The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

simply reported to Nicholas that ‘going to church, met Misha, stopped, talked a minute, and then he went back to Gatchina’.²⁶

At Stavka, he and Nicholas met privately in the Tsar’s salon before tea. This time there were no lectures about ‘remembering his duty’ — awkward, given the second high gallantry award on Michael’s chest — and the Tsar this time conceded what he had refused to consider in March: that with his next appointment, Michael could join Stavka. He was also belatedly promoted to Adjutant- General.

This was not a signal of change in the family war conducted from Tsarskoe Selo. What Michael did not tell his brother was that Natasha, whom he had not seen for three months, had also come to Mogilev and was staying in his carriage. In the four days she was there she kept well away from the headquarters proper, going for walks in the town, and having lunch in the restaurant of the Bristol Hotel. She also went to the cinema, while Michael was dining with his brother.

It was after Michael had left that Nicholas found out about Natasha. His source was a furious Alexandra. ‘You know Misha’s wife was at Mogilev!!’ she exploded in a letter to him. ‘Georgi (Grand Duke George Mikhailovich) told Paul he sat near her at the cynema (sic). Find out where she lived (perhaps wagon) & how long, & forbid strictly it happening again.’²⁷ It would not happen again. Michael never took up an appointment at headquarters and the next time he saw Nicholas it would be in circumstances so desperate that both had more important matters to worry about.

WITH the summer offensive having ground to a halt, and stalemate on the south-western front, Michael’s corps would spend that autumn of 1916 refitting and preparing itself for what looked like a long winter. So leaving Mogilev with Natasha, he took her to Brasovo for the start of an extended leave, his first that year. They arrived on September 4, 1916, delighted to be in a place into which the outside world could never intrude. Natasha had worked wonders in the house, decorating it and refurnishing so that it was now better than it had ever been. Michael went fishing on the mill pond, catching 150 fish in one morning in a big sweep-net, and then with his aide Vyazemsky he chopped down thirty-six trees near the house.²⁸ The two children joined them, and leaving Brasovo they went on to Moscow, staying at the National Hotel. After six weeks they were back in Gatchina, with Michael preparing himself to go back to the front.

It was not to be. Suddenly he succumbed to a fever and no sooner had he recovered than he went down again with a new attack of his ‘damned stomach pains’; a week later he was still ill. After being examined by a team of specialists in Petrograd he was advised to go to the warm Crimea and rest. A month of sitting doing nothing and he would feel a different man; if he ignored their advice and returned to the army, he would not be doing either the army or himself a favour.

Given that, he had little choice. But before he departed there was one thing he had to do, and that was to write to Nicholas. His weeks back from the front had exposed him to the reality of public opinion in Russia and what he had heard and seen had alarmed him greatly. In the months he had been at the front, the mood had darkened much more than he had realised. He had known enough to have warned his brother face to face about the political risks he was taking; now, having heard so much more in these past weeks on the home-front, for the first time he did so in writing. On November 11, 1916, he went into his study at Nikolaevskaya Street, to tell his brother that time was running out.

‘A year ago…you invited me to share my thoughts with you candidly whenever I felt it called for. The time has come… I am deeply concerned and worried by what is happening around us. There has been a shocking alteration in the mood of the most loyal people; on all sides I observe a way of thinking which fills me with the most serious apprehension not only for you and for the fate of our family, but even for the integrity of the state order.

‘The public hatred for certain people who allegedly are close to you and who are forming part of the present government has, to my amazement, brought together the right, the left, and the moderate; and this hatred, along with the demands for changes are already openly expressed at every opportunity. Please don’t think that I am writing this under someone’s influence (he meant Natasha): these impressions I have tried to verify in conversations with people of various circles — level-headed people whose loyalty and devotion are beyond any doubt and, alas, my apprehensions have been confirmed.’

Having underlined the fact that he was speaking from his own experience, not merely repeating what Natasha and her ‘bad set’ had told him — though he could have no doubt that Alexandra would blame her anyway — he did not mince his words thereafter:

‘I have come to the conviction that we are standing on a volcano, and that the least spark, the least incorrect step could provoke a catastrophe for you, for us all and for Russia… it seems to me that, by removing the most hated persons and replacing them with unblemished people, towards whom there is no evident mistrust on the part of society (which now means Russia as a whole), you will find a good way out of the situation in which we now are; and for such a decision you will certainly find support both in the Council of State and the Duma… It seems to me that the people who are urging you to follow an opposite course are concerned far more with keeping their own posts than with protecting you and Russia. Half-measures in this case are only prolonging the crisis and thus making it more acute.

‘I am deeply confident that everything that is said in this letter will be confirmed by all those among our relatives who are at least slightly familiar with the moods pervading the country and society. I am afraid these moods are not so strongly felt and perceived at Stavka… the majority of those who come with reports will never tell you the unpleasant truth, for they are protecting their own interests… I cannot help feeling that if anything happens inside Russia, it will be echoed with a catastrophe as regards the war. That is why, painful as it is for me to do it, my love for you has urged me to share all my worries with you without keeping anything back.’²⁹

He could hardly be clearer; and it was not necessary to mention Alexandra. He had done that often enough before. Would Nicholas pay any heed? Everything Michael had written was true, his advice sound, and his forecast of the catastrophe which awaited if nothing was done was to prove tragically accurate. In the event, Nicholas never replied.

Six days later, on November 17, Michael and Natasha set off to stay at his sister Xenia’s house on the shores of the Black Sea, twelve miles from Yalta. They would be there a month, before returning to Brasovo for Christmas and a houseful of guests invited to join them. They arrived in Brasovo on December 20, shortly before the children, staff and their house party arrived from Petrograd.

Of their guests, only one — Grand Duke Dimitri — failed to turn up. As they would discover, he had been arrested.

8. MURDER MOST FAIR

MICHAEL’S warning letter to his brother came at what proved to be the beginning of the end for Nicholas and Alexandra. On the battlefield the summer offensive had produced only stalemate at the cost of horrific casualty figures. Industrial and politically-motivated strikes had been almost unknown in the first months of the war, but by the end of 1916 the number of strikes would reach a million, double the number in the previous year. Facing their third winter of war, Russians now looked inwards and not outwards. Talk of betrayal was commonplace, with many convinced that the source of that treachery lay in the boudoir of the German-born Empress in the government she had largely created, and which did her will.

Alexandra was no traitor, but what was true was that she and Rasputin now dictated political affairs almost without hinder from the Tsar at Stavka. Two of the best ministers who had survived her original purge were now dismissed. The first to go was the effective war minister Polivanov, ludicrously described by Alexandra as ‘simply a revolutionist.’¹ The shrewd British military observer, Colonel Alfred Knox, judged him to be the ‘ablest military organiser in Russia’ and his departure ‘a disaster’.²

The second to be shown the door was the long-serving and respected foreign minister Sergei Sazanov. He had long been in her sights — why is he ‘such a pancake?’ she had asked Nicholas — after he complained to the Tsar about ‘the dangerous part that the Empress had begun to play since Rasputin gained possession of her will