The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

Nonetheless, in itself that made a mockery of the promises given by the Duma men on March 3. The powers he had vested in them to ensure orderly and responsible government had clearly been hijacked by the disorderly and irresponsible men in the Soviet.

Yet otherwise he could not complain about his life in Gatchina. He had bought another house for his staff, on Baggout Street where Natasha had lived when she was married to Wulfert, and at the end of April he rented another in Kseniinsky Street, by the Priorate. ‘The house has two floors, we’re thinking of it for our servants,’ he noted in his diary for May 5, 1917.³ He had spent the day inspecting the house, planning to enlarge the garden, and discussing with Natasha the final furnishings, due for delivery nine days later.⁴

But would they be left alone as they had been? There were worrying signs that the Soviet was becoming ever more assertive and demanding, now that the Bolsheviks were back in Petrograd and challenging them. Lenin and Trotsky, returned from exile by the Germans in the hope of stirring up even more trouble, were formidable rivals to the Soviet. That did not bode well, and while Michael had no intention of leaving Russia permanently, it seemed prudent to have some sort of insurance policy in case matters worsened.

An exit permit to Finland —the gateway to Sweden, Norway and then England— suggested itself. To get one, he would need to pull strings and do so discreetly, without the comrades finding out. General Polovtsov, his old friend from the Savage Division, had recently been appointed commander of the Petrograd garrison and on an official trip to Gatchina in June he was contacted by Michael’s ADC Prince Vyazemsky.

‘It was completely out of the question that I should openly visit the Grand Duke, whom I liked so much,’ said Polovtsov. ‘A plot would have at once been suspected, but I was delighted to think that a secret meeting with his ADC could be arranged.’ It took place in the Gatchina palace. In the course of this meeting Vyazemsky asked if Michael could be given a permit to cross into Finland with two cars.

Back in Petrograd, Polovtsov casually approached Kerensky. ‘By the way, I have had a request from the Grand Duke Michael to deliver him a permit for crossing the frontier into Finland with his family in two cars. You always say that you admire him so much for his correctness and straightforwardness, so I expect you will have no objection…’

Kerensky looked at him through half-closed eyes. ‘If I were not in Petrograd at the moment, what would you do?’

‘I would deliver it on my own responsibility.’

‘Then deliver it on your own responsibility,’ Kerensky replied.⁵

There were, however, no such discreet concessions for Nicholas. After three months’ imprisonment at Tsarskoe Selo no solution had been found to the question of what to do with the ex-Tsar and his family. In July, an attempted coup by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd was to force a decision. The uprising, crushed by loyal government troops after two days of serious disorders, was a serious setback for the Bolsheviks, and a humiliation for its leadership with Lenin, shaving off his beard as disguise, fleeing by car to Finland.

But it also settled the immediate future of Nicholas. Believing that the Bolshevik failure might encourage a monarchist counter-revolution, Kerensky decided to remove the ex-Tsar from the political chess board while there was opportunity to do so. He chose Tobolsk, in the far-off Urals; his reason, he would say, was that it was ‘an out-and-out backwater’.⁶ The move was fixed for August 1.

Michael heard of this ‘only by accident’ in the afternoon of the previous day. With only hours to spare, he drove at once to Petrograd with Natasha and Johnson, going directly to the Winter Palace, home and office to the all-powerful Kerensky, now master of both the Provisional Government and the Soviet which, with the Bolshevik threat, had come to find itself needing him as much as he had once needed them. It was difficult in these days to distinguish one from the other.

While Michael and Natasha waited in their car, Johnson was sent into the Winter Palace to find Kerensky and to persuade him to allow Michael to see his brother that night.⁷

Kerensky had taken to working at the desk of Michael’s father Alexander III and sleeping in his bed. The red flag flying over the Winter Palace was also lowered whenever he was out of town, as had happened when the Tsar would leave in imperial days.⁸ It was as if Kerensky had become Tsar, which in a sense he had: he was the virtual dictator and as much autocrat as Nicholas had ever been.

The Provisional Government which had met Michael in Millionnaya Street was largely dissolved. Only three of the 12 original ministers remained in office — Kerensky as prime minister, war minister and navy minister; Tereshchenko, formerly finance minister was now foreign minister; and Nekrasov who remained transport minister. Milyukov and Guchkov had resigned in disgust within the first two months; Prince Lvov had quit as prime minister after the abortive Bolshevik uprising in July, which left him at best as no more than a figurehead in a government dominated by Kerensky. The others had just vanished, to be replaced by men from the Soviet, though no Bolsheviks joined the government for they had refused to ‘collaborate’.

This was no longer the Provisional Government, bound by the constitution handed to them by Michael — it was the Kerensky Government, bound by no one save himself and his lackeys. The so-called Kerensky Offensive, launched against the Germans in June, had failed. If anything, that meant that his grip had to tighten; since there was no victory, other than against the Bolsheviks, his eyes had turned inwards. The enemy, he believed, was now within.

It was around 7.30 p.m. when Johnson was led in to see Kerensky. Yes, he understood, and saw no objection. A meeting was arranged for midnight at Tsarskoe Selo, which was the earliest that Kerensky could be there, and he insisted on being present.

After Johnson re-emerged into the palace square, Michael drove to Matveev’s apartment on the Fontanka, where they all had dinner. At 10 p.m. Michael and Natasha drove north to Tsarskoe Selo, stopping at Grand Duke Boris’s English-style villa on Town Street. From there, at midnight, Michael was taken alone to the Alexander Palace by the Guard Commandant, Colonel Eugen Kobylinsky.⁹ Entering through the kitchen, they went through the basement to the stairs leading to Nicholas’s study. In the anteroom they were met by Kerensky.

It was some five months since the brothers had seen each other, the last occasion being in February 1917, when Michael had gone to Tsarskoe Selo to beg Nicholas to make the concessions necessary to save the throne. Nicholas had then dismissed his arguments as alarmist, as he had dismissed all those before. Now he was an ex- Tsar, a prisoner, unable to command anyone, and helplessly awaiting despatch with his entire family into distant exile.

Kerensky, making small talk, accompanied Michael into the study, and then retreated to a side table and pretended to be absorbed in a book.¹⁰ As the door closed behind them, 13-year-old Alexis, the boy who should have been Emperor, came into the anteroom and asked Kobylinsky: ‘Is that Uncle Misha who has just come in?’ Told that it was, he hid himself behind the door. ‘I want to see him when he goes out,’ he said, peering through a crack in the door at the study beyond.¹¹

Although Kerensky sat with his head seemingly buried in his book, privacy was impossible. However low their voices, Michael and Nicholas knew he could hear everything they said, so they did not say much in consequence. There had been an awkward silence at first, then ten minutes of polite conversation, neither sufficiently at ease to think of anything that actually mattered. ‘How is Alix? How is mother?’ Their conversation never rose above the trite. ‘They stood fidgeting all the while, and sometimes one would take hold of the other’s hand or the buttons of his uniform,’ Kerensky, sneaking glances over his book, would say later.

After ten minutes, Kerensky motioned that the meeting was over. ‘May I see the children?’ asked Michael, not knowing that Alexis was outside the door, looking in.

‘No,’ answered Kerensky. ‘I cannot prolong the interview.’¹²

Michael and Nicholas clasped hands, and murmured their goodbyes. Then Michael, his eyes filled with tears,¹³ turned and left as he had come. Alexis, waved away by Kobylinsky, retreated out of sight, hoping that some call would come for him from Uncle Misha. But there was no call; Michael had not known he was there.

That night, all he said to his diary was that ‘I found that Nicky looked rather well’.¹⁴ He would never see his brother again, though of course he could not know that it was Nicholas who would briefly outlive him.

Nor could he know, as he drove back to Gatchina in the eaerly hours of August 1, that he was about to become a prisoner himself.