replied, “I will not be the Marat of the Russian Revolution. I will take the Tsar to Murmansk myself. The Russian Revolution does not take vengeance.”
Murmansk was the gateway to England and it was to England that all of Kerensky’s fellow ministers hoped that the Tsar could be sent. As early as March 19, while Nicholas was still with his mother at
Buchanan was equally concerned, and the following day his urgent telegram was placed before the British War Cabinet. At the head of the table at 10 Downing Street sat the Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. The fiery Welshman had little sympathy for the Russian autocracy. In a famous speech made in August 1915, he had thundered grim approval of Russia’s terrible defeats: “The Eastern sky is dark and lowering. The stars have been clouded over. I, regard that stormy horizon with anxiety but with no dread. Today I can see the colour of a new hope beginning to empurple the sky. The enemy in their victorious march know not what they are doing. Let them beware, for they are unshackling Russia. With their monster artillery they are shattering the rusty bars that fettered the strength of the people of Russia.”
When Imperial Russia fell, Lloyd George exuberantly telegraphed the Provisional Government: “It is with sentiments of the profoundest satisfaction that the people of Great Britain … have learned that their great ally Russia now stands with the nations which base their institutions upon responsible government.… We believe that the Revolution is the greatest service which they [the Russian people] have yet made to the cause for which the Allied peoples have been fighting since August 1914. It reveals the fundamental truth that this war is at bottom a struggle for popular Government as well as for liberty.”
In his own heart, Lloyd George was highly reluctant to permit the deposed Tsar and his family to come to England. Nevertheless, he and his ministers agreed that, as the request for asylum had come not from the Tsar but from Britain’s new ally, the Provisional Government, it could not be refused. Buchanan was signaled that Britain would receive Nicholas but that the Russian government would be expected to pay his bills.
On March 23, Buchanan carried this message to Miliukov. Pleased but increasingly anxious—the unauthorized descent on Tsarskoe Selo by armored cars filled with soldiers had occurred the day before—Miliukov assured the Ambassador that Russia would make a generous financial allowance for the Imperial family. He begged, however, that Buchanan not reveal that the Provisional Government had taken the initiative in making the arrangement. If the Soviet knew, he explained, the project was doomed.
But the Soviet, rigidly hostile to the idea of the Tsar leaving Russia, already knew. Kerensky had told them, in Moscow, that he would personally escort the Imperial family to a British ship. On March 22—the same day that Nicholas returned to his family, that Rasputin’s corpse was disinterred, that the British Cabinet decided to offer asylum—the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet was shouting hoarsely, “The Republic must be safeguarded against the Romanovs returning to the historical arena. That means that the dangerous persons must be directly in the hands of the Petrograd Soviet.” Telegrams were wired to all towns along the railways leading from Tsarskoe Selo with instructions to the workers to block the passage of the Tsar’s train. At the same time, the Soviet resolved that the Tsar should be taken from Tsarskoe Selo, properly arrested and clapped into the bastion of the Fortress of Peter and Paul until the time of his trial and execution. The fact that this last resolution was never carried out was attributed by one scornful Bolshevik writer to the domination of the Soviet at that point by irresolute Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.
For the moment, the question of the Tsar’s fate became a stand-off between the Soviet and the Provisional Government. The Soviet lacked the strength to penetrate the Alexander Palace and simply drag the family off to the Fortress. The government, on the other hand, was not sufficiently master of the country, and especially of the railways, to embark on an enterprise such as moving Nicholas to Murmansk. This journey, from Tsarskoe Selo, south of the capital, through the heart of Petrograd, meant running the very real risk that the train would be stopped, the Imperial family pulled off and carted away to the Fortress or worse.
Unwilling to take this risk, Kerensky, Miliukov and their colleagues decided to postpone the trip until the psychological atmosphere improved. In the meantime, they appeased the Soviet. On the 24th, the day after the British offer of asylum arrived, the Provisional Government pledged to the Soviet that the deposed sovereigns would remain in Russia. On the 25th, Miliukov informed Buchanan that he could not even deliver to the Tsar a personal telegram from King George which declared harmlessly, “Events of last week have deeply distressed me. My thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I always have been in the past.” When Buchanan argued that the telegram had no political significance, Miliukov replied that he understood this, but that others would misinterpret it as part of a plot to escape. The only indication Nicholas and Alexandra ever had of this telegram was Kerensky’s comment during his first visit to Tsarskoe Selo that the King and Queen of England were asking for news of their Russian relatives.
Days passed and the impasse remained. On April 2, Buchanan wrote to the Foreign Office, “Nothing has yet been decided about the Emperor’s journey to England.” On April 9, Buchanan talked to Kerensky, who declared that the Tsar’s departure would be delayed for several more weeks while his papers were examined and he and his wife were questioned. In England, meanwhile, the news that asylum had been offered had been received coldly by the Labor Party and many Liberals. As opposition to the invitation began to mount, the British government began backing away. On April 10, a semi-official Foreign Office statement coolly announced that “His Majesty’s Government does not insist on its former offer of hospitality to the Imperial family.”
On April 15, even Buchanan began to withdraw his support for asylum, explaining to London that the Tsar’s presence in England might easily be used by the extreme Left in Russia “as an excuse for rousing public opinion against us.” He suggested that perhaps Nicholas might be received in France. Hearing this, Lord Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador in Paris, wrote a scathing personal letter to the Foreign Secretary, brimming with vicious misinformation about the Empress Alexandra. “I do not think that the ex-Emperor and his family would be welcome in France,” wrote Bertie. “The Empress is not only a Boche by birth but in sentiment. She did all she could to bring about an understanding with Germany. She is regarded as a criminal or a criminal lunatic and the ex-Emperor as a criminal from his weakness and submission to her promptings. Yours ever, Bertie.”
From April until June, the plan remained suspended. Kerensky admitted later that, during this period, the suspension had nothing to do with the views of English Liberals and Laborites but was determined by the internal political situation in Russia. By early summer, however, conditions in Russia had changed and the moment seemed ripe for a discreet transfer of the Imperial family to Murmansk. Once again, the Russian government approached England on the matter of asylum.
“[We] inquired of Sir George Buchanan as to when a cruiser could be sent to take on board the deposed ruler and his family,” said Kerensky. “Simultaneously, a promise was obtained from the German Government through the medium of the Danish minister, Skavenius, that German submarines would not attack the particular warship which carried the Royal exiles. Sir George Buchanan and ourselves were impatiently awaiting a reply from London. I do not remember exactly whether it was late in June or early in July when the British ambassador called, greatly distressed.… With tears in his eyes, scarcely able to control his emotions, Sir George informed … [us] of the British Government’s final refusal to give refuge to the former Emperor of Russia. I cannot quote the exact text of the letter.… But I can say definitely that this refusal was due exclusively to considerations of internal British politics.” Apparently, Bertie’s letter from Paris had done its poisonous work, for Kerensky remembers the letter explaining that “the Prime Minister was unable to offer hospitality to people whose pro-German sympathies were well- known.”
Subsequently, confusion, accusations and a sense of guilt appeared to permeate the recollections of all those involved in this inglorious episode. Both Sir George Buchanan and Lloyd George flatly contradicted Kerensky, insisting that Britain’s offer of asylum was never withdrawn and that the failure of the project was solely due to the fact that the Provisional Government—in Buchanan’s words—”were not masters in their house.” Meriel Buchanan, the Ambassador’s daughter, later overrode her father’s account, explaining that he had offered it in order to protect Lloyd George, who was responsible for the refusal. She recalled that a telegram refusing to let the Tsar come to
