The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II (17 page)

‘Your Highness, you, as his only brother, must tell him the whole truth — point out the pernicious results of the Empress’s influence...’

‘Do you think there must be a responsible ministry?’

‘The general demand is only for a strong government...the country’s desire is to see at the head of the Cabinet a man enjoying the confidence of the nation. Such a man would form a ministry responsible to the Tsar...for God’s sake, Your Highness, use your influence to get the Duma summoned, and Alexandra Fedorovna and her set put out of the way.’

According to Rodzyanko this interview lasted for more than an hour. ‘The Grand Duke agreed with everything and promised to help...’
¹⁰
Rodzyanko’s wife thought Michael was there ‘on some mysterious mission, I think he was sent secretly by his brother’. But she reported to a relative that ‘he knows and understands everything, and listened attentively to all that was said and promised to prevail upon the Emperor to see [my husband]’. When Nicholas then did agree to meet Rodzyanko, she wrote that ‘it is more than likely that the audience was granted after Michael Aleksandrovich’s expositions.’
¹¹

That meeting between the Tsar and the Duma president came on Saturday January 7 in Nicholas’s study at Tsarskoe Selo. Rodzyanko spoke frankly about the mood of the country, the disastrous influence of the Empress, and the mistakes which now threatened to plunge Russia into anarchy. His message was blunt: unless he agreed to grant concessions and to remove Alexandra from politics, he faced disaster. ‘Your Majesty, do not compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country.’

The Tsar pressed his head with his hands and said, ‘Is it possible that for 22 years I tried to act for the best, and that for 22 years it was all a mistake?’ Rodzyanko did not flinch from his answer. ‘Yes, Your Majesty, for 22 years you have followed the wrong course.’
¹²

But if Rodzyanko hoped for a new start he was to be disappointed. Once he had bowed and set off to return to the capital, Nicholas went on as before. Nothing was to be done, nothing would change. The Tsar would retreat to his army headquarters in distant Mogilev leaving Alexandra in their Tsarskoe Selo palace to deal with ministers who did whatever she demanded.

There was little more immediately that Michael could do, for on January 19 he departed back to the front line. Three days later he was in Kiev, and on his way to the south-western headquarters of his 2nd Cavalry Corps. His new appointment, effective as of January 29, was that of Inspector General of Cavalry, but before taking up the post he needed to hand over his Corps formally and to make his farewells to the divisions, brigades and regiments. Over the next days he travelled the front line by sleigh, inspecting trenches and outposts. He thanked ‘the riflemen for their service, tasted the food, inspected the wooden barracks of the lower-ranking men, and then went to a hut for a bite to eat.’
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After the atmosphere in Petrograd it was almost a relief to him to be at the front line and he enjoyed his tour. He found nothing in his Corps to suggest that morale was low, or that the ferment in the capital had affected his troops. As before, when he had left the Savage Division ten months earlier, they cheered him, played trumpet farewells, sang songs, gave him tea and looked sorry to see him go, he noted in his diary.
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What he also noted was that he had been spared making a speech, as he did when departing the Savage Division. Doing so, he lamented, ‘must have taken at least three years of my life. I am always so frightfully nervous, but I pulled myself together and spoke loudly, slowly, and clearly.’

Yet politics could not be kept at bay. Before returning to Gatchina he went to say goodbye to his commander-in-chief Brusilov at his headquarters in Kamenets-Podolsky, arriving there on Wednesday, February 1.

‘I was very fond of him’. Brusilov recalled, ‘for he was an absolutely honourable and upright man, taking no sides and lending himself to no intrigues…he shunned every kind of gossip, whether connected with the services or with family matters. As a soldier he was an excellent leader and an unassuming and conscientious worker.’
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As the two men said farewell on February 1, Brusilov thought the situation too serious for just polite talk. ‘I expounded most earnestly…the need for immediate and drastic reforms…begging him to explain all this to the Tsar and to lend my views his personal support.’ Michael promised to do so, but cautioned that ‘my brother has time and time again had warnings and entreaties of this kind from every quarter, but he is the slave of influence and pressure that no one is in a position to overcome.’
¹⁶
He meant the Empress.

The two men shook hands, and Michael set off home next day. It was a slow journey. ‘We are moving with a delay of 3 hours, probably because of snowdrifts. I say “probably”, as you can never know the real cause of happenings. But the truth is that everything is in complete disorder everywhere.’
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It was going to get worse.

THE serious plotters were now well advanced in their plans for a palace coup. Discounting the near-hysterical ‘champagne plot’ at the Vladimir palace, which served only to extinguish any hopes that the Romanovs could put their own house in order, there were a number of conspiracies, none knowing much if anything of the others. All necessarily were shadowy and perhaps only two were credible.

The Progressive Bloc of conservatives and liberals in the Duma had prepared a list of ministers who would form the government after a coup, with Michael as Regent, though they were vague as to how this was to be accomplished.

Demands that something should be done could be heard on all sides. Vladimir Stankevich, a henchman of the radical left-wing Duma deputy Aleksandr Kerensky, saw ‘a general determination to have done with the outrages perpetrated by court circles and to overthrow Nicholas. Several names were suggested as candidates for the throne, but there was unanimous agreement that Michael Aleksandrovich was the only one who could guarantee the constitutional legitimacy of government.’
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But talk was not action. Among those determined to act were Aleksandr Guchkov, the 55-year-old leader of the Octobrists, a right-wing party in the Duma, but one which favoured ‘constitutional government’; among his supporters were the liberal Nikolai Nekrasov, and industrialist Mikhail Tereshchenko, all destined to play a leading part in the events to come. Nekrasov and Tereshchenko were young men, the former 36 and the other only 29.

Guchkov, a former President of the Duma, had been hated by the Empress since 1912 when he had bitterly denounced Rasputin — ‘Oh, could not one hang Guchkov?” was her response.
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The gossipy French ambassador Paléologue called him ‘the personal enemy of Their Majesties’,
²⁰
so it was no surprise that he should now want to be rid of them.

Guchkov’s reasoning was that without change a revolution was inevitable and if it was left to extremists and the street mob then it would be they who would rule afterwards. ‘I fear that those who make the revolution will be at the head of that revolution’. The alternative was to be a bloodless palace coup, for none wanted that Michael should become Regent for Alexis ‘surrounded by lakes of blood’.
²¹
The plan which they slowly pieced together was to capture the Tsar’s train while it was travelling between the capital at the army headquarters at Mogilev, and thus present the country next morning with a
fait accompli.
To make this feasible Prince Dimitri Vyazemsky, a brother of Michael’s ADC Vladimir, had been charged with the task of recruiting ‘like-minded’ army officers.
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But would Michael agree to be Regent? The plotters took that for granted, though they made no approach to him in advance. Certainly Guchkov seemed entirely confident. After all, he argued, faced with the reality of Nicholas compelled to abdicate, he would have no choice but to accept, willingly or otherwise. ‘The only illegality would be the moral pressure exerted. After that, the law would come into effect.’
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A second and unrelated plot went to the heart of the
Stavka
itself where General Alekseev, the chief of staff, supported it. One of the principals was Prince Lvov, the popular leader of the civic and volunteer organisations across Russia. Their intention was to arrest Alexandra on one of her regular visits to
Stavka
, and compel the Tsar to remove her to Livadia; if he refused, as they knew he would, then he would be compelled to abdicate — with the same result as in the Guchkov plot: Michael as Regent.
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This plan had not been developed because Alekseev had been ill for several weeks, but it remained in being.

However, the arrival in the capital in early January of General Aleksandr Krymov, a 46-year-old cavalryman from Brusilov’s army in the south, gave the Guchkov plot the better chance of success. In Krymov they had the military leader they needed. In the wider picture, it also helped that Krymov knew Michael and they respected each other.

At a meeting in Rodzyanko’s apartment, attended by a number of senior Duma representatives, Krymov made clear his intent. ‘The feeling in the army is such that news of a
coup d’etat
would be welcomed with joy. A revolution is imminent and we at the front feel it is to be so. If you decide on such an extreme step, we will support you. Clearly, there is no other way...the Emperor attaches more weight to his wife’s nefarious influence than to all honest words of warning. There is no time to lose.’
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The meeting lasted far into the night. Although Rodzyanko declined to have any part in it — ‘I have taken the oath of allegiance’ — the others were less squeamish, one quoting Brusilov’s remark that ‘if it comes to a choice between the Tsar and Russia, I will take Russia’.
²⁶

The plot, though lacking detail and with more questions than answers, was now a commitment. With the general in their ranks they were confident of recruiting enough officers for the task in prospect.

Michael was not made privy to any of this, for it was well understood that he could never allow himself to have any hand in bringing down his brother. He would become Regent, but that would be the direct result of the Tsar’s abdication, not because of any act on his part. He would take over with clean hands.

That said, they had first to capture and arrest the Tsar, and they were still weeks away from being ready to do that. But ready they would be, they were confident of that, as they were confident that the Tsar, once in their hands, would have no choice but to do as they commanded. Failure was not an option. They would strike in the middle of March.

In the event, that would be too late. What would be known as the February Revolution would render all that planning of no account. The end for Nicholas would be very different to the one which they had designed. Yes, he would sign his abdication as a result, and in a train as it turned out, but Michael would not be Regent, he would be Tsar.

BACK home in Gatchina on Saturday, February 4, Michael telephoned his brother-in-law Sandro in Petrograd. Had there been any sign that Nicholas was ready to make concessions— anything hopeful at all — while he had been away at the front? The answer was depressingly No. Michael arranged to meet Sandro in the capital, and then proposed that the two of them should go together to Tsarskoe Selo in yet another desperate attempt to persuade him to see sense, appoint a responsible government, and take his wife out of politics altogether.
¹
Sandro agreed, but suggested that he first went there and confronted Alexandra privately. What had to be said to her in front of Nicholas would come better from him alone than with Michael. At least his wife Xenia, as the Tsar’s sister, could not be accused of being in ‘a bad set’.

Arriving in Tsarskoe Selo, Alexandra reluctantly agreed to meet Sandro. Nicholas led him into her mauve bedroom. ‘Alix lay in bed, dressed in a white negligée embroidered with lace...I kissed her hand and her lips just skimmed my cheek, the coldest greeting given me by her since the first day we met in 1893. I took a chair and moved it close to her bed, facing a wall covered with innumerable icons lit by two blue-and-pink church lamps.’

With Nicholas standing silently, puffing away on his cigarettes, Sandro told her bluntly that she had to remove herself from politics. Their exchange became heated, until all pretence at politeness vanished. ‘Remember Alix, I remained silent for thirty months!’ he shouted at her in a wild rage. ‘For thirty months I never said as much as a word to you about the disgraceful goings-on in our government — better to say in your government! I realise that you are willing to perish and that your husband feels the same way, but what about us? Must we all suffer for your blind stubbornness? No, Alix, you have no right to drag your relatives with you into a precipice. You are incredibly selfish!’

Alexandra stared at him coldly. ‘I refuse to continue this dispute’, she replied tersely. ‘You are exaggerating the danger. Some day, when you are less excited, you will admit that I knew better.’