Protopopov.” Shulgin, at that moment, was in the adjoining room. “Suddenly,” he wrote, “there was coming something especially exciting; and at once the reason was whispered to me. ‘Protopopov is arrested,’ and at that moment I saw in the mirror the door burst open violently and Kerensky broke in. He was pale and his eyes shone, his arm was raised; with this stretched out arm, he seemed to cut through the crowd; everyone recognized him and stood back on either side. And then in the mirror I saw that behind Kerensky there were soldiers with rifles and, between the bayonets, a miserable little figure with a hopelessly harassed and sunken face—it was with difficulty that I recognized Protopopov. ‘Don’t dare touch that man!’ shouted Kerensky—pushing his way on, pallid, with impossible eyes, one arm raised, cutting through the crowd, the other tragically dropped, pointing at ‘that man.’ … It looked as if he were leading him to execution, to something dreadful. And the crowd fell apart. Kerensky dashed past like the flaming torch of revolutionary justice and behind him they dragged that miserable little figure in the rumpled greatcoat surrounded by bayonets.”
By Tuesday morning, March 13, except for a last outpost of tsarism in the Winter Palace, which General Khabalov held with 1,500 loyal troops, the city was in the hands of the revolution. In the afternoon, the revolutionaries in the Fortress of Peter and Paul across the river gave Khabalov’s men twenty minutes to abandon the palace or face bombardment; having lost all hope, the dejected loyalists marched out and simply melted away.
In the anarchy that followed, wild celebrations were mingled with violent outbursts of mob fury. In Kronstadt, the naval base outside the city, the sailors brutally slaughtered their officers, killing one and burying a second, still living, side by side with the corpse. In Petrograd, armored cars, with clusters of rebel soldiers perched on their tops, roared up and down the streets, flying red flags. Firemen, arriving to put out the fires blazing in public buildings, were driven away by soldiers and workmen who wanted to see the buildings burn. Kschessinska’s mansion was sacked by the mob from top to bottom, the grand piano smashed, the carpets stained with ink, the bathtubs filled with cigarette butts.*
On Wednesday, March 14, even those who had wavered flocked to join the victors. That morning saw the mass obeisance to the Duma of the Imperial Guard. From his Embassy window, Paleologue watched three regiments pass on their way to the Tauride Palace: “They marched in perfect order,” he wrote, “with their band at the head. A few officers came first, wearing a large red cockade in their caps, a knot of red ribbon on their shoulders and red stripes on their sleeves. The old regimental standard, covered with icons, was surrounded by red flags.” Behind came the Guard, including units from the garrison at Tsarskoe Selo. “At the head were the Cossacks of the Escort, those magnificent horsemen who are the flower … and privileged elite of the Imperial Guard. Then came His Majesty’s Regiment, the sacred legion which is recruited from all the units of the Guard and whose special function it is to secure the personal safety of their sovereigns.”
Even more spectacular was the march of the Marine Guard, the
Cyril’s behavior drew a terse, prophetic comment from Paleologue: “Who can tell whether this treacherous insinuation will not before long provide the foundation for a terrible charge against the unfortunate Empress. The Grand Duke Cyril should … be reminded that the most infamous calumnies which Marie Antoinette had to meet when she faced the Revolutionary Tribunal, first took wing at the elegant suppers of the Comte d’Artois [the jealous younger brother of Louis XVI].”
Petrograd had fallen. Everywhere in the city, the revolution was triumphant. At the Tauride Palace, two rival assemblies, both convinced that tsarism was ended, were embarking on a struggle for survival and power. Yet, Russia was immense and Petrograd only a tiny, artificial mound, scarcely Russian, in a corner of the Tsar’s empire. The two million people of Petrograd were only a fraction of the scores of millions of subjects; even in Petrograd, the revolutionary workers and soldiers were less than a quarter of the city’s population. A week had gone by since Nicholas had left for Headquarters and the first disorders had broken out. In that week, he had lost his capital, but still he kept his throne. How much longer could he keep it?
The Allied ambassadors, desperately concerned that the fall of tsarism would mean Russia’s withdrawal from the war, clung to the hope that the Tsar would not topple. Buchanan still talked in terms of Nicholas “granting a constitution and empowering Rodzianko to select the members of a new government.” Paleologue thought that the Tsar had a chance if he pardoned the rebels, appointed the Duma committee as his ministers and “appeared in person … and solemnly announced on the steps of Our Lady of Kazan that a new era is beginning for Russia. But if he waits a day it will be too late.” It was Knox who sensed more accurately the ominous future. Standing at a corner of the Liteiny Prospect, watching the burning of the district court across the street, he heard a soldier say, “We have only one wish: to beat the Germans. We will begin with the Germans here and with a family that you know called Romanov.”
* Krupskaya’s mother died while Lenin was in Switzerland. There is a story that one night Krupskaya rose exhausted from her vigil beside her dying mother and asked Lenin, who was writing at a table, to awaken her if her mother needed her. Lenin agreed and Krupskaya collapsed into bed. The next morning she awoke to find her mother dead and Lenin still at work. Distraught, she confronted Lenin, who replied, “You told me to wake you if your mother needed you. She died. She didn’t need you.”
* One elegant Petrograd mansion was saved by the quick wits of its owner, the artful Countess Kleinmichel. Before the mob arrived, she barred her doors, shuttered her windows and placed in front of her house a sign which read: “No trespassing. This house is the property of the Petrograd Soviet. Countess Kleinmichel has been taken to the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul.” Inside, Countess Kleinmichel then packed her bags and planned her escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
NICHOLAS, leaving home for Headquarters on the night of March 7, was subdued and downhearted. Twice, from the train, he sent melancholy telegrams tinged with the loneliness that overwhelmed him on leaving his family after two months at Tsarskoe Selo. In Mogilev, he missed the buoyant presence of the Tsarevich. “Here in the house it is so still,” he wrote to Alexandra. “No noise, no excited shouts. I imagine him sleeping—all his little things, photographs and knicknacks, in exemplary order in his bedroom.”
Nicholas’s last letters as Tsar, written as it were from the brink of the abyss, have often been cited as evidence of his incorrigible stupidity. The most famous remark of all, invariably quoted in even the briefest estimate of Nicholas’s character, is the line: “I shall take up dominoes again in my spare time.” Taken by itself, the remark is devastating. Any tsar with so little wit as to sit playing dominoes while his capital revolts deserves nothing: neither his throne nor understanding.
Yet, there is more to it than that. It was the Tsar’s first night back at Army Headquarters and he was writing to his wife of familiar things. Immediately before this much-quoted line, he is talking about his son. He says that he will greatly miss the games they had played every evening; in lieu of them, he will take up dominoes again to relax in his spare moments. Even more significantly, the letter was written not against a backdrop of revolution, but at a moment when Nicholas believed that the capital was quiet. The date on the letter is March 8, the day on which the first bread riots occurred in the city. The first reports of these disorders arrived at Headquarters on the morning of the 9th; Nicholas did not learn until the 11th that anyone in Petrograd considered them serious.
Despite the weeks of rest with his family, Nicholas returned to Mogilev still mentally fatigued and physically
