Alexander III, had accepted with difficulty the accession to the throne of his mild-mannered nephew. A vociferous Anglophobe, he was infuriated when Nicholas chose as his consort a princess who, although born in Darmstadt, was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Vladimir’s widow, Marie Pavlovna, also was German, a Mecklenberger, and the third lady of the Russian Empire, ranking directly after the two Empresses. Socially, Marie Pavlovna was everything that Alexandra was not. Energetic, poised, intelligent, well read, devoted to gossip and intrigue, openly ambitious for her three sons, she turned her grand palace on the Neva into a glittering court which far outshone Tsarskoe Selo. In the lively conversations which dominated her dinner parties and soirees, amusement and scorn directed at the ruling couple were frequent themes. Never did the Grand Duchess forget that after the Tsarevich, who was ill, and the Tsar’s brother, who had married a commoner, the next in line for the throne was her eldest son, Cyril.
In addition, each of the Vladimir sons had separate personal reasons for prickly relations with the Tsar and the Empress. Cyril was married to the divorced wife of Alexandra’s brother Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse. Andrei kept as his mistress the ballerina, Mathilde Kschessinska, who had been in love with Nicholas II before his marriage. Boris, the middle Vladimir son, had proposed to his cousin Olga, the Tsar’s eldest daughter. The Empress, in writing to her husband, expressed some of the flavor of her rebuff to Boris: “What an awful set his wife would be dragged into … intrigues without end, fast manners and conversations … a half-worn, blase … man of 38 to a pure fresh girl 18 years his junior and live in a house in which many a woman has ‘shared’ his life!! An inexperienced girl would suffer terribly to have her husband 4–5th hand—or more!” As the proposal had been transmitted not only in the name of Boris, but in that of his mother as well, Marie Pavlovna bore great bitterness toward Alexandra.
Rodzianko got a taste of this bitterness, and the conspiracy growing out of it, when in January 1917 he was urgently invited to lunch at the Vladimir Palace. After lunch, he wrote, the Grand Duchess “began to talk of the general state of affairs, of the Government’s incompetence, of Protopopov and of the Empress. She mentioned the latter’s name, becoming more and more excited, dwelling on her nefarious influence and interference in everything, and said she was driving the country to destruction; that she was the cause of the danger which threatened the Emperor and the rest of the Imperial family; that such conditions could no longer be tolerated; that things must be changed, something done, removed, destroyed.…”
Wishing to understand her meaning more precisely, Rodzianko asked, “What do you mean by ‘removed’?”
“The Duma must do something. She must be annihilated.”
“Who?”
“The Empress.”
“Your Highness,” said Rodzianko, “allow me to treat this conversation as if it had never taken place, because if you address me as the President of the Duma, my oath of allegiance compels me to wait at once on His Imperial Majesty and report to him that the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna has declared to me that the Empress must be annihilated.”
For weeks, the grand-ducal plot was the talk of Petrograd. Everyone knew the details: four regiments of the Guard were to make a night march on Tsarskoe Selo and seize the Imperial family. The Empress was to be shut up in a convent—the classic Russian method of disposing of unwanted empresses—and the Tsar was to be forced to abdicate in favor of his son, with the Grand Duke Nicholas as Regent. No one, not even the secret police who had collected all the details, took the Grand Dukes seriously. “Yesterday evening,” Paleologue wrote on January 9, “Prince Gabriel Constantinovich gave a supper for his mistress, formerly an actress. The guests included the Grand Duke Boris … a few officers and a squad of elegant courtesans. During the evening the only topic was the conspiracy—the regiments of the Guard which can be relied on, the most favorable moment for the outbreak, etc. And all this with the servants moving about, harlots looking on and listening, gypsies singing and the whole company bathed in the aroma of Moet and Chandon
The Imperial government was crumbling and among those who watched the process with dismay were some who were not Russian. The war and the alliance had conferred on the Ambassadors of France and Britain, Maurice Paleologue and Sir George Buchanan, positions of vast importance. Through the two Embassies in Petrograd and across the desks of the two Ambassadors flowed major questions of supply, munitions and military operations, as well as matters of diplomacy. As it became increasingly apparent that Russia’s domestic political crisis was affecting her capacity as a military ally, Buchanan and Paleologue found themselves in a delicate situation. Accredited personally to the Tsar, they had no right to speak on matters affecting Russian internal policy. Nevertheless, by the winter of 1917 both Ambassadors found themselves begged on all sides to use their access to the Tsar to plead for a government acceptable to the Duma. Personally convinced that nothing else could save Russia as an ally, they both agreed. Paleologue’s attempt, put off by Nicholas’s vagueness and gentle courtesy, failed completely. On January 12, Buchanan, in turn, was received at Tsarskoe Selo.
Sir George Buchanan was an old-school diplomat, distinguished by discretion, silvery hair and a monocle. Seven years’ service in Russia had left him weary and frail, but with a host of friends and admirers, including the Tsar himself. His only handicap in fulfilling his post was his inability to speak Russian. This made no difference in Petrograd, where everyone who mattered also spoke French or English. In 1916, however, Buchanan visited Moscow, where he was made an honorary citizen of the city and given a priceless icon and a massive silver loving cup. “In the heart of Russia,” wrote R. H. Bruce Lockhart, the British Consul General, who was assisting in Buchanan’s visit, “he had to say at least a word or two in Russian. We had carefully rehearsed the ambassador to hold it up and say to the distinguished audience, ‘
At Tsarskoe Selo, Buchanan was surprised to be received by the Tsar in the formal audience chamber rather than in Nicholas’s study, where they usually talked. Nevertheless, he asked whether he could speak frankly, and Nicholas assented. Buchanan came straight to the point, telling the Tsar that Russia needed a government in which the nation could have confidence. “Your Majesty, if I may be permitted to say so, has but one safe course open to you—namely, to break down the barrier that separates you from your people and to regain their confidence.”
Drawing himself up and giving Buchanan a hard look, Nicholas asked, “Do you mean that I am to regain the confidence of my people or that they are to regain
“Both, Sire,” Buchanan replied, “for without such mutual confidence Russia will never win this war.”
The Ambassador criticized Protopopov, “who, if Your Majesty will forgive my saying so, is bringing Russia to the verge of ruin.”
“I chose M. Protopopov,” Nicholas interjected, “from the ranks of the Duma in order to be agreeable to them—and this is my reward.”
Buchanan warned that revolutionary language was being spoken not only in Petrograd but all over Russia, and that “in the event of revolution only a small portion of the army can be counted on to defend the dynasty.” Then he concluded with a surge of personal feeling:
“An ambassador, I am well aware, has no right to hold the language which I have held to Your Majesty, and I had to take my courage in both hands before speaking as I have done.… [But] if I were to see a friend walking through a wood on a dark night along a path which I knew ended in a precipice, would it not be my duty, Sire, to warn him of his danger? And is it not equally my duty to warn Your Majesty of the abyss that lies ahead of you?”
The Tsar was moved by Buchanan’s appeal and, pressing the Ambassador’s hand as he left, said, “I thank you, Sir George.” The Empress, however, was outraged by Buchanan’s presumption. “The Grand Duke Serge remarked that had I been a Russian subject, I should have been sent to Siberia,” Buchanan wrote later.
Although Rodzianko had disdained Marie Pavlovna’s suggestion that the Empress be “annihilated,” he agreed with the Grand Duchess that the Empress must be stripped of political powers. Earlier in the fall, when Protopopov had come to him and mentioned that the Tsar might appoint the Duma President as Premier, Rodzianko had stated as one of his terms that “the Empress must renounce all interference in affairs of state and remain at Livadia until the end of the war.” Now, in the middle of winter, he received a visit from the Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Michael. Michael, the handsome, good-natured “Misha,” was living with his wife, Countess Brassova, at Gatchina, outside the capital. Although after the Tsarevich he was next in line for the throne, he had absolutely no influence on his brother. Worried and realizing his own helplessness, he asked how the desperate situation might be saved.
