Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

  There was one moment, according to Rodzianko, when Nicholas wavered in his determination to refuse a responsible ministry. On the eve of his departure, the Tsar summoned several of his ministers, including Prince Golitsyn, the Prime Minister, and announced that he intended to go to the Duma the next day and personally announce the appointment of a responsible government. That same evening, Golitsyn was summoned again to the palace and told that the Tsar was leaving for Headquarters.

  “How is that, Your Majesty?” asked Golitsyn, amazed. “What about a responsible ministry? You intended to go to the Duma tomorrow.”

  “I have changed my mind,” said Nicholas. “I am leaving for the Stavka tonight.”

  This conversation took place on Wednesday, March 7. Five days later, on Monday, March 12, the Imperial government in Petrograd collapsed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Revolution: March 1917

  IN the grip of an intense thirty-five-degree-below-zero cold, the people of Petrograd shivered and were hungry. Outside the bakeries, long lines of women stood for hours waiting for their daily ration of bread while the snow fell gently on their coats and shawls. Workers, whose factories had closed for lack of coal, milled in the streets, worried, grumbling and waiting for something to happen. In their stuffy, smoke-filled barracks, soldiers of the garrison gathered around stoves and listened from supper until dawn to the speeches and exhortations of revolutionary agitators. This was Petrograd in the first week of March 1917, ripening for revolution.

  On February 27, the Duma reconvened and Kerensky shouted defiance not only at the government but at the Tsar. “The ministers are but fleeting shadows,” he cried. “To prevent a catastrophe, the Tsar himself must be removed, by terrorist methods if there is no other way. If you will not listen to the voice of warning, you will find yourselves face to face with facts, not warnings. Look up at the distant flashes that are lighting the skies of Russia.” Incitement to assassination of the Tsar was treason, and Protopopov began proceedings to deprive Kerensky of his parliamentary immunity so that he could be prosecuted. Rodzianko told Kerensky privately, however, “Be sure we shall never give you up to them.”

  In the mood which lay over the capital, even Kerensky’s inflammatory speech did not seem abnormal. On the very day of the speech, Buchanan, whose political antennae were acutely sensitive, concluded that the city was quiet enough for him to slip away on a much-needed ten-day holiday in Finland.

  The underlying problem was the shortage of food and fuel. The war had taken fifteen million men off the farms, while at the same time the army was consuming huge quantities of food. The railroads which brought supplies into the capital were collapsing. Barely adequate in peacetime, the Russian railroads had now the added load of supplying six million men at the front with food and ammunition, as well as moving the men themselves according to the dictates of Army Headquarters. In addition, hundreds of coal trains had necessarily been added to the overtaxed system. Before the war, the entire St. Petersburg industrial region, with its giant metallurgical industries, had used cheap Cardiff coal imported up the Baltic. The blockade required that coal be brought by train from the Donets basin in the Ukraine. Creaking under this enormous military and industrial load, the railroads’ actual capacity had drastically decreased. Russia began the war with 20,071 locomotives; by early 1917, only 9,021 were in service. Similar deterioration had reduced the number of cars from 539,549 to 174,346.

  The cities, naturally, suffered more than the countryside, and Petrograd, farthest from the regions producing food and coal, suffered most. Scarcities sent prices soaring: an egg cost four times what it had in 1914, butter and soap cost five times as much. Rasputin, closer to the people than either the Tsar or his ministers, had seen the danger long before. In October 1915, Alexandra had written to her husband: “Our Friend … spoke scarcely about anything else for two hours. It is this: that you must give an order that wagons with flour, butter and sugar should be obliged to pass. He saw the whole thing in the night like a vision, all the towns, railway lines, etc.… He wishes me to speak to you about all this very earnestly, severely even.… He would propose three days no other trains should go except those with flour, butter and sugar—it’s even more necessary than meat or ammunition.”

  In February 1917, winter weather dealt Russia’s railroads a final blow. In a month of extreme cold and heavy snowfall, 1,200 locomotive boilers froze and burst, deep drifts blocked long sections of track and 57,000 railway cars stood motionless. In Petrograd, supplies of flour, coal and wood dwindled and disappeared.

  Ironically, there were not, in the winter of 1917, any serious revolutionary plans among either workers or revolutionaries. Lenin, living in Zurich in the house of a shoemaker, felt marooned, depressed and defeated. Nothing he tried seemed to succeed. The pamphlets he wrote drew little response, while the hair oil which he bought in quantity and rubbed assiduously into his skull failed to stimulate even the slightest growth of hair.* In January 1917, addressing a group of Swiss workers, he gloomily declared that while “popular risings must flare up in Europe within a few years … we older men may not live to see the decisive battles of the approaching revolution.” Kerensky, the Duma’s most vociferous advocate of revolution, said later, “No party of the Left and no revolutionary organization had made any plan for a revolution.” None was needed. Revolutionary plots and political programs became insignificant in the face of the growing hunger and bitterness of the people. “They [the revolutionaries] were not ready,” wrote Basil Shulgin, a monarchist deputy, “but all the rest was ready.”

  On Thursday, March 8, as Nicholas’s train was carrying him away from the capital back to Headquarters, the silent, long-suffering breadlines suddenly erupted. Unwilling to wait any longer, people broke into the bakeries and helped themselves. Columns of protesting workers from the industrial Vyborg section marched across the Neva bridges toward the center of the city. A procession, composed mainly of women chanting “Give us bread,” filled the Nevsky Prospect. The demonstration was peaceful; nevertheless, at dusk a squadron of Cossacks trotted down the Nevsky Prospect, the clatter of their hoofs sounding the government’s warning. Despite the disorders, no one was seriously alarmed. At the French Embassy that night, the guests threw themselves into a passionate argument as to which of the reigning ballerinas of the Imperial Ballet—Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina or Mathilde Kschessinska—was supreme in her art.

  On Friday morning, March 9, the crowds poured into the streets in greater numbers. More bakeries were sacked and again the Cossack patrols appeared, although without their whips, the traditional instrument of mob control in Russia. The crowd, noting this absence, treated the Cossacks cheerfully and parted readily to let them pass. The Cossacks, in turn, bantered with the crowd and assured them, “Don’t worry. We won’t shoot.”

  On Saturday, most of the workers of Petrograd went on strike. Trains, trolley cars and cabs stopped running, and no newspapers appeared. Huge crowds surged through the streets, carrying, for the first time, red banners and shouting, “Down with the German woman! Down with Protopopov! Down with the war!” A sense of alarm began to speed through the city. That night the violinist Georges Enesco gave a recital in the concert hall of the Maryinsky Theatre. The theatre was practically empty; not more than fifty people sat in the audience, and there were wide gaps in the orchestra. Enesco came up to a corner of the huge stage and played an intimate, private concert for the few people sitting close together in the front of the deserted hall.

  The Cabinet, trying desperately to solve the problem of food supply, met all day and through the night. By telegram, they begged Nicholas to return. With the exception of Protopopov, the entire Cabinet also offered to resign, urging the Tsar to appoint a new ministry acceptable to the Duma. Nicholas refused. Five hundred miles away, misinformed by Protopopov as to the seriousness of the situation, believing the crisis to be only another of the turbulent strikes which had plagued his entire reign, he replied to Prince Golitsy
n, the Prime Minister, that Cabinet resignations were out of the question. To General Khabalov, Military Governor of Petrograd, he telegraphed brusquely: “I order that the disorders in the capital, intolerable during these difficult times of war with Germany and Austria, be ended tomorrow. Nicholas.”

  The Tsar’s order clearly meant that, where necessary, troops were to be used to clear the streets. The sequence, arranged by Protopopov, entailed meeting disorders first with the police, then with Cossacks wielding whips and, as a last resort, with soldiers using rifles and machine guns. Ultimately, of course, the plan and the security of the capital depended on the quality of the troops available.

  As it happened, the quality of the troops in Petrograd could not have been worse. The regular soldiers of the pre-war army—the proud infantry and the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, the veteran Cossacks and regiments of the line—had long since perished in the icy wastes of Poland and Galicia. The best men who remained were still in the trenches facing the Germans. The Petrograd garrison in the winter of 1917 consisted of 170,000 men, most of them raw recruits crowded into training barracks. The Cossacks of the garrison were young country boys, fresh from the villages, wholly inexperienced in street fighting. Many of the infantry recruits were older men, in their thirties and forties, drawn in part from the working-class suburbs of Petrograd itself. Poor fighting material, not wanted by the generals at the front, they were left in the capital, where it was hoped that their proximity to home would keep them from stirring up trouble. There were too few officers; those on hand had been invalided back from the front or were boys from military schools incapable of maintaining discipline in a crisis. Lacking both officers and rifles, many units of the garrison never bothered to train.

  Despite the caliber of his garrison, General Khabalov prepared to obey the Tsar’s command. Early risers, venturing into the city’s streets on Sunday morning, found huge posters bearing Khabalov’s orders: All assemblies and public meetings were forbidden and would be dispersed by force. All strikers who were not back at their jobs the following morning would be drafted and sent to the front.

  The posters were ignored completely. Huge crowds swarmed from the Vyborg quarter across the Neva bridges into the city. In response, lines of soldiers began issuing silently from their barracks. At 4:30 p.m. there was shooting on the Nevsky Prospect opposite the Anitchkov Palace. Fifty people were killed or wounded; throughout the city that day, two hundred people died. Many of the soldiers were bitter, and only reluctantly obeyed orders. Before the Nicholas Station, a company of the Volinsky Regiment refused to fire into a crowd, and emptied its rifles into the air. A company of the Pavlovsky Life Guards refused to fire at all and, when its commander insisted, turned and shot the officer instead. The situation was quickly restored when a loyal company of the crack Preobrajensky Guard moved in to disarm the mutineers and send them back to their barracks.

  That night, Rodzianko, who had been meeting with the helpless ministers, sent an anguished telegram to the Tsar: “The position is serious,” he said. “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 ended with a heartfelt plea: “May the blame not fall on the wearer of the crown.” Nicholas, scornful of what he considered hysterics, turned to Alexeiev and declared, “That fat Rodzianko has sent me some nonsense which I shall not even bother to answer.”

  Instead of concessions, Nicholas decided to send reinforcements. He ordered General Ivanov, an elderly commander from the Galician front, to collect four of the best regiments from the front line, march on the capital and subdue it by force, if necessary. He telegraphed Prince Golitsyn to instruct Rodzianko that the Duma session was to be suspended. And he decided to return to Petrograd himself within a few days. “Am leaving day after tomorrow [the 13th],” he telegraphed Alexandra. “Have finished here with all important questions. Sleep well. God bless you.” In Petrograd that night, although two hundred people lay dead, most of the city was quiet. Buchanan, returning at last from his Finnish holiday, noted that “the part of the city through which we passed on our short drive to the Embassy was perfectly quiet and, except for a few patrols of soldiers on the quays and the absence of trams and cabs, there was nothing unusual.” Paléologue, returning home at eleven p.m., passed the Radziwill mansion, blazing with the lights of a gala party. Outside, among a long line of elegant cars and carriages, Paléologue happened to spot the car of Grand Duke Boris.

  Monday, March 12, was the turning point in Petrograd. On Monday morning, the Tsar’s government still clung to a last shred of power. By Monday night, power had passed to the Duma.

  The key to this swift, overwhelming change was the massive defection of the Petrograd soldiery. Many of the workers had had enough of going to the Nevsky Prospect to be killed. Indeed, on Sunday night, Iurenev, the leader of the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd, had gloomily concluded that the uprising had failed. “The Reaction is gaining strength,” he said to a group of extreme Left party leaders meeting in Kerensky’s study. “The unrest in the barracks is subsiding. Indeed, it is clear that the working class and the soldiery must go different ways. We must not rely on day dreams … for a revolution, but on systematic propaganda at the works and the factories in store for better days.”

  Iurenev was wrong: the unrest in the barracks was not subsiding. On Sunday afternoon, the Volinsky Regiment, which had displayed reluctance to fire on the crowd, had retreated to its barracks in confusion and anger. All night the soldiers argued. Then, at six in the morning, a Volinsky sergeant named Kirpichnikov killed a captain who had struck him the previous day. The other officers fled from the barracks and, soon after, the Volinsky marched out, band playing, to join the revolution. The mutiny spread quickly to other famous regiments, the Semonovsky, the Ismailovsky, the Litovsky, the Oranienbaum Machine Gun Regiment and, finally, to the legendary Preobrajensky Guard, the oldest and finest regiment in the army, created by Peter the Great himself. In all of these cases, the units that went over were recruit battalions of inferior quality; nevertheless, they carried the colors and wore the uniforms of the proudest regiments of the Russian army.

  In most parts of the city, the morning of March 12 broke with deadly stillness. From a window of the British Embassy, Meriel Buchanan, the Ambassador’s daughter, stared out at “the same wide streets, the same great palaces, the same gold spires and domes rising out of the pearl-colored morning 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 Fortress and the Imperial flag of Russia that for the last time fluttered against the winter sky.”

  A few minutes later, from a window in his own Embassy, Paléologue witnessed the dramatic scene when the army confronted the mob: “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 towards 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.”

  Two hours later, General Knox heard “that the depot troops of the garrison had mutinied and were coming down the street. We went to the window.… Craning our necks, we first saw two soldiers—a sort of advance guard—who strode along the middle of the street, pointing their rifles at loiterers to clear the road.… Then came a great disorderly mass of soldiery, stretching right across the wide street and both pavements. They were led by a diminutive but immensely dignified student. All were armed and many had red flags fastened to their bayonets.… What struck me m
ost was the uncanny silence of it all. We were like spectators in a gigantic cinema.”

  A few minutes later, Paléologue, trying to find out what was happening, went out into the street: “Frightened inhabitants were scattering through the streets.… At one corner of the Liteiny, soldiers were helping civilians to erect a barricade. Flames mounted from the Law Courts. The gates of the Arsenal burst open with a crash. Suddenly, the crack of machine-gun fire split the air; it was the regulars who had just taken up position near the Nevsky Prospect.… The Law Courts had become nothing but an enormous furnace; the Arsenal on the Liteiny, the Ministry of the Interior, the Military Government Building … the headquarters of the Okhrana and a score of police stations were in flames, the prisons were open and all the prisoners had been liberated.” By noon, the Fortress of Peter and Paul had fallen with its heavy artillery, and 25,000 soldiers had joined the revolution. By nightfall, the number had swollen to 66,000.

  During Monday morning, the Imperial Cabinet held its last meeting. Protopopov, who was present, was urged to resign. He rose and walked out of the room, melodramatically mumbling, “Now there is nothing left to do but shoot myself.” The Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Michael arrived and, after listening to the ministers, decided to appeal to Nicholas himself. Leaving the meeting, he telephoned directly to Headquarters and urged the immediate appointment of a government which could command the nation’s confidence. General Alexeiev, at the other end of the line, asked the Grand Duke to wait while he spoke to the Tsar. Forty minutes later, Alexeiev called back: “The Emperor wishes to express his thanks,” he said. “He is leaving for Tsarskoe Selo and will decide there.” Hearing this, the Cabinet simply gave up. It adjourned itself—forever, as it turned out—and the ministers walked out of the building. By nightfall, most of them had arrived at the Tauride Palace to have themselves arrested and placed under the protection of the Duma.