To make certain that Nicholas was in fact at Tsarskoe, as it was now informed, the Ispolkom dispatched later that day (March 9) a detachment of three hundred infantry and one machine gun company to Tsarskoe under the command of S. D. Mstislavskii, an SR officer. On arrival, Mstislavskii demanded that the ex-Tsar be at once “presented to him.” He thought to himself: “Let him stand before me—me, a simple emissary of the revolutionary workers and soldiers, he, the Emperor of All the Russias, Great, Little, and White, the autocrat, like an inmate at an inspection in what used to be his prisons.”
Mstislavskii wore an old sheepskin coat, with the epaulettes of a military official, a fur cap on his head, a saber by his side and a Browning, the handle of which protruded from his pocket. Soon the ex-Tsar appeared in the corridor. He approached the group, apparently wishing to speak with them. But Mstislavskii stood without saluting, without removing his cap, and even without uttering a greeting. The Emperor stopped for a second, looked him straight in the eye, then turned around and went back.
*
By virtue of the rules set by General Kornilov209 the Imperial family was cut off from the outside world: no one could enter Tsarskoe without permission, and all letters, telegrams, and phone calls were subject to oversight.
On March 21, Kerensky appeared unexpectedly at Tsarskoe. It was his first opportunity to meet face to face the object of some of his most virulent Duma speeches. His description of the encounter, and the impression which Nicholas made on him, is of considerable interest:
The whole family was standing huddled in confusion around a small table near a window in the adjoining room. A small man in uniform detached himself from the group and moved forward to meet me, hesitating and smiling weakly. It was the Emperor. On the threshold of the room in which I awaited him he stopped, as if uncertain what to do next. He did not know what my attitude would be. Was he to receive me as a host or should he wait until I spoke to him? Should he hold out his hand, or should he wait for my salutation? I sensed his embarrassment at once as well as the confusion of the whole family left alone with a terrible revolutionary. I quickly went up to Nicholas II, held out my hand with a smile, and said abruptly “Kerensky,” as I usually introduce myself. He shook my hand firmly, smiled, seemingly encouraged, and led me at once to his family. His son and daughters were obviously consumed with curiosity and gazed fixedly at me. Alexandra Feodorovna, stiff, proud and haughty, extended her hand reluctantly, as if under compulsion. Nor was I particularly eager to shake hands with her, our palms barely touching. This was typical of the difference in character and temperament between the husband and wife. I felt at once that Alexandra Feodorovna, though broken and angry, was a clever woman with a strong will. In those few seconds I understood the psychology of the whole tragedy that had been going on for many years behind the palace walls. My subsequent interviews with the Emperor, which were very few, only confirmed by first impression.…
I for one do not think he was the outcast, the inhuman monster, the deliberate murderer I used to imagine. I began to realize that there was a human side to him. It became clear to me that he had acquiesced in the whole ruthless system without being moved by any personal ill will and without even realizing that it was bad. His mentality and his circumstances kept him wholly out of touch with the people. He heard of the blood and tears of thousands upon thousands only through official documents, in which they were represented as “measures” taken by the authorities “in the interest of the peace and safety of the State.” Such reports did not convey to him the pain and suffering of the victims, but only the “heroism” of the soldiers “faithful in the fulfillment of their duty to the Czar and the Fatherland.” From his youth he had been trained to believe that his welfare and the welfare of Russia were one and the same thing, so that the “disloyal” workmen, peasants and students who were shot down, executed or exiled seemed to him mere monsters and outcasts of humanity who must be destroyed for the sake of the country and the “faithful subjects” themselves.…
48.
Ex-Tsar Nicholas at Tsarskoe Selo, March 1917, under house arrest.
In the course of my occasional short interviews with Nicholas II at Tsarskoe Selo, I tried to fathom his character and, I think, on the whole I succeeded. He was an extremely reserved man, who distrusted and utterly despised mankind. He was not well educated, but he had some knowledge of human nature. He did not care for anything or anyone except his son, and perhaps his daughters. This terrible indifference to all external things made him seem like some unnatural automaton. As I studied his face, I seemed to see behind his smile and charming eyes a stiff, frozen mask of utter loneliness and desolation. I think he may have been a mystic, seeking communion with Heaven patiently and passionately, and weary of all earthly things. Perhaps everything on earth had become insignificant and distasteful to him because all his desires had been so easily gratified. When I began to know this living mask I understood why it had been so easy to overthrow his power. He did not wish to fight for it and it simply fell from his hands. Authority, like everything else, he held too cheap. He was altogether weary of it. He threw off authority as formerly he might have thrown off a dress uniform and put on a simpler one. It was a new experience for him to find himself a plain citizen without the duties or robes of state. To retire into private life was not a tragedy for him. Old Madame Naryshkina, the lady-in-waiting, told me that he had said to her: “How glad I am that I need no longer attend to these tiresome interviews and sign those everlasting documents! I shall read, walk and spend my time with the children.” And, she added, this was no pose on his part. Indeed, all those who watched him in his captivity were unanimous in saying that Nicholas II seemed generally to be very good-tempered and appeared to enjoy his new manner of life. He chopped wood and piled up the logs in stacks in the park. He did a little gardening and rowed and played with the children. It seemed as if a heavy burden had fallen from his shoulders and that he was greatly relieved.
210
Given the sentiments of the Ispolkom, it was unlikely ever to have approved the government’s plans to allow Nicholas to leave for England. Nevertheless, it came as something of a shock when at the end of March (OS) Britain informed the Provisional Government that she was withdrawing her invitation to the ex-Tsar. It was believed then and for a long time afterward that it was Prime Minister David Lloyd George who had dissuaded George V from following his generous impulses. Lloyd George himself liked to perpetuate this impression.211 But it has since become known that he did so to protect the King, who had vetoed the earlier decision for fear that it would embarrass the Crown and irritate Labor MPs who were “expressing adverse opinions to the proposal.”212 The King’s role in this dishonorable action was kept in strict secrecy: instructions went out “to keep an eye on anything that may be put into the War Cabinet minutes likely to hurt the King’s feelings.”213 It subsequently became Britain’s stated policy not to allow any member of the Russian royal family on her soil while the war was on, with the exception of the Empress Dowager Marie, the Danish-born sister of Edward VII’s widow, Alexandra.*
According to Kerensky, Nicholas was shattered to learn of the British refusal214—not because he wanted to leave Russia, but because it was further proof of the “treason and cowardice and deception” with which he felt surrounded. He spent the next four months in forced idleness—reading, playing games, taking walks, and working in the garden.
The February Revolution had many striking features that distinguish it from other revolutionary upheavals. But the most striking of all was the remarkable rapidity with which the Russian state fell apart. It was as if the greatest empire in the world, covering one-sixth of the earth’s surface, were an artificial construction, without organic unity, held together by wires all of which converged in the person of the monarch. The instant the monarch withdrew, the wires snapped and the whole structure collapsed in a heap. Kerensky says that there were moments when it seemed to him that
the word “revolu
tion” [was] quite inapplicable to what happened in Russia [between February 27 and March 3]. A whole world of national and political relationships sank to the bottom, and at once all existing political and tactical programs, however bold and well conceived, appeared hanging aimlessly and uselessly in space.
215
Rozanov described the phenomenon in his own pungent style:
Russia wilted in two days. At the very most, three. Even
Novoe vremia
could not have been shut down as quickly as Russia shut down. It is amazing how she suddenly fell apart, all of her, down to particles, to pieces. Indeed, such an upheaval had never occurred before, not excluding “the Great Migrations of Peoples” … There was no Empire, no Church, no army, no working class. And what remained? Strange to say, literally nothing. A base people remained.
216
By late April, eight weeks after the Revolution had broken out, Russia was foundering. On April 26 the Provisional Government issued a pathetic appeal in which it conceded it was unable to run the country. Kerensky now voiced regrets that he did not die when the Revolution was still young and filled with hope that the nation could manage to govern itself “without whips and cudgels.”217
Russians, having gotten rid of tsarism, on which they used to blame all their ills, stood bewildered in the midst of their newly gained freedom. They were not unlike the lady in a Balzac story who had been sick for so long that when finally cured thought herself struck by a new disease.
*According to E. I. Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia v fevral’skom perevorote (Leningrad, 1927), 85, the troops used machine guns, but this is almost certainly wrong. A noncommissioned officer who took part in the incident claimed that the troops fired into the air and that the killing was done by a drunken officer: Byloe, No. 5–6/27–28 (1917), 8–9.
*In April-June 1917, mutinies broke out among French troops on the Western Front. They were fueled by soldier resentment of the heavy casualties suffered in the Nivelle offensive, but the news of the Russian Revolution, which led to a rebellion of Russian units in France, also played a part. Eventually, fifty-four divisions were affected: in May 1917 the French army was incapable of offensive operations. And yet the mutiny, which the French government managed to keep secret for decades, was eventually contained and at no time threatened to bring down the state—a telling commentary on the national and political cohesion of France as compared with that of Russia. See John Williams, Mutiny 1917 (London, 1962), and Richard M. Watt, Dare Call It Treason (New York, 1963).
*Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 105; KA, No. 2/21 (1927), 11–12. Michael alone signed the message, but it was the result of the joint efforts of himself, Prime Minister Golitsyn, Rodzianko, Beliaev, and Kryzhanovskii: Revoliutsiia, I, 40.
*Ruzskii was arrested by the Bolsheviks in September 1918 while living in retirement in the North Caucasian city of Piatigorsk, and murdered, along with 136 other victims of terror, the following month. He was very anxious to clear his name of charges that he had pressured Nicholas to abdicate. (Alexandra called him “Judas” in a letter to Nicholas of March 3, 1917: KA, No. 4,1923, 219.) His story, as recounted by S. N. Vilchkovskii, is in RL, No. 3 (1922), 161–86.
*After the Revolution, in emigration, he would proclaim himself successor to the Russian throne.
*“Riding school” apparently refers to the royal manège in Paris, the seat of the National Assembly during the Revolution, notorious for its unruly proceedings.
*A. Shliapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god, III (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927), 173. The secrecy may have been due to embarrassment that so many Ispolkom members were non-Russians (Georgians, Jews, Latvians, Poles, Lithuanians, etc.): V. B. Stankevich, Vospominaniia, 1914–1919 g. (Berlin, 1920), 86.
†B. Ia. Nalivaiskii, ed., Petrogradskii Sovet Rabochikh i Soldatskikh Deputatov: Protokoly Zasedanii Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta i Biuro Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta (Moscow-Leningrad, 1925), 59. According to Marc Ferro, Des Soviets au Communisme Bureaucratique (Paris, 1980), 36, the resolution was moved by Shliapnikov. It was by this procedure that in May, on his return from the United States, Leon Trotsky would receive a seat on the Ispolkom.
*N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii, I (Berlin-Petersburg-Moscow, 1922), 255–56. Revoliutsiia, I, 49; T. Hasegawa, The February Revolution: Petrograd 1917 (Seattle-London, 1981) 410–12. The minority consisted of members of the Jewish Bund augmented by some Mensheviks and Mezhraiontsy.
*When on March 18 General Ruzskii asked Rodzianko to explain the chain of authority in the new government, Rodzianko answered that the Provisional Government had been appointed by the Provisional Committee of the Duma, which retained control over its actions and ministerial appointments (RL, No. 3, 1922, 158–59). Since the Provisional Committee had ceased to function by then, this explanation was either delusion or deception.
*According to S. P. Melgunov, Martovskie dni (Paris, 1961), 107, the term “Provisional Government” was not officially used until March 10.
*Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 148, gives the total casualties as 1,315. Avdeev’s figures, which seem more accurate, are 1,443 victims, of which 168 or 169 were killed or died from wounds: 11 policemen, 70 military personnel, 22 workers, 5 students, and 60 others, 5 of them children (Revoliutsiia, I, in).
†In this picture (Plate 44) most of the military appear to wear officer’s uniforms.
*Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 145. The message to Ivanov was sent at Alekseev’s request: KA, No. 2/21 (1927), 31.
*Ivanov made his way to Tsarskoe Selo, where he met with the Empress (Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 148), but his men were stopped at the approaches to Petrograd at Luga by mutinous troops and dissuaded from proceeding with their mission: RL, No. 3 (1922), 126.
†In fact, the “people” were nowhere clamoring for the Tsarevich to assume the throne under a regency: this was wishful thinking on the part of Duma politicians.
*P. E. Shchegolev, ed., Otrechenie Nikolaia II (Leningrad, 1927), 203–5. Admiral A. I. Nepenin, commander of the Baltic Fleet, concurred as well. His telegram came late: he himself was murdered two days later by sailors: N. de Basily, Diplomat of Imperial Russia, 1903–1917: Memoirs (Stanford, Calif., 1973), 121, and RL, No. 3 (1922), 143–44. There was no response from Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who commanded the Black Sea Fleet.
*Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 159. Later, when he returned to Tsarskoe, Nicholas showed Count Benckendorff the cables from the front commanders to explain his decision to abdicate: P. K. Benckendorff, Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo (London, 1927), 44–45.
*Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 171. According to Voeikov (Padenie, III, 79), Nicholas chose to go to Mogilev rather than proceed directly to Tsarskoe because the road to there was still barred.
*At that time, the Soviet transferred to the Smolnyi Institute, which had housed a finishing school for aristocratic girls.
*Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 191; G. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, II (Boston, 1923), 104–5. Miliukov withheld the King’s message from Nicholas.
* As described in Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 198, from the words of Mstislavskii. Benckendorff, who witnessed the scene, says that Mstislavskii was content to see the ex-Tsar pass in the corridor: Benckendorff, Last Days, 49–50.
*Although the daughter of the British Ambassador has gone to great lengths to depict her father as highly upset by his government’s action (Meriel Buchanan, The Dissolution of an Empire, London, 1932, 196–98), English archives show that he endorsed it: Kenneth Rose, King George V (London, 1983), 214.
PART TWO
The Bolsheviks Conquer Russia
Russia has been conquered by the Bolsheviks.…
—Lenin, March 1918
[The Bolshevik Party] set itself the task of overthrowing the world.
—Trotsky
, The Revolution Betrayed
9
Lenin and the Origins of Bolshevism
He will go far, for he believes all he says.
—Mirabeau of Robespierre
&nb
sp; One need not believe that history is made by “great men” to appreciate the immense importance of Lenin for the Russian Revolution and the regime that issued from it. It is not only that the power which he accumulated allowed Lenin to exert a decisive influence on the course of events but also that the regime which he established in October 1917 institutionalized, as it were, his personality. The Bolshevik Party was Lenin’s creation: as its founder, he conceived it in his own image and, overcoming all opposition from within and without, kept it on the course he had charted. The same party, on seizing power in October 1917, promptly eliminated all rival parties and organizations to become Russia’s exclusive source of political authority. Communist Russia, therefore, has been from the beginning to an unusual extent a reflection of the mind and psyche of one man: his biography and its history are uniquely fused.
Although few historical figures have been so much written about, authentic information on Lenin is sparse. Lenin was so unwilling to distinguish himself from his cause or even to concede that he had an existence separate from it that he left almost no autobiographical data: his life, as he conceived it, was at one with the party’s. In his own eyes and in the eyes of his associates he had only a public personality. Such individual traits as are attributed to him in the Communist literature are the standard virtues of hagiography: self-denying devotion to the cause, modesty, self-discipline, generosity.
The Russian Revolution Page 53
