violently did the Grand Duke object to the idea that he become military dictator, that he brandished the revolver in his holster and shouted, “If the Emperor does not accept the Witte program, if he wants to force me to become Dictator, I shall kill myself in his presence with this revolver. We must support Witte at all cost. It is necessary for the good of Russia.”
The Imperial Manifesto of October 30, 1905, transformed Russia from an absolute autocracy into a semi- constitutional monarchy. It promised “freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association” to the Russian people. It granted an elected parliament, the Duma, and pledged that “no law may go into force without the consent of the State Duma.” It did not go as far as the constitutional monarchy in England; the Tsar retained his prerogative over defense and foreign affairs and the sole power to appoint and dismiss ministers. But the Manifesto did propel Russia with great rapidity over difficult political terrain which it had taken Western Europe several centuries to travel.
Witte now had maneuvered himself into an awkward corner. Having forced a reluctant sovereign to grant a constitution, Witte was expected to make it work. He was installed as President of the Council of Ministers, where he quickly obtained the resignation of Constantine Pobedonostsev. After twenty-six years as Procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobedonostsev left, but not before he had scathingly referred to his successor, Prince Alexis Obolensky, as a man in whose head “three cocks were crowing at the same time.”
To Witte’s despair, rather than getting better, the situation grew steadily worse. The Right hated him for degrading the autocracy, the Liberals did not trust him, the Left feared that the revolution which it was anticipating would slip from its grasp. “Nothing has changed, the struggle goes on,” declared Paul Miliukov, a leading Russian historian and Liberal. Leon Trotsky, writing in the newly formed
In parts of Russia, the Manifesto, by stripping the local police of many of their powers, led directly to violence. In the Baltic states, the peasants rose against their German landlords and proclaimed a rash of little village republics. In the Ukraine and White Russia, bands of Ultra-Rightists, calling themselves Black Hundreds, turned against the familiar scapegoats, the Jews. In Kiev and Odessa, pogroms erupted, often with the open support of the Church. In the Trans-Caucasus, similar attacks, under the guise of patriotism and religion, were made on Armenians. In Poland and Finland, the Manifesto was taken as a sign of weakness; there was a sense that the empire was crumbling, and mass demonstrations clamored for autonomy and independence. At Kronstadt on the Baltic and Sevastopol on the Black Sea, there were naval mutinies. In December, the Moscow Soviet led two thousand workers and students to the barricades. For ten days they held off government forces, proclaiming a new “Provisional Government.” The revolt was crushed only by bringing from St. Petersburg the Semenovsky Regiment of the Guard, which cleared the streets with artillery and bayonets. During these weeks, Lenin slipped back into Russia to lead the Bolsheviks; the police soon found his trail and he was forced to flit secretly from place to place, diminishing his effectiveness. Still, he was gleeful. “Go ahead and shoot,” he cried. “Summon the Austrian and German regiments against the Russian peasants and workers. We are for a broadening of the struggle, we are for an international revolution.”
Nicholas, meanwhile, waited impatiently for his experiment in constitutionalism to produce results. As Witte stumbled, the Tsar became bitter. His letters to his mother mark the progression of his disillusionments:
November 9: “It is strange that such a clever man [Witte] should be wrong in his forecast of an easy pacification.”
November 23: “Everybody is afraid of taking courageous action. I keep trying to force them—even Witte himself—to behave more energetically. With us nobody is accustomed to shouldering responsibility, all expect to be given orders which, however, they disobey as often as not.”
December 14: “He [Witte] is now prepared to arrest all the principal leaders of the outbreak. I have been trying for some time past to get him to do it, but he always hoped to be able to manage without drastic measures.”
January 25, 1906: “As for Witte, since the happenings in Moscow he has radically changed his views; now he wants to hang and shoot everybody. I have never seen such a chameleon of a man. That, naturally, is the reason why no one believes in him any more.”
Feeling his status slipping, Witte tried to recapture the Tsar’s good will by cynically chopping away most of the strength from the Manifesto he had only recently written. Without waiting for the Duma to be elected, Witte arbitrarily drafted a series of Fundamental Laws based on the declaration: “To the Emperor of all the Russias belongs the supreme autocratic power.” To make the government financially independent of Duma appropriations, Witte used his own great personal reputation abroad to obtain from France a massive loan of over two billion francs.
Despite these efforts, Sergius Witte took no part in the affairs of the Russian parliament which he had helped to create. On the eve of its first meeting, Nicholas asked for his resignation. Witte pretended to be pleased by the move. “You see before you the happiest of mortals,” he said to a colleague. “The Tsar could not have shown me greater mercy than by dismissing me from this prison where I have been languishing. I am going abroad at once to take a cure. I do not want to hear about anything and shall merely imagine what is happening over here. All Russia is one vast madhouse.” This was nonsense, of course; for the rest of his life, Witte itched to return to office. His hopes were illusory. “As long as I live, I will never trust that man again with the smallest thing,” said Nicholas. “I had quite enough of last year’s experiment. It is still like a nightmare to me.” Eventually, Witte returned to Russia, and Nicholas made him a grant of two hundred thousand roubles from the Treasury. But in the nine years which were to pass before Witte died, he would see the Tsar only twice again, each time for a brief interview of twenty minutes.
In all these months of war with Japan and the 1905 Revolution, Nicholas and Alexandra had had only one brief moment of unshadowed joy. On August 12, 1904, Nicholas wrote in his diary: “A great never-to-be-forgotten day when the mercy of God has visited us so clearly. Alix gave birth to a son at one o’clock. The child has been called Alexis.”
The long-awaited boy arrived suddenly. At noon on a hot summer day, the Tsar and his wife sat down to lunch at Peterhof. The Empress had just managed to finish her soup when she was forced to excuse herself and hurry to her room. Less than an hour later, the boy, weighing eight pounds, was born. As the saluting cannon at Peterhof began to boom, other guns sounded at Kronstadt. Twenty miles away, in the heart of St. Petersburg, the batteries of the Fortress of Peter and Paul began to thunder—this time the salute was three hundred guns. Across Russia, cannons roared, churchbells clanged and flags waved. Alexis, named after Tsar Alexis, Nicholas’s favorite, was the first male heir born to a reigning Russian tsar since the seventeenth century. It seemed an omen of hope.
His Imperial Highness Alexis Nicolaievich, Sovereign Heir Tsarevich, Grand Duke of Russia, was a fat, fair baby with yellow curls and clear blue eyes. As soon as they were permitted, Olga, nine, Tatiana, seven, Marie, five, and Anastasia, three, tiptoed into the nursery to peek into the crib and inspect their infant brother.
The christening of this august little Prince was performed in the Peterhof chapel. Alexis lay on a pillow of cloth of gold in the arms of Princess Marie Golitsyn, a lady-in-waiting who, traditionally, carried Imperial babies to the baptismal font. Because of her advanced age, the Princess came to the ceremony especially equipped. For greater support, the baby’s pillow was attached to a broad gold band slung around her shoulders. To keep them from slipping, her shoes were fitted with rubber soles.
The Tsarevich was christened in the presence of most of his large family, including his great-grandfather King Christian IX of Denmark, then in his eighty-seventh year. Only the Tsar and the Empress were absent; custom forbade parents to attend the baptism of their child. The service was performed by Father Yanishev, the elderly priest who had served for years as confessor to the Imperial family. He pronounced the name Alexis, which had been carried by the second Romanov Tsar, Alexis the Peaceful, in the seventeenth century. Then he dipped the new Alexis bodily into the font, and the Tsarevich screeched his fury. As soon as the service was over, the Tsar hurried into the church. He had been waiting anxiously outside, hoping that the aged Princess and the elderly priest would not drop his son into the font. That afternoon, the Imperial couple received a stream of visitors. The Empress, lying on a couch, was seen to smile frequently at the Tsar, who stood nearby.
Six weeks later, in a very different mood, Nicholas wrote again in his diary: “Alix and I have been very much
