made a new declaration: “I have decided to renounce my throne. Until three o’clock today I thought I would abdicate in favor of my son, Alexis. But now I have changed my decision in favor of my brother Michael.*5 I trust you will understand the feelings of a father.” Then, with the scratch of his signature, Nicholas II swept both himself and his son off the Russian throne. Now only humiliation and death awaited them.