The Race to Save the Romanovs
Page 9
‘It was obvious we could not let the Romanovs go abroad and seek their fate elsewhere and await their moment,’ recalled Soviet Executive Committee member Nikolay Sukhanov; nor could they be allowed to return to the ‘historical arena’. The committee ‘acknowledged very quickly and unanimously that the Soviet must take the Romanov question into its own hands’, and they were prepared to do so ‘even if this should threaten a break with the Provisional Government’.3 Its members were convinced that the Romanovs had vast reserves of wealth safely hidden in foreign banks; why should they be sent abroad so that they could draw on their ‘millions’ to fund a counter-revolution, asked the new official newspaper, the Bolshevik-run Pravda. ‘No! the Romanovs must not be allowed abroad. That would be a state crime; a betrayal of the nation.’4 There was the question too of political security: ‘the Emperor knows too many state secrets’; he had to be isolated, and ideally locked up in the Peter and Paul Fortress or sent to the revolutionary stronghold at Kronstadt.5 On 22 March, Sergey Maslovsky, a commissar of the Petrograd Soviet, was sent out to Tsarskoe to ‘gain control over the situation’ – in other words, to take Nicholas to the fortress, where he would be incarcerated in the dreaded Trubetskoy Bastion.6 Maslovsky arrived at the Alexander Palace with three commandeered armoured cars bristling with men and machine guns. En route he had brandished his pistol and vowed to ‘arrest Nicholas Romanov and bring him back to Petrograd, dead or alive’. He was prepared to ‘liquidate the matter here in Tsarskoye’ if necessary, he bragged. When they arrived at the palace, he and the Bolshevik commissar Alexey Tarasov-Rodionov tried to incite the guards to hand over ‘Nikolashka’, in case it was decided to ‘spirit him abroad and then later set him on your necks again’. When the officers of the guard assured him that the former Tsar was a captive and was going nowhere, Maslovsky relented. Having been allowed to see Nicholas from a distance in a corridor, to verify that he was actually there, Maslovsky was briskly seen off by Colonel Evgeniy Kobylinsky, commander of the external guard at Tsarskoe Selo.7
That evening, Nikolay Chkheidze, the Menshevik chair of the Soviet, reported that the Provisional Government had capitulated to pressure ‘not to allow the former tsar and his family to leave Tsarskoe Selo without the explicit agreement of the Executive Committee’, which had by now resolved to ‘immediately take extraordinary measures’ if any attempt was made to do so.8 To ensure that the government kept to its word, the Soviet set up its own network of watchers to confirm that the Imperial Family remained locked up at the Alexander Palace.9 French ambassador Maurice Paléologue noted that they had also ‘posted “revolutionary” guards at Tsarskoe Selo and on the roads leading from it, to prevent any surreptitious abduction of the sovereigns’ by the Provisional Government or anyone else.10
So the night before Foreign Minister Milyukov even received the British offer of asylum, his government had already been placed in an impossible position: how could it hope to effect the safe evacuation out of Russia of the Imperial Family, when the Petrograd Soviet was already doing all it could to stop that from happening and was demanding Nicholas’s trial and execution?
The British offer, when it came the following morning, was thus virtually redundant – yet another ineffectual piece of paper that has gone down in history as promising much, but delivering nothing. Why did Milyukov continue the charade of discussing an evacuation that he knew was logistically impossible, and would otherwise end violently? The issue of the Romanov evacuation was already – within a week of the abdication – an entirely academic one. Yet the controversy and recrimination over who was responsible for the ensuing embarrassing debacle would continue for decades.
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With the Soviet doing all it could to wrest control of the fate of the Romanov family from the government, the Provisional Government was forced to act. Alexander Kerensky, a Socialist Revolutionary who also had a position in the Petrograd Soviet, was now tasked, as the new Justice Minister, with overseeing the Imperial Family’s protection at the Alexander Palace until some kind of arrangement could be made for their future. ‘We regarded any display of revengefulness as unworthy of Free Russia,’ Kerensky later recalled. The arrest of the Tsar and Tsaritsa and their family had been, he insisted, a protective and not a punitive measure, and he relied on Colonel Kobylinsky – who would soon be made commandant of the Alexander Palace garrison – to ensure that the family were fairly treated and that there were no breaches in security.11 In the meantime, in order to calm the volatile situation, and with the approval of Sir George Buchanan, the Provisional Government assured the Petrograd Soviet that it had not as yet informed Nicholas of the British offer. In a private meeting with Milyukov, Buchanan agreed that two important things had to be dealt with before they informed the Tsar and his wife of any arrangements: the government needed to ‘overcome the opposition of the Soviet, and … their Majesties could not in any case start till their children got better’.12 There were now 300 soldiers guarding the outer perimeter of the palace; all the telephones and the telegraph machine were out of bounds; and all incoming and outgoing mail was subject to close scrutiny. Recreation outside, in a closed-off part of the park, was strictly regulated. Those of the Imperial Family’s entourage who had not accepted the Provisional Government’s offer to leave were now prisoners with them.13
Thus, while Kerensky and Milyukov trod a difficult path keeping the Petrograd Soviet onside by assuring them that they were not going to allow the Romanovs to leave Russia, they were, simultaneously, juggling talks with England about precisely that. At Tsarskoe Selo, no one in the imperial entourage could get a straight answer about what was going on; the former monarchs were kept in the dark about where they would eventually go, though they had come to the conclusion that perhaps Norway might be a better option; it would be good for Alexey’s health, as Alexandra had mentioned to her lady-in-waiting Baroness Buxhoeveden.14 This much at least filtered out to the Western press, desperate for any reliable news of the Imperial Family. According to a ‘Copenhagen telegram’, ‘the ex-Tsar has asked permission for his son to go to Norway, in order to be restored to health’. An article in the Liverpool Echo on 29 March, entitled ‘Ex-Tsar’s Future Home’, engaged in intense speculation about whether the Imperial Family were to come to England, noting that a report had arrived ‘from a well-informed quarter’ pointing to the ‘probability of the Russian royal family ultimately making their home in Denmark.’15
And then, a day later, the first warning sign of a change in British official sentiment was sounded. Almost from the moment his government had expressed its disapproval of his private telegram to the Tsar, King George had been in an agony of doubt about the whole issue of the Romanov asylum, and on Thursday, 30 March, he instructed Lord Stamfordham to write to the Foreign Secretary:
My dear Balfour,
The King has been thinking much about the Government’s proposal that the Emperor Nicholas and his Family should come to England.
As you are doubtless aware the King has a strong personal friendship for the Emperor, and therefore would be glad to do anything to help him in this crisis. But His Majesty cannot help doubting, not only on account of the dangers of the voyage, but on general grounds of expediency [my italics], whether it is advisable that the Imperial Family should take up their residence in this country.16
The British government pondered this message for three days before responding. It had never encouraged the idea of asylum in England, hoping that Denmark or even Switzerland might step in, but nevertheless it had done the honourable thing under pressure from Milyukov and had issued an official invitation. While it fully appreciated that the King was now having second thoughts, this put David Lloyd George in a very tricky position. The following day, Stamfordham was therefore informed that the government ‘do not think, unless the position changes, that it is now possible to withdraw the invitation which has been sent, and they therefore trust that the King will consent to adhere to the original invitation’. As a constitutional mona
rch, George had no choice but to capitulate. A brief response came the following day from Stamfordham informing Balfour that the King ‘must regard the matter as settled, unless the Russian Government should come to any fresh decision on the subject’.17
But what exactly were the ‘general grounds of expediency’ that were by now so exercising King George? In a nutshell, it was fear of inflaming the radical left-wing sentiment for the revolution and against the Imperial Family that was gathering ground in Britain as that doing its damnedest in Petrograd to stop them ever leaving. Already what had been initiated as a seemingly straightforward humanitarian exercise was being loaded with political overtones, which were not just anti-monarchical and potentially damaging to the Allied war effort, but were forcing the King into an uncomfortable, and very personal, moral dilemma.
King George’s reign had, since the outbreak of war in 1914, already witnessed a darkening atmosphere of strikes and industrial unrest, fuelled by the growth of support for socialism and the rise of the Labour Party. Socialism had brought with it the much-feared spectre of republicanism, and King George was only too acutely aware that his government’s priority was to hold the Home Front together all the time there was a war going on. He dreaded the onrush of a class war in Britain mimicking that in Russia; his cousin Nicholas’s fall from power posed a serious conflict of interests over which he dithered and agonised as he tried to balance his private familial sympathies with his duty as head of the nation.
The voice of dissent was gathering outside his door. On 31 March at London’s Royal Albert Hall a rally had been held to ‘rejoice’ the advent of the Russian Revolution, chaired by republican Labour politician George Lansbury. This was no meeting of a handful of left-wing extremists; the Hall was packed to the rafters with 12,000 people, with a further 5,000 outside unable to get in.18 Although the Albert Hall meeting had not been openly hostile to the King, in its celebration of revolution and a newly free Russia it had provided a huge boost to working-class confidence in its own growing political muscle. On the lookout for warnings of public hostility, the King’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, was now vigorously stoking the fires of George’s anxiety by feeding him a stream of negative press cuttings about the question of the Tsar coming to England.
Day after day Stamfordham scoured the newspapers for any criticism of the King or signs of a growing anti-monarchical movement, pasting the cuttings into a file marked ‘Unrest in the Country’. One passage in particular was heavily marked up in red ink for the King’s attention: it came from an article published on 5 April by Independent Labour Party leader Henry Hyndman, entitled ‘The Need for a British Republic’. Published in Justice – The Organ of Social Democracy, which was soon to become the official weekly newspaper of the Labour Party, the article reminded readers that the British royal family was ‘essentially German’* and called for a British republic, remarking that ‘If the King and Queen have invited their discrowned Russian cousins to come here, they are misinterpreting entirely the feelings of us common Englishmen.’19
The article went on to warn of a desire for a post-war republic in Britain. On the same day, the King had received a warning letter from a friend, the Bishop of Chelmsford, that there was ‘a suspicion among the public that the Tsar [was] backed by this country’; other letters to the King, both solicited and unsolicited, were arriving, expressing serious concern about the rise of the Labour Party and the extent to which it was stirring up social unrest.20 Fear of the mob was widespread. Perhaps the government had not given sufficient consideration to all this, before conceding to Milyukov’s request to give sanctuary to the Tsar? Nor had the government taken account of the fact that the British people had not forgotten the brutality with which the 1905 Revolution in Russia had been suppressed. Stamfordham was scrupulous, if not obsessive, in ensuring that every disturbing piece of evidence was placed before the monarch: ‘There is no socialist newspaper, no libellous rag, that is not read and marked and shown to the King if they contain any criticism, friendly or unfriendly to His Majesty and the Royal Family,’ he stated.21 His systematic assault on the King’s already fragile confidence in the matter would soon have its desired effect.
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At the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo meanwhile, Alexander Kerensky had made his first official visit to the incarcerated Romanovs on 3 April, arriving ostentatiously in one of the numerous luxury motor cars confiscated from the Imperial Garage. On being introduced to Nicholas, he grandly informed him that one of his first acts as Justice Minister had been to abolish the death penalty. But was this perhaps less out of general altruism than to defuse the anticipated pressure for Nicholas’s trial and execution? Kerensky was certainly being put upon to retain the death penalty for ‘leaders of the old regime’.22
When asked by Nicholas, Kerensky was unable to give any definitive answer to the question of his departure from Russia, but told him he still hoped to arrange it. He was disconcerted by the Tsar’s strangely passive and detached manner so soon after the tumultuous events he had gone through; there was a profound sense of loneliness, desolation even, about him. ‘He did not wish to fight for power, and it simply fell from his hands’; Nicholas’s retirement into civilian obscurity had ‘brought him nothing but relief’. Having been freed from hours at his desk signing ‘those everlasting documents’, he seemed truly content with his life reading, walking, chopping wood and gardening with his children. It was Alexandra ‘who felt keenly the loss of her authority and could not resign herself to her new status’; her negative and hostile attitude dragged everyone down.23 Kerensky later confided to a friend that, like many others, he had pre-judged Nicholas unfairly. Indeed, he had been so struck by the former Tsar’s dignified demeanour that during their meeting he had found himself calling him ‘Your Royal Highness’ instead of just plain Nikolay Alexandrovich.24
During the first few days of April, unaware of all the machinations going on behind the scenes regarding his evacuation, Nicholas noted that he had begun to start sorting through his things, ‘put[ting] aside everything that I want to take with me, if we have to go to England’.25 When one of her captors suggested to Alexandra that maybe she should hurry things along and ‘write to the English queen to beg her to help her and the children’, she gave him short shrift: ‘I don’t need to beg anyone’s help after all we have been through, except the Lord God’s,’ she snapped. ‘I have nothing to write to the English queen about.’26
* * *
During his visit, Kerensky had informed the family’s physician, Dr Evgeniy Botkin, that the Danish queen had telegraphed the Provisional Government from Copenhagen ‘to enquire about the health of the former Empress’. This passing comment has always been assumed to be an enquiry about the Tsaritsa Alexandra, but surely not. Why should the Danes suddenly be interested in German-born Alexandra’s health? It was her children who were sick. Was it not a request about the health of the Dowager Empress Dagmar, King Christian’s aunt, who had by now returned to Kiev, and news of whom had been intermittent?* In a similar vein, Kerensky was heard to say during his visit that ‘the English queen’ was also asking about the health of the Empress. Again, this seems to be a misinterpretation, based on the loose use of ‘Queen’ and ‘Empress’ in such brief telegrams. In light of the kerfuffle about her husband’s recent private telegram to Nicholas, the last thing Queen Mary would have done is send a private telegram asking about the Tsaritsa. No, the telegram was from Alexandra, the Queen Mother, urgently seeking news of her sister, the Dowager Empress Dagmar.27
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At this crucial juncture in the Romanov asylum negotiations, the Queen Mother was indeed becoming something of a thorn in the side for the British government. ‘Mother dear’ was badgering her son George on a regular basis ‘about Russia, and Nicky’, as she ‘was very much upset about it all’. Although the King had had a private meeting with the exiled Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich† about ‘the idea of poor Nicky coming to England’, without his knowle
dge telegrams had also been arriving at the British embassy in Petrograd from his mother, who was ‘most anxious for news’, not having heard from Dagmar ‘for some days’.28 The Queen Mother was begging Sir George Buchanan to sidestep officialdom and forward letters to Dagmar in Kiev, as were other members of the royal family with relatives in Russia – all of whom were finding it impossible to get news – but he regretted that he could not do so ‘until I obtain permission from the Government’. In a message to the Foreign Office on 4 April, Buchanan confided that these private interventions were causing him a lot of problems: ‘I hear that two telegrams sent by Queen Alexandra have been held up. One was quite harmless but the other I fear was rather compromising in its language. It is useless for Her Majesty to telegraph at present.’29 There was good reason to fear such telegrams falling into the wrong hands: the Russians were intercepting and reading all British telegrams sent ‘en clair’, and possibly ciphered diplomatic ones too, having a long tradition of code-breaking established under the old tsarist secret police, the Okhrana.
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In the Russia and Siberia FO 800/205 file there is a previously uncited but revealing exchange between Queen Alexandra’s private secretary Sir Arthur Davidson and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. Its contents illustrate how once again – and only days after King George’s unofficial telegram of support to Nicholas had so alarmed them – the British government was getting extremely irritated about the royals sending private messages to Russia behind its back.