Nicholas and Alexandra

England did arrive in Petrograd on April 10; she remembered the words her father used and the anguished expression on his face as he described the telegram. Lloyd George did not respond formally to her charge, but she noted that the former Prime Minister “is reported to have said in an interview that he does not remember refusing the late Emperor admission to England, but that, if the matter had been considered, he probably would have given such advice.” In his memoirs, Lloyd George left no doubt of his lack of sympathy for Imperial Russia or its Tsar. The Russian Empire, he said, was “an unseaworthy Ark. The timbers were rotten and most of the crew not much better. The captain was suited for a pleasure yacht in still waters, and his sailing master had been chosen by his wife, reclining in the cabin below.” Nicholas he dismissed as “only a crown without a head … the end was tragedy … but for that tragedy this country cannot be in any way held responsible.”

King George’s attitude on the matter vacillated. At first, he wanted to help his relatives, but by March 30, his private secretary was writing to the Foreign Secretary, “His Majesty cannot help doubting not only on account of the dangers of the voyage, but on general grounds of expediency, whether it is advisable that the Imperial family should take up their residence in this country.” By April 10, the King was concerned about the widespread indignation felt in England against the Tsar. He realized that if Nicholas came to England he would be obliged to receive his cousin, an act which would bring considerable unpopularity down on him. Accordingly, he suggested to Lloyd George that, because of the outburst of public opinion, the Russian government should perhaps be informed that Britain was obliged to withdraw its offer.

Later, of course, when the murder of the Imperial family had outraged the King, memories tended to blur. “The Russian Revolution of 1917 with the murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family had shaken my father’s confidence in the innate decency of mankind,” recalled the Duke of Windsor. “There was a very real bond between him and his first cousin, Nicky.… Both wore beards of a distinctive character and as young men, they had looked much alike.… It has long been my impression that, just before the Bolsheviks seized the Tsar, my father had personally planned to rescue him with a British cruiser, but in some way the plan was blocked. In any case, it hurt my father that Britain had not raised a hand to save his cousin Nicky. ‘Those politicians,’ he used to say. ‘If it had been one of their kind, they would have acted fast enough. But merely because the poor man was an emperor —’ ”

   In Switzerland, Lenin’s first reaction to the revolution in Russia was skepticism. Only seven weeks had passed since his statement on January 22, 1917, that “we older men may not live to see the decisive battles of the approaching revolution.” Even the news of the Tsar’s abdication and the establishment of a Provisional Government left him with reservations. In his view, the replacement of an autocracy by a bourgeois republic was not a genuine proletarian revolution; it was simply the substitution of one capitalist system for another. The fact that Miliukov and the Provisional Government intended to continue the war confirmed in his mind that they were no more than tools of Britain and France, which were capitalist, imperialist powers. On March 25, Lenin telegraphed instructions to the Bolsheviks in Petrograd, “Our tactics: absolute distrust, no support of the new government, Kerensky especially suspect, no rapprochement with the other parties.”

Lenin became desperate to reach Russia himself. “From the moment the news of the revolution came, Ilyich did not sleep and at night all sorts of incredible plans were made,” Krupskaya recalled. “We could travel by airplane. But such things could be thought of only in the semi-delirium of the night.” He considered donning a wig and traveling via France, England and the North Sea, but there was the chance of arrest or of being torpedoed by a U- boat. Suddenly, through the German minister in Berne, it was arranged that he should travel through Germany itself to Sweden, Finland and then to Russia. The German motive in this bizarre arrangement was sheer military necessity. Germany had gained little from the fall of tsarism, as the Provisional Government meant to continue the war. Germany needed a regime which would make peace. This Lenin promised to do. Even if he failed, the Germans knew that his presence inside Russia would create turmoil. Accordingly, on April 9, Lenin, Krupskaya and seventeen other Bolshevik exiles left Zurich to cross Germany in a “sealed” train. “The German leaders,” said Winston Churchill, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.”

On the night of April 16, after ten years away from Russia, Lenin arrived in Petrograd at the Finland Station. He stepped from his train into a vast crowd and a sea of red banners. In an armored car, he drove to Mathilde Kschessinska’s mansion, which had been commandeered as Bolshevik headquarters. From the dancer’s balcony, he addressed a cheering crowd, shouting to them that the war was “shameful imperialist slaughter.”

Although Lenin had been welcomed with the blaring triumph due a returning prophet, neither the Petrograd Soviet as a whole nor the Bolshevik minority within the Soviet were by any means ready to accept all of his dogma. In the early days of the revolution, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who dominated the Soviet believed that some degree of cooperation should be shown the Provisional Government, if only to prevent the restoration of the monarchy. Besides, Marxist theory called for a transitional period between the overthrow of absolutism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet might argue whether Nicholas belonged in his palace or in a cell, but its over-all policy was to support the policies of the Provisional Government “insofar as they correspond to the interests of the proletariat and of the broad masses of the people.” Even some Bolsheviks supported this program.

Lenin would have none of this. Speaking to the All-Russian Conference of Soviets on the morning after his return, he issued his famous April Theses, demanding overthrow of the Provisional Government, the abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. Most important, he demanded an end to the war and urged the troops at the front to begin fraternizing with the enemy. Amazement and consternation greeted Lenin’s words; he was interrupted in the middle of his speech by shouts, laughter and cries of “That is raving! That is the raving of a lunatic!” Even Molotov, who had remained one of the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd, and Stalin, who returned on March 26 from three years’ exile in Siberia, were caught off guard. Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper which they had been editing, had been agreeing that a protracted period of bourgeois government was necessary before proceeding to the final stage of the socialist revolution. Lenin’s enemies hastened to gibe. He had been away too long, they said, living comfortably in exile; he had taken no part in the overthrow of tsarism; he had been transported back to Russia under the protection of the most autocratic and imperialistic regime remaining in Europe, As word got around that the Soviet had disowned him, the Provisional Government was vastly relieved, “Lenin was a hopeless failure with the Soviet yesterday,” said Miliukov gleefully on April 18. “He was compelled to leave the room amidst a storm of booing. He will never survive it.”

Yet Lenin scarcely noticed his defeat. A brilliant dialectician, prepared to argue all night, he gained ascendancy over his Bolshevik colleagues by sheer force of intellect and physical stamina. On May 17, Trotsky, who had been living on East 162nd Street in New York City and writing for Novy Mir, an emigre Russian newspaper, while studying the American economy in the New York Public Library, returned to Petrograd. Nominally a Menshevik, within weeks of his return he and Lenin were working together. Of the two, Lenin was leader.

Through the spring and summer, Lenin hammered away at the Provisional Government. The Marxian subtleties of the April Theses were laid aside; for the masses, the Bolsheviks coined an irresistible slogan combining the two deepest desires of the Russian people: “Peace, Land, All Power to the Soviet.” In May, when Miliukov once again proclaimed that Russia would honor its obligations and continue to fight, a massive public outcry forced him from office. Guchkov also resigned and, early in July, Prince Lvov decided that he could no longer continue as Prime Minister. Kerensky became simultaneously Prime Minister and Minister of War.

In constantly urging that Russia continue to fight, Russia’s allies played directly into Lenin’s hands. Terrified that Russia’s withdrawal from the war would release dozens of enemy divisions for use in the west, Britain, France and the newly belligerent United States exerted heavy pressure on the shaky Provisional Government. Beginning in June, the U.S. government extended loans of $325 million to the Provisional Government. But Elihu Root, who led President Wilson’s mission to Russia, made clear that the terms were: “No war, no loan.”

Pressed by the Allies, the Provisional Government began to prepare another offensive. Kerensky made a personal tour of the front to exhort the soldiers. In early July, Russian artillery opened a heavy bombardment along forty miles of the Galician front. For the first time, supplies and munitions were plentiful, and the thirty-one Russian divisions attacking the Austrians quickly broke through. For two weeks, they advanced while Kerensky exulted and Nicholas, at Tsarskoe Selo, radiated happiness and ordered Te Deums to celebrate the victories. Then, on July 14, the news darkened. German reserves arrived and checked the advance. On the Russian side, Soldiers’ Committees debated the wisdom of further attacks and whole divisions refused to move. When the enemy counterattacked, there was no resistance. The Russian retreat became a rout.