Seizing the initiative, on the following day, March 12, workers and soldiers captured the Military Arsenal and looted it, arming themselves for further acts of daring. They burst into the Central Office of the secret police and ransacked it, burned the Law Courts with their records of property and privilege, and broke into the city’s largest prisons, setting all the prisoners free. Finally the soldiers manning the capital’s principal bastion, the Fortress of Peter and Paul, yielded to the superior armed force of the revolutionaries – for that is what they had become – and gave up their arms.
It was over, or nearly over. A few troops continued to defend the Winter Palace and the Admiralty against the victorious insurgents, a few more fired down into the crowds from isolated rooftops. But long before midnight, the city was in rebel hands.
The noise and confusion went on all night, sounds of gunfire and shouting, cars and trucks roaring up and down the street, as here and there a skirmish broke out or a band of soldiers, drunk on wine and victory, slouched along the broad quays. When the sun rose the next morning, March 13, Petrograd no longer belonged to the tsar.
Rodzianko, president of the Duma, sent a telegram to Nicky: ‘Situation grave. Anarchy in capital. Government paralyzed. Transport . . . has reached complete breakdown. Public discontent growing. Disorderly shooting occurring on the streets. Military units are firing on each other. Vital to call on a figure trusted by the country to form a new government. No time to lose. Any delay is as good as death. I pray God that in this hour the blame will not fall on him who wears the crown.’1
But the tsar, contemptuous of Rodzianko and assured by his commanders in Mogilev that the Duma president was exaggerating the crisis, ignored the telegram and did not send a reply. He did, however, dissolve the Duma, leaving the country without any governing authority save his own – backed by those troops that remained loyal to him.
The gravity of the situation eluded him, but to others it was only too clear. In the space of a few days, the imperial government, faced with an unprecedented upwelling of popular resistance, had all but melted away.
Fourteen battalions of the guard, seven thousand police and mounted Cossacks, several hundred thousand armed troops stationed in the city and just outside it: of these defenders, only a token force remained. And the capital had fallen.2
Word had reached the Alexander Palace at nine o’clock on the morning of March 12 that the regiments had mutinied. Sophie Buxhoeveden, the empress’s lady-in-waiting, took the message to her mistress, who was still in bed.
‘I told her everything,’ Sophie wrote. ‘She listened with perfect self-possession, only remarking that, if the troops had mutinied, “it was all up.”’
While she dressed Alix sent for the Acting Commander of the Palace guard, who assured her that the garrison in Tsarskoe Selo was still loyal and would defend the palace should revolutionaries from Petrograd attack it. As for the situation in the capital, more troops were being sent in. The rebellion would soon be crushed.3
All that day, Alix did what she could to preserve order among the staff and discourage panic. All the children but Marie were ill with severe measles, and she was preoccupied with nursing them, keeping vigil by their bedsides. Their fevers were rising – Alexei had a fever of 104 degrees – and complications had begun to set in, with Tatiana developing abscesses in her ears and Olga showing symptoms of pericarditis.4
Preoccupied as she was with worry about Alexei and her daughters, and expecting Nicky to return the following day from Mogilev, Alix could not at first spare much energy for confronting the crisis in Petrograd.
‘In the palace we had lulled ourselves into believing that no serious rising would take place during the war,’ Sophie Buxhoeveden recalled in her memoirs. No matter how grave discontent might grow, no matter what political extreme might be reached, Russians would be loyal and patriotic, as long as there was a threat from a foreign enemy to be faced.
And the strength of the alliance against the German enemy had only recently been demonstrated, at least formally, when Alix received the members of the diplomatic corps at the palace. For two days, while rioters (she called them ‘hooligans’) were marching through the streets of Petrograd, she had greeted all the ministers and secretaries of foreign missions who had never before met her in person, holding out her hand to be kissed as each elaborately uniformed dignitary approached in turn.5 It was a spectacle reminiscent of her grandmother’s court, a parade of supernumeraries worthy of an Italian opera – elaborately costumed masters of ceremonies, lackeys in tall hats with sweeping plumes, liveried servants gleaming with gold lace, velvet knee-breeches and buckled shoes.
The receptions symbolized stability and order. Yet, less than forty-eight hours later, it was clear that disorder was in the ascendant, and stability had become an illusion.
On the morning of March 13, Alix called her lady-in-waiting and told her to quietly pack her bags, taking as little as possible to avoid alarming the other servants. It might be necessary for the family to leave the palace at short notice, and Alix wanted Sophie to be ready to go with them.
The Grand Marshal of the court, the elderly Count Paul Benckendorff, and the acting guard commander Grooten had been discussing whether or not the empress and her children ought to leave Tsarskoe Selo for a safer place. Alix was against it, both because the children were so unwell and because for her to flee the palace would look like cowardice. But the question seemed to be academic, at least for the moment; it was doubtful whether the imperial train would be allowed to come to Tsarskoe Selo, and the train lines were sure to be in rebel hands.
But if they could not leave by train, some other way out might have to be found. Knowing this, Alix passed on the caution to Sophie, and quietly began to collect a few things of her own, relying on Lili Dehn to take over the task of nursing the children.
‘She could scarcely master her anxiety,’ Sophie wrote, remembering her mistress’s state of mind that morning. Nicky had not come from Mogilev as promised. Alix had sent telegrams to him there, but had received no reply – an ominous sign, for in the past he had always replied quickly. Perhaps the revolutionaries had seized him, or were besieging the army headquarters. Count Apraxin, newly arrived from Petrograd, brought word that no relieving force had reached the city, and that the government, such as it was, had taken refuge in the Admiralty, protected by a tiny force of loyal troops. The Duma had taken over – illegally, as the tsar had disbanded it – and was attempting to run the country.
Among the palace servants, trepidation began to spread. Many left. Though none dared say it aloud, everyone whispered that the Alexander Palace would be the next likely target of attack by the revolutionaries. If they could capture the heir to the throne they would strengthen their position many times over. And if they could capture the empress, that hated symbol of moral evil and corruption, they could take vengeance on her as Grand Duke Dimitri and Felix Yusupov had taken vengeance on Rasputin, endearing themselves to all Russia.
Shortly after midday on March 13, water ceased to flow from the taps in the palace. The rebels had cut off the water supply. Soon the electricity too was cut off. Candles and lanterns were collected, and water brought from the lake, but the lack of electricity and pure water caused the remaining servants to became even more fearful. What if all food supplies were cut off as well? Would they be left to starve?
There were more desertions towards evening, more of the household staff melting away into the village or disappearing into the palace park. Then, at about eight in the evening, thousands of soldiers of the Tsarskoe Selo garrison left their barracks and began a mini-revolution of their own.6 They fired their rifles into the air and shot out windows in nearby houses. Storming the small prison, they liberated the inmates and, smashing the windows of wine shops, drank their fill before starting to make their way slowly towards the palace.
That their mood was murderous no one doubted. At the very least, if the most rational among them succeeded in restraining t
he most violent, the empress and Alexei would be kidnapped and taken to Petrograd where they would be imprisoned. But to judge from the shouted threats of the men and their continual rifle fire, their wild bawling of revolutionary songs and their obscene name-calling, rational voices were not likely to prevail. Made brutal by drink and with no one in authority to restrain them, the soldiers seemed likely to overwhelm the palace defenders, kill the empress and rape her daughters in an orgy of bloodshed and looting.
The palace guard proved loyal. Assembling in the wide courtyard of the palace were three battalions of guardsmen, two squadrons of Cossacks, a company of railway soldiers and a single heavy field battery, its guns pointing outwards into the empty blackness beyond the tall iron gates.
The defenders knelt in a long line in the snow, another line standing behind them, reserves in the rear. There was no moon, only the faint glow thrown up by the snow and the looming whiteness of the palace itself, its windows flickering yellow with candlelight. The temperature had dropped sharply; the men’s breath froze in the air as they waited for the mutineers to come closer.
Though the strain on her heart was great, Alix had managed, with the aid of Lili Dehn, who pushed her from behind, to climb the stairs to the second floor of the palace where the children’s sickrooms were. It was there that she was informed of the mutiny of the garrison.
When the initial shock had passed, she went to Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia and Alexei and told each of them, keeping her voice as calm as she could, that there would soon be firing very close to the palace and that they were not to be frightened; the guard would protect them. This done, and without changing out of her white nurse’s uniform, she threw a black cloak over her gown and went out into the courtyard, accompanied by Count Benckendorff and her daughter Marie.
Alix knew, and the soldiers knew as well, that they were in the minority. Fidelity to the tsar was diminishing; the men were under pressure to join the revolutionaries. They and their families might well suffer severe punishment for what they now did in defending the palace and its occupants.
Still, Alix trusted in their constancy, and she told them so, walking up and down the long defensive lines with Marie beside her. She trusted in their devotion to the tsar, she said. She knew that they would not hesitate to defend the tsarevich. She hoped that they would not have to fire their weapons, that a show of force would be enough to turn back the mutineers.
Meanwhile the disloyal troops of the garrison were coming through the palace parks, weaving in and out among the statuary and pergolas, the grottoes and antique pavilions that ornamented the gardens. They churned the snow to slush, flattened the bushes and kept up their bursts of gunfire.
But, having spent themselves in mayhem, they were beginning to falter. It was after midnight, too dark for them to see across the broad lawns, formal gardens and lakes that separated them from the Alexander Palace, but they had heard that the palace courtyard was full of soldiers, in numbers greater than their own, and that there were gunners on the roof waiting to mow them down as soon as they came within range. Having come as far as the cluster of houses and pavilions known as the Chinese Village, they halted; they would wait until morning before deciding whether or not to proceed.
They had decided to wait, but no one in the Alexander Palace knew this, and the soldiers, staff and family spent the entirety of that long, bitterly cold night expecting an assault. Believing the empress to be the principal target, the few remaining household members slept on sofas outside her bedroom, along with two of the tsar’s aides who had managed, despite considerable danger and mostly on foot, to make their way to Tsarskoe Selo from Petrograd.
Alix herself hardly slept that night, shuttling between the sickrooms and the sitting room, her footsteps echoing in the empty dark rooms in between. The palace felt all but deserted, save for the soldiers who came and went from the guardroom and the few remaining gentlemen of the staff who patrolled the corridors.
At last morning came, and the threat of immediate assault abated. The mutinous troops from the Tsarskoe Selo garrison were no longer poised to attack the palace; instead they joined with revolutionary forces from Petrograd which had been brought in by train during the night in great numbers. Now a much enlarged body of troops siding with the revolutionaries surrounded the palace, held in check for the time being but able, at any time, to overwhelm its defenders.
That day and the next, March 14 and 15, no one within the Alexander Palace knew what to expect. Fragments of news, much of it unreliable, reached them but there was still no word from Nicky, and Alix’s worry about him increased.
She continued to nurse her children, who were growing more and more ill. Tatiana could not hear at all out of her abscessed ears, Anastasia too was developing abscesses and Marie, who had come down with double pneumonia, had such a high fever that Dr Botkin thought she might die.7
Alix smoked, prayed, looked after her sick daughters and son, and now and then snatched an hour or two of sleep. Her face took on a haggard look; she could no longer disguise her weariness.
Day by day, her worries were expanding. Her husband’s silence (Was he safe? Had he been imprisoned or even killed by the revolutionaries?), her children’s increasing debility, with Marie desperately, perhaps fatally ill, the capital in rebel hands and the government in complete disarray, her own life under threat: she was close to complete exhaustion.
Then, on March 16, came the most shocking news of all.
Leaflets distributed in Petrograd and brought to Tsarskoe Selo by the few servants who returned to their posts announced the abdication of the tsar.
He had signed the instrument of abdication at Pskov, while aboard the imperial train, the leaflets said. He was tsar no longer.
When Count Benckendorff came to Alix to confirm this painful news, she could not at first believe it. ‘She could not imagine he had taken such a step so hurriedly,’ the count wrote, ‘especially since he knew Alexei was so ill.’
But Alexei’s illness no longer mattered, dynastically, for the tsar had abdicated not only on behalf of himself but on behalf of his son. He had given up the throne so that his brother Michael could rule, and so that Russia, governed by a firmer hand, could rally and win the war.
But the swift rush of events had not ended there. When Michael was told of his brother’s abdication, and informed that he was now tsar, he was deeply troubled. His accession had been brought about under duress; it was the revolutionaries, and not his subjects, who had made him tsar. He saw the virtue of serving as a figurehead, a force for stability. Yet if the people did not want him – and the people, at least those in the capital, seemed to be against the monarchy – then his accession might lead to renewed violence, increased instability. He and other family members might well be killed. He decided to abdicate in his turn.8
Three hundred years of Romanov rule had come to an end. Loyalties maintained over centuries now had no clearly defined focus. Though often criticized and belittled, the tsar had been loved. He had been, to a degree realized only after his abdication, a sacred figure, venerated not so much for himself but for the tradition, the patriotic feelings, of which he was the natural focus. And now the throne was empty.
Officers of the palace guard wept openly as the news of the abdication spread. ‘Consternation was general,’ Count Benckendorff wrote.9 The tsar had been their anchor. Protecting him and his family had been their mission in life. Knowing that he was now just an ordinary man, at the head of an ordinary family, they felt lost, adrift, and inconsolably sad.
Members of the household came forwards to assure Alix that, even though she was no longer empress, they were and would remain loyal to her.
They found her in her daughters’ schoolroom, where she had taken refuge in solitude. ‘She was deadly pale and supported herself with one hand on the schoolroom table.’ When Sophie came up to her, the two women embraced, Sophie ‘murmuring some broken words of affection’, Alix kissing her lady-in-waiting. Count Benckendorff took A
lix’s hand, ‘tears running down his usually immobile face’.
‘It is for the best,’ Alix said, speaking in French for Benckendorff’s benefit. ‘It is God’s will. May God grant that this saves Russia. That’s all that matters.’10
The marshal and the lady-in-waiting left her there in the schoolroom, collapsing into a chair, crying and covering her face with her hands.
Like the soldiers of the guard, she too was adrift. The purpose that had sustained her during the war years, to serve as her husband’s prop and support in the work of ruling, to bolster his will with hers, had fallen away. She had given her all to the enormous task of being his strength: her failing health, what remained of her vigour, her staunch faith. Now that task was at an end.
The task, the ruler, the throne itself had been swept away, swiftly and finally, and an important part of her had been swept away with them, leaving only confusion, bewilderment and a crushing sense of loss.
30
The provisional government, created by the Duma deputies who continued to meet, though the Duma itself had been dissolved, was now the ruling authority in Russia – ruling by virtue of its own self-declared sovereignty, in the absence of a tsar.
Under the presidency of Prince Lvov, who also took on the duties of Interior Minister, the new council established itself, with the liberal deputy Alexander Guchkov (Alix’s bête noire) becoming Minister of War, Paul Miliukov, leader of the moderate Cadet (Constitutional Democratic) party becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. I. Tereshchenko Minister of Finance and the fiery young lawyer Alexander Kerensky Minister of Justice. These specific titles and responsibilities were due to prove fluid, changing suddenly and often in the coming months, and the Provisional Government was to prove fragile.
Not so the other leading political body formed in the immediate aftermath of the tsar’s abdication: the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. The Soviet, composed of union leaders, leading figures from the leftist parties and intellectuals who had long been opposed to imperial rule, met in the Tauride Palace where the Duma also sat, and were led by an Executive Committee which had no official role.
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