November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  In the meantime rumors about the impending change of command filtered out and reached, among others, the effervescent Rodzyanko. As the “second personage in the state,” and “super-arbiter,” he dashed off to Tsarskoye Selo to try his hand at dissuasion. The Emperor received him, with ill grace, on 24 August, and remained immovable. Rodzyanko then rushed off to upbraid the ministers. He found them in session, called Krivoshein, the most influential of them and the best disposed to the politically minded public, out to the vestibule, and began abusing him for the government’s failure to stand up to the Emperor. Krivoshein said evasively that he was merely Minister of Agriculture. Rodzyanko then called Goremykin out. But he was still more resistant: the government followed the dictates of its conscience and needed no advice from the outside. With a cry of “I am beginning to believe those who say Russia has no government,” Rodzyanko made for the exit with an insane look on his face and without saying goodbye. So distraught was he that he forgot his cane, and when the doorman offered it to him, he jumped into his carriage yelling, “Damn the wretched stick!”

  The next day Rodzyanko sent the Emperor a written statement, which was subsequently passed around and widely read.

  Sire! You are a symbol and a banner, and you cannot permit a shadow to fall on that sacred banner. You must remain outside and above the organs of government, which bears the primary responsibility for repulsing the enemy. Surely you will not voluntarily submit your sacrosanct person to the judgment of the people—that way lies the ruin of Russia. You are of a mind to replace the Supreme Commander, in whom the Russian people still has boundless trust. The people will find no other explanation for this step than the influence of the Germans around you. The people will begin to feel that the situation is hopeless and that chaos in the government of the country is imminent. The army will lose heart, and revolution and anarchy will inevitably flare up throughout the country, sweeping away everything in their path.

  The muddleheaded fat man had begun quite effectively. The Emperor himself had anxiously wondered what would be left of the authority of the throne if the steady succession of retreats continued under his command. But Rodzyanko had then gone beyond the bounds of tact and, as only he could, defeated his own argument.

  Rumors that the popular Supreme Commander was to be replaced spread ever wider: the Duma heard them, Zemgor heard them, then all Petrograd, all Moscow—and everybody, needless to say, was indignant.

  The government rejoiced that the changeover was at least hanging fire. Maybe the Emperor would back down? Why couldn’t he direct his urge to take control to the home front rather than to the battlefield? Meanwhile the retreat continued and the confidence of the masses in the Grand Duke was quickly declining. With a little further delay, perhaps the Emperor’s assumption of command would be acceptable?

  Samarin uncompromisingly insisted that the step planned by the Emperor put the dynasty and Russia in mortal danger. Polivanov’s behavior, always devious, became more and more self-contradictory: he at one and the same time opposed the assumption of command by the Emperor, made damaging remarks about the Grand Duke, and tried to turn his colleagues against Goremykin. Krivoshein’s arguments, expressed more and more fully as time went by, were as follows:

  The uncertainty that has been created cannot continue, if only because General Yanushkevich continues with it. His presence at GHQ is a greater danger than the German armies. Apart from that, the damage has largely been done: the Emperor’s decision is no secret to anyone, it is talked about on almost every street. Further holdups may rob the Emperor’s resolve of whatever is admirable in it. We must without delay ask the Emperor to summon a Council of War, with ministers taking part, to review our war plans. The best venue would be GHQ, and the Grand Duke’s presence is absolutely essential. His Majesty has such an extraordinary talent for dealing with people, even those he knows to be no friends of his, that he will succeed in making it appear that he and the Grand Duke are on good terms. And if we are fated to go through a change of command, after the Council of War it will appear to be the result of consultation with the government and the senior commanders. This will blunt its impact on the minds of the public. Everybody is saying at present that no action is apparently being taken in high places.

  The Emperor agonized for weeks, day in and day out. He went to the Elagin Palace to see his mother, and her answer was: You are not equipped to play such a role, you will not be forgiven for it, do not lead Russia to destruction, and anyway the business of state requires your presence in Petrograd. Do not repeat the error of Paul I: he too, in the last year of his reign, began turning away all those who were devoted to him.

  Loyal old Vorontsov-Dashkov also advised against it: At present you are head of state and sit in judgment—if you become head of the army, you may face judgment.

  Many others used similar arguments to test and bend the will of the Emperor.

  Only the voice of his royal spouse, the never silent voice he listened to more easily than to others, supported the line he had taken.

  Modesty is one of God’s greatest gifts, but a supreme ruler must make his will felt more often. Be sure of yourself and act! Everybody takes advantage of your angelic goodness and patience. You are a little too hesitant in making up your mind, and vacillation is never good. You must show that you make your own decisions and have a will of your own. Be firm to the end, reassure me of that, or I shall be ill with anxiety. In Russia, there must be a master as long as the people are uneducated.

  All these discordant voices evidently weakened the Emperor’s resolve, and the change he had decided on was a long time coming. He had never in his life found it so hard to make up his mind. The most awful thing was that he did not know whom to believe, who was telling the truth. The Emperor remembered his nightmare experience with Witte in October 1905. He had made a mistake he couldn’t undo, yielded when there was no need, and it horrified him. His ministers had badgered him in May—fire those four and things will immediately change for the better. So he had dismissed the four, his devoted and well-loved Nikolai Maklakov among them, but had he succeeded in appeasing the public? He would have been no further from pleasing them, from winning their goodwill, if he had refused to dismiss those ministers: the Duma was now declaring that it could not possibly work with the present government. And the new ministers had devised no new ways of governing. He had thought that the four ministers he was adding were not the least bit to the left—but the government as a whole had taken a sharp left turn and loyal old Goremykin could scarcely hold them in check. No, forced concessions never improved matters. To save Russia, to make sure that God would not desert her, perhaps a propitiatory sacrifice really was necessary. Well—the Emperor would be that sacrificial victim. If the retreat had to continue to the very end, he would take responsibility for the retreat. At the same time the Emperor could not forget his invariable bad luck. All the misfortunes he had ever feared had always fallen upon him, none of his undertakings had ever ended in success. He prayed alone in various churches, and went to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan with the Empress. He tried to convince himself that he was not just influenced by his wife and by Grigori, but that when he stood before the great icon of the Saviour in the church at Tsarskoye Selo some inner voice urged him to stand fast in the decision he had taken. He had suffered all his life from timidity, and he had to overcome it!

  Meanwhile, the whole world was chewing over the change of command—but the change was not happening. The Grand Duke’s transfer could come to be seen as a disgrace, not a mark of royal favor. (Rasputin was telling people that it was he who was removing the Grand Duke.) Nikolai Nikolaevich irritably asked the Emperor to speed up his transfer to the Caucasus. Yanushkevich, deeply hurt, had already been removed, and replaced by General Alekseev.

  Krivoshein: I never expected such demeaning behavior from His Majesty. However painful his personal feelings are, he has no right to abandon the army to the whim of fate.

  Samarin: Rumors of secr
et influences have recently reappeared, and they are supposed to have played a decisive part in the business of the Supreme Command. I shall ask the Emperor openly about this, I have a right to do so. When His Majesty offered me the post of Procurator of the Holy Synod he told me to my face that all this tittle-tattle was fabricated by enemies of the throne. I will now remind him of our conversation and ask him to release me. I am willing to serve my rightful Tsar to the last drop of my blood, but not … We must put a stop to the dissemination of rumors which do more to undermine the monarchic principle than any revolutionary activity.

  Goremykin: I have said repeatedly that the Emperor’s decision is irrevocable. Instead of fraying his nerves with our démarches our duty is to rally around our Tsar and help him.

  Shakhovskoy: I was against the change of command. But it is now too late to go back on it, because everybody knows of His Majesty’s intention. A retraction would be interpreted as a sign of weakness and fear.

  Krivoshein: The Grand Duke is obviously finished. His popularity has declined not only among the troops but also among the civilian population, who are dismayed by the influx of refugees and the endless recruiting drives at a time when there is no one to harvest a splendid grain crop. History offers an example. When our retreat before Napoleon was beginning to look inordinately hasty and desperate, Arakcheev, Shishkov, and Levashev demanded that Aleksandr I withdraw from the army: if Barclay should be beaten, Russia would only grieve, but if the Emperor of All the Russias were beaten, Russia would not be able to endure it. Let General Alekseev play the part of Barclay, and let the Emperor rally his army in the rear.

  In any case, the government was no longer sure that it would itself remain in Petrograd for long, and took the precaution of discussing secretly whether to start evacuating the treasures of the Hermitage, the royal palaces, and the Public Library via the inland waterways to Nizhny Novgorod. But they were afraid of causing a panic: as it was, people were withdrawing their savings from the banks in dangerously large amounts.

  General Ivanov, however, was proposing evacuation to a depth of a hundred versts behind the Southwestern Front, and a few days later, without waiting to hear from anyone else, and without even asking the government, he began preparing to evacuate Kiev.

  Shcherbatov: The military have finally lost their heads and their common sense. Local life has been turned upside down. It would be better to die in the last battle than to sign Russia’s death warrant.

  Kharitonov: People are crying out in agony on every side that they are being ruined for no reason and to no purpose. It would be good for the Emperor to take a look at what is going on in the name of evacuation. The whole thing must be taken out of the hands of hotheaded ensigns and put into those of experienced civilian administrators. It’s infuriating, our helplessness in the face of our generals’ valor in retreat.

  Krivoshein: My whole soul is revolted by the thought that the mother of Russian cities, Russia’s ancient holy of holies, Kiev, is doomed to undergo the horrors of evacuation. In truth, extraordinary conditions have been created by the fencing off of part of Russia as a theater of war. We must implore His Majesty to summon a Council of War, an elementary measure which people were reluctant to consider thirteen months ago. History will not believe that Russia waged war and came to the brink of destruction blindfolded, that millions of people were sacrificed to the conceit of some and the criminality of others. A Council of War would work out a plan for the further conduct of the war and for a strictly orderly evacuation.

  Food stocks were taken from the civilian population and paid for with coupons of some sort. Headquarters staffs retreated in a mad rush, not as if temporarily withdrawing, but as if they expected never to return: they laid whole districts waste, burned crops and buildings, slaughtered cattle, threatened landowners with violence. Acting on instructions from their generals, retreating troops took the curses of the population with them. Smolensk province and its neighbors groaned under the influx of refugees, the dearth of provisions, the unmanageable numbers of soldiers. Hospital trains and military transports blocked the railroads. That great strategist, “Black” Danilov, dismissed with Yanushkevich, gave a banquet on the train in one of the stations. And GHQ was already planning to redraw the boundaries of the theater of war—the theater of its own chaotic authority and the government’s impotence—still deeper in the interior, along a line from Tver to Tula.

  Shcherbatov: We cannot let the central provinces be torn to pieces by a horde of behind-the-lines heroes. The abolition of normal authority plays into the hands of revolutionaries.

  Krivoshein: People are falling victim to a sort of mass psychosis, an eclipse of sense and reason.

  The government was overpowered by extreme anxiety combined with a sense of its own helplessness. The ministers debated every problem eagerly, at length and inconclusively. They saw more and more clearly that nothing depended on the result of their deliberations. They lacked any means or mechanism for influencing events, they could only talk to people, issue warnings, and make suggestions. They showed no resolve, expressed no firm opinion, put up no resistance. Not only was a quarter of the country taken away from them and given to the generals to administer; they found no firm footing in the rest of it and felt as if they were suspended in midair. It would be natural for the government to look to the monarch for support—he had created it and it was subordinate to him—but he took practically no account of them and paid no attention to their opinions. The Unions of Zemstvos and Towns issued instructions throughout the country without consulting the government. The Duma and the social organizations acted more and more openly as though they were out to seize power, demonstratively ignoring the government. In its legislative capacity the Duma simply kept the brakes on, so that no serious law could get passed, especially if it was urgently needed.

  Krivoshein: Even the Convention refrained from associating with the mob. We, thank God, have no revolution as yet. But the time may be much closer than we expect. People refuse to understand the government’s clemency and take advantage of it to engage in revolutionary agitation.

  Kharitonov: The Duma has broken loose from its chains and is biting people right and left. The Tsar has no confidence in his ministers. I dread to think what may happen.

  The population was fed rumors about bribery in connection with military contracts, and stirred up by sensational leaflets with fictitious “news.” In Moscow disorders were sparked by patriotic rejoicing when newspapers reported that we had seized the Dardanelles. In Ivanovo–Voznesensk the immediate cause of the trouble was the arrest of persons inciting the workers to strike.

  Shcherbatov: It was time to start shooting, but we couldn’t be sure of the garrison. We could expect repercussions in other industrial areas. But the Minister of the Interior is powerless: home-front ensigns with despotic inclinations and little understanding of the matters entrusted to them rule the roost everywhere. I am just an ordinary citizen, even in the capital of the empire, and can act only insofar as it does not call into question the fantasies of the military authorities. We must take action, of course, but how, when we have no support from any quarter?

  Metropolitan society, in the throes of patriotic alarm—"Everything for the war effort” was the cry—still did not give up its cabarets, its all-night drinking sessions. Nightclubs and restaurants reverberated with music and blazed with light.

  Shcherbatov: It’s a practical matter, not just a matter of principle—this waste of electricity when factories are short of power.

  Samarin: All these boozy “victory celebrations” make the worst possible impression on the people. They blame the government for permitting debauchery in the capital. The Holy Synod has called on the people to fast and pray in response to the disasters that have befallen their motherland. An Orthodox government ought to close down places of entertainment in these days of penance.

  As for the press, it was completely out of hand, to an extent which would not have been permitted in any republica
n country. (In France the press was under rigid official control and contributed to the war effort.)

  Sazonov: Our allies are horrified by the unbridled license that reigns in the Russian press.

  Goremykin: Our newspapers have gone completely mad. Their whole effort is directed to shaking the authority of the government. This is not freedom of speech—I’m damned if I know what to call it. Even in 1905 they did not permit themselves such outrageous antics. His Majesty told us then that in time of revolution our reactions to the abuses of the press cannot be governed by the law alone, that we cannot permit anyone to inject poison into the people with impunity. The military censors cannot remain indifferent to newspapers which sow sedition in the country.

  Krivoshein: Our press oversteps the bounds even of elementary decency. There is a mass of articles completely unacceptable in content and tone. Until now it was just the Moscow papers, but quite recently the Petrograd papers too seem to have kicked over the traces. Nothing but abusive language, incitement of the public against the authorities, the dissemination of sensational false reports. It’s plain for all to see that they are trying to revolutionize the country—but nobody is willing to intervene. I thought we had a law on wartime censorship!

  Shcherbatov: Prior censorship of civilian publications was abolished long ago, and my department has no means of preventing the promulgation of the blatant lies and inflammatory articles which fill our newspapers. The law gives us no right to institute civilian censorship.

  Nor to impose a fine, nor to close a newspaper down. There was military censorship in the theater of military operations (which, however, included Petrograd) and that was all. It held back only things that might be of use to enemy intelligence, but the military censors were not required to inspect printed matter from a civilian viewpoint. Yanushkevich’s instructions from GHQ prohibited only criticism of the imperial family; everything else was a legitimate target, military censorship did not intervene in civil matters. The press openly preached the need for a decisive assault on the government, intensifying public hostility to it. This aroused groundless hopes (“amnesty!”), and blame for their nonfulfillment fell upon the government.