The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

soldiers has flared up, the like of which I have not seen… little by little the troops were brought to order during the night, but the proclamation of Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich would pour oil onto the fire and a merciless extermination of everything that can be exterminated would start…¹⁸

An hour later he was sending the same message to Alekseev at Stavka. Alekseev, who had already sent out the abdication manifesto, was disturbed by his wire conversation with Rodzyanko, and at 7 a.m. he sent out his views to his other army commanders that ‘there is no frankness or sincerity in the communications of Rodzyanko’ and that ‘there is no unity within the State Duma and the Temporary Committee’.¹⁹

Alekseev suspected that it was the Soviet which was dictating affairs in the capital. His response was to propose that the army should demand that the manifesto as written be implemented and that there should be a meeting of all army commanders to ‘establish unanimity in all circumstances and in any eventuality’.

At the Tauride Palace, the new government knew that it could not delay much longer its meeting with Michael — whether he was Emperor or whether they could somehow return him to Regent. Everyone knew where he was. As they waited for Rodzyanko to return from his wire talks, Kerensky picked up a copy of the Petrograd telephone directory, flicked through the pages and ran his finger down the column to the name of Princess Putyatina. Her number was 1-58-48. A few moments later, at 5.55 a.m., the telephone rang in 12 Millionnaya Street.²⁰

14. EMPEROR MICHAEL

THERE was never any chance of keeping secret the succession of Michael as Emperor. In the four hours which had elapsed between the first telegraphed despatches from Pskov and the desperate call from Rodzyanko, the news had spread out not only to the army but to cities across Russia. At first light, thousands of troops in frontline units were swearing an oath of allegiance to Emperor Michael II, and in the Fourth Cavalry Division General Krasnov announced the succession to ‘an enormous cheer’; over the next two days he decorated soldiers with the Cross of St George in the name of His Majesty Emperor Michael.¹

At Pskov itself, with Nicholas gone, a Te Deum was ordered for the new Emperor in the cathedral. Dimitri’s sister Marie went to the morning service, as did Ruzsky and his generals. The square beside the cathedral was crowded with soldiers, many of them wearing a red rosette, ‘their faces agitated’. Inside, a packed congregation heard the manifesto of Nicholas read out, and then prayed ‘for the prolongation of the days of the new Tsar’.²

As the morning wore on, even in far-off Crimea, and around the ex-Tsar’s favourite home at Livadia, people celebrated Michael’s succession. The American-born Princess Cantacuzene, grand-daughter of US President Grant, and one of Petrograd’s leading hostesses, was on holiday at Yalta at that time, and remembered that Nicholas’s portraits disappeared ‘from shop windows and walls within an hour after the reading of the proclamation; and in their place I saw by the afternoon pictures of Michael Aleksandrovich. Flags were hung out, and all faces wore smiles of quiet satisfaction. It was very bad; now it will be better, was the general, calm verdict. The supposition of a constitutional monarch was the accepted idea.’³

In Moscow, where the garrison had also gone over to the revolution, although without any of the excesses which had occurred in Petrograd, the succession of Michael was greeted with ‘wooden indifference’ on the part of the revolutionaries;⁴ there were no marching protests or riots and no sign of resistance of the kind so feared by Rodzyanko in the hot-house of the Tauride Palace.

When Alexandra’s sister Grand Duchess Ella heard the news at the Chudov Abbey of which she was abbess, her sole concern was the question of Natasha. Told by a monk that in the next service the liturgy would be changed to ‘Our Right Orthodox and Sovereign Lord and Emperor Michael’, she protested: ‘What about…?’ The monk broke in hurriedly. ‘Ah, Matushka, there will be no mention of the lady.’⁵

There would be no prayers for Natasha, but otherwise the faithful crossed themselves and prayed for Michael. Even in Petrograd, the storm centre of the revolution, the news of his succession was greeted with cheers, at least outside the citadels of the revolutionaries.

At Warsaw station, when Guchkov and Shulgin arrived back from Pskov, the two delegates decided to make the first proclamation about Michael. ‘Long live Emperor Michael’ they cried as they hurried from their train, cheered by the people as they went by. When Shulgin walked into the station’s huge entrance hall, a transit battalion of frontline troops, surrounded by a curious crowd, was drawn up there as they waited to change trains. Shulgin read out the manifesto and, lifting his eyes from the paper, called for three cheers for ‘His Majesty Emperor Michael II’. The battalion and the crowd responded with cheers that ‘rang out, passionate, genuine, emotional’.⁶

Shulgin strode back into the station, the crowd making way for him as he went forward looking for Guchkov. Suddenly he was aware of an urgent voice telling him that he was wanted on the telephone in the station-master’s office. When he walked in and picked up the receiver it was to hear the croaking voice of Milyukov. ‘Don’t make known the manifesto’, barked Milyukov. ‘There have been serious changes.’

A startled Shulgin could only stammer a reply. ‘But how?…I have already announced it.’

‘To whom?’

‘Why, to all here. Some regiment or other. The people. I have proclaimed Michael Emperor.’

‘You should not have done that’, shouted Milyukov. ‘Feelings have become much worse since you left…Don’t take any further steps. There may be great misfortune.’⁷

Bewildered, Shulgin put down the phone, and looked around for Guchkov. He had gone off to a meeting of 2,000 men in some nearby railway workshops, he was told, intent on spreading the glad tidings of Michael’s succession. Shulgin was about to go after him when he remembered that he still had the manifesto in his pocket. The railway shopmen had been staunch supports of the Soviet; if he went in, would he get out?

At that moment the telephone rang. This time it was Bublikov, the man whom the Duma Committee had appointed as Railway Commissioner. He was sending his own man to the station. ‘You can trust him with anything…Understand?’ Shulgin understood perfectly. A few minutes later Bublikov’s messenger thrust himself through the crowd and Shulgin slipped him the envelope bearing the manifesto. The man took it and disappeared back to the transport ministry offices, where it was hidden under a pile of old magazines.

Shulgin then headed for the workshops, where Guchkov was standing on a platform above a dense mass of railwaymen, being harangued by its chairman, sneering protests about a new government led by a prince and full of landowners and wealthy industrialists.

‘Is this what we had the revolution for, comrades? Prince Lvov?’ It was clearly not the time nor place to cry out ‘Long Live Emperor Michael’.

As Shulgin joined Guchkov on the platform, the seething workers began to move forward menacingly. Here were two representatives of this bourgeois government, sent secretly to confer with the Tsar at Pskov. Whom did they really represent? ‘Shut the doors, comrades,’ cried the leaders.

The situation looked nasty, but then the railmen began to quarrel amongst themselves, with some shouting that the shopmen on the platform were behaving ‘like the old regime’. Pushing, shoving, the crowd began to turn on its own, with voices calling out for Guchkov to be allowed to speak. He did so, briefly, defending the aims of the new government but prudently deciding not to mention Michael. As tempers cooled, the doors were opened again, and a shaken Guchkov and Shulgin were allowed to leave.⁸

By then the news of the proclamations read out at the Warsaw station had raced across the city. Lawyer Vladimir Nabokov, unaware that he was soon to play a critical role in the future of the monarchy, heard about Michael’s succession twice over as he was walking to work from his apartment on the Morskaya, and when he reached his office he found ‘great excitement, with crowds on the stairs and in the big conference hall’.⁹

Curiously, one of the last to discover the name of the new Emperor of All the Russias was Michael himself. When Kerensky telephoned the apartment at 5.55 a.m. he made no mention of the manifesto. The new government was not yet ready to tell him about that.

MILLIONNAYA Street was half-awake when Kerensky made his call. The apartment was spacious; even so, it