interfere in his turn, and to warn the Emperor of the ever increasing
unpopularity of his consort, advising him at the same time to send her
somewhere for the benefit of her health, until the storm had abated
which everybody except the few people who surrounded the Sovereign saw
was on its way. His advice also was disregarded. A lady belonging to
the highest social circles, whose family had always been upon terms
of intimacy with that of Nicholas II., the Princess Vassiltschikoff,
bethought herself to write to the Empress, and to entreat her to
save the country and the dynasty, and to induce her husband to call
together a responsible ministry, in possession of the confidence of
the Duma and of the nation. The only reply which she received was an
order commanding her to leave the capital immediately for her country
seat, with a prohibition to return to it again. Alexandra Feodorovna
remained the only person the Czar would listen to, and Alexandra
Feodorovna was but the mouthpiece of people like Rasputin, Sturmer,
and Protopopoff, who kept telling to her that she must not yield, and
that the only thing capable of restoring peace to Russia was to subdue
the rebellious spirits who dared talk about the necessity of making
concessions to public opinion, coupled with the firm determination to
crush, even by force, any manifestations which might be made in that
direction. Acting upon this advice, the Empress assumed a power which
had never belonged to any consort of a sovereign before. In the absence
of Nicholas II. at the front, it was she who gave out orders, not
only to the different ministers, but also to the troops composing the
garrison of Petrograd; she had people arrested according to her fancy,
she caused the houses of others that had displeased her to be searched
by the numerous police agents whom she had at her disposal, ready to
execute any of her caprices; she showed herself the absolute master in
her consort’s dominions, and she held everybody, including himself, in
a firm grasp, which (this must be added) was more the grasp of Rasputin
and Protopopoff, than her own.
It was evident that such a state of things could not go on
indefinitely. There were still some persons left who hoped to be able
to save the dynasty by removing its principal enemy, the unscrupulous
peasant who had tarnished its prestige. A plot, into which entered
different persons belonging to the highest aristocracy of the land
as well as some members of the Imperial family, was arranged, and
culminated, as I have already related, in the murder of Rasputin. All
this has been told, but what has not yet been written is the manner
in which the news of the assassination of her favourite was received
by the Empress. At first her despair was pitiable to behold, then she
quickly rallied, and getting back her energy, proceeded to avenge her
murdered friend. The Czar was at Headquarters, and she happened to find
herself alone with her children at Tsarskoie Selo. She sent for one of
her husband’s aide de camps, General Maximovitsch, and commanded him to
proceed immediately to Petrograd, and to arrest the Grand Duke Dmitry
Pavlovitsch, allowing him, however, to remain in his own palace, but
with strict orders not to leave it, even for a short walk. The whole
Imperial family protested, but it was of no avail. Mr. Protopopoff
was on the side of the Czarina, and he alone was in command of the
police forces of the capital. Any thought of resistance was out of
the question. The hated minister would not have hesitated to proceed,
even against the relatives of his Sovereign, to gratify the revengeful
feelings of Alexandra Feodorovna.
How vindictive the latter showed herself to be can be seen out of the
severity of the punishments which, at her instigation, were showered
upon all those who had taken part in the conspiracy to which Rasputin
had fallen a victim. Prince Youssoupoff, with his wife, was exiled in
one of his properties in the government of Koursk, and the young Grand
Duke Dmitry was ordered to proceed to the front in Persia, which,
considering his delicate state of health, was tantamount to a death
sentence. When this became known, the whole of the Imperial family
wrote to the Czar in the following terms:
“May it please Your Majesty, we, whose signatures you will find at the
bottom of this letter, urgently and strongly beg of you to reconsider
your decision in regard to the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovitsch, and show
him some leniency. We know for a fact that he is physically ill, and
morally broken down. You have been his guardian in his youth, and you
are aware of the deep feelings of affection and of respect that he has
always entertained in regard to you, and to our Fatherland. We implore
Your Majesty in view of his youth, and of the precarious state of his
health, to allow him to repair either to his own estate of Oussoff, or
else to Vilensky.
“Your Majesty is probably aware of the terrible conditions in which
our army finds itself placed in Persia at the present moment, and of
the many illnesses and epidemics of all kinds that are raging there.
To expose the Grand Duke to those dangers is simply compassing his
ruin, because he can only come out of such a trial a physical and moral
wreck, and surely the kind heart of Your Majesty will take pity on a
youth for whom you have had some affection in the past, and in regard
to whom you have always shown yourself a kind father. We pray to God to
soften the feelings of Your Majesty, and to induce you to alter your
decision, and to show some mercy to your own kinsman.”
To this letter was received on the next day the following reply:
“No one has the right to commit a murder. I am aware that many people
are suffering now from qualms of conscience, because it is not only
Dmitry Pavlovitsch who is mixed up in this business. I am surprised at
your daring to address me in such terms. Nicholas.”
The Grand Duke had to submit. He departed for the Persian front,
accompanied by an officer who had received strict orders to oppose any
attempt that he might feel tempted to make, in order to escape his
doom. A curious incident, very characteristic of the state of mind
prevailing in the capital at that time, then occurred. The comrades of
this officer, upon hearing of his appointment, obliged him to resign
his commission, considering that he had disgraced himself by accepting
such a mission.
In the meanwhile the body of Rasputin was taken at night to Tsarskoie
Selo and buried in a small chapel which had been erected some years
before by the Empress, quite close to the palace which she inhabited.
Troops surrounded it so as to prevent any one getting near to it,
whilst the ceremony lasted, and the funeral was attended by the
Emperor, the Empress, and the intimate friend of the latter, Madame
Vyroubieva. Alexandra Feodorovna used to go every afternoon to pray on
the grave of the man whose influence had proved her bane, until at last
the Revolution imprisoned her, and threw to the winds the ashes of the
greatest enemy that the dynasty of the Romanoff’s had ever known. When
the body was exhumed by the angry populace, one found on its breast
a sacred image, bearing the names of the Empress, and of her three
daughters, last memento of an affection which had proved so fatal to
those who had nursed it.
The murder of Rasputin had one very clear and definite object, that of
ridding the Czar of an individual who had sullied his honour. Those who
were courageous enough to send him into eternity had nursed the hope
that once this evil influence had disappeared, the counsels of wisdom
would prevail, and Nicholas II. might be at last brought to understand
that his duty required of him to look bravely into the face of the
situation in which he had been thrown together with the Empire over
which he ruled. Until that time, no one had been able to talk seriously
with him, with hopes of being listened to. The Emperor had acquired
the habit of never giving an immediate reply to any proposition that
was submitted to him, but deferred his decisions, in order to discuss
them first with the Empress, who in her turn consulted her favourites
Sturmer and Protopopoff, who had taken to a certain extent the place
left empty by Rasputin’s disappearance. They were all of them working
together towards the conclusion of a separate peace with Germany,
because they believed that if once this were achieved they would be
able to recall the army from the front, and to use it against the Duma
and the nation, establishing with its help upon a sounder and firmer
base their own power and might. None among them gave a thought to the
possibility that the troops might practise with the people, and work
together with it towards the downfall of the government and of the
dynasty.
This desire of the Empress to bring about, no matter at what cost,
the ending of the war, was suspected by a good many people. A few
officers in possession of important commands had an inkling of it,
and the leaders of the labour party had also heard about it. The last
named, who had worked more than any other class of the nation for the
continuation of the struggle in the material sense of the word, and who
wanted to avenge their sons fallen before the enemy, became anxious
at the possibility of such a peace being concluded; and very distinct
threats were uttered not only in Petrograd, but all over Russia,
against the Ministers, the Emperor, and especially the Empress. This
explains, apart from other reasons, why the murder of Rasputin was
hailed with such joy. One hoped that his removal would put an end to
a state of things out of which could only result disaster, shame and
misfortune.
Unfortunately things turned out quite differently. Alexandra Feodorovna
declared that she considered it her duty to go on doing exactly what
her dead and gone friend had advised her to do, and the partisans of a
separate peace with Germany found in her a more solid protection than
the one they had enjoyed before. She pursued unmercifully all those
who had tried to open the eyes of the Emperor, and the first thing she
did, after having seen the Grand Duke Dmitry sent to Persia and Prince
Youssoupoff exiled, was to cause the Czar to write to the Grand Duke
Nicholas Michaylovitsch, who had addressed to him the letter which had
incensed her so terribly, and command him to leave Petrograd and repair
for two months to an estate which he owned in the South of Russia, in
the government of Kherson. This order was brought to the Grand Duke
by an Imperial messenger, on the last day of the year 1916, at half
past eleven o’clock at night. It was written entirely in the Emperor’s
hand, and was couched in the following terms: “I command you to start
at once for Grouchevka, and to remain there two months. Nicholas.” But
there was added a postscript that had been probably written without the
Empress’s knowledge, under the vague feeling of remorse for such an
unjustifiable action, and which said: “I beg you to do what I ask you.”
Other Grand Dukes attempted in their turn to shake the influence of
Alexandra Feodorovna, and to point out to the Czar the peril which it
represented for the dynasty. Many angry scenes took place at Tsarskoie
Selo, between them and the master of this Imperial place, but they
all led to nothing, and when the wife of the Grand Duke Cyril, the
Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna, sought the Sovereign on her own
initiative, and tried to make him realise the great unpopularity of
his consort, Nicholas II. interrupted her with the exclamation: “What
has Alice got to do with politics? She is only a sister of mercy, and
nothing else. And in regard to her so-called unpopularity, what you say
is not exact.”
He then proceeded to show his cousin any amount of letters emanating
from wounded soldiers, who thanked the Empress for the care which she
had taken of them, letters of which not a single one was genuine,
and which had been manufactured at the instigation of Sturmer and
Protopopoff. The truth of the matter was that the wounded and sick
in the different hospitals visited by Alexandra Feodorovna, did not
at all harbour kind feelings in regard to her, as they reproached
her with giving all her care and attention to the German prisoners,
to the detriment of her own soldiers. And among other stories which
were related concerning those visits of hers, there was one which had
obtained a wide circulation. It was related that one day the Empress,
talking to a wounded officer who had been brought to her own hospital
at Tsarskoie Selo, had asked him the name of the German regiment
against which he had been fighting. The officer had replied that it was
a Hessian regiment, upon which Alexandra Feodorovna had turned her back
upon him, and had left the room in a violent rage which she had not
even tried to control or to dissimulate.
The Grand Duchess Victoria was not discouraged by the manner in
which her disclosures had been received by Nicholas II., and she had
attempted to discuss the subject with the Empress, but the latter, at
her first words, had stopped her with the remark: “The people whom you
advise us to take into our confidence, are the enemies of the dynasty.
I have been for twenty-two years upon the throne, and I know Russia
well. We are beloved by the nation, and no one will ever dare raise
his hand against us. All this opposition about which you are talking
proceeds from a few aristocratic bridge players, and is devoid of any
importance.” After this, there was nothing to be done but to allow
events to take their course, and to proceed.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
MEETING ADDRESSED BY NIKOLAI LENINE IN FRONT OF WINTER PALACE,
PETROGRAD]
They were to develop far quicker than one could have imagined. The
army had begun to discuss the position, and to comment upon it. Every
one who had watched the march of affairs during the last months, felt
that something was going to happen, but no one knew what it would be,
or wished even to know it, so general was the discouragement that had
taken hold of the public mind. There was, however, one factor left,
which towered over the whole of the situation; that was the sincere
desire on the part of the different political parties to try and keep
back as long as possible a crisis which was recognised to have become
inevitable, but which no one wished to see hastened. This feeling was
such a general one that a member of the Duma, who for family reasons
had come for a few days to Stockholm where I was residing at the time
just before the Revolution, told me that no one had been more surprised
than he when the news had reached him that it had broken out, because,
though he had been convinced it was going to produce itself, yet he
had never believed that it could take place so soon.
Whilst this fearful storm was brooding on the horizon and getting
nearer and nearer to him with each day that passed, Nicholas II.
refused to listen to the thunder which was already resounding close
to his ears, and was getting more and more determined to persist in
the fatal resolution of holding his own against the tempest, and if
necessary of using force in order to conjure and to subdue it. If ever
the old Latin proverb, “Quod Deus vult perdere, prius dementat,” has
ever been realised, it was in the case of this unfortunate Sovereign,
who had fallen into the hands of an ambitious, cold woman, devoid
of intelligence and of scruples, and incapable of appreciating the
character of the people over whom she had been called upon to reign,
and of whom she had been unable to conquer either the esteem, the
respect or the affection, during the quarter of a century that she had
lived in its midst.
CHAPTER IV
This discredited Monarch, and his hated and despised Empress, by
whom were they surrounded during those eventful days which preceded
their fall? Who were the people whom they trusted, and on whom they
relied? Whom do we see advising them? Only a handful of flatterers,
of sycophants, always ready to turn against him and to betray them at
the first opportunity, together with Ministers devoid of any political
sense, and without any knowledge or comprehension of the position
into which the country had been allowed to drift; without any courage
or energy, incapable of imposing themselves or their opinions upon
the masses, and of convincing them of the soundness of their views;
incapable even of subduing these masses by the use of sheer force.
Apart from these flatterers and these weak advisers, whom could
Nicholas II. and his Consort trust and believe in? Whom had they got
beside them? A discontented army, that was too thoroughly weary of
seeing itself neglected and passed over like a negligible quantity,
whilst it was fighting for dear life on the frontiers, and who had lost
all wish to go on with what appeared to it to have become a hopeless
struggle; a few functionaries who cared for nothing but their own
advantage or advancement; a handful of adventurers in quest of places,
influence and riches, especially of the latter; a police always ready
to listen to every kind of low denunciation; that had abused its power,
that had destroyed, thanks to its criminal activity, every sense of
personal security in the nation, and that prosecuted only those who
did not pay it sufficiently to leave them alone. Blackmailers, spies,
and valets; this was all that was left to the Czar of All the Russias,
to watch over him. They were the only people on whom he could rely,
and even they would only remain faithful to him as long as the supreme
power would remain, at least nominally, in his hands. His family, as
we have seen, detested the Empress, and was ready and prepared to side
against him on the first notice of his downfall, which it effectively
did. What was left in Petrograd of aristocracy had withdrawn itself
from him, lamenting over evils which it knew itself powerless to allay,
and had come to the sad conclusion that the further it kept from
Tsarskoie Selo the better it would be for everybody. The Emperor stood
alone, forsaken by all those who under different circumstances would
have considered themselves but too honoured to die for him, let alone
defend him against his foes. Alexandra Feodorovna had created a desert
around her husband, and, thanks to her, there was hardly a Russian left
in the world who did not for some reason or other curse the Sovereign
whom Providence had destined to become in all human probability the
last of the Romanoff’s crowned in Moscow. Nicholas II. imagined that
he could rely on the devotion and the loyalty of his army. He forgot
that this army was no longer the one that had acclaimed him with such
enthusiasm at the beginning of the war. Most of the officers who had
been in command of it at the time had fallen on some battle field or
other; the soldiers too had disappeared, and the young recruits who had
taken their place had been reared in different ideas, and were ignorant
of the old discipline which had inspired the former regiments whose
original contingents had been slain. The army had become a national
one from the Imperialist it had been before; it was composed of the
same elements of discontented minds who before they had been called
to the colours had freely discussed the conditions under which the
war was being fought, and who had noticed better than it would have
been possible for them to do at the front, the mistakes of those in
command, the remorseless dilapidation of the Public Exchequer which was
going on everywhere, together with all the faults and the carelessness
that had brought about all the disasters which had fallen upon the
nation. This army could no longer nurse, in regard to the Czar, the
veneration and almost religious respect which had animated it in
earlier days. It had perceived at last that he was not at the height
of the duties and responsibilities which had devolved upon him, and as
a natural consequence of the fall of the scales from its eyes it had
sided against him, together with the Duma, from which it was hoping
and expecting the salvation which its masters of the present hour were
unable to procure for it.
But whilst the whole of Russia was aware of this state of things,
Nicholas II. alone refused to see it. He felt afraid of appearing as
the weak man that he really was; he refused all the urgent entreaties
which were addressed to him, to appeal to his people, and to appoint
a popular and responsible Ministry, capable once he had called it to
power of requiring from him the fulfilment of his former promises,
which he had determined beforehand never to keep. He threw himself from
right to left, and from left to right, in quest of councillors after
his own heart, or rather after the heart of the Empress, because it was
she who finally decided everything; and he changed his Ministers with
a facility which was the more deplorable that those of the morrow did
not differ from the ones whom he had dismissed the day before, until at
last, thanks to his irresolution and to his obstinacy, he contrived to
discredit, not only in Russia, but also abroad and among his Allies,
the government of which he was the head, together with his own person
and the great Imperial might which he personified. At last even the
extreme conservative parties, who until then had been on his side,
joined the ranks of his enemies, and this defection of theirs made the
disaster an irremediable one, and the fatal catastrophe inevitable.
England at this moment made an effort to save the Czar, together with
his dynasty. Lord Milner, who had repaired to Petrograd to attend the
conference of the Allies which was being held there, tried to open
the eyes of Nicholas II. as to the dangers which surrounded him, and
to persuade him to grant at last a constitutional government to his
people, and to entrust the interests of the country to a Cabinet in
possession of its confidence. His representations proved absolutely
useless. The Emperor replied to him that if the troubled state of
public opinion persisted, he would establish a military dictature. He
forgot in saying so that in order to carry an attempt of the kind it
is indispensable to have at one’s hand a man strong enough to accept
the responsibility of such a post, and an army faithful and loyal
enough to back him up. Protopopoff, whom the Empress consulted as to
the wisdom of the decision which Lord Milner had implored the Czar to
take, declared that he thought it would be an extremely dangerous one
to adopt, and that the only thing which could and ought to be done,
in the present circumstances, was to resort to rigorous measures; to
prorogue the Duma and the Council of State; and to repress without
the least mercy every demonstration against the government. He added
that he was quite ready to assume the responsibility of the repression
which he advised, and if the necessity for doing so presented itself,
to give orders to the police to fire on the crowds. At the same time
he inundated the capital, and even the provinces, with a whole army of
spies, whose only occupation consisted in denouncing to him all the
people who did not pay them sufficiently well to leave them alone. A
kind of committee of public safety, such as had existed in France at
the time of the Terror, became, thanks to Mr. Protopopoff, the sole
master of the Russian Empire, and it disposed, according to its fancy,
of the existence as well as of the property and liberty of the most
peaceful citizens. During one night, fifty workmen belonging to the
group that was sitting in the industrial war committee, entrusted with
the fabrication of ammunitions, as representatives of the labour party,
were arrested, without any other apparent reason than the fact that
they had allowed themselves to discuss in public the debates which had
taken place in the Duma, and had been overheard by some spy or other.
This Assembly had met on the 27th of February, 1917, as had already
been settled before the resignation of Mr. Sturmer, and the appointment
of Prince Galitzyne as Prime Minister in his place. It became evident
from the very first day the Session was opened that most violent
discussions were about to take place, and that the government
would never be able to command a majority, because even the ultra
Conservatives who had backed it up before had forsaken it. One more
reason for discontent with it had arisen: the almost total lack of food
in Petrograd, where, thanks to the mismanagement of the railways and
the lack of tracks, no provisions of any kind could arrive. Riots of
a more or less serious character took place in different quarters of
the town; the population clamoured for bread, and broke the windows
in the bakers’ and butchers’ shops, wherever it could do so. This
was one more complication added to all those already existing. The
Duma thought it indispensable to make an energetic manifestation of
its want of confidence in the government’s power to grapple with the
difficulties of the situation. The parties composing the moderate left,
together with the Cadets that had recently united themselves into one
group denominated the “Bloc,” declared by the mouth of their leader,
Mr. Chidlovsky, that it was indispensable to call together a Cabinet
comprising really national elements, in possession of the confidence
of the country as well as that of the Sovereign, because the one in
existence was entirely discredited, even among its former supporters.
During the debates which followed upon this motion, the socialist
deputies, among others Mr. Tcheidze, expressed themselves in most
violent terms, and said, among other things, that the government then
in power would never understand the wishes or the needs of the nation,
or become reconciled with it, and that between it and the country there
existed an abyss which nothing in the world could ever fill. It had
against it the whole of Russia, and it had done nothing and was doing
nothing to smooth over the difficulties which it had itself created,
and for which it was alone responsible. And Mr. Tcheidze concluded his
speech by expressing his conviction that a compromise was no longer
possible, and that only a great national movement of revolt could
overturn the Cabinet and replace it by another one better able to
understand the needs of the country and of the army.
One of the leaders of the extreme right who, up to that time,
had been famous for his reactionary opinions and sympathies, Mr.
Pourichkievitsch, went even further than his socialist colleague,
and proceeded to sketch the character of Mr. Protopopoff, accusing
him of spending his time in suspecting everybody (the zemstvos, the
aristocracy, the Duma, and even the Council of State) of conspiracies
against his person, and of meditating the suppression of these two
institutions within a short time. Mr. Pourichkievitsch added that in
what concerned the Duma he was personally convinced that it would
prefer a dissolution to the alternative of a blind submission to a
tyrant like the Minister of the Interior, and of keeping silent when it
knew that the Fatherland was in danger.
Another speaker of great talent, Mr Efremoff, said that he had come
with great regret to the conclusion that all means at the disposal of
a parliamentary assembly to fight the government had been exhausted,
and that the whole country was a prey to deep dissatisfaction with the
existing order of things. It was high time, he added, that the system
which had ruled Russia for such a long time should give way before a
responsible cabinet, the constitution of which was claimed imperatively
by public opinion. It was only such a cabinet that would be able to
encourage the country to go on with the struggle in which it found
itself engaged, against a foe who had obtained so many advantages over
it, thanks to the mistakes and to the crimes of the administration
represented by Mr. Protopopoff, and by his friends.
But it was the leader of the Cadets, Mr. Miliukoff, the greatest
statesman that Russia possesses at the present moment, who dealt the
last blow to the Ministry, thanks to the acerb criticisms which he
addressed to the Sovereign and to the latter’s advisers, and to his
indignant protest against the arbitrary imprisonment of the delegates
of the workmen of Petrograd, who had been chosen by them to represent
their interests in the industrial war commission. The vice president
of this commission, Mr. Konovaloff, joined him in this protest, whilst
another deputy belonging to the extreme left, whose name was to become
famous very soon, Mr. Kerensky, in language of a violence such as had
never been heard before in the Duma, prophesied that the time would
soon come when this Duma would find itself compelled to fight for its
rights and for the liberty of the nation, and would adopt decisive
measures to put an end to the danger which was threatening the great
work of the national defence, if it was allowed to remain in the hands
and under the control of people who had so badly understood its claims
and its necessities.
After these debates, during which had been voted by an immense majority
the immediate release of the arrested workmen, Mr. Protopopoff rushed
to Tsarskoie Selo, the metropolitan Pitirim, and Mr. Sturmer (who had
remained a persona grata at Court, notwithstanding the fact that he
had been compelled to resign his former functions of Prime Minister)
accompanied him. A conference took place between them and the Empress,
towards the close of which Nicholas II. was asked to come in and
to listen to the decisions that had been arrived at, which he was
requested to sanction. This conference decided that the negotiations
already engaged with Germany in view of the conclusion of a separate
peace should be hastened; that the Duma should be prorogued for an
indefinite period of time, and the police armed with machine guns, in
order to be able to crush at once, by a display of its forces, every
popular manifestation that might be attempted in favour of a change of
government, should such manifestation take place in the capital.
Here I am touching in this short sketch of the Russian Revolution
upon a point which is still dark, the point concerning this separate
peace with Germany, about which there arose at that time so much
talk in Petrograd. The idea of a step of that kind, which would have
constituted an arrant treason in regard to the Allies of Russia, had
been conceived first in the brain of Mr. Sturmer, to whom most probably
it had been suggested by his confidential friend and secretary, Mr.
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, about whom I have already spoken in the first
part of this book, and who, after the murder of Rasputin, had been
finally brought to trial and sentenced to eighteen months hard labour
for blackmail. He had always been in the employ of Germany, and he
had spoken to his patron of the necessity for putting an end to a war
which, if it went on much longer, might endanger the very existence of
the dynasty. Mr. Sturmer had also sympathies for the “Vaterland,” and
he was but too glad to act according to the hints which were given to
him by a man in whom he had every confidence. He found an unexpected
ally in Rasputin, who in his turn induced the Empress through Madame
Vyroubieva to rally herself to his opinion, which was a relatively easy
thing to do, considering the fact that she had been already, of her
own accord, working towards a reconciliation between the Romanoffs and
the Hohenzollerns, the only people whom she thought of any consequence
in the whole affair. The difficulty consisted, however, in finding
a person willing and disposed to act as intermediary in so grave a
matter. Rasputin knew Protopopoff, discussed the subject with him, and
found him quite ready to enter into the views which he expounded to
him.
At that time Mr. Protopopoff was vice president of the Duma. No
one knew exactly how he had contrived to secure his election as
such, considering his reputation of reactionary and especially of
opportunist. He had, however, succeeded in getting himself appointed,
and the fact that he held this position gave him a certain weight and
prestige abroad. He was given very precise instructions as to what he
was to do, and started with several of his colleagues of the Duma for
England, under the pretext of returning the visit which some members
of the English House of Commons had paid to Petrograd a few months
earlier. On his way back, he stopped at Stockholm as I have already
related, conferred there with an agent of the German Foreign Office
called Mr. Warburg, and settled with him the conditions under which an
eventual peace could be concluded. After this Protopopoff returned to
Russia, where, however, the story of his Swedish intrigues had already
become known so that he was awarded a very poor welcome by his friends.
People believed then that his political career had come to an end,
when, just at this juncture, the most important post in the Russian
Empire, that of Minister of the Interior, became vacant, thanks to the
dismissal of Mr. Chvostoff who had tried to get rid of Rasputin with
the help of the monk Illiodore, and, to the general stupefaction of the
world, the place was offered to Mr. Protopopoff by the Empress herself.
By that time one had become used in Russia to every possible surprise
in regard to the appointment of Ministers, and nothing that could
happen in that line astonished those (and they were legion) who knew
that it was a gang of adventurers that was ruling the country. The rise
of Mr. Protopopoff was not therefore considered by them as something
out of the way, but in parliamentary circles it gave rise to deep
indignation; an indignation which eventually found its way into the
press, where, however, it was very quickly suppressed by the censor,
and also in the various speeches uttered in the Duma, during which
allusions were made for the first time to the unhealthy influence
exercised by the Empress over her husband.
The former was triumphant. As soon as she became aware of the
conditions under which the German government would consent to conclude
peace with Russia, she set herself, in conjunction with her friends,
to try to persuade Nicholas II. that his duty in regard to his people
required him to put an end to a hopeless conflict during which the best
blood in Russia was being spilt for a cause doomed beforehand. She made
him observe that if the war went on much longer, the revolutionary
elements in the country would wax stronger, in proportion to the
sacrifices entailed upon the nation, and that it was quite possible,
the latter, exasperated by their magnitude, would attempt to get
rid of a government that had not succeeded in restoring to it the
tranquillity which it so sorely needed. It did not take her a long
time to convert the Czar to her point of view, and the negotiations
officiously inaugurated by Mr. Protopopoff were officially continued by
him together with Mr. Sturmer, whom Alexandra Feodorovna personally
entreated to assume their direction in conjunction with her own self.
In spite of the extreme secrecy which had presided at these different
conferences between the Empress and her favourites, something of their
purport had transpired among the general public, and threats had been
proferred against those who had accepted to play the sad part of Judas
in regard to their country. These threats had been whispered in the
corridors of the Duma, and Mr. Protopopoff had been informed of their
purport by his spies. It became therefore one of his principal aims
to get rid of an opposition which, he knew but too well, would only
increase in violence as well as in importance as the sorry work he was
bent upon performing would come out in the light of day and become
known to his numerous adversaries. Apart from this, he thought it
would be better to present himself later on before the Duma with an
accomplished fact behind him. He therefore persuaded the Empress that
whilst he would be pressing with the utmost speed the negotiations
with the Kaiser, begun already, it would be advisable to bring from
the front a considerable number of troops to Petrograd, so as to be
able with their help to crush any effort at resistance attempted either
by the population of the capital or by its garrison, about whose
state of mind the minister did not feel quite sure. The Cabinet was
so badly informed, in spite of its numerous spies, of what was going
on in the army that it imagined the latter would only feel grateful
and happy to see the campaign come to an end and be able to go back
to its homes, and that in consequence it would lend itself with the
greatest pleasure to any attempt made by the Monarch and the government
to put an end to a struggle for which it did not feel any longer any
enthusiasm at heart.
The men who reasoned thus were absolutely mistaken. The army had made
up its mind to win the war; the workmen whose importance was increasing
with every day that went by, also wished it, because they hoped that
out of this victory they were longing for might result a radical change
in the form of the administration they had begun to despise more and
more as its incapacity became more and more apparent. The person of
the Czar did not inspire respect or enthusiasm any longer, but on the
other hand love for the Fatherland had made considerable progress
since the beginning of the war, and the national sentiment which, up
to that time, had only existed in the state of an Utopia had become a
reality, especially since one had perceived the great strength which it
had communicated to Russia’s allies, to France among others, where the
Republic, which many people were already seeing loom in the distance as
a possibility in the land of the Czars, had inspired so much patriotism
to its citizens.
Neither Mr. Sturmer, nor Mr. Protopopoff, nor those who shared their
opinions and their views, were able to understand what was going on
in the heart and in the soul of the Russian nation. They were far
too much absorbed in their own petty, personal interests, to be able
to give a thought to such a subject. For them the conclusion of a
peace with Germany meant the strengthening of their influence and of
their power, together with honours, dignities, and the possibility
to enrich themselves, and to have a few more stars attached to the
golden embroideries of their uniforms. It meant also the possibility
of getting rid once for all of this spectre of a responsible ministry,
of which they stood in such dread. They therefore threw themselves in
the struggle against the Duma with an ardour that grew as they saw the
increasing difficulties with which the accomplishment of their designs
was going to encounter in that Assembly, and, as a first step in the
course of action they had determined to follow, they submitted to the
signature of Nicholas II. the fatal decree which prorogued the Duma
together with the Council of State, and which was to give the signal
for the conflagration of which they were to become themselves the first
victims.
Traitors are always to be found in hours of great national peril. Among
the people who resided in the palace of Tsarskoie Selo, there was a
person who, becoming acquainted by chance of what was going on there,
rushed to communicate the news which he had heard to Mr. Kerensky, the
leader of the extreme left party in the Duma. The latter did not lose
one moment in communicating to his colleague the news which had come to
his knowledge, and also to the president of the Assembly, Mr. Rodzianko.
[Illustration:
_Photograph, International Film Service, Inc._
ALEXANDER KERENSKY]
Mr. Rodzianko was about the last man whom one would have suspected of
being possessed of the necessary determination to resort to a “Coup
d’Etat.” He was a Chamberlain of the Czar; he had been brought up in
monarchical traditions, and during his whole life he had submitted
to the one which, in Russia, placed the Sovereign in the light of
something holy and sacred before his subjects. He was respected but
did not enjoy an immense authority in the Chamber that had never
taken quite kindly to him, not thinking him possessed of sufficient
courage to fight its battles with efficiency. It is probable that
he felt terrified rather than anything else, at the prospect which
the communication of Mr. Kerensky opened before him, but things
had advanced too far for him to be able to withdraw. There was no
alternative left but to perish oneself, or to destroy others. Mr.
Rodzianko called together a meeting of several deputies belonging to
the moderate parties, with whom he discussed the situation. They very
quickly came to the conclusion that if one entered into a struggle
with the government in this all important question of war and peace,
one would be backed up by the whole country, which did not wish to see
the war come to an end until the enemy had been driven out of Russian
territory. There was also another thing which added itself to all the
different questions roused by the discovery of the intentions of the
Court. It was the determination of the radical groups of the Duma to
proceed to the “Coup d’Etat” on their own accord, and no matter under
what conditions, with or without the help of the moderate elements
in the Assembly. This might have become extremely dangerous, as they
had behind them the whole mass of the working population of the
capital. The question had therefore to be considered as to whether
the Revolution was to be made with the concurrence of all the parties
represented in the Duma, or by the radical socialists alone, who,
in the latter case, would have become the absolute masters of the
situation, and might have pressed for the immediate proclamation of
a Republic which could easily have degenerated into an anarchy, and
which in the best of cases would have lacked the necessary dignity,
capable of giving it prestige and authority at home and abroad. Mr.
Rodzianko found himself placed in the presence of a dilemma of a most
difficult kind and nature. He took the only decision possible under the
circumstances, he boldly placed himself at the head of the movement
and constituted a provisional government, in place of the one that had
foundered under the weight of the contempt of the whole nation.
The first thing that was done by the Duma was to refuse to disperse and
to resist the ukaze of the Czar that had prorogued its debates for an
indefinite time. The socialist deputies went about trying to get the
population of Petrograd to join in the vast movement of revolt they
meant to bring about. The latter was but too willing to do so, and the
want of provisions was the pretext which the people took to organise
vast meetings, and a strike in all the factories. Great masses of men
and women paraded the streets, and were dispersed by a formidable
police force which had been assembled by Mr. Protopopoff and armed with
machine guns that were used against the crowds, whenever these did not
obey immediately the injunctions to disperse given to them by special
constables and Cossacks gathered together in all the principal streets
and squares of the capital. The regular troops had been consigned in
their barracks and ordered to keep themselves ready to lend a hand
to the police. But the unexpected happened. The soldiers had been
worked upon by delegates from the workmen, and they declared that they
would not obey orders, should any be given to them, to fire upon the
populace assembled in the streets. The latter seemed quite sure of
impunity, because notwithstanding the preparations made by the police
to quell the revolutionary movement, the existence of which was already
recognised everywhere, it refused to disperse, and on the contrary
proceeded to commit the only acts of violence which were performed
during the course of the mutiny. It threw itself on the prisons where
political offenders were confined, plundered and burned them, and
liberated their inmates. A few other excesses were performed, upon
which the Duma constituted itself an executive committee, which assumed
the task of restoring order in Petrograd.
In the meanwhile, the Czar who had been kept in total ignorance of what
was going on in the capital, had left Tsarskoie Selo for headquarters,
after having signed the prorogation of the Chambers. In his absence,
it was the Empress who was left sole mistress of the situation, and
it is to her and to Protopopoff that were due all the attempts at
repression which happily for all parties concerned were not allowed to
be executed, at least not in their entirety.
Mr. Rodzianko telegraphed to the Czar. He informed him that the
position was getting extremely serious, that the population of
Petrograd was absolutely without any food, that riots were taking
place, and that the troops were firing at one another. He implored
the Sovereign in the interests of the dynasty to send away Protopopoff
and his crew, and he drew his notice to the fact that every hour was
precious, and that every delay might bring about a catastrophe. At the
same time he telegraphed to the principal commanders at the front,
asking them to uphold his request for a responsible government capable
of putting an end to the complete anarchy that was reigning in the
capital, an anarchy which threatened to extend itself all over the
country. The commanders replied that they would do what he asked them
to perform. Nicholas II. alone made no sign. It was related afterwards
that he had telegraphed to the Empress, asking her what she advised
him to do. But it is more likely that the telegram of the President of
the Duma was never handed to him. Mr. Rodzianko, however, sent another
despatch to headquarters which contained the following warning: “The
position is getting more and more alarming. It is indispensable to take
measures to put an end to it, or to-morrow it may be too late. This
is the last moment during which may be decided the fate of the nation
and of the dynasty.” To this message also no reply was received. The
Czar seemed unable to understand the gravity of the situation. Others
did, however, in his place, and on that same day, the 12th of March,
the troops composing the garrison of Petrograd went over to the cause
of the Revolution. They marched to the Duma in a long procession,
beginning with the Volynsky regiment, one of the crack ones in the
army, to which joined themselves almost immediately the famous
Preobragensky Guards, and they declared themselves ready to stand by
the side of the new government. The President of the Duma received
them, and declared to them that the executive committee which had been
constituted was going to appoint a provisional government; of the Czar,
there was no longer any question. It had become evident that his army
would no longer support his authority or fight for him and for his
dynasty. Soon the troops composing the garrisons of Tsarskoie Selo,
Peterhof, and Gatschina left their quarters and joined the mutineers.
The Revolution had become an accomplished fact.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, International Film Service, Inc._
REVOLUTIONARY CROWD IN PETROGRAD]
The new executive committee displayed considerable patriotism at this
juncture. It might have provoked enormous enthusiasm in its favour had
it revealed what it knew concerning the peace negotiations entered into
by the Empress, but this might have given a pretext for explosions
of wrath on the part of the mob, which could easily have ended in
excesses, compromising the dignity of the Revolution. It therefore
decided to keep back from the public its knowledge on this subject, and
contented itself with arresting the ministers, and all the persons whom
it suspected of having lent themselves to this intrigue, and it simply
empowered two members of the Duma, Mr. Goutschkoff and Mr. Schoulguine,
to proceed to Pskov, where it was known that the Emperor had arrived
the day before, to ask the latter to abdicate in favour of his son.
Nicholas II. in the meanwhile had arrived at headquarters which were
then in Mohilev, and where no one seemed to know anything about what
was going on in Petrograd. None of the people about him even suspected
that a storm was brewing which would overturn in a few hours a power
which they considered far too formidable for anything to be able to
shake. The only person who was kept informed of the course which events
were taking was the head of the Staff, General Alexieieff, who had
been won over from the very first to the cause of the Revolution, and
who, if one is to believe all that one hears, played all the time a
double game. It was he who received all the telegrams addressed to
the Emperor, and who communicated them to him. The latter at last was
shaken out of his equanimity, and gave orders to prepare his train
to return to Tsarskoie Selo. He took this decision in consequence
of a message from the commander of the Palace, addressed to General
Voyeikoff the head of the Okhrana, where the latter was advised that
the presence of the Sovereign was necessary, because the troops of the
garrison in the Imperial residence had mutineed, and the safety of the
Empress and of her children was endangered. But in spite of the orders
given to press the departure of the Imperial train it somehow could not
be got ready as quickly as was generally the case, so that it was only
during the night from the 12th to the 13th of March, that it started
at last. It went the usual route as far as the station of Lichoslav,
where it was met with the news that a revolutionary government had been
formed at Petrograd which had seized the railway lines and appointed
a deputy to take them in charge. Another telegram from the military
station master of the Nicholas station in Petrograd instructed the
officials at Lichoslav to send the Imperial train to Petrograd, and not
to Tsarskoie Selo. This was communicated to General Voyeikoff, who,
however, gave directions not to heed this warning, but to proceed to
Tsarskoie Selo, as had been arranged at first. At twelve o’clock at
night the Imperial train reached Bologoie. There a railway official
informed the persons in charge of it that Tosno and Lioubane were in
possession of the troops which had mutineed against the government, and
that it might be dangerous to proceed any further. General Voyeikoff
would not listen to this advice, and the train went on to the station
of Vichera, where it had perforce to stop. The General was told that
the first train which always preceded the one in which the Sovereign
was travelling had been seized by the insurgents, and the members of
the Imperial suite who were travelling in it had been arrested and
conveyed under escort to Petrograd.
The Czar was awakened. General Voyeikoff informed him that it was
impossible to proceed to Tsarskoie Selo, because the railway line was
in the hands of the revolutionaries. It was then decided to go to
Pskov, where commanded General Roussky, on whose fidelity the Sovereign
believed that he might rely.
But Roussky had been won over to the cause of the Duma, notwithstanding
the fact that he had been loaded with favours by Nicholas II. When the
latter reached Pskov, where the General met him at the railway station,
the troops there had already been sworn over by their commander
in favour of the Revolution, and were quite ready to enforce its
decisions. The Czar knew nothing about this, and after a few moments’
conversation with Roussky, who acquainted him superficially with the
spirit reigning in the army, he declared to him that he consented to
call together a responsible Cabinet chosen out of the principal leaders
of the different parties in the Duma. But the General replied that
he feared this concession came too late, and that it would no longer
satisfy the country or the army.
On the 15th of March, Roussky succeeded in talking over the telephone
with Rodzianko, whom he informed of the details of his conversation
with Nicholas II. The president of the Duma then told him that the
former must decide to abdicate in favour of his son. They spoke for
more than two hours, and before their talk had come to an end, Roussky
had promised to do all that lay within his power, even to resort to
violence if need be, to further the views of the new government that
had taken up the supreme authority in Russia. He went then to make his
report to the Emperor, after which the latter signified his intention
to resign his throne to his little boy. The telegram announcing
this resolution, however, was not sent to Petrograd, because in the
meanwhile there had reached Pskov the news that the two delegates sent
by the Executive Committee, Mr. Goutschkoff, and Mr. Schoulguine, had
started on their way thither, in order to confer personally with the
Czar.
At ten o’clock in the evening of that same day, the 15th of March, they
reached Pskov. Their intention had been to confer at first with General
Roussky, but an Imperial aide de camp met them on the platform, and
asked them to follow him immediately into the presence of Nicholas
II. The latter received them in his railway carriage. With him were
old Count Fredericks, the Minister of his household, and a favourite
aide de camp, General Narischkine. Nothing in the appearance of the
Emperor could have led any one to suppose that something extraordinary
was happening to him. He was as impassible as was his wont in all the
important occasions of his life, and he shook hands with the delegates
as if nothing whatever was the matter, asking them to sit down. He
motioned Goutschkoff to a chair beside him, and Schoulguine opposite.
Fredericks and Narischkine stood at some distance from the group, and
Roussky, who came in uninvited at that moment, placed himself next to
Schoulguine.
Goutschkoff was the first one to speak. He was extremely agitated
and could only control his feelings with difficulty, keeping his
eyes riveted on the table and not daring to lift them up to the face
of the Sovereign whose crown he had come to demand. But his speech
was perfectly correct, and contained nothing that could have been
interpreted in an offensive way. He exposed the whole situation, such
as it was, and concluded by saying that the only possible manner to
come out of it would be the abdication of the Czar in favour of his
son under the regency of the former’s brother, the Grand Duke Michael
Alexandrovitsch.
At this juncture Roussky could not restrain his impatience, and,
bending down towards Schoulguine, murmured in his ear: “This is already
quite settled.”
When Goutschkoff had finished his speech, Nicholas II. replied in a
perfectly quiet and composed tone of voice:
“I thought the matter over yesterday, and to-day, and I have made up my
mind to abdicate. Until three o’clock I was ready to do so in favour of
my son, but then I came to the conclusion that I could not part from
him.”
He stopped for a few moments, then went on:
“I hope that you will understand this,” and after another pause he
continued:
“On that account, I have decided to abdicate in favour of my brother.”
The delegates looked at each other, and Schoulguine remarked that they
were not prepared for this complication, and that he begged permission
to consult with his colleague. But after a short conversation they
gave up the point, as Goutschkoff remarked that he did not think they
had the right to mix themselves up in a matter where paternal feelings
and affection came into question, and that besides a regency had also
much to say against it, and was likely to lead to complications. The
Emperor seemed satisfied that the delegates had conceded the point, and
then he asked them whether they could undertake to guarantee that his
abdication would pacify the country and not lead to any disturbances.
They declared that they could do so. Upon this he got up and passed
into another compartment of his railway carriage. In about half an hour
he returned, holding in his hand a folded paper, which he handed over
to Goutschkoff, saying as he did so: “Here is my abdication, will you
read it?” After which he shook hands with the delegates and retired as
if nothing unusual had happened, perhaps not realising that with one
stroke of his pen he had changed not only his own life, but the course
of Russian history, and, in a certain sense, destroyed the work of his
glorious ancestor, Peter the Great.
It is difficult here not to make some remark on the part played by
General Roussky in this tragedy which without his interference would
probably have taken a different course. It is impossible not to come to
the conclusion that the unfortunate Czar whom he induced to abdicate,
might have found better and more faithful servants than the people who
forsook him in the hour of his peril. Very probably Roussky believed
that he was acting in the interests of his country, which in a sense
he was also doing, because something had to be attempted in order to
stop the nefarious work of Alexandra Feodorovna, and it is certain
that her husband would never willingly have consented to be parted
from her. Killing a woman would have been disgracing oneself, together
with the Revolution which had been accomplished under such exceptional
circumstances; but still one would have preferred that the man who was
instrumental in the destruction of the Romanoff dynasty should not have
been one who wore on his epaulettes the initials of the Sovereign he
was helping to dethrone. One would have liked him to feel some pity for
the master whose hand he had kissed a few days before he presented to
him the pen with which he ordered him to sign his own degradation. In
spite of the impassibility preserved by Nicholas II. during the last
hours of his reign, it is likely that the tragedy which took place at
Pskov must have been one of the most poignant that has ever assailed
a Sovereign, who, after having reigned for twenty-two years, found
himself, in the course of a few hours, reduced to utter powerlessness
and compelled to give up of his own accord the crown which his father
had bequeathed to him, and which he had hoped to leave in his turn to
the son, whom fate and perhaps a mistaken feeling of affection had made
him despoil. He was not a bad man after all, although he had done many
a bad action; he was a tender father, and the thought of his child must
have added to the moral agony of his soul. By what means he was induced
to put his name at the bottom of the document which snatched away from
him the sceptre which he had dropped on his coronation day in Moscow,
remains still a mystery. Whether violence was used, or whether he was
persuaded by the eloquence of Roussky alone to give up the inheritance
of his race, is a thing which the future alone will reveal to us. It
is probable that he found himself compelled to come to his decision in
some way or other, and perhaps the threat to reveal the treason against
his allies in which he had participated, and which had been the work of
the Empress, was the most powerful argument which was used to oblige
him to sign his abdication. It was after all better to fall as a weak
man than to be covered with shame in the eyes of the world. He was
perhaps told to choose between degradation and dishonour, and he cannot
be blamed if he refused to resign himself to the latter.
CHAPTER V
The abdication of Nicholas II. was but one of the acts of a drama the
end of which is awaited with anxiety not only in Russia, but in the
whole of the world. Like everything else that he had ever done, it was
not performed in time, and it was badly executed. His own selfishness,
together with that of his wife, had brought about catastrophes which it
would have been relatively easy to avoid, by displaying a small amount
of political tact, good sense, and knowledge of the real requirements
of the Russian people. If the Czar had only been able to render to
himself an account of all that was going on around him, he would in
the interest of his dynasty have given up his son to the care of the
nation, and allowed him to take his place under the regency of the
Grand Duke Michael. This would have left Russia with a Czar, and not
allowed the people to see that they could very well exist without
one, which, as events have proved, has not been a particularly lucky
experience for them. This would also have ensured to Nicholas II. his
own liberty, because it is not likely that the Grand Duke Michael
would have had his brother and sister-in-law imprisoned. But neither
the dispossessed Monarch nor Alexandra Feodorovna were characters able
to rise to any heights of unselfishness. She had not the faintest
knowledge of the duties imposed upon her by her position as Empress
of Russia, and when she was placed between the alternative of seeing
her husband dethroned, or being compelled to give up his crown to their
child, she suggested a third one; that of substituting for the latter
his uncle, because she thought it would be easier for her later on
to overturn him than an Emperor who owned her for a mother; and that
she already contemplated the eventuality of a protest on the part of
Nicholas II. against the abdication to which he had been compelled is a
fact that can hardly be denied.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
BOLSHEVIKI SAILORS BURIED AT MOSCOW]
On the other hand the Grand Duke Michael could not have refused to act
as Regent for his nephew, though it was, in a certain sense, natural
for him to show some hesitation in accepting over the head of his
brother, and of his brother’s son, the crown of their common ancestors.
Personally the young Grand Duke did not care for power or for honours,
and the fact that he was married to a lady not belonging to any royal
house made it easier for him to resign himself to go on for the rest
of his existence living as a very rich private gentleman, which he had
done for a number of years. Pressure was also brought to bear upon
him, in the sense that he was told by persons interested in his not
accepting the throne that if the Constitutive Assembly which it was
proposed to call together, would elect him as Emperor, it would put
him later on in an easier position in regard to his nephew, the little
Grand Duke Alexis, and perhaps even allow him to secure the possession
of his empire to his own children after him. All these considerations
put together decided him not to avail himself of the immediate
opportunity which lay before him, of becoming the Czar of All the
Russias, and his proclamation on the subject may have been a wise one
from a personal point of view; it was, however, disastrous as regarded
the future fate of the dynasty, and it is doubtful now whether it will
ever be possible for a Romanoff to reign again in Russia.
The men who had made the Revolution were but too well aware of this
fact, and they proceeded, immediately after this act of Renunciation,
to organise the government of the country on the new lines which they
hoped and wished to follow in the future. Their lead was followed
by the nation with an enthusiasm which was so intense that it is no
wonder it came to collapse so soon as was the case. Russia seemed to
have been seized with a perfect frenzy; she was like a man who after
having been unjustly imprisoned for years does not know what to make
of his newly acquired freedom. People were literally mad with joy, and
inclined to find that everything their new government wished to do was
right. Hardly a voice of discontent arose during these first weeks that
followed upon the abdication of Nicholas II., and this absolution,
which was granted beforehand to the Ministry that had taken into its
hands the direction of the affairs of the country, allowed the men at
the head of it to decide the fate of the Sovereign whom they had helped
to overthrow, in a manner perhaps different from what would have been
done under other circumstances.
The Czar, after having parted from Mr. Goutschkoff and Mr. Schoulguine
at Pskov, and seen them leave with his abdication for Petrograd,
proceeded himself in his own special train to Mohilew, where the
headquarters of the army were established. It is not easy to understand
the reasons which induced him to do it. Perhaps he thought he would
be in greater safety among the troops that had owned him as a chief
but the day before than anywhere else. At that time he had not the
slightest inkling of the treason of General Alexieieff, and he might
have nursed the vague thought that the latter might lend himself to
another effort to subdue the revolutionary movement which had seized
hold so rapidly of the whole country. Others say that he wished to bid
good-bye to his army before returning to Tsarskoie Selo to join his
wife and family. The real motive of his determination has, however,
not been ascertained so far, though the rumours going about at the
time would have it that he had been invited to repair to headquarters
by Alexieieff, who thought that it would be easier for him to keep his
former Sovereign a prisoner there than anywhere else, until the moment
when the new government should have decided as to what was to be done
with him. That something of the kind must have been in his mind can
be deduced from the fact that from the day of the return of Nicholas
II. at Mohilew he was no longer allowed to see any of the officers
of the Staff, or those attached to headquarters, and that the only
person who visited him twice a day, as if to assure himself that he was
still there, was General Alexieieff himself, and this only for a few
minutes. It was also the general who insisted on both Count Fredericks,
formerly Minister of the Imperial household, and General Voyeikoff,
the head of the Okhrana, or personal police guard of the Czar, being
sent away from Mohilew. He explained his request by saying that these
two gentlemen were looked upon with such inimical feelings by the
garrison and officers stationed at Mohilew, that he could not answer
for their safety were they to remain near the Emperor. In consequence
of this warning both of them left for Petrograd, but on their way
thither were arrested, and conveyed under escort to the fortress of
St. Peter and St. Paul, from whence Count Fredericks in view of his
advanced age (he is over eighty), and of the precarious state of his
health, was transferred to the Evangelical hospital. General Voyeikoff
having been invited to tear off the initials of Nicholas II. from his
epaulettes, proudly refused to do so, and declared that he had rather
take off these epaulettes altogether. He was the only one who did not
consent to submit to the orders of the government in that respect, all
the other members of Nicholas II.’s military household having shown
themselves but too eager to do it, General Roussky divesting himself
of his aiguillettes five minutes after the Emperor had handed over his
abdication to the Delegates sent by the Duma to require it from him.
The unfortunate Monarch returned to Mohilew from Pskov on the 17th
of March. On the next day arrived there by special train his mother,
the Dowager Empress Marie, who, upon hearing of the misfortunes that
had befallen her son, had hastened to his side. Their relations had
been more than strained for a long time, thanks to the intrigues of
the Empress Alexandra, but in those moments of agony the mother’s
heart forgot aught else save that her child was in trouble, and she
rushed to him to try at least to help him by her presence to bear it.
Nicholas II. felt the nobility of this conduct, and the few days which
he spent with Marie Feodorovna did away with much of the bitterness
that had presided at their intercourse with each other for some time.
But what they must have been for the widowed Empress it would be hardly
possible to imagine. She understood but too well, if he did not, the
perils which awaited her son in the future, and the contrast which his
reign had presented with that of his father must have filled her soul
with agony and distress. Fate proved itself indeed hard for this noble
woman, because it inflicted upon her that last, supreme sorrow, of
seeing, before her train carried her back to this town of Kieff which
she had made her home for the last two years, Nicholas II. taken away a
captive to that palace that was to know him no longer for its master.
If one is to believe all that one hears, it seems that it was General
Alexieieff, together with General Roussky and a few socialist leaders,
who insisted on the provisional government ordering the arrest of the
former Czar and of his Consort. They represented to Mr. Miliukoff and
to his colleagues, that it would be the height of imprudence to allow
the Empress to remain at liberty and able to go on intriguing, as was
her wont, against the new administration. On the other hand sending the
Imperial family immediately abroad had also its inconveniences, because
their presence in Denmark or in England would only have been a cause of
embarrassment to the Allies. Then again, the hatred of the population
of Petrograd for Alexandra Feodorovna had reached such immense
proportions that it was feared it would give way to excesses against
her, and even attempts to murder her, if some kind of satisfaction
were not given to its incensed feelings in respect to a woman who was
considered everywhere in the light of the worst of traitors. For this
reason or for another, it is not quite clear, but most likely because
of the representations made by Roussky and by Alexieieff, the Executive
Committee of the Duma, which was then the highest authority in Russia,
decided to arrest Nicholas II. together with his Consort.
Four members of the Duma, Messrs. Boublikoff, Gribounine, Verschinine
and Kalinine, were commanded to repair to Mohilew, and to signify to
the ex-Emperor the decision of the government. It seems that what had
hastened it had been the discovery of a correspondence between the
Empress and Protopopoff, which the latter, in abject fear for his
life, had himself given up to the Duma, hoping that he would thus be
able to drive away from his own person the responsibility for the
conspiracy which had been going on at Tsarskoie Selo, under the plea
that he had been compelled to obey the orders which had been given to
him. Apart from this correspondence, other things had come to light;
amongst others the part that a Thibetan doctor, who had been a friend
of Rasputin, and whom Madame Vyroubieva had introduced to the Empress,
had played in the private life of the Imperial pair. It seems that he
had given to Alexandra Feodorovna certain drinks and drugs, which,
unknown to him, she had administered to Nicholas II., with the result
that the latter had been completely stupefied, and had become a tool
in the hands of his enterprising wife. The fact sounds incredible,
and I would not have mentioned it here had it not been that young
Prince Youssoupoff, one of those who had executed Rasputin, publicly
spoke about it during an interview which after his return to Petrograd
from the exile whither he had been sent by the Czar, he awarded to
a correspondent of the Vovoie Vremia, where the account of it was
published. Both these incidents gave a free hand to those who, from the
very first day of the Revolution, had insisted upon the Empress being
put under restraint, and once this measure was adopted, it was hardly
possible not to extend it also to Nicholas II.
The Commissioners started on March 20th for Mohilew. General Alexieieff
had been privately informed as to the reason of their arriving there,
and, unknown to others, gave orders for the Emperor’s train to be
prepared to carry him away at a moment’s notice. At four o’clock of the
afternoon of March 21st, the Commissioners reached their destination,
and they sent at once for the General, with whom they held a conference
of about twenty minutes. He assured them that he had already made full
preparation for the departure of the Monarch. They asked him for a list
of the people in attendance on the latter, and noticing thereon the
name of Admiral Niloff, who was considered to be one of the staunchest
supporters of the Empress, they said at once that he could not travel
in the Imperial train, and sent for him to acquaint him with the fact.
Niloff asked only if he was to consider himself as being under arrest,
but the commissioners assured him that they had received no orders to
that effect.
Whilst this was going on, Nicholas II. was lunching with his mother in
the latter’s special train, which all the time of her stay in Mohilew
had remained at the station, and which she had not left during these
days. General Alexieieff was the one who took it upon himself to tell
the Czar that he had been made a prisoner. He boarded the train of the
Empress, pushed himself most unceremoniously into the carriage where
she was sitting with her son, and acquainted the latter with his fate.
Neither the deposed Sovereign nor the widowed Empress said a word.
She simply got up and went to the window. She saw a crowd of people
standing around her train, and the one that was about to carry away her
son, then she turned back, and folded him in one long embrace. Speech
was impossible to either of them and Marie Feodorovna remained tearless
all through this tragedy.
On the platform were standing several officers who had formerly been
attached to the person of the Emperor, whilst he had been in command of
the army. They were waiting to say good-bye to their former chief. A
guard, no longer of honour alas! was also standing at the door of the
railway compartment assigned to him, who a few days before had been the
Czar of All the Russias, together with the commissioners of the Duma,
into whose hands Alexieieff delivered his prisoner. Nicholas II. passed
on from his mother’s train to his own. Every head was uncovered; he
spoke to no one, and no one spoke. A silence akin to that of the grave
prevailed. Standing at the window of her carriage could be seen the
figure of the Empress Marie watching this sad departure. A few minutes
later the train started on its mournful journey. Another act in this
drama had come to an end.
Whilst this was going on at Mohilew, the officer in command of the
garrison of Petrograd, General Korniloff, had repaired to Tsarskoie
Selo. From the station he telephoned to Count Benckendorff, the head
of the Imperial household, asking him when he could see the Empress.
The Count asked him to wait a few minutes at the instrument, and then
told him that Alexandra Feodorovna would be ready to receive him in
half an hour. At the appointed time the General was introduced into the
presence of the Sovereign who entered the room dressed in deep black,
but as haughty as ever, and asked him in ironical tones to what she was
indebted for the honour of his visit. Korniloff got up, and briefly
communicated to her the decision of the government in respect to her
person, and warned her that the Palace would be strictly watched, and
all communications between her and the outside world forbidden. The
Empress then enquired whether her personal servants and those of her
children would be left to her, and after having been reassured as to
that point, she withdrew as impassible as ever, though strong hysterics
seized her as soon as she was once more alone in her private apartments.
The guard in charge of the Palace was changed; the telephone and
private post and telegraph office were taken over by a staff which
General Korniloff had brought over with him from Petrograd, and the
Empress was informed that she could not leave her rooms, even for a
walk, without the permission of the officer in charge of the troops
quartered in the Imperial residence. Though no orders had been issued
in regard to her personal attendants, yet the proud Princess was to
find that most of them had left her of their own accord. Her children
were all ill with a severe attack of measles, but this did not prevent
the salaried domestics who up to that moment had been so happy and
eager to be allowed the privilege of serving her, deserting her in the
hour of her need. The few friends she thought she could rely upon were
in prison. She was alone, all alone; and so she was to remain until the
end. The devotion with which Marie Antoinette was surrounded during the
tragedy of her existence was not known by Alexandra Feodorovna in the
drama of her life. She had made far too many enemies during the time
of her splendour and prosperity to find any one willing to cheer and
comfort her in the hour of her misfortune.
And the next day her husband was brought back to that Palace of
Tsarskoie Selo they had both liked so much, brought back a prisoner to
find her captive. What did she think when she saw him again? Did she
realise at last all the evil which she had done, all the misery, which,
thanks to her influence, had overtaken the Emperor whose crown she had
shared? How did she feel in presence of this catastrophe, of this wreck
of all her ambitions, plans and hopes? Outwardly she made no sign that
she understood the full significance of the events that had swallowed
her up in their depths, together with her pride and haughtiness. She
only manifested some emotion when told that the body of Rasputin had
been exhumed and burned publicly by exasperated crowds. Otherwise she
remained silent and if not resigned at least disdainful, even when she
was subjected to a close interrogation by General Korniloff, who was
deputed to examine her as to certain points in the correspondence which
Mr. Protopopoff had surrendered to the Duma. She denied to every one
the right to question her; she proudly refused to reply to the demands
addressed to her, and it was only when she was alone in her rooms that
she used to give way to terrible fits of despair at the loss of that
grandeur by which her head had been turned. Her children were so ill
that they could not even be told of the change that had taken place in
their existences and destinies. Her husband was too much crushed by the
weight of all the calamities which had fallen upon him to be able to
comfort her in any way. Her friends had left her, her attendants had
forsaken her, her family had abandoned her.... And it was thus, amidst
the stillness of sorrow and of anxiety, that the curtain was to fall
upon the tragedy of Nicholas II. and of Alexandra Feodorovna, or at
least upon one of its principal acts....
PART III
THE RIDDLE OF THE FUTURE
CONCLUSION
More than one year has gone by since the events narrated in this book,
and it is possible now to throw a retrospective glance on them, as well
as on all the tragedies that have followed the fall of the Romanoffs.
It has been proved beyond doubt that it is not sufficient to destroy
a political system and to overturn a monarchy. These must be replaced
by something else, and it is this something else which Russia has been
vainly looking for during the last twelve months. After the abdication
of Nicholas II., successors had to be found to take up the power which
had been snatched out of his hands owing to the clamours of public
indignation at his weakness of character and want of comprehension of
the needs of his people. These successors, who were taken here and
there in the hazards of an adventure brought about by the intrigues
of a few and by the cowardice of many, who were they? What did they
represent? And what elements of strength did they possess? They were
called upon to take the direction of the destinies of their Fatherland
in an hour of national crisis, such as it had never known before in
the whole course of its history, and to try to save a situation which
had become already so entangled that it had almost reached the limits
of desperation. It is possible to-day to pass judgment on the first
government that assumed authority after the fall of the unfortunate
Czar. And, much as one would like to think well of it, it must be
admitted that though it was composed of men of great talent and
integrity, it did not possess one single character determined enough
and strong enough to deliver it from the demagogues who had secured an
entry into it, and from the anarchist elements that had tried from the
very outset to impose themselves upon it and their doctrines. Moreover
these men were devoid of experience, and they believed sincerely (there
can be no doubt as to this point) but absolutely erroneously, that it
was sufficient for them and their party to come to the foreground in
order to bring about in Russia an era of bliss such as exists only in
fairy tales. Among them was found Alexander Kerensky, a Socialist, one
of the leaders of the Labour Party, an indifferent lawyer but a most
eloquent speaker, who, better than any one else in Russia, understood
the art of stirring the souls and appealing to the passions of the
crowds upon which he relied to keep him in power; and who by his
wonderful speeches could easily lead these crowds upon any road he
wished to have them follow, though it might not land them where they
imagined they were going. Kerensky imposed himself upon the Revolution
in the same way he imposed himself upon a jury, and he treated it as
he would have treated a jury during a criminal trial. Of politics he
had but a hazy idea; of the art of government he understood nothing. He
believed in the value of words, and imagined that he could establish
in Russia an ideal State, living upon ideal principles. But at
one time he was popular, and people thought him a strong man, whilst
he was only an eloquent demagogue. With this he had an overbearing
character, would not admit contradiction, and soon was at variance with
his colleagues in the ministry, who, unfortunately for Russia, were
as weak as he was himself but with less tyrannical dispositions; they
retired when they found that they could not prevent him from carrying
out his plans of reforming the army and of abolishing its military
discipline, without which no troops in the world could be expected
to stand bravely in presence of an attacking foe. It is a thousand
pities that men like Paul Milyukoff, Prince George Lvoff, Rodzianko
and others, to whose initiative was due the success of the Revolution,
allowed themselves to be overruled by Kerensky, until he was left alone
to bear upon his shoulders the whole burden of the government and the
whole responsibility of the war, when he collapsed like a weak reed at
the first real attack directed against him.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
KERENSKY INSPIRING TROOPS TO SUPPORT REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT]
Another misfortune connected with the government that replaced that
of Nicholas II. was that it failed to recognise the terrible German
propaganda that was carried on with renewed energy in Russia after the
Revolution. It would not believe in its danger, and it could not bring
itself to employ violence to put an end to the Socialist or, rather,
anarchist agitation fomented by German intrigues and kept up by German
money, which alone has rendered possible the triumph of Bolschevikism
and the seizure of supreme power by people such as Lenine, Trotzky,
Kameneff, and other personalities of the same kind, and the same
doubtful or, rather, not doubtful reputation.
And yet it would have been relatively easy to put an end to the career
of these men, had one only applied oneself to do so in time and
bravely faced the criticisms of the people who were in their pay, or
in their employ. The whole story of the Lenine-Trotzky intrigue has
not yet been told, at least not here in America; and it may not be
without interest to disclose some of its details. When Milyukoff and
Prince Lvoff proceeded to form a government after the overthrow of the
Monarchy, they offered the portfolio of Justice to a Moscow lawyer
called Karensky (nothing to do with Alexander Kerensky) who enjoyed the
reputation of being one of the most eloquent, and, at the same time,
honest members of the Moscow Bar. They called him to Petrograd, where
they held several consultations with him. Karensky declared himself
ready to accept the position offered him, but only on one condition:
that he would be given an absolutely free hand to proceed with the
greatest energy and vigour against all the German spies and agents with
which the Capital was infested, and that he would also be allowed the
same free hand in his dealings with the anarchists who were beginning
to make themselves heard. Neither Prince Lvoff nor Milyukoff would
agree to give him these powers he demanded. They feared that if they
did so they would be reproached for doing exactly the same as the
government that had crumbled down a few days before; and they also
objected to allowing a member of the cabinet to dispose at his will and
fancy of such grave questions as those involved in repression exercised
against any political party, no matter of what shade or opinion.
Karensky thereupon refused the position offered to him, but accepted
the post of State Prosecutor under Alexander Kerensky at first, and,
afterwards, when the latter had been transferred to the war office,
under Mr. Pereviazeff. This allowed him to watch the growing German
agitation, connected with anarchist conspiracies, which was beginning
to feel its way previous to its explosion. He had heard about Lenine
and Trotzky, and was from the first convinced that they were both in
the employ of the Kaiser either directly or indirectly, and he set
himself to obtain proof that such was the case. He had wondered at
the easiness with which Lenine had been able to obtain a passport
from the German government authorising him to cross the dominions of
William II. on his way from Switzerland to Russia. He, therefore, had
the correspondence of both Lenine and Trotzky watched, and very soon
his attention was attracted by the fact that they were both sending
and receiving constantly telegrams to and from Sweden and Finland, all
of which were deeply concerned with the health of a certain “Kola”
who seemed to be always getting ill, and then better, in a sort of
regular way which appeared more than strange. This was the first remark
which led to the result that at last, it was established, to the
absolute satisfaction of Karensky and of others, that Trotzky, Lenine,
Kameneff, a certain Zinovieff, a lawyer called Kozlovsky, a lady going
by the name of Madame Soumentay, and the wife of Lenine, had received
not less than _nineteen millions of rubles_ from the German government.
This money had been sent through so many different channels that it was
next to impossible to discover its origin. It had passed through eight
banks, and, I do not now remember, through how many private hands. But
the people whose names I have just mentioned had received it, partly
in Russian banknotes, and partly in banknotes printed in Berlin, which
were supposed to be Russian, of a new type with which the German
government was beginning to meet its obligations so as not to make them
too heavy for its own Exchequer.
Karensky sought Prince Lvoff, who was still Prime Minister at the time,
and asked him to sign an order for the arrest of Trotzky and Lenine.
The Prince had not the courage to do so, and the State Prosecutor had,
perforce, to wait. But in July the first insurrectionary movement,
engineered by the Bolscheviki, broke out, and then Karensky thought
that his duty obliged him to assume the responsibilities which the
ministry did not care to face. By that time Prince Lvoff, Milyukoff
and others had resigned, and Kerensky was virtually master of the
situation. But he was weak, weaker perhaps than any of his colleagues
had been, and he openly declared to the State Prosecutor that he felt
afraid to arrest the two men who were ultimately to lead Russia to
her destruction. Karensky, however, was made of sterner stuff, and he
bravely decided to act for himself, and signed alone the order for
the incarceration of both Lenine and Trotzky. But the former had been
warned, and had fled to Finland. A thorough search was made of the flat
which he occupied, where the sum of one million and a half of rubles
was found in possession of his wife, who could not explain whence she
had this money. Trotzky at the same time was incarcerated and brought
before the State Prosecutor. The latter, in order to justify the course
of action he had taken, had caused to be published in all the Petrograd
and Moscow newspapers an account of the discoveries which he had made,
together with the names of the people who had participated in the work
of treason he was determined to suppress. A curious thing in the story
is that none of the papers that printed it (and they all did with the
exception of the Bolschevik organ _Prawda_), was allowed to get abroad,
which accounts for the fact of no publicity having been given to the
story. Petrograd then was exasperated against Trotzky to such an extent
that Karensky feared he would be lynched, and caused him to be conveyed
to the prison called “Kresty” in an automobile driven by his own son,
as no chauffeur would undertake to drive him there. What happened
later on remains to this day a mystery. The Minister of Justice, Mr.
Pereviazeff, resigned his functions two days after the arrest of
Trotzky, and his place was taken by Nekrassoff, who, when asked by
the Committees of soldiers and peasants who had begun by that time to
be all powerful, to give the reasons which had induced the government
to resort to this measure, became so embarrassed in his replies that
these Committees insisted on Trotzky being set at liberty, which was
done three days afterwards. Karensky then resigned his functions, and
returned to Moscow whence, however, he was obliged to fly and seek a
refuge in Kharkov, as soon as the Bolscheviki seized the government.
The latter inaugurated a system of terrorism that claimed more victims
than is known abroad, completed the disorganisation of the army, and
at last started the negotiations which culminated in the shameful
peace signed at Brest Litovsk. After three and a half years’ war and a
Revolution, Russia as an independent nation ceased to exist, and became
virtually, and to all appearance, a German province.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, International Film Service, Inc._
PEACE DOCUMENT OF DELEGATES AT BREST-LITOVSK CONFERENCE]
This is the story as it reads, and sad enough it sounds. Germany can
look triumphantly on the success of her work and glory in it. Happily
for Russia, for the world and for the cause of civilisation, it is only
one chapter of it that has come to an end. Russia, the great Russia
of the past, is not dead. She possesses far more vitality than she is
given credit for, and she still has sound, true, and honest elements
amidst her citizens. When attempting to judge her, one ought to think
of the great French Revolution, and to remember that in France, also,
it took years before its work was at last consolidated and set upon a
sound basis. One must bear in mind that in France, too, a period of
terrorism made people despair of the future and fear that the end of
their Fatherland had come. Our Russian Revolution is hardly one year
old, and though perhaps one will be aghast at what I am going to
say, I think that she has not yet passed through that phase of real
terror which is always a symptom of great upheavals such as Russia
has undergone and is undergoing. We may see worse things yet; we may
live to look upon the erection of a scaffold on one of the squares of
Petrograd or of Moscow. But this will not mean that the end of Russia
has come, nor that she has become, or will remain, a German province.
The hatred of the Teuton, on the contrary, will grow as events progress
and the great disillusion arrives. A few more months, and the peasants
whom Trotzky, Lenine and their crew have lured with false promises will
perceive that these demagogues have been unable to fulfil all that they
had sworn to them they would do. They will realise that their lot has
become under the rule of these new masters ten thousand times harder
than was the case before, and they will be the first to rise against
these deceivers. If we are to believe all that we hear from people
who have arrived here from Russia recently, this movement of reaction
has already started, and it is bound to grow stronger with every day
and hour which goes by. The peace signed at Brest Litovsk will remain
verily a “scrap of paper” which will end by being thrown into the
waste-paper basket. Not one Russian will recognise it, not one Russian
will accept it; the Germans feel it themselves, and are preparing for
a new struggle which may have a far different conclusion from the one
which they are now trying to persuade the world has come to an end.
What has helped them, apart from the treason of Trotzky, Lenine and
their followers, who have only had one idea in heart and brain, that of
enriching themselves at the expense of the country for which they feel
neither affection nor pity, has been the state of confusion into which
Russia was thrown by the Revolution that broke up so unexpectedly--a
confusion which can only be compared to that which prevails in the
house of a man whom sudden ruin has overtaken, when every servant or
menial in the place tries to steal and take something in the general
disaster or to profit out of it in some way or other. In Petrograd, in
Moscow, as well as all over the country, looting took place, not only
of private property, but also of the Public Exchequer, especially of
the latter, and the Russian officials, who had always been grasping,
became all at once bandits after the style of Rinaldo Rinaldino, or
any other brigand illustrated by drama or comedy. They stole; they
took; they carried away; they seized everything they could lay their
hands upon. To begin with the silver spoons of the unfortunate Czar
and as many of the Crown Jewels as they could get hold of, down to the
paper money issued by the State Treasury, of which, as the Kerensky
government had to own before the so-called National Assembly at Moscow,
eight hundred millions were put into circulation every month after
the Revolution, in contrast with two hundred millions which were
issued formerly. I do not think that it is a libel on these officials
to suppose that part of this fabulous sum found its way into their
pockets, instead of being applied to the needs of the nation or of the
army.
This wholesale plundering, if I may be forgiven for using such a word,
was of course not the fault of Kerensky and of his colleagues, under
whose ministry it began, but whereas the latter realised immediately
that it was taking place and resigned rather than countenance it; the
former, though aware of it, found his hands tied in every attempt he
made to subdue it, by the fact that those who were principally guilty
were either his personal friends or his former partisans, or people
with whom he had associated in earlier times, and with whom he had
compromised himself to a considerable extent. With regard to those
associates of his former life, Kerensky found himself in the same
position as Napoleon III. after his accession, in presence of the
Italian Carbonari, who claimed from the Sovereign the fulfilment of
the promises made to them by the exiled Pretender. Kerensky had also
given certain pledges at a time when he never expected he might be
called upon to redeem them; and when he became a Minister he had to
give way to the exigencies of all the radicals, anarchists, and extreme
socialists among whom he had laboured, and with whom he had worked at
the overthrow of the detested and detestable government of the Czar. He
could not cast them overboard or set them aside. He had to listen to
them, and in a certain sense to submit to their demands. For example,
in the case of the exile to Siberia of the unfortunate Nicholas II.,
a measure which in the first days of the Revolution he had declared
that he would never resort to, but which he nevertheless executed
under conditions of the most intense cruelty, simply because it was
demanded from him by persons to whom he could not say no. People
who knew him well say that the fact of his powerlessness caused him
intense suffering, but he had neither the strength to assert himself in
presence of his former comrades, nor, perhaps, the will to do so.
In a certain sense, he was the man of the hour, “le maitre de l’heure,”
as the Franco-Arab proverb says. He was even to some extent the one
indispensable element without which it would have been impossible for
a Republic ever to become established in Russia. And everybody seemed
to agree, one year ago, that a Republic was the only form of government
possible after the fall of the Romanoffs. Of this Republic Kerensky
rapidly became the symbol and at the same time the emblem of a new
Russia; a regenerated and better one, in the opinion of his followers
of the moment; a worse one from what it had been formerly, in that of
his adversaries, but at all events of a different Russia from the one
previously known.
But, unfortunately, Kerensky was neither a statesman like Milyukoff
nor an administrator like Prince Lvoff, nor even a business man like
Konovaloff. He lacked experience and knowledge of the routine of
government. He had but a limited amount of education, no idea of the
feelings of people born and reared in a different atmosphere from that
in which he had grown up. He was only a leader of men, or rather of
the passions of men; and, unfortunately for him, what Russia required
was more a ruler than a leader, of whom she had more than she wanted,
though perhaps at that particular moment none so powerful as Kerensky.
He had emerged a Dictator out of a complete and general chaos; and
he was to add to it the whole weight of his unripe genius and of his
exuberant personality. After having been the Peter the Hermit of a new
Crusade, he was to become the false Prophet of a creed which he had
preached with an eloquence such as has been seldom surpassed, but in
which it is doubtful whether he himself believed. Had he consented,
or had he been able to work in common with more experienced men than
himself towards the triumph of the Republican cause, he would have
taken in the annals of his country the place of one of its greatest
men. As it has turned out, he will rank among its most interesting and
brilliant historical figures, but only as a figure. His disappearance
also has had something romantic about it, which will perhaps appeal to
certain people in Russia, and which will disgust others. The world is
wondering where he has gone and what has become of him; but everything
points to the fact that he has either done away with himself, as he
often said he would do in case of failure, or else that he has been
murdered by the Bolscheviki during those days when the Neva and the
different canals of Petrograd were carrying away to the sea hundreds of
dead bodies every day. At least this is the opinion of persons who were
in Russia at the time Kerensky vanished into space; and very probably
this opinion will prove to be a true one.
The moderate liberal parties in Russia, who are the really intelligent,
would, of course, wish their country’s future government to become a
Republic modelled after that of the United States. At the same time, if
we are to believe the rare news which reaches us from Petrograd, and
especially from Moscow, one hears people say now what they would never
have dared to mention a few months ago--i. e., that a constitutional
Monarchy, if it could be established, would offer certain advantages.
I hasten to say that, personally, I do not see where these advantages
would come in, unless they were associated with a new dynasty. But at
the same time, together with many others, when I look at all that has
taken place recently in my poor country, I cannot but feel sad at the
great uncertainty as to the morrow which the Revolution of last year
has opened, not only before Russia, but before the whole world, and I
would like to see this incertitude come to an end in some way or other.
I have but little more to add. It is difficult even to try to guess
what the future holds in store for the former realm of the Romanoffs.
The only thing which one can say at present with any certainty is
that Russia will never honour the signature of Trotzky in regard to
the peace treaty concluded with Germany. Any hesitation Russia might
have had as to this point in her moments of discouragement, that must
have made themselves felt at times, disappeared after the message sent
by the President of the United States to the Soviets in Moscow. This
message dispelled any fear the Russians might have had as to whether
their allies had abandoned her. At present the country knows that it
does not stand alone, and that any resistance it has to offer to its
foes will be appreciated and encouraged. This is much, indeed this is
the one thing which was capable of rousing the energies of the whole
of that vast land which the Teutons imagine that they have conquered.
I can but repeat: Russia is not dead yet. Russia shall show the world
that, betrayed as she has been, she can still lift the yoke put upon
her, save herself, and help to save the world for the great cause of
Democracy.
And the conclusion of this book? I do not pretend to offer any. I
simply invite my readers to draw the one they like best. I ask them
only to do so with kindness and an appreciation of the difficulties of
the situation. I have not tried to write a volume of controversy; I
have merely attempted to describe, as well as I could, the Revolution
and the events which preceded it, among which the extraordinary story
of Rasputin figures so curiously.
I have given the narrative as it was related to me by people whose
veracity I have no reason to challenge. It is certain, however, that
many of its details are still unknown, and it is doubtful whether
they will be revealed before the end of the war. At present there are
too many persons interested in dissimulating the part which they have
played in the drama, either out of fear, or because they do not think
the time opportune. It seems sometimes as if there exists a tacit
understanding among the actors of the tragedy to hide the details of
the conspiracy which came to an end by the signature of the Manifest
of Pskov. This signature was wrenched, no one knows yet by just what
means, out of the weakness of Nicholas II!--that unfortunate Monarch
who has never realised the obligations and duties he owed to the
nation that dethroned him. The last crowned Romanoff had never had,
unfortunately for him, and still more unfortunately for his subjects,
a sense of appreciation of the real value of facts or of events, which
sometimes is even more useful than a great intelligence, to those whom
destiny has entrusted with the difficult task of ruling over nations.
He believed that his duty consisted in upholding the superannuated
traditions of autocracy, and he did not perceive that these traditions
had been maintained so long only because there had existed strong men
to enforce them. Honest and kind of heart though he was, at least in
many respects, he had contrived in spite of these qualities to rouse
against him from the very first days of his accession to the Throne all
the social classes of his country. He had irritated the aristocracy,
wounded the feelings of the army and of the people, and excited against
himself the passions of the proletariat and of the peasantry, by his
weakness of character and his obstinacy in surrounding himself with
the most hated and most despised elements in Russia. A few days before
his fall he might still have made a successful effort to save himself
and his dynasty, had he only followed the disinterested advice which
was forwarded to him by his Allies and consented to the establishment
of a responsible Ministry. He preferred to listen to his wife and
to the people she kept around her. Instead of trying to conciliate
his subjects, he threatened them, until the expected occurred, and
he lost not only his crown but also his liberty; and has perhaps
forfeited his life and that of his family.
But the future, the future, my readers will ask me, What will be the
future, what shall it bring forth for Russia? The only reply possible
to this eager question is to quote the words of Victor Hugo in his
wonderful Ode to Napoleon: “The future belongs to no one, it is
controlled by God alone.”
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1918, International Film Service, Inc._
THE HOUSE AT BREST-LITOVSK WHERE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE RUSSIAN
BOLSHEVIKI AND THE AUSTRO-GERMANS WERE CONDUCTED]
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed. Some similarly-spelled names were left as-is, as
neither variation matches current usage.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.