The impatient Soviet in consequence took their own steps to deal with the issue of Michael and the monarchy by ordering ‘the arrest of the Romanov family’; in Michael’s case this was not to be house arrest but ‘an actual arrest’, which in turn came to mean that ‘he is subjected only to the surveillance of the revolutionary army’.21 A bluff to put pressure on the Duma men to deliver Michael’s abdication and quickly?
Back in Millionnaya Street there seemed no haste to do so at the lunch table. Michael’s greater interest appeared to be in finding out what had happened at Pskov. ‘Tell me’, he asked Shulgin, ‘how did my brother conduct himself?’
‘His Majesty was very pale but at the same time very calm and resigned…amazingly calm.’22
Shulgin then told him the full story, including Nicholas’s reasons for bypassing his son. The whole table listened attentively, for it was the first account any of them had heard of the abdication scene at Pskov. Despite the drama of their own day, what had happened at Pskov had changed everything, and no one thought of interrupting Shulgin as he described the scene in the imperial carriage. Michael made no criticism of his brother and in front of Michael no one else did so either.
After that, conversation was polite, with no mention of the reason for their all being there, until lunch was finished and Princess Putyatina rose from the table and withdrew. The delegates then looked at Michael, waiting for the moment when he would formally provide his abdication; Nekrasov fingered again the manifesto in his pocket.
Matveev, having sat throughout lunch in silence, then asserted himself, asking Nekrasov to let him see what he had written down. Nekrasov handed it over, and Matveev read through it, then returned it with the air of a man who had found it wanting.
Nekrasov glanced down at the paper: he had no experience of drafting a manifesto of this kind; had he missed something? This Matveev did not seem to be quite the nonentity they had taken him for when he was acting as doorman. His manner was that of advisor, acting for Michael, not servant.
That became clear in moments after Michael suggested that Matveev ‘should help set down in proper form what had taken place’.23 Oh dear, he was a lawyer. He was also trouble, for nodding towards Nekrasov, Matveev announced to the table that in order to prepare a proper manifesto for Michael’s signature they would first need to have a copy of the original abdication manifesto signed by Nicholas, as well as a copy of the
An embarrassed Prince Lvov knew from Shulgin that he had handed the manifesto over at the Warsaw station to some man from the transport ministry, but no one at the table had any idea what had happened to it thereafter — that it was actually still hidden under a pile of old magazines in the office of Bublikov, the transport commissioner. As for the Code of Laws — where could they get a copy of those?
The lunch table was now in disarray, any thought of a quick exit with a signed manifesto now abandoned. Somehow the lawyers were going to have to take over and since Michael had his own in Matveev they were going to need one themselves. The man they settled on was Vladimir Nabokov, and Prince Lvov volunteered to call him. For Michael he was a welcome choice: for Nabokov’s sister Nadine was one of Natasha’s closest friends, and her daughter was a playmate of Michael’s seven-year-old son George.24
Prince Lvov first tried Nabokov’s office in the General staff building, and then his home; he was not there either but his wife offered to trace him, which she did promptly. He was at another of his offices, and he promised to leave immediately.
With that, Kerensky and the Duma men other than Lvov and Shulgin, decided to return to the Tauride Palace. There was nothing they could do here, and it was clearly going to be a long afternoon. Assured by Prince Lvov that they would be told as soon as the manifesto had been signed, they left looking rather more subdued than when arriving so confidently almost six hours earlier. They were not sure how it had happened, but somehow Michael now seemed to be in charge.
At almost that very moment a telegram was sent to Michael from Sirotino, a railway station some 275 miles from Pskov. Nicholas, having ‘awoken far beyond Dvinsk,’25 had suddenly remembered that he had neglected to mention to his brother that he was the new Emperor. He hastily scribbled out a telegram, despatched at 2.56 p.m. and addressed to ‘Imperial Majesty Petrograd’. It read:
As so often during the past days, Nicholas had acted when it was too late to matter. However, at least it was delivered, unlike the last telegram sent to him, and returned
THERE were no cabs or cars available to Vladimir Nabokov, but hurrying along the crowded Nevsky Prospekt he reached Millionnaya Street just before 3 p.m. After briefing him on the events of that morning, Prince Lvov explained that ‘the draft of the Act had been outlined by Nekrasov, but the effort was incomplete and not entirely satisfactory, and since everyone was dreadfully tired… they requested that I undertake the task’.27
But as Matveev had pointed out earlier, they could not proceed without the Code of Laws and the original Nicholas manifesto. However, since the manifesto was lost somewhere in the transport offices, there was no dispute about its meaning and it had been proclaimed all over the city. That being so, what Nabokov agreed as essential was having the
Who would have a copy? Nabokov telephoned the constitutional jurist Baron Nolde — ‘that astute and exacting specialist in state law’28 — at his office in nearby Palace Square, asking him to come at once and to bring with him a first volume of the Code of Laws. He arrived ten minutes later.
He, Nabokov and Shulgin now retreated into the bedroom of Princess Putyatina’s young daughter, with only a small school desk at which to write. The immediate problem which confronted the two lawyers was precisely that which had exercised Michael when he had first learned that he had been named Emperor: was that lawful?
Nabokov and Nolde did not need any prompting on that issue: both recognised from the outset that Nicholas’s manifesto contained ‘an incurable, intrinsic flaw’. At best it was doubtful law, and as Nabokov would say, ‘from the beginning Michael must necessarily have felt this’. Rightly, he judged that ‘it significantly weakened the position of the supporters of the monarchy. No doubt it also influenced Michael’s reasoning.’29
That said, Nabokov and Nolde were left in the same position as Michael: the political fact that Alexis had been bypassed and could not be restored in any practical sense, given the peril of present circumstances. Michael had been abandoned by the new government and they did not want to hear the lawyers telling them that Michael was not the Emperor in fact, and that Nicholas’s abdication manifesto was wrong and would have to be done all over again so that Alexis was Emperor and Michael the Regent.
They did not need Lvov and Shulgin to spell out the consequences of that: the Soviet would not only march into the apartment and arrest Michael, as they threatened to do, but arrest the whole government, leaving Kerensky to put together another one.
When Nabokov and Nolde began their task, handing out drafts of the manifesto to Matveev for perusal and approval by Michael, they began with the same preamble used by Nekrasov:
This formula gave legitimacy to the new government, which otherwise was simply there by licence of the Soviet. No one had elected the Provisional Government which represented only itself, and in that regard it had arguably less authority than the Soviet which could at least claim to have been endorsed by elected soldier and worker delegates.
Michael could make the new government official and legal, as no one else could, and therefore it was important that his manifesto be issued by him as Emperor. If he was not Emperor, he had no power to vest, and no authority to ‘command’ anyone. Of political necessity the new government needed Michael to give up the
