The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

also read the cable from Alekseev recommending abdication. There was ‘a terrible moment of silence,’ Ruzsky remembered, as Nicholas absorbed the shock,³ but he gave no sign of his inner turmoil when he went for a walk along the station platform with Ruzsky at lunch-time. A few hours earlier he had assumed that in conceding a responsible ministry he had given more than enough; now he was being asked to contemplate the unthinkable: that he should give up the throne. Later it would be said by those who deplored his abdication that Ruzsky bullied him into it, shouting at him and thumping the table with his fist, saying ‘Will you make up your mind to go!’⁴

No, he was not bullied and Ruzsky had no reason to do so knowing that the decision depended on the replies awaited from the commanders. There was no comfort for Nicholas there in the cable from Alekseev, which incorporated the first three responses.

The reply from Grand Duke Nicholas — ‘Uncle Nikolasha’, the former Supreme Commander sacked in 1915, and now commander on the Caucasus front could not be more frank:

As a loyal subject I feel it my necessary duty of allegiance in the spirit of my oath, to beg Your Imperial Majesty on my knees to save Russia and your heir, being aware of your sacred feelings of love for Russia and for him. Make the Sign of the Cross and hand over to him your heritage. There is no other way…

The second was from Brusilov, Michael’s former commander-in-chief, and the most successful fighting general in the army:

At the present time the only solution… is the abdication in favour of the heir Tsarevich under the Regency of Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich. There is no other way out; speed is necessary, so that the popular conflagration, which has grown to large proportions, can be rapidly extinguished otherwise it will result in incalculable catastrophic consequences. By these acts the dynasty itself would be saved in the person of the lawful heir.

The third was from General Aleksei Evert, the commander on the western front: Under the conditions which have been created and not seeing any other answer I implore Your Majesty to make a decision which would be in agreement with the declaration of the President of the State Duma…as the only measure which apparently can stop the revolution and thus save Russia from the horrors of anarchy.⁵

Ruzsky, armed with these, and backed by two of his generals, went back to the Emperor in his railway carriage. He handed over the text, letting it speak for itself. Nicholas, smoking one cigarette and then lighting another, read it and then put it down on the table before rising and going to the window, staring out unseeingly. He could have contempt for politicians, and ignore his brother, but he could not defy his generals and they had just passed a vote of no confidence in him, both as Tsar and Supreme Commander. He could not sack them, as he could sack politicians, nor could he argue with them.

Suddenly he turned and said calmly: ‘I have decided. I shall renounce the throne’. He made the sign of the Cross and the three generals, realising the enormity of what had just been said, followed suit.⁶

Two short telegrams were drafted for Nicholas — the first to Rodzyanko.

There is no sacrifice which I would not bear for the sake of the real welfare and for the salvation of our own dear Mother Russia. Therefore I am ready to abdicate the throne in favour of my son, provided that he can remain with me until he comes of age, with the Regency of my brother the Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich.

That was the response that was hoped for by the Duma men — Nicholas gone, a boy Emperor, Michael as Regent. His second telegram, to Alekseev, was in similar terms.⁷

Ruzsky was just about to send these off when an unexpected cable arrived from Petrograd announcing that two members of the Temporary Committee, Guchkov and Shulgin, were on their way to Pskov to meet the Tsar and were leaving at 3.35 p.m.

Not knowing the significance of this, Ruzsky held up despatch of the abdication cables and went back to Nicholas with the unexpected news of the two deputies.⁸ Could they be coming with some offer that would make the abdication unnecessary? Was Nicholas II in fact to be reprieved?⁹

However, fifteen minutes later, reality returned to the imperial carriage. The frontline commanders had spoken and that being so Nicholas could not remain Emperor. His original abdication cables were handed back to Ruzsky, Nicholas telling him to send them out to Rodzyanko and Alekseev. The time was 3.45 p.m.¹⁰

At that moment Nicholas ceased to be Tsar, Alexis was the new emperor; and Michael was Regent. Or so it was assumed when his cables were circulated by Alekseev to the military commanders and Rodzyanko spread the word in the Duma. Indeed, his abdication was so generally known that in London his cousin King George V that night wrote in his diary: ‘Heard from Buchanan that the Duma had forced Nicky to sign his abdication and Misha had been appointed Regent…’ The king was in no doubt about the reason: ‘I fear Alicky (the Empress) is the cause of it all and Nicky has been weak’.¹¹

What was not taken into account was that his abdication cable contained a condition in respect of Alexis— ‘provided that he can remain with me until he comes of age’ — which would have been more than three years later, in August 1920.

It was disregarded firstly because no discussion or thought had yet been given to that particular question, but more significantly because it was deemed irrelevant to the fact of his abdication. To say as he did that he was ‘ready to abdicate’ concealed the reality that he had been forced off the throne, after being abandoned on all sides. He was in no position to ‘abdicate conditionally’ or dictate the terms of his going; he was finished. And that being so, his son Alexis automatically succeeded him, for that was the law.

Moreover, the question of his future over the next three years was not the issue in the crisis engulfing the capital and thus the wider nation. The sole imperative was that with an innocent boy on the throne and the constitutionally-minded Michael as Regent, the monarchy could be secured, which is what mattered to all but the socialists in the Soviet.

To say as he did in his cable that There is no sacrifice which I would not bear for the sake of the real welfare and for the salvation of our own dear Mother Russia meant nothing at all if immediately contradicted by his saying except for having to part with my son.

But that, it turned out, was precisely what he was saying. Millions of fathers had lost their sons to the war, and if order was not restored, tens of thousands of others would lose theirs in the resulting chaos. Nicholas hoped to be not among them. Their sacrifice was not to be his.

MICHAEL was keeping closely in touch with developments at the Tauride Palace and on that Thursday, March 2, there were constant comings and goings at Millionnaya Street as Duma emissaries arrived with news. Michael had known the night before that while ‘all the power is now in the hands of the Temporary Committee’, the Duma men ‘are in difficulties because of the strong pressure by the Committee of Deputies of Workers and Soldiers’.¹²

Early that morning he knew that his brother had, belatedly, offered a responsible ministry under Rodzyanko — disregarding his own advice that it should be under Prince Lvov — but he also knew that this was no longer enough. It was frustrating sitting in Millionnaya Street, unable to do anything to help. Should he go to the Tauride Palace and declare his support for such a new government? Rodzyanko, who knew the mood there among the socialists, thought that potentially dangerous. The arrival of the red-bowed Kirill at the Tauride Palace had created more astonishment than uproar in the Soviet, for it had seemed to them a surrender of the imperial family, though it had also strengthened the standing of the Duma men who appeared now to be able to command even a Grand Duke.

There was less interest when, later that same day, Bimbo turned up and also offered the Duma his support. Bimbo had only just arrived back at his Millionnaya Street palace having taken the revolution as signal that he could end the exile imposed upon him on New Year’s Day by the Tsar. Tall, bald, fat and still a bachelor at 58, Bimbo was a gossip who had never concealed his contempt for Nicholas and Alexandra; as a young man in the Chevalier Gardes he had been known as ‘Phillipe Egalite’ because he insisted on calling his soldiers ‘my friends’.¹³ At the Tauride Palace his support for the Duma was acknowledged, but not thought of having any political significance. As for the Soviet, they hardly knew he was there.

But Michael was neither an eccentric Grand Duke nor the discredited Kirill. The Soviet might take his