Stripped of its apparent deference, the message could not be clearer; Michael was publicly promoting a new and responsible ministry under Prince Lvov, with a Cabinet picked by him not by Nicholas or Alexandra. For the first time, Michael was openly telling his brother that he had to sack his government, and that the days of autocracy were over.
Alekseev’s reply came back on the tape. ‘I will report Your Imperial Highness’s telegram to his Imperial Majesty immediately. His Majesty the Emperor is leaving for Tsarskoe Selo tomorrow.’
Leaving
Forty minutes later General Alekseev passed on Nicholas’s reply. It was uncompromising, almost dismissive.
Reading that, Michael knew that his brother had ignored everything he had said, and that his wire had been a waste of time, as had the discussion at the conference in the Marie Palace. Michael had been told to mind his own business.
Alekseev was clearly unhappy for he added a message of his own, directly supporting Michael’s original proposals.
Michael in reply repeated his concern that Nicholas was leaving Mogilev ‘since under the present conditions literally every hour counts…’ Alekseev agreed and promised to raise the matter at the morning conference because ‘I realise perfectly well… that time lost cannot be compensated for’.34
It was a dispiriting end to a long night, in which Michael had achieved precisely nothing. He summarised his efforts in his diary, concluding with one word:
And alas indeed, for by refusing to empower his brother the Tsar now had no government at all. When the lights failed at around midnight in the Marie Palace the last of the ministers there simply drifted away into the night and they never met again. Thus, when at 11.35 that evening in Mogilev the Tsar sent off a telegram to his prime minister saying that ‘I personally bestow upon you all the necessary powers for civil rule’,36 there was no prime minister, no power and no rule. Prince Golitsin had gone home. Over the next 24 hours he and most of the Tsar’s other ministers would be arrested by the revolutionary mob and for some their ultimate fate would be a firing squad.
THE immediate question for Michael was where he went now. It was impossible to return to Gatchina immediately ‘because of heavy machine-gun fire and grenade explosions’. His secretary Johnson had hidden their car in the courtyard of the Moika building but at 3 a.m. when ‘things had quietened down somewhat’, he decided to make an attempt to reach the station, still hoping to get home if he could. However, as his car and a military escort drove through unlit streets a revolutionary patrol tried to stop them. Michael accelerated and got away, but his military escort was arrested. ‘We could not proceed further and decided to make for the Winter Palace.’37
He arrived to find the war minister Belyaev with the dejected garrison commander Khabalov ‘and a force of 1,000 troops’. With only a few machine-guns and little artillery they had been defending the Admiralty but were marched out when their commander General Zankevich decided that it would be more symbolic ‘to die in defence of the palace’.
Michael recognised a different kind of symbolism — that it had been from the Winter Palace that troops had fired on the crowds marching into the palace square in January 1905, killing men, women and children. Michael had been with his brother at Tsarskoe Selo that day and twelve years later the memory, and the lesson of the revolution which followed, remained with him. Whatever the events of the next hours and days, if there was to be any chance of restoring order, he was not prepared to allow another ‘Bloody Sunday’, and hand the revolutionaries a propaganda victory that could only add fuel to the flames. Moreover, the Winter Palace was indefensible. Across the Neva were the rebel guns of the Fortress of St Peter and St. Paul. They could reduce the Winter Palace to rubble if they chose to open fire.
Tersely, the garrison commander was told to remove his troops back to the stronger and less politically sensitive Admiralty, ‘the poor General Khabalov’ being ‘very grateful’ to avoid a battle he could only lose.38
That done, where was he to go? It was 5 a.m. and he needed refuge close by and quickly. The best idea seemed the apartment of his old friend Princess Putyatina at 12 Millionnaya Street, just 500 yards away, and opposite the palace of Bimbo, banished by the Tsar for defending Dimitri.
He and his weary secretary Johnson slipped out of the Winter Palace into the courtyard of the adjacent Hermitage then, watching out for revolutionary patrols, waited until their path was clear before running across the snow-covered road and knocking on the door of No 12.39
The concierge heard their banging and recognising Michael’s voice opened up before leading them up two flights of stairs to the apartment of Princess Putyatina, using her pass-key to admit them inside. The princess, whose husband Pavel was away at the front, was alone with her young daughter. ‘I woke with a start hearing violent knocking on my bedroom door. At this noise, seized with fright, I could only imagine that armed soldiers had burst into my apartment.’ She was relieved when she recognised the voice of Johnson. Dressing hurriedly she went into the study where Michael was waiting. He was ‘very tired and seemed very upset’, but apologised with his ‘usual good grace’ for having disturbed her, adding: ‘Are you not afraid, Princess, of putting yourself at such risk by having such a dangerous guest?’40
Her maid produced coffee and they were gratefully sipping it when they heard boots on the stairs and the sounds of shouting from the apartment above. A revolutionary squad, forcing their way through the service entrance at the rear of the building, had come to arrest the Tsar’s chamberlain, Nicholas Stolypin, a brother of the former prime minister Peter Stolypin, assassinated in a Kiev theatre six years earlier. He was dragged away, but as they held their breath there was no knock on their door — or not yet.
Break-ins of suspected homes would be commonplace over the next days as mutineers went around the city looking for officials and ministers associated with the Tsar’s government, or who were simply people judged to be enemies of the revolution. Princess Putyatina had so far been lucky, her concierge telling rampaging mobs that in her apartment was only a soldier’s wife and child. She was not likely to remain so, however, if the mutineers learned that the Tsar’s brother was there, in an unguarded building they could enter with one blow of a rifle butt.
For the moment that was a problem for the morrow. Silently, but gratefully, Michael and Johnson collapsed exhausted on settees and went to sleep.
11. ADDRESS UNKNOWN
