The blame for that would fall in large part on the ambitious Grand Duke Kirill who had signed the manifesto the day before. For at the very moment that Michael was putting his name to the document, Kirill effectively tore it up — marching into the Tauride Palace at the head of a battalion of his marines, a big red bow on his chest, to ‘declare his loyalty to the Temporary Duma Committee’.36 His marines guarding Tsarskoe Selo would also be withdrawn on his orders.
Kirill, like Michael and every other Grand Duke, had sworn an oath of loyalty to ‘serve His Imperial Majesty, not sparing my life and limb, until the very last drop of my blood’; now, on Wednesday, March 1, he joined the revolution, whilst Nicholas was still Tsar. Paleologue, driving later past Kirill’s palace on Glinka Street, would see a red flag flying on its roof.37
One of those who saw Kirill’s arrival at the Tauride Palace was General Polovtsov, once commander of the Tartar regiment in Michael’s Savage Division, and someone who continued to respect him. In Petrograd by chance, he had been recruited by Guchkov to serve on the Duma’s ‘military committee’. To his eyes, the arrival of Kirill ‘made a great impression and was understood by the crowd as a sign that the imperial family refused to fight for its rights and recognised the revolution as an accomplished fact’. The monarchists in the Duma ‘did not like it.’ 38
Kirill’s later justification for his actions was that the Duma Committee was the only effective authority in the capital, and because it had ordered all units in the capital to report to it ‘to show its allegiance’, he had no alternative as a commander of one of those units but to obey.
‘They were the only loyal and reliable troops left in the capital…to have deprived them of leadership would simply have added to the disaster.’ His concern, he protested, ‘was to do my utmost to re-establish order in the capital…so that the Emperor could safely return.’39 Few believed that, either then or on reading his subsequent apologia, which he boldly entitled
Kirill’s hostility to Tsarskoe Selo was well known, as were his own ambitions. However much he protested his innocence, he was bound to be suspected of having gone to the Duma in the hope of ingratiating himself, and with Nicholas gone, it would be the ‘loyal’ Kirill who would be asked to become Regent, even Emperor. Unfortunately for Kirill, as the Duma Committee came to see Nicholas’s abdication as the only hope of saving the monarchy — and as the price of a deal with the Soviet — the only man being talked about as Regent was Michael. Kirill had spent his reputation for nothing.
Understandably, he was therefore outraged, as was uncle Grand Duke Paul, that Michael should have emerged as the hope for salvation. Paul suspected that it was all the work of the scheming Natasha and her left- wing friends in the Duma. As he wrote to Kirill: ‘the new intention to make Misha Regent displeases me greatly. It is inadmissible and it is possible that it may be merely the intrigues of Brasova…if Nicky agrees the manifesto which we have sanctioned…the demands of the people will have been satisfied.’40
Kirill replied immediately in similar cloud-cuckoo terms: ‘I completely agree,’ he wrote furiously. ‘But despite my entreaty to work together and in conformity with the family, Misha sneaks away and communicates secretly with Rodzyanko,’ he wailed. ‘I have been left completely alone during these days to bear responsibility towards Nicky and to save the situation while recognising the new government.’41
Kirill’s petulant response was understandable: his march into the Tauride Palace had gained him nothing but odium. As for Paul, his manifesto was already dead even as he was advancing its merits. It had been vetoed by the Soviet and as that became clear it ceased to matter, and was put away in a drawer.
Simply too little, too late? Ironically, Nicholas would still think it was too much, too soon. In any case, what the family wanted did not matter to him and it would not be they who would dictate what was to come. As for Alexandra, it had taken just five days, but her hated ministers were now under arrest, her despised government was no more, and her humiliated husband lost in a train. Her downfall, the prospect of which had occupied the minds of so many for so long, was already complete. What she thought and said was no longer of any consequence and never would be again.
AT about seven o’ clock that Wednesday evening, after travelling 860 miles, Nicholas’s train crawled into Pskov station, and he was at last back in contact with the world, albeit one very different to that he had left 38 hours earlier, at 5 a.m. the previous day. There was no one to meet him, though shortly afterwards the 63-year- old army commander, General Nikolai Ruzsky, turned up at the station, ‘bent, grey and old, wearing galoshes,’ his eyes behind his spectacles ‘unfriendly’.42
Sitting in the Tsar’s study aboard the train, Ruzsky was uncomfortable about discussing constitutional issues, but he was convinced of the need for concessions of the kind which Michael had argued for, and he pressed on doggedly to say so. There was a gloomy dinner, then the talks resumed.
Nicholas thought Ruzsky rude and the general would later admit that ‘we had a storm brewing’.43 As stubborn as ever and still blind to his own peril, Nicholas refused to give up his autocratic powers, though he conceded that he was willing to appoint Rodzyanko as prime minister, albeit with a Cabinet responsible to the Tsar.
Ruzsky was getting nowhere, until a telegram arrived from General Alekseev at Mogilev, urging the same concessions. Nicholas, now in an uncomfortable corner, sought compromise. He insisted that, whatever else, the ministers for war, navy and foreign affairs should continue to be accountable to him. Ruzsky would not even concede that: all ministers, he argued, should be accountable to the Duma.
Nicholas went to his sleeping car a rattled man. In refusing the demands of politicians and dismissing the pleas of his brother and others, he had assumed the absolute loyalty of his senior military commanders. Now they, too, seemed to be against him. At 2 a.m. he called Ruzsky to his carriage and told him that he had ‘decided to compromise’; a manifesto granting a responsible minister, already signed, was on the table.44 Ruzsky was authorised to notify Rodzyanko that he could now be prime minister of a parliamentary government.
However, that proved only how little the Tsar knew of what had happened in the capital since Michael had wired him at 10.30 p.m. on Monday night, a little more 48 hours earlier. When, at 3.30 a.m. Ruzsky got through to Petrograd on the direct line, Rodzyanko’s reply was shatteringly frank: ‘It is obvious that neither His Majesty nor you realise what is going on here… Unfortunately the manifesto has come too late… and there is no return to the past… everywhere troops are siding with the Duma and the people, and the threatening demands for an abdication in favour of the son, with Michael Aleksandrovich as Regent, are becoming quite definite.’45
When Ruzsky finished his long and painfully slow discussion on the direct wire, the time was 7.30 a.m. on Thursday March 2. Before the day was out, Nicholas would abdicate not once, but twice.
12. POISONING THE CHALICE
HIS discussion on the wire with Rodzyanko was the first time that Ruzsky knew that the crisis in Petrograd had moved beyond demands for a constitutional monarchy to that of the abdication of Nicholas. He therefore sent on Rodzyanko’s taped message to Alekseev at Supreme Headquarters and at 9 a.m. that Thursday morning Alekseev cabled his reply: ‘my deep conviction that there is no choice and that the abdication should now take place…it is very painful for me to say so, but there is no other solution.’1
Having made his own views clear, at least to Ruzsky, Alekseev — less pained than he pretended — did not wait for a reply but sent out his own telegrams to his other army commanders and to the admirals commanding the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Russia had a war to fight and Alekseev was determined that the revolution in Petrograd should not undermine the frontline armies waiting to begin their spring offensive. He summarised the discussions between Ruzsky and Rodzyanko, putting the case in black and white and more bluntly than the Duma president had done himself. ‘The dynastic question has been put point-blank’, he told his commanders. ‘The war may be continued until its victorious end only provided the demands regarding the abdication from the throne in favour of the son and under the regency of Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich are satisfied. Apparently the situation does not permit another solution…’2
His cables went out at 10.15 am. Four hours later, at 2.15 p.m., he wired the Emperor at Pskov giving him the first three replies. They would prove decisive.
Nicholas had been given a transcript of the early-morning tapes when he arose in the late morning, and he
