want to rally to our Tsar to make certain of victory over the Germans.” Nobility and peasants burned with the same emotions. “This is not a political war,” said Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, widow of the Tsar’s uncle Vladimir. “It is a duel to the death between Slavism and Germanism. One of the two must succumb.” An old peasant from Novgorod told Kokovtsov, the former Prime Minister, “If we are unlucky enough not to destroy the Germans, they’ll come here. They’ll reign over the whole of Russia and then they’ll harness you and me—yes, you as well as me—to their plows.”
The Duma sat only one day, August 8, passing the government’s military budget without a dissenting vote. “War was declared and all at once, not a trace was left of the revolutionary movement,” declared Kerensky. “Even the Bolshevik members of the Duma were forced to admit—though somewhat sullenly—that it was the duty of the proletariat to cooperate in the defense.”
That Germany would be defeated, few Russians doubted; Britain’s entry made the outcome certain. There was controversy as to how long the war would go on. “Six months,” said the pessimists, who argued that the Germans might fight, “The Germans don’t know how to fight,” replied the optimists. “They only know how to make sausages. All the Russians will have to do to annihilate the whole German army is simply to throw their caps at them.”
Ancient tradition prescribed that Russian tsars begin their wars by going to Moscow to ask the blessing of God in the historic seat of tsarist rule, the Kremlin. If anything, when Nicholas and his family arrived in Moscow on August 17, the city was more wildly enthusiastic than St. Petersburg. A million people lined the streets, jammed balconies, windows and rooftops or clung from the branches of trees as the Imperial procession wound through the streets to the Kremlin’s Iberian Gate. That night, inside the Kremlin, a private worry reappeared. “Alexis Nicolaievich is complaining a good deal of his leg tonight,” Pierre Gilliard wrote in his diary. “Will he be able to walk tomorrow or will he have to be carried? The Tsar and Tsaritsa are in despair. The boy was not able to be present at the ceremony in the Winter Palace. It is always the same when he is supposed to appear in public … some complication will prevent it. Fate seems to pursue him.”
On the following day, Gilliard continued: “When Alexis Nicolaievich found he could not walk this morning, he was in a terrible state. Their Majesties have decided he shall be present at the ceremony all the same. He will be carried by one of the Tsar’s Cossacks. But it is a dreadful disappointment to the parents who do not wish the idea to gain ground among the people that the Heir to the Throne is an invalid.”
At eleven, the Tsar, the Empress, their four daughters, the Tsarevich, in the arms of a huge Cossack, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth, wearing the gray robe of her religious order, appeared in the St. George Hall of the Kremlin. In the center of the hall, Nicholas proclaimed to the nobility and people of Moscow: “From this place, the very heart of Russia, I send my soul’s greeting to my valiant troops and my noble allies. God is with us!” Moving into the Ouspensky Sobor—the Cathedral of the Assumption—where eighteen years earlier they had been crowned, the Tsar and the Empress prayed before the lofty, jeweled iconostasis. In the flickering glow of hundreds of candles, through pungent clouds of sweet incense, they walked around the church to kneel and pray before the tombs of Russia’s patriarchs. The triumphant setting and the glorious display of pomp and piety seemed an eloquent dramatization of the basic principle of the Russian autocracy: “As it is God Himself who has given us our supreme power, it is before His altar that we are responsible for the destinies of Russia.”
The following morning, while Moscow still seethed with excitement, Gilliard and his young pupil slipped quietly out of the Kremlin for a drive into the hills outside the city. Returning through narrow streets clogged with workmen and peasants, their unescorted automobile was slowed and halted by the mass. Surging on all sides of the auto, the crowd suddenly recognized its young passenger. “The Heir! The Heir!” they shouted, struggling for a better view. As those nearest the car were crushed against its sides, the bolder of them thrust their arms inside and touched Alexis. “I’ve touched him! I’ve touched the Heir!” shouted a woman in triumph. Frightened and pale, the Tsarevich huddled back in the seat while Gilliard frantically tried to get the car moving. Eventually the auto was rescued by two large Moscow policemen who happened on the scene and moved the crowd back with much puffing and shouting.
When the Imperial family returned to Tsarskoe Selo on August 22, Nicholas was exhilarated. The two largest cities of his empire had given spontaneous, overwhelming demonstrations of affection and patriotism. Determined to be worthy, Nicholas issued a decree intended to expunge every blemish from the holy crusade on which Russia was embarking. Throughout the empire, the sale of vodka was banned for the duration of the war. The gesture, coming at a moment when military expenditures were soaring, was more noble than wise, for the sale of vodka was a state monopoly from which the Imperial government drew a substantial proportion of its revenue. Nor did the ban stop drinking in Russia; the rich drew from their well-stocked cellars, the poor made alcohol at home. In a second burst of enthusiastic patriotism, after returning from Moscow, Nicholas suddenly changed the name of his own capital. On August 31, 1914, the German St. Petersburg was changed to the Slav Petrograd.
In the opening days of the war, the same heady emotions surged through Paris, London and Berlin. But after the trumpets had sounded, the hymns had been sung and the men had marched away, then war began its stern testing of the nations. In the terrible years ahead, Britain, France and Germany each called up deep reserves of national purpose and strength. But in Russia, behind the massive facade of an enormous empire, the apparatus of government, the structure of society and economy were too primitive, too inflexible, and too brittle to withstand the enormous strains of a great four-year war.
Two shrewd and cunning Russians sensed this danger immediately. From the beginning, although their voices were drowned in the gush of war excitement, Rasputin and Witte opposed the war. Still close to the villages, Rasputin sensed what war would cost in peasant blood. Once before, in 1908, he had argued against fighting Austria over the annexation of Bosnia: “The Balkans are not worth fighting for,” he had said. In 1914, still lying in bed in Siberia recovering from his stab wounds, he telegraphed, “Let Papa not plan war, for with the war will come the end of Russia and yourselves and you will lose to the last man.” Anna Vyrubova, who delivered the telegram to the Tsar, reported that he angrily tore it to pieces before her eyes. Rasputin was undeterred. Taking a large piece of paper, writing in almost illegible letters, he scrawled this ominous prophecy:
Dear friend, I will say again a menacing cloud is over Russia lots of sorrow and grief it is dark and there is no lightening to be seen. A sea of tears immeasurable and as to blood? What can I say? There are no words the horror of it is indescribable. I know they keep wanting war from you evidently not knowing that this is destruction. Heavy is God’s punishment when he takes away reason that is the beginning of the end. Thou art the Tsar Father of the People don’t allow the madmen to triumph and destroy themselves and the People. Well, they will conquer Germany and what about Russia? If one thinks then verily there has not been a greater sufferer since the beginning of time she is all drowned in blood. Terrible is the destruction and without end the grief.
Gregory
Witte, abroad when the war broke out, hurried home to urge that Russia withdraw immediately. He spoke bluntly to Paleologue: “This war is madness.… Why should Russia fight? Our prestige in the Balkans, our pious duty to help our blood brothers?… That is a romantic, old-fashioned chimera. No one here, no thinking man at least, cares a fig for these turbulent and vain Balkan folk who have nothing Slav about them and are only Turks christened by the wrong name. We ought to have let the Serbs suffer the chastisement they deserved. So much for the origin of the war. Now let’s talk about the profits and rewards it will bring us. What can we hope to get? An increase of territory. Great Heavens! Isn’t His Majesty’s empire big enough already? Haven’t we in Siberia, Turkestan, the Caucasus, Russia itself, enormous areas which have not yet been opened up? Then what are the conquests they dangle before our eyes? East Prussia? Hasn’t the Emperor too many Germans among his subjects already? Galicia? It’s full of Jews!… Constantinople, the Cross on Santa Sophia, the Bosporous, the Dardanelles. It’s too mad a notion to be worth a moment’s consideration. And even if we assume a complete victory, the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs reduced to begging for peace and submitting to our terms—it means not only the end of German domination, but the proclamation of republics throughout central Europe. That means the simultaneous end of Tsarism. I prefer to remain silent as to what we may expect on the hypothesis of our defeat.… My practical conclusion is that we must liquidate this stupid adventure as soon as possible.”
Paleologue, whose job it was to do everything possible to keep Russia in the war fighting on France’s side, watched Witte go and mused on the old stateman’s character: “an enigmatic, unnerving individual, a great intellect, despotic, disdainful, conscious of his powers, a prey to ambition, jealousy, and pride.” Witte’s views, he reflected, were “evil” and “dangerous” to France as well as to Russia.
