The Romanovs

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘Fatso Rodzianko has again written me a lot of nonsense to which I won’t even give a reply,’ Nicholas told Count Frederiks. He ordered the dismissal of the Duma – but decided to return to Petrograd.

  Overnight, the Pavlovsky Guards, followed by many other units, mutinied. The Preobrazhenskys murdered their colonel. On 27 February, the streets filled again with workers. Crowds stormed the Arsenal. Now they were armed. ‘The army was fraternizing with the revolt,’ observed Paléologue, the French ambassador. Policemen were killed. Police headquarters was set on fire. Shops were looted. Trucks and limousines were requisitioned and driven crazily through the streets. The city except for a well-defended Winter Palace was overrun by the revolution: ‘the beginning of anarchy’, noted Misha. Khabalov appealed to Stavka: ‘Quickly send reliable troops from the front.’ When his ADC brought him the latest telegrams from Petrograd, the tsar snapped: ‘What’s the matter, Mordvinov?’ Nicholas looked at the ‘terrible’ news for so long, the pause was ‘painful, excruciating’.

  ‘How happy I am at the thought of meeting you in two days,’ Nicholas wrote to Alix. ‘After the news of yesterday from town, I saw many faces here with frightened expressions. Alexeev is calm but finds an energetic man must be named to make the ministers work. That’s right of course.’ So finally that evening the tsar, advised by the general, was ready to appoint the ministry, but first he would crush the revolution. He ordered General Nikolai Ivanov, appointed emergency commander of Petrograd, to hurry to the capital with a train of loyal forces.

  At the Taurida Palace in Petrograd, Prince Golitsyn tried to dismiss the Duma, but the parliamentarians refused to go, creating a ‘temporary committee’ under Rodzianko. When he reached the Mariinsky Palace, Khabalov admitted that the city was lost. Golitysn forced Protopopov to resign, then telegraphed his own resignation to the tsar who rejected it.

  ‘What shall I do?’ wondered Rodzianko at the Taurida Palace. ‘I have no desire to revolt . . . on the other hand there’s no government.’ He appealed to the tsar – and the generals: ‘Sire, do not delay . . . Tomorrow may be too late.’ Then he summoned Misha from Gatchina.

  At 5 p.m., Misha arrived on his private train and rushed to meet the prime minister and Rodzianko at the Mariinsky Palace. ‘By 9 p.m. shootings in the streets had begun,’ he recalled, ‘and the old rule ceased to exist.’ Rodzianko urged Misha to ‘assume dictatorship of the city’, rallying the last loyal troops of the garrison. Misha refused – but at 10.30 p.m. he crossed the square to the war minister’s residence to communicate with the tsar via Alexeev’s Hughes apparatus. He proposed the respected Prince Lvov as prime minister. ‘Your Imperial Majesty may wish to authorize me to announce this.’

  ‘I will report Your Imperial Highness’s telegram to his Imperial Majesty immediately,’ replied the chief of staff, Alexeev.

  ‘It may be advisable to delay HM the emperor’s journey to Tsarskoe Selo for several days . . . Every hour is precious.’

  Nicholas rejected all Misha’s advice. He would not make ‘changes to his personal staff until his arrival in Tsarskoe Selo’. At 11.25 p.m. the emperor telegraphed Golitsyn: ‘I personally bestow upon you all necessary powers for civil rule.’ But all powers had long since bled away. Golitsyn and the ministers just went home.

  At 3 a.m., Misha was driven with a military escort to the Winter Palace, only just escaping revolutionaries by accelerating away. At the palace he found General Khabalov and a thousand loyal troops, but ordered them not to defend the palace. As Khabalov retreated to the Admiralty, Misha and his secretary walked through the Hermitage to emerge on Millionnaya Street. Misha knocked on the door of number 14, the apartment of his friend Prince Pavel Putiatin. ‘I woke with a start hearing violent knocking on my bedroom door,’ recalled Olga Putiatina, whose husband was at the front. ‘I imagined armed soldiers had burst into my apartment,’ but instead she welcomed a ‘very tired and very upset’ Misha.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid, princess, of having such a dangerous guest?’ he joked.

  Simultaneously at Stavka, the emperor was feeling cut off. ‘It’s a revolting sensation to be so far away and receive only scraps of bad news,’ he wrote. ‘I decided to return to Tsarskoe as soon as possible.’

  At 5 a.m., almost as Misha was sipping Princess Putiatina’s coffee, the tsar left Mogilev in his train, taking an indirect route eastwards via Vyazma in order to leave the main line clear for Ivanov’s loyal forces – but this added 200 miles and nine hours to his journey. At three o’clock that afternoon, Nicholas arrived at Vyazma, telegraphing Alexandra: ‘Thoughts always together. Glorious weather. Many troops sent from front.’

  Taking a break from nursing her children, the empress with a fur coat over her nurse’s uniform, and the seventeen-year-old Maria walked around the park, greeting the troops. ‘They’re all our friends,’ she said. ‘Devoted to us.’6

  On the Moscow–Petrograd line, Nicholas’s train was just sixty miles away, but at 4 a.m. on 1 March it was stopped at Malaya Vishera. Revolutionaries blocked the line – at least that excuse halted the tsar. ‘Shame and dishonour,’ wrote Nicholas. ‘Impossible to get to Tsarskoe. How difficult it must be for poor Alix.’ After an anxious discussion, the tsar reversed his tracks, then steamed westwards to Pskov.

  During the next fifteen hours of 1 March as the tsar was incommunicado, Petrograd fell to the revolution. After a firefight, the loyalists at the Admiralty surrendered. A chaotic new world was emerging in the Taurida Palace: a thousand scruffy, milling revolutionaries, ruffians and deserters of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers vied with frockcoated gentlemen of the Temporary Committee of the Duma to rule Russia. The only link between the two was the socialist lawyer Alexander Kerensky, aged thirty-five, who was a member of both. Kyril, erratic son of Vladimir and Miechen, withdrew troops guarding Tsarskoe Selo and, waving a red flag, marched into the Taurida Palace, where Rodzianko drafted a manifesto for a constitutional monarchy – under the regency of Misha.

  At 7 p.m., at Pskov, the emperor finally emerged out of the snowy wastelands, oblivious of the new world born in his absence.7

  He found himself in the gruff grip of General Nikolai Ruzsky, sixty-three-year-old commander of the northern front. Nicholas was alone except for his devoted courtiers,* at whom Ruzsky growled: ‘Look what you’ve done . . . all your Rasputin clique. What have you got Russia into now?’

  Emperor and general sat together awkwardly in the salon of the imperial train.

  ‘I’m responsible before God and Russia for everything that’s happening,’ declared Nicholas, still bound by his coronation oath, ‘regardless of whether ministers are responsible to the Duma or State Council.’

  ‘One must accept the formula “the monarch reigns but the government rules”,’ explained Ruzsky.

  This, explained the emperor, was incomprehensible to him, and he would need to be differently educated, born again. He could not take decisions against his conscience. Ruzsky brusquely argued with the emperor into the night without, Nicholas complained afterwards, ‘leaving him one moment for reflection’. Then a telegram arrived from General Alexeev revealing the widening revolution and proposing a government under Rodzianko. Nicholas, under unbearable pressure, telegraphed General Ivanov with orders ‘to undertake no measures before my arrival’ in Petrograd. At 2 a.m., now on 2 March, Nicholas agreed to appoint Rodzianko prime minister, retaining autocratic power. Then he went to bed. Ruzsky informed Rodzianko, who replied at 3.30 a.m., ‘It’s obvious neither His Majesty nor you realize what’s going on here . . . There is no return to the past . . . The threatening demands for an abdication in favour of the son with Michael Alexandrovich as regent are becoming quite definite.’ In the course of that evening, the bewhiskered gents of the Duma, who wished to preserve the monarchy, and the leather-capped Marxists of the Petrograd Soviet, who wanted a republic, had compromised to form a Provisional Government – and seek Nicholas’s abdication in favour of Alexei. The new premier was Prince Lvov, with Keren
sky as justice minister. Now that they knew Nicholas was in Pskov, the Duma sent two members, Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin, to procure his abdication. They set off immediately.

  Romanov power rested on the army. The generals were monarchists, but they wished to avoid civil strife in order to fight the Germans. ‘My conviction’, telegraphed Alexeev to the emperor at 9 a.m., ‘is that there’s no choice and abdication should take place.’ There was a ‘terrible moment of silence’ as Nicholas read this. He smoked cigarettes and walked up and down the station.

  At 10.15 a.m. Alexeev polled Nikolasha, Brusilov and other commanders by telegraph. In the imperial train at Pskov, lunch was agonizing. At 2.15 p.m. the chief of staff reported the unanimous decision of the generals, even Nikolasha: abdication in favour of Alexei. ‘There’s no other way,’ wrote Nikolasha.

  Nicholas, wearing his favourite grey Circassian coat, stood looking out of the window, thinking, ‘My abdication is necessary,’ as he recorded in his diary. Then he turned to Ruzsky: ‘I’ve decided. I shall renounce the throne.’ He crossed himself; so did Ruzsky.

  ‘I agreed,’ he wrote, signing the telegrams to Rodzianko and Alexeev abdicating in favour of Alexei and regent Misha. The general took the telegrams, while Count Frederiks staggered out and told the adjutants in the neighbouring wagon: ‘Savez-vous, l’empereur a abdiqué.’ To the anguished shouts of the adjutants, he shrugged hopelessly and then, to hide his tears, he locked himself in his carriage.

  Nicholas called in the court physician Professor Sergei Fedorov, who had so often treated Alexei.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ asked the doctor, ‘do you think Alexei will stay with you?’

  ‘And why not?’ replied Nicky. ‘He’s still a child and must remain with the family . . . Until then Michael is regent.’

  ‘No, Your Majesty, that’s unlikely to be possible.’

  ‘Tell me frankly, Sergei Petrovich,’ he said, ‘is Alexei’s malady incurable?’

  ‘Science teaches us, Sire, that it’s an incurable disease. Yet those afflicted can sometimes reach old age.’

  ‘This is just what the tsarina told me.’ Nicholas hung his head. ‘Well, if that’s the case and Alexei can never serve his country as I’d like him to, we have the right to keep him ourselves.’ He ordered General Alexeev to change the terms of the abdication.8

  At 9.45 p.m., Frederiks escorted the two parliamentarians Guchkov and Shulgin into the salon. There they were joined by the autocrat, who was ‘absolutely calm and impenetrable’ – but he had long hated Guchkov. ‘We bowed, the emperor greeted us and shook hands,’ wrote Shulgin. ‘The gesture was rather friendly.’ They sat at a table. Guchkov started to explain their mission until General Ruzsky came in, bowed, listened and then interrupted: ‘The matter has been decided.’

  ‘I’ve made the decision to abdicate,’ said Nicholas – but he would not leave the throne to Alexei. ‘I have come to the conclusion that, in the light of his illness, I should abdicate in my name and his simultaneously as I cannot be separated from him.’

  ‘But we had counted on the figure of little Alexei Nikolaievich to soften the effect of the transfer of power,’ Guchkov argued. The emperor hesitated, then added poignantly: ‘I hope you will understand the feelings of a father.’ His successor was Misha. Guchkov and Ruzsky consulted together. This was against Emperor Paul’s Fundamental Laws. Misha was married to Countess Brassova: could an emperor have a morganatic wife? Yes, hadn’t Alexander II married Dolgorukaya? They accepted Nicholas’s plan. At 11.40 p.m., retiring to his private wagon, the ex-emperor signed the manifesto, witnessed by Frederiks – the old man ‘in despair’, his hands trembling – backdated to 3 p.m.:

  Not wishing to be parted from Our Beloved Son, We hand over the succession to Our Brother the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich and bless him on his accession.*

  Returning to the salon, Frederiks handed the abdication to Guchkov and Ruzsky. Nicholas was so calm, ‘I even wondered whether we were dealing with a normal person,’ recalled Guchkov. ‘One might expect some show of emotion but nothing of the sort.’ In fact Nicky was seething: ‘God gives me the strength to forgive all my enemies but . . . I can’t forgive General Ruzsky.’ As the ex-tsar, polite to the last, saw off Guchkov and Shulgin, his Cossack escort saluted him.

  ‘It’s time for you to take my initials off your shoulder-straps,’ he told them.

  ‘Please, Your Imperial Majesty,’ asked one Cossack, ‘allow us to kill them!’

  Nicholas smiled. ‘It’s too late for that,’ he said ruefully.

  Nicholas ‘renounced the throne’, as an aide saw it, ‘as if he were turning over command of a cavalry squadron’. Afterwards, as liveried servants served tea, ‘the tsar sat peaceful and calm’, wrote his ADC Mordvinov. ‘He kept up conversation and only his eyes which were sad, thoughtful and staring into the distance, and his nervous movements when he took a cigarette betrayed his inner disturbance.’ It was agony for the courtiers. ‘When will this end?’ wondered Mordvinov. Inside the ex-tsar was raging: ‘All around is betrayal, cowardice and deceit!’ At that moment, Misha became Emperor Michael II.9

  *

  As the front-line soldiers took the oath to Michael II, the new tsar was obliviously slumbering in the Millionnaya Street apartment until, at 5.55 a.m., Kerensky phoned to announce that a delegation would visit later. Misha still did not know he was tsar. At nine o’clock, the bell rang and his cousin Bimbo embraced him.

  ‘I’m very happy to recognize you as Sovereign,’ said Bimbo, ‘since you’re already tsar. Be brave and strong.’

  At 9.30, just after Bimbo had left, Prince Lvov, the prime minister, and his ministers including Kerensky, Rodzianko and Guchkov (just back from Pskov and now war minister) arrived. They had scarcely slept for many nights, swinging between terror of imminent slaughter to the exhilaration of living momentous history. All except Kerensky were terrified of the Soviet and most were convinced that Misha’s accession would lead to ‘colossal bloodshed’. They stood up as Michael II entered.10

  At Tsarskoe Selo, the news of Nicholas’s abdication had arrived at 3 a.m. Afraid to tell the empress, the courtiers instead told Uncle Pitz, who went to see the empress that morning. Alexandra knew that Nicky had been forced to appoint a Duma ministry. ‘And you who are alone, no army behind you, were caught like a mouse in a trap, what can you do? That’s the lowest meanest trick, unheard of in history.’

  Unable to say a word, Uncle Pitz stood kissing her hand for a long time. ‘His heart was breaking. The empress in her simple nurse’s uniform, struck him with her serenity,’ recorded Pitz’s wife.

  ‘Dear Alix, I wanted to be with you . . .’ he said.

  ‘What’s happening with Nicky?’

  ‘Nicky is well but you must be brave: today at one in the morning, he signed the abdication for himself and Alexei.’

  The ex-empress shuddered: ‘If Nicky did it, then it must have been necessary.’ Tears trickled down her cheeks. ‘I may no longer be empress,’ she said, ‘but I still remain a sister of mercy. As Misha will now be emperor, I’ll look after the children, the hospital, we’ll go to Crimea . . .’

  Alix tottered towards her friend Lili Dehn. ‘Abdiqué!’ she sobbed. ‘Poor darling – alone there and suffering. My God, what he must have suffered.’ She tried to send telegrams to Nicky but they were returned: ‘Address of person mentioned unknown.’ Now she wrote: ‘I fully understand your action, my own hero . . . I know that you could not sign against what you swore at your coronation. We know each other through and through – need no words.’ So far the five children knew nothing. Helped by Anna, Alexandra burned correspondence, but ‘She never recovered from the grief of destroying her youthful love letters which were more to her than the most costly jewels,’ wrote her daughter Olga.

  When Lenin and his wife Krupskaya heard the news in Geneva, she wondered, ‘Perhaps it’s another hoax.’

  ‘It’s staggering,’ agreed Lenin. ‘It’s so incredibly unexpected.’

 
; The ex-tsar steamed back to Stavka, sitting alone in the gloom, lit only by the lamp of an icon in the corner. ‘After all the experiences of this sad day, the emperor, always distinguished by enormous self-control, no longer had the strength to restrain himself,’ recalled Voeikov. ‘He embraced me and wept.’ Afterwards ‘I slept long and deeply,’ wrote Nicholas. ‘Talked with my people about yesterday. Read a lot about Julius Caesar.’ Then he remembered Misha: ‘To His Majesty Emperor Michael. Recent events have led me to decide irrevocably to take this extreme step. Forgive me if it grieves you and also for no warning – there was no time.’11

  In the flat on Millionnaya Street, the ministers tried to intimidate Michael into abdicating. He asked if they could guarantee his safety. ‘I had to answer in the negative,’ said Rodzianko, but Pavel Milyukov, the foreign minister, argued that this ‘frail craft’ – the Provisional Government – would sink in ‘the ocean of national disorder’ without the raft of the monarchy. Kerensky, the only one who could speak for the Soviet, disagreed, threatening chaos: ‘I can’t answer for Your Highness’s life.’

  Princess Putiatina invited them all for lunch, sitting between the emperor and the prime minister. After a day of negotiations, Michael signed his abdication: ‘I have taken a firm decision to assume the Supreme Power only if such be the will of our great people by universal suffrage through its representatives in the Constituent Assembly.’ Next day, he sent a note to his wife Natasha: ‘Awfully busy and extremely exhausted. Will tell you many interesting things.’ Among those interesting things, he had been emperor of Russia for a day – and, after 304 years, the Romanovs had fallen.12

  * Guchkov plotted with the generals to capture the imperial train and crown Alexei under the regency of Misha and the direction of a responsible government. Even General Alexeev and Prince Lvov discussed the imprisonment of Alexandra and the overthrow of Nicholas, who would be replaced by Nikolasha. In November, Alexeev and Lvov asked the mayor of Tiflis, Alexander Khatisov, to propose this to Nikolasha, who rejected the plan. The coup was off – but in Kiev the dowager empress Minny (accompanied by her Georgian courtier and lover since Alexander III’s death, Prince George Shervashidze) encouraged the family to confront Nicholas. When Sandro challenged him to end his political isolation, the tsar revealingly replied coldly: ‘I believe only my wife.’