The following day, the Empress wrote, “Tomorrow Gregory sees old Khvostov and then I see him in the evening. He wants to tell his impression if a worthy successor to Goremykin.” But Khvostov did not survive the interview; Alexandra wrote indignantly that Rasputin was received “like a petitioner in the ministry.”
The next candidate brought forward, Boris Sturmer, was more successful. Equipped with Goremykin’s arch- conservative instincts while lacking completely the old man’s courage and honesty, Sturmer, then sixty-seven, was an obscure and dismal product of the professional Russian bureaucracy. His family origins were German; his great- uncle, Baron Sturmer, had been Austria’s representative on the guard which sat on St. Helena keeping watch on Napoleon. Sturmer himself, first as Master of Ceremonies at court, then as the reactionary governor of Yaroslav province, had attracted a universally bad reputation. “A man who had left a bad memory wherever he occupied an administrative post,” declared Sazonov. “An utter nonentity,” groaned Rodzianko. “A false and double-faced man,” said Khvostov.
When Sturmer first appeared, Paleologue, who had scarcely heard of him, busied himself for three days gathering information. Then he penned this discouraging portrait: “He … is worse than a mediocrity—third rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea of State business. The most that can be said for him is that he has a rather pretty talent for cunning and flattery.… His appointment becomes intelligible on the supposition that he has been selected solely as a tool; in other words, actually on account of his insignificance and servility.… [He] has been … warmly recommended to the Emperor by Rasputin.”
In fact, Sturmer was first recommended to the Tsar by Rasputin’s friend and protege Pitirim, who, with Rasputin’s aid, had been named Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in Petrograd. “I begat Pitirim and Pitirim begat Sturmer” was the way Rasputin sardonically put it. Nevertheless, Sturmer’s name was the one that filled the Empress’s letters. “Lovy, I don’t know but I should still think of Sturmer.… Sturmer would do for a time. He very much values Gregory which is a great thing.… Our Friend said about Sturmer to take him for a time at least, as he is such a decided loyal man.”
To the astonishment of Russia and even of the faithful Goremykin, who had no inkling that his wish for retirement was about to be granted, the unknown Sturmer was suddenly named Prime Minister in February 1916. The Duma regarded the appointment as a crushing humiliation, an insult to all of their work and aspirations. There was no doubt that when the new Prime Minister appeared before them, their outrage would exceed anything they had directed at Goremykin. At this point, Rasputin offered an ingenious suggestion. The
With Sturmer installed at the top, the Empress, urged on by Rasputin, continued to weed among the ministerial ranks. Her next major target was Polivanov, the Minister of War. The Empress had never liked him. “Forgive me,” she had written the Tsar when Polivanov was appointed, “but I don’t like the choice of Minister of War Polivanov. Is he not our Friend’s enemy?” In the short time since he replaced the indolent Sukhomlinov, the brusque, efficient Polivanov had worked wonders in training and equipping the army. It was primarily due to his efforts that the beaten Russian army of 1915 was able to recover and launch the great offensive of 1916. Nevertheless, Polivanov was marked, not only by his rough refusal to have anything to do with Rasputin, but also by his eagerness to work closely with the Duma in obtaining maximum support for his army program. In the end, Polivanov’s doom was sealed when he discovered that Rasputin had been supplied by Sturmer with four high- powered War Office cars too fast to be followed by the police when he set off for one of his steamy nocturnal haunts. Polivanov sternly objected, and soon Alexandra was writing to Nicholas, “Get rid of Polivanov … any honest man better than him.… Remember about Polivanov.… Lovy, don’t dawdle, make up your mind, it’s far too serious.” On March 25, Polivanov fell. “Oh, the relief! Now I shall sleep well,” she said when she heard the news. Others were appalled. Polivanov was “undoubtedly the ablest military organizer in Russia and his dismissal was a disaster,” wrote Knox. General Shuvaiev, Polivanov’s successor, Knox described as “a nice old man, quite straight and honest. He had no knowledge of his work, but his devotion to the Emperor was such that if the door were to open and His Majesty were to come into the room and ask him to throw himself out of the window, he would do so at once.”
The next to go was Sazonov, the Foreign Minister. A brother-in-law of Stolypin, Sazonov was a cultivated man of liberal background and a close friend of both Buchanan and Paleologue. He had been Foreign Minister since 1910 and was completely trusted both by the Tsar and by the Allied governments. Nevertheless, since his signing of the ministerial letter, Alexandra had wanted him removed. She suspected, rightly, that along with his friendship with England and France, he also wanted a responsible government in Russia; both, she believed, would undermine the autocratic Russia she hoped to pass along to her son. Through the winter, she kept up a barrage at “long-nosed Sazonov … Sazonov is such a pancake.” Then, in March 1916, she wrote to Nicholas, “Wish you could think of a good successor to Sazonov—need not be a diplomat. So as … to see we are not later sat upon by England and that when questions of ultimate peace come we should be firm. Old Goremykin and Sturmer always disapproved of him as he is such a coward towards Europe and a parliamentarist—and that would be Russia’s ruin.”
Sazonov’s downfall came in July 1916, and was actually precipitated by the question of autonomy for Poland. At the outbreak of war, Russia had promised a virtually independent, united Polish kingdom, linked to Russia only in the person of the Tsar. The Poles were enthusiastic, and on first entering Galicia, Russian troops were welcomed as liberators. Military defeat and the loss of most Polish territory in 1915 had delayed action on the pledge, at the same time encouraging those Russian conservatives who resisted its enactment, fearing that autonomy for one part of the empire would stimulate other provinces to seek the same thing. Alexandra, spurred by Rasputin, argued that “Baby’s future rights” were challenged. Nevertheless, Sazonov, backed by Britain and France, continued to insist.
On July 12, Sazonov saw Nicholas at Headquarters. “The Emperor has entirely adopted my views.… I won all along the line,” he reported jubilantly to Buchanan and Paleologue. In enormous good humor, the Foreign Minister left for a Finnish holiday during which he planned to draft an Imperial proclamation on Poland. Meanwhile, both Sturmer and the Empress hurried to Headquarters, and while he was still in Finland, Sazonov was abruptly dismissed. Appalled, Buchanan and Paleologue pleaded that the dismissal be set aside. Failing, Buchanan then boldly asked the Tsar’s permission to have King George V grant the fallen minister a British court decoration in recognition of his services to the alliance. Nicholas agreed and was genuinely pleased that Sazonov, whom he liked and had dealt with shabbily, was receiving the honor.
Sazanov’s replacement at the Foreign Ministry was none other than Sturmer, who took on the office in addition to the Premiership. The appointment was a further hideous shock to Buchanan and Paleologue, who would now be dealing daily on an intimate professional level with Russia’s new Foreign Minister. Each Ambassador reacted in character: Buchanan stiffly wrote London that “I can never hope to have confidential relations with a man on whose word no reliance can be placed.” Paleologue, after an interview, confided to his diary, “His [Sturmer’s] look, sharp and honeyed, furtive and blinking, is the very expression of hypocrisy … he emits an intolerable odor of falseness. In his bonhomie and his affected politeness one feels that he is low, intriguing, and treacherous.”*
The key ministry in troubled times was not Foreign Affairs or even the presidency of the ministerial council. It was the Ministry of Interior, which was responsible for the preservation of law and order. Under this office came the police, the secret police, informers and counterespionage—all the devices which, as a regime grows more unpopular, become all the more necessary to its preservation. In October 1916, the Tsar suddenly appointed to this critical post the Vice-President of the Duma, Alexander Protopopov. The choice was a disaster, yet, ironically, Nicholas made it at least in part as a gesture to Rodzianko and the Duma.
Alexander Protopopov was sixty-four, a small, sleek man with white hair, a mustache and bright black eyes. In his native Simbirsk, the Volga town which also gave Russia Kerensky and Lenin, Protopopov’s social position was far higher than that of either of his famous fellow townsmen. His father was a nobleman and landowner who also owned a large textile factory; the son went to cadet cavalry school, studied law and became a director of his father’s factory. An important local personage, he was elected to the Duma, where, although he showed little
