The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II (23 page)

So as part of its deal with the Duma Committee the Soviet demanded a complete amnesty for all revolutionaries, soldiers as well as any others accused of terrorism or murder. The Soviet and the rebel troops both know that if they did not hang together now, they would hang together later.

So, as part of its agenda, the Soviet sought guarantees that the garrison in Petrograd would not be dispersed into the army as a whole, to be picked off later, or disarmed. With these and other measures, the Soviet aim was to continue to hold a loaded pistol at the head of a new government, should it later be tempted to seek revenge. It had already shown that, whatever might be agreed, it knew who was boss. The day before, in its Order No 1, it had stated in its Point 4 that
The orders of the Military Commission of the State Duma shall be executed only in such cases as do not conflict with the orders and resolution of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
The message was that the Duma Committee could have all the attributes of government, provided that it did not do anything of which the Soviet disapproved. It could bark, but it should remember that it was on a short lead.

When the Soviet delegates filed into the Duma Committee with their agenda they found Rodzyanko at a far table, drinking soda water. Facing him, at another table, was the white-haired Pavel Milyukov, sitting behind a pile of papers, notes and telegrams. Across the floor the other Committee members, including Prince Lvov, occupied a row of chairs and armchairs, with other deputies standing around them.
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After desultory conversation, the Soviet executive read out its conditions for supporting the Duma as government. The most difficult over the next 40 hours would be their ‘Point Three’: in effect, the future of the monarchy.

The man who would have nothing to do with their demands for a republic was Milyukov, though he was prepared to yield on the other issues, including an amnesty. ‘He spoke for the entire Duma Committee; everyone considered this a matter of course,’ noted a Soviet member. ‘It was clear that Milyukov here was not only a leader but the boss of the right wing.’ He would not yield on the monarchy and on this the ‘bourgeois leader was irreconcilable’.

Milyukov attempted to make a reformed monarchy appear utterly harmless, without power or influence, a fig leaf for those who did rule. It could not affect the kind of government which Russia would enjoy, and it could not threaten the safety of those who had joined the revolution. There was nothing the Soviet need fear, for Alexis was ‘a sick child’ and Michael if he became Regent was ‘a thoroughly stupid man’.
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This ploy, judged ‘naive’ by one,
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did not impress the three men staring back at him. An army general, twice decorated for gallantry in the battlefield, married to a woman known for her strong political opinions — whatever he was, he was not stupid.

By eight o’ clock on Thursday evening, with all now knowing that Nicholas had abdicated that afternoon, the issue of the monarchy was still not settled. It was then that Milyukov played his trump card, by announcing that if there was no Tsar, then he would not be in government. ‘Now, if I am not here, there is no government at all. And, if there is no government, then...you yourselves can understand...’
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An ultimatum or a bluff? The Soviet could not know which, but if it was a bluff it was one they did not dare call. Reluctantly, and unhappily, the Soviet gave way, grudgingly agreeing that the status of Russia should be decided by a future elected Constituent Assembly, leaving Russia as a monarchy until then. However, it made clear that it would ‘engage without delay in a broad struggle for a democratic republic’.
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The monarchy had been reprieved, but only just. Russia could have its sickly boy Emperor, with Michael as figurehead Regent. And with that, surely, the revolution after six tempestuous days was now all but over. Russia was set on a new course.

That afternoon the shape of the new government had become clear. It comprised many of the same men who would have been in any government designed to have public confidence. Milyukov, perched on a table, had jotted their names down on a sheet of paper and distributed the portfolios with little discussion.

The prime minister was to be Prince Lvov, the man Michael had recommended to his brother on Monday night ‘as the only possible candidate’. Rodzyanko, whom Nicholas thought he had appointed prime minister that morning, was not even in the twelve-man Cabinet, though he continued to head the Duma. Milyukov was foreign minister; Guchkov, then on his way to Pskov, was war minister. Kerensky, the only member of the Soviet included in the Cabinet, was justice minister.

As the meeting with the Soviet came to a close that evening, the name of this self-appointed government was chosen almost casually. Milyukov suggested ‘The Provisional Committee of the Duma’; the Soviet member Nikolai Sukhanov suggested instead that it be called more simply ‘The Provisional Government’. Milyukov nodded, and scratched that name down.
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By 10 p.m., with everything seemingly settled, The Provisional Government was born. However, almost at that same moment, Nicholas in Pskov was to throw everything into turmoil again. There was to be no boy emperor, and no Regent. He had changed his mind.

ALEKSANDR Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin, the two delegates sent to Pskov by the Duma Committee, now the Provisional Government, set off from Petrograd before news reached the capital that Nicholas had offered to abdicate— and therefore, in the minds of all those who heard of it, had abdicated.

Before setting off, and as the talks with the Soviet dragged on, Guchkov had set down the need for decisive action, regardless of any agreement with the Soviet:

In this chaos, in everything that goes on, the first thought should be to save the monarchy. Without the monarchy Russia cannot live. But apparently the present Emperor can no longer reign. An imperial order by him is no longer an order: it would not be executed. And if that is so, then how can we calmly and indifferently await the moment when all the revolutionary riffraff starts to look for an issue itself? They would destroy the monarchy...If we act following an agreement ‘with them’ it will surely turn out to be least favourable to us..
.
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Given this, Guchkov and Shulgin still thought that when they did arrive in Pskov, 170 miles away, their task would be to persuade Nicholas to abdicate. They expected a struggle.

The journey took them seven hours, so it was around 10 p.m. when their train pulled into the station and they were led across the tracks to the brightly-lit imperial carriages. Shown into a large saloon car, with a table set with
hors d’oeuvres
, they were met by the bent figure of old Baron Fredericks, the Tsar’s long-time minister of court and keeper of the family’s secrets.

Shulgin suddenly felt uncomfortable, conscious that he was ‘unshaved, with a crumpled collar, in a business coat.’
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Then Nicholas came in, wearing a grey Circassian coat, his face calm. He gestured and the two delegates sat down.

For Guchkov it was an extraordinary moment: for months he had been planning a coup in which Nicholas would be arrested on his train and made to abdicate. In Guchkov’s mind he had pictured a scene not unlike the very one of which he was now part. It would have been two weeks later and there would have been no revolution, but otherwise there were uncanny resemblances between fact and ambition.

Yet Guchkov found himself curiously disconcerted as he faced Nicholas. He shook hands with him and sat down facing him across the polished tabletop. The Emperor — or past Emperor as he was now thought back in Petrograd — was sitting and leaning slightly back against the silken wall, his face blank and impenetrable. Guchkov, recovering his own composure, put his hand on his forehead as was his habit when speaking, and began his case, looking down rather than at Nicholas.
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As he did so, Ruzsky came in, bowed to Nicholas, and whispered to Shulgin to tell him ‘that the matter has been decided’. However, he said nothing to Guchkov, who continued talking until he had finished what he had come here to say.

Expecting an argument he was astonished when Nicholas calmly replied: ‘I have made the decision to abdicate the throne’.
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Guchkov glanced at Shulgin. On the journey to Pskov he had rehearsed what he would say, making notes, and working out with Shulgin how best to counter Nicholas’s rebuttal of their arguments. They expected a long night. Now, suddenly, it was all over.

The shock, in fact, was still to come. For after a pause Nicholas announced that he was abdicating not only for himself but for his son, and that he had therefore decided to name Michael as his successor.

Bewildered, Guchkov stared in disbelief. ‘But we had counted on the figure of the little Alexis Nikolaevich as having a softening effect on the transfer of power.’
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Replacing Nicholas with an innocent boy was the bedrock of their case for preserving the monarchy against those demanding a republic.

So why? Nicholas looked across the table. ‘I have come to the conclusion that, in the light of his illness, I should abdicate in my name and his name simultaneously, as I cannot be separated from him.’

He leaned forward to Guchkov, as if seeking understanding. ‘I hope you will understand the feelings of a father.’
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Fortunately for Nicholas — unfortunately for Russia — Guchkov still did not know of the earlier abdication cable, when Nicholas declared himself ready to abdicate provided that his son ‘can stay with me until he comes of age’, for had he done so he would have arrived in Pskov with a very different purpose. He would not have wasted his time in arguing for abdication, but rather concentrated on agreeing the terms under which Alexis, the new emperor, would remain in parental care for the next three years.

Nicholas could not abdicate twice. His first was binding on him— Ruzsky had a signed copy of that — and acceptance by the Duma Committee of some reasonable arrangement for Alexis’s care would suffice to dispose of any conditional element in his abdication. The principle that an offer once made cannot be withdrawn if its condition is met would have been sufficient for Guchkov to have refused to consider the removal of Alexis from the succession. His difficulty was that he did not know that there had been an offer. And Ruzsky, knowing nothing of the political significance of the issue in terms of the struggle going on at the Tauride Palace, chose to remain silent about it.

However, the fact was that while waiting for the two delegates from Pskov, Nicholas had started to brood about giving up his throne but losing his son at the same time — a prospect which he pondered in dismay. The thought of his beloved son torn from his family and handed over to strangers was too terrible to contemplate, though it was probably no better to think that he might be handed over to ‘Uncle Misha’ as Regent and ‘that woman’. A cynical view might well be that he also bitterly resolved that if ‘they don’t want me, then they won’t get my son’, but whatever was going through his tortured mind, he failed to recognise that what he was proposing was actually unlawful. The laws of succession drawn up and binding since the days of Tsar Paul I were designed to remove the right of one Emperor to choose or block the next.

Tsar Paul had good reason for introducing the law: his own mother, Catherine the Great, had intended to hand her throne to a grandson, not Paul, but died before that could be done. Previous sovereigns had also played fast and loose with the succession. No longer. Succession was to be by rank, not preference, and that was the law followed by the five emperors after Paul. There were to be no more palace coups.

This did not mean that an imbecile could demand the throne, for it was understood that someone clearly unfit to take the throne should not do so; however in ruling out such an heir there were independent procedures by which this should be shown to be in the interests of the nation, not merely an excuse based on the personal judgement of an Emperor.

Was Alexis unfit to become Emperor? The answer was No. Indeed, his parents had spent years hiding his illness from public knowledge so that when he did ascend the throne it would not be held against him. The issue here, never considered before, was separation. And that, in itself — while personally heart-breaking for his family — was not cause for ruling him out. After all, his brother as Regent was hardly likely to countenance such a course for his ailing nephew, and there had been no suggestion in the meetings at the Tauride Palace that removal of Alexis from his parents had been a condition of his inheritance.

Nevertheless that is what Nicholas in that afternoon of Thursday, March 2, decided would be the case, recklessly indifferent to the consequences for crown and country. To find excuse for his change of mind he called Professor Sergei Fedorov, the court physician to his carriage. Fedorov had always told him that Alexis’s haemophilia was incurable, and he repeated that fact now. But that was not what Nicholas wanted to know: his question was whether he thought Alexis would be allowed to remain with the family after his succession. The correct answer to that was surely that Fedorov could not know: he was not a politician, he was a doctor. Instead, probably because he knew what answer Nicholas was looking for, he told him that he doubted if Alexis would be allowed to remain with his parents.
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Where he could be more certain was that if separated, Alexis might not get the care he needed, given that his illness had been hidden from the world.