Again Rodzianko declared that “Alexandra Fedorovna is fiercely and universally hated, and all circles are clamoring for her removal. While she remains in power, we shall continue on the road to ruin.” The Grand Duke agreed with him and begged Rodzianko to go again to tell the Tsar. On January 20, Nicholas received him.
“Your Majesty,” said Rodzianko, “I consider the state of the country to have become more critical and menacing than ever. The spirit of all the people is such that the gravest upheavals may be expected.… All Russia is unanimous in claiming a change of government and the appointment of a responsible premier invested with the confidence of the nation.… Sire, there is not a single honest or reliable man left in your entourage; all the best have either been eliminated or have resigned.… It is an open secret that the Empress issues orders without your knowledge, that Ministers report to her on matters of state. … Indignation against and hatred of the Empress are growing throughout the country. She is looked upon as Germany’s champion. Even the common people are speaking of it.…”
Nicholas interrupted: “Give me the facts. There are no facts to confirm your statements.”
“There are no facts,” Rodzianko admitted, “but the whole trend of policy directed by Her Majesty gives ground for such ideas. To save your family, Your Majesty ought to find some way of preventing the Empress from exercising any influence on politics.… Your Majesty, do not compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country.”
Nicholas pressed his head between his hands. “Is it possible,” he asked, “that for twenty-two years I tried to act for the best and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?”
The question was astonishing. It was completely beyond the bounds of propriety for Rodzianko to answer, yet, realizing that it had been asked honestly, man to man, he summoned his courage and said, “Yes, Your Majesty, for twenty-two years you followed a wrong course.”
A month later, on February 23, Rodzianko saw Nicholas for the last time. This time the Tsar’s attitude was “positively harsh” and Rodzianko, in turn, was blunt. Announcing that revolution was imminent, he declared, “I consider it my duty, Sire, to express to you my profound foreboding and conviction that this will be my last report to you.”
Nicholas said nothing and Rodzianko was curtly excused.
Rodzianko’s was the last of the great warnings to the Tsar. Nicholas rejected them all. He had pledged to preserve the autocracy and hand it on intact to his son. In his mind, urbane grand dukes, foreign ambassadors and members of the Duma did not represent the peasant masses of the real Russia. Most of all, he felt that to give way during the war would be taken as a sign of personal weakness which would only accelerate revolution. Perhaps when the war was ended, he would modify the autocracy and reorganize the government. “I will do everything afterwards,” he said. “But I cannot act now. I cannot do more than one thing at a time.”
The attacks on the Empress and the suggestions that she be sent away only angered him. “The Empress is a foreigner,” he declared fervently. “She has no one to protect her but myself. I shall never abandon her under any circumstances. In any case, all the charges made against her are false. Wicked lies are being told about her. But I shall know how to make her respected.”
Early in March, after two months of rest with his family, Nicholas’s spirits began to improve. He was optimistic that the army, equipped with new arms from Britain and France, could finish the war by the end of the year. Complaining of the “poisoned air” of Petrograd, he was anxious to return to
Protopopov, meanwhile, sensing the approach of a crisis, tried to mask his fears by recommending forcible countermeasures. Four cavalry regiments of the Guard were ordered from the front to Petrograd, and the city police began training in the use of machine guns. The cavalry never arrived. At
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
This conversation took place on Wednesday, March 7. Five days later, on Monday, March 12, the Imperial government in Petrograd collapsed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
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
