Nicholas and Alexandra (19 page)

The Empress was in a state of despair. Five days after "Bloody Sunday," she wrote to her sister Princess Victoria of Battenberg:

"You understand the crisis we are going through! It is a time full of trials indeed. My poor Nicky's cross is a heavy one to bear, all the more as he has nobody on whom he can thoroughly rely and who can be a real help to him. He has had so many bitter disappointments, but through it all he remains brave and full of faith in God's mercy. He tries so hard, works with such perseverance, but the lack of what I call 'real' men is great. . . . The bad are always close at hand, the others through false humility keep in the background. We shall try to see more people, but it is difficult. On my knees I pray to God to give me wisdom to help him in his heavy task. . . .

"Don't believe all the horrors the foreign papers say. They make one's hair stand on end—foul exaggeration. Yes, the troops, alas, were obliged to fire. Repeatedly the crowd was told to retreat and that Nicky was not in town (as we are living here this winter) and that one would be forced to shoot, but they would not heed and so blood was shed. On the whole, 92 killed and between 200-300 wounded. It is a ghastly thing, but had one not done it the crowd would have grown colossal and 1,000 would have been crushed. All over the country, of course, it is spreading. The Petition had only two questions concerning the workmen and all the rest was atrocious: separation of the Church from the Government, etc. etc. Had a small deputation

brought, calmly, a real petition for the workmen's good, all would have been otherwise. Many of the workmen were in despair, when they heard later what the petition contained and begged to work again under the protection of the troops.

"Petersburg is a rotten town, not one atom Russian. The Russian people are deeply and truly devoted to their Sovereign and the revolutionaries use his name for provoking them against landlords, etc. but I don't know how. How I wish I were clever and could be of real use. I love my new country. It's so young, powerful and has so much good in it, only utterly unbalanced and childlike. Poor Nicky, he has a bitter, hard life to lead. Had his father seen more men, drawn them around him, we should have had lots to fill the necessary posts; now only old men or quite young ones, nobody to turn to. The uncles no good, Mischa [Grand Duke Michael, the Tsar's younger brother] a darling child still. . . ."

But "Bloody Sunday" was only the beginning of a year of terror. Three weeks later, in February, Grand Duke Serge, the Tsar's uncle and Ella's husband, was assassinated in Moscow. The Grand Duke, who took a harsh pride in knowing how bitterly he was hated by revolutionaries, had just said goodbye to his wife in their Kremlin apartment and was driving through one of the gates when a bomb exploded on top of him. Hearing the shuddering blast, Ella cried, "It's Serge," and rushed to him. What she found was not her husband, but a hundred unrecognizable pieces of flesh, bleeding into the snow. Courageously the Grand Duchess went to her husband's dying coachman and eased his last moments by telling him that the Grand Duke had survived the explosion. Later she visited the assassin, a Social Revolutionary named Kaliayev, in prison and offered to plead for his life if he would beg the Tsar for pardon. Kaliayev refused, saying that his death would aid his cause, the overthrow of the autocracy.

The murder of her husband changed Ella's life. The gay, irrepressible girl who had guided her small, motherless sister Alix; who had fended off the attentions of William II; who had skated and danced with the Tsarevich Nicholas—this woman disappeared. All of the gentle, saintly qualities suggested by her quiet acceptance of her husband's character now came strongly forward. A few years later, the Grand Duchess built an abbey, the Convent of Mary and Martha, in Moscow and herself became the abbess. In a last gesture of worldly flair, she had the robes of her order designed by the fashionable religious painter Michael Nesterov. He designed a long, hooded robe of fine, pearl-gray wool and a white veil, which she wore for the rest of her life.

As the months rolled by, violence spread to every corner of Russia. "It makes me sick to read the news," said Nicholas, "strikes in schools and factories, murdered policemen, Cossacks, riots. But the ministers instead of acting with quick decision, only assemble in council like a lot of frightened hens and cackle about providing united ministerial action." The slaughter of Rozhdestvensky's fleet in Tsushima raised a storm of mutiny in the ships remaining in the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Sailors of the battleship
Potemkin,
angered when they were served portions of bad meat, threw their officers overboard, raised the red flag and steamed their ship along the Black Sea coast, bombarding towns, until the need for fuel forced them to intern at the Rumanian port of Constanza.

By mid-October 1905, all Russia was paralyzed by a general strike. From Warsaw to the Urals, trains stopped running, factories closed down, ships lay idle alongside piers. In St. Petersburg, food was no longer delivered, schools and hospitals closed, newspapers disappeared, even the electric lights flickered out. By day, crowds marched through the streets cheering orators, and red flags flew from the rooftops. At night, the streets were empty and dark. In the countryside, peasants raided estates, crippled and stole cattle, and the flames of burning manor houses glowed through the night.

Overnight, a new workers' organization bloomed. Consisting of elected delegates, one for each thousand workers, it called itself a soviet, or council. Like the strike itself, it came from nowhere, but grew rapidly in numbers and power. Within four days, a leader emerged in Leon Trotsky, a fiery orator and a member of the Menshe-vik branch of the Marxist Social Democratic Party. When the Soviet threatened to wreck every factory which did not close down, companies of soldiers were brought into the city. Sentries paced in front of all the public buildings, and squadrons of Cossacks clattered up and down the boulevards. The revolution was at hand; it needed only a spark.

In one of his most famous letters, written to his mother at the height of the crisis, Nicholas described what happened next:

"So the ominous quiet days began. Complete order in the streets, but at the same time everybody knew that something was going to happen. The troops were waiting for the signal but the other side would not begin. One had the same feeling as before a thunder storm in summer. Everybody was on edge and extremely nervous. . . . Through all those horrible days I constantly met with Witte. We very often met in the early morning to part only in the evening when night fell. There were only two ways open: to find an energetic

soldier to crush the rebellion by sheer force. There would be time to breathe then but as likely as not, one would have to use force again in a few months, and that would mean rivers of blood and in the end we should be where we started.

"The other way out would be to give to the people their civil rights, freedom of speech and press, also to have all laws confirmed by a state Duma—that of course would be a constitution. Witte defends this energetically. He says that, while it is not without risk, it is the only way out at the present moment. Almost everybody I had an opportunity of consulting is of the same opinion. Witte put it to me quite clearly that he would accept the Presidency of the Council of Ministers only on condition that his program was agreed to and his action not interfered with. He . . . drew up the Manifesto. We discussed it for two days and in the end, invoking God's help, I signed it. . . . My only consolation is that such is the will of God and this grave decision will lead my dear Russia out of the intolerable chaos she has been in for nearly a year."

Sergius Witte, who gave Russia its first constitution and its first parliament, believed in neither constitutions nor parliaments. "I have a constitution in my head, but as to my heart—" Witte spat on the floor. Witte was a huge, burly man with massive shoulders, great height and a head the size of a pumpkin. Inside this head Witte carried the ablest administrative brain in Russia. It had guided him from humble beginnings in the Georgian city of Tiflis, where he was born in 1849, to the role of leading minister of two tsars.

Witte's mother was Russian, but on his father's side his ancestry was Dutch. His father, a native of Russia's Baltic provinces, was a cultured man who lost his fortune in a Georgian mining scheme, leaving Witte to battle upward on wits and ego alone. In both respects, Witte was handsomely equipped. "At the University [of Odessa]," he wrote, "I worked day and night and achieved great proficiency in all my studies. I was so thoroughly familiar with the subjects that I passed all my examinations with flying colors without making any special preparations for them. My final academic thesis was entitled, 'On Infinitesimal Quantities.' The work was rather original in conception and distinguished by a philosophical breadth of view."

Hoping to become a professor of pure mathematics, Witte was compelled instead to go to work for the Southwestern District Railroad. During Russia's 1877 war with Turkey, he served as a traffic supervisor in charge of transporting troops and supplies. "I acquitted my-

self with success of my difficult task," he declared. "I owed my success to energetic and well thought-out action." In February 1892, he was promoted to Minister of Communications (including railroads). "It will not be an exaggeration," he noted, "to say that the vast enterprise of constructing the great Siberian railway was carried out by my efforts, supported, of course, first by Emperor Alexander III and then by Emperor Nicholas II." In August 1892, Witte was transferred to the key post of Minister of Finance. "As Minister of Finance, I was also in charge of our commerce and industry. As such, I increased our industry threefold. This again is held against me. Fools!" Even in his private life, Witte took care to ensure that he was not outsmarted. He married twice; both wives had previously been divorced from other men. Of his first wife he said, "With my assistance she obtained her divorce and followed me to St. Petersburg. Out of consideration for my wife I adopted the girl who was her only child, with the understanding, however, that should our marriage prove childless, she would not succeed me as heiress."

Along with the throne, Nicholas inherited Witte from his father. Both the new Tsar and the veteran Minister hoped for the best. "I knew him [Nicholas] to be inexperienced in the extreme but rather intelligent and ... he had always impressed me as a kindly and well-bred youth," Witte wrote. "As a matter of fact, I had rarely come across a better-mannered young man than Nicholas II." The Empress Witte liked less, although he was forced to admit that "Alexandra does not lack physical charms." As Minister of Finance, he struggled successfully to put Russia on the gold standard. He brought in armies of foreign traders and industrialists, tempting them with tax exemptions, subsidies and government orders. His state monopoly on vodka brought millions into the treasury every year. Nicholas disliked Witte's cynicism and arrogance, but admitted his genius. When Witte brought the Portsmouth peace negotiations to what under the circumstances amounted to a brilliant conclusion for Russia, the Tsar recognized his indebtedness by making Witte a count.

Experienced, shrewd and freshly crowned as a peacemaker, Witte was the obvious choice to deal with the spreading revolutionary upheavals. Even the Dowager Empress Marie advised her son, "I am sure that the only man who can help you now is Witte. . . . He certainly is a man of genius." At the Tsar's request, Witte drew up a memorandum in which he analyzed the situation and concluded that only two alternatives existed: a military dictatorship or a constitution. Witte himself urged that granting a constitution would be a cheaper, easier way of ending the turmoil. This recommendation gained further

weight when it was vehemently endorsed by Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, the Tsar's six-foot-six-inch cousin, then in command of the St. Petersburg Military District. So violently did the Grand Duke object to the idea that he become military dictator, that he brandished the revolver in his holster and shouted, "If the Emperor does not accept the Witte program, if he wants to force me to become Dictator, I shall kill myself in his presence with this revolver. We must support Witte at all cost. It is necessary for the good of Russia."

The Imperial Manifesto of October 30, 1905, transformed Russia from an absolute autocracy into a semi-constitutional monarchy, It promised "freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association" to the Russian people. It granted an elected parliament, the Duma, and pledged that "no law may go into force without the consent of the State Duma." It did not go as far as the constitutional monarchy in England; the Tsar retained his prerogative over defense and foreign affairs and the sole power to appoint and dismiss ministers. But the Manifesto did propel Russia with great rapidity over difficult political terrain which it had taken Western Europe several centuries to travel.

Witte now had maneuvered himself into an awkward corner. Having forced a reluctant sovereign to grant a constitution, Witte was expected to make it work. He was installed as President of the Council of Ministers, where he quickly obtained the resignation of Constantine Pobedonostsev. After twenty-six years as Procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobedonostsev left, but not before he had scathingly referred to his successor, Prince Alexis Obolensky, as a man in whose head "three cocks were crowing at the same time."

To Witte's despair, rather than getting better, the situation grew steadily worse. The Right hated him for degrading the autocracy, the Liberals did not trust him, the Left feared that the revolution which it was anticipating would slip from its grasp. "Nothing has changed, the struggle goes on," declared Paul Miliukov, a leading Russian historian and Liberal. Leon Trotsky, writing in the newly formed
Isvestia,
was more vivid: "The proletariat knows what it does not want. It wants neither the police thug Trepov [commander of the police throughout the empire] nor the liberal financial shark Witte: neither the wolf's snout, nor the fox's tail. It rejects the police whip wrapped in the parchment of the constitution."