The Last Tsar (27 page)

I am leafing through the diaries of the grand duchesses. Olga’s diary: “December 17.… Father Grigory has been missing since last night. They are looking everywhere. It is terribly hard. The four of us slept together. God help us!…

“December 18.… Ania is staying with us, since Mama is afraid for her.… We have finally learned that Father Gregorii was killed, probably by Dmitrii, and thrown from the bridge by Krestovskii. He was found in the water. No words can say how hard it is. We sat and drank tea, and the whole time we felt that Father Gregorii was with us.”

Did Dmitry kill him? This was the end to all her hopes. This is why “No words can say how hard it is.”

He (telegram): “18 Dec, 1916.… I have only just read your letter. Am horrified and shaken. In prayers and thoughts I am with you. Am arriving to-morrow at 5 o’clock.”

——

Was Rasputin’s prediction only a muzhik’s cunning or was it dictated by the Holy Devil’s dark power? Or both? This drunken, insanely debauched muzhik who had trampled the luxurious floors of their palaces truly was a precursor. The precursor of those hundreds of thousands of terrible muzhiks who would trample their palaces and murder them—and throw their corpses, like carrion, without burial, into the warm July earth.

At first Rasputin’s corpse was placed in a crypt at St. Feodor’s Cathedral. Then he was buried secretly—not far from the park and palace, under a chapel that was being built. Right under the altar. He was close by as before.

Nicholas’s diary:

“December 21. Wednesday.… At 9 the whole family went past the photography building and turned right toward the field, where we assisted at a sad scene: the coffin with the body of the unforgettable Grigory, murdered on the night of December 17 by monsters in the home of F. Yusupov, had already been lowered into the grave. Father Alexander Vasiliev finished the eulogy, after which we returned home. The weather was gray with 12 degrees of frost. Walked until reports.… In the afternoon took a walk with the children.”

Nicholas was firm: The decision was made to banish “the monsters Dmitry and Felix” from Petrograd. His wife’s sufferings were not all that forced him to be firm. For a Christian, murder is blasphemous—not only that, the tsar’s own relatives had killed the muzhik! The rest of the Romanov family honored the “monsters.” At the station Felix was seen off by his father-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. How poor Dmitry envied everyone who remained in his beloved Petrograd. How many of his relatives—of those who remained in “beloved Petrograd”—would be killed! Felix and Dmitry, though, the “monsters” banished from the capital, would survive.

For the next few days it was as if Alix had turned to stone. At first she had been violent, shouting “Hang them!,” but later she became ominously calm, almost indifferent. She understood that this was the end. The end that the holy man had predicted. Alix showed Nicky the holy man’s will, and he tried to calm her: Grigory’s behests were being carried out. Trepov, whom the empress (and consequently Grigory) did not like, was being driven out. The decrepit Golitsyn
was being appointed prime minister, which for all intents and purposes meant that Protopopov, the holy man’s favorite, was to head the government.

Society rebelled. Endless meetings were held—municipal, district, noble—and all against the new government. While everyone was waiting for the revolution, it had already begun. The holy man was right: it began immediately upon his death!

Frost, the sun secreted behind the clouds. The pure snow of Tsarskoe Selo glittering as if splashed with quicksilver. The sovereign’s annual grand entrance in the Great Palace. Another New Year’s in the long line of years of his reign.

“1 January. Sunday. The day passed gray, quiet, and warm.… At about 3 Misha arrived, and he and I left for the Great Palace to a reception of the Ministers, Suite, and diplomats.”

In early 1917 no one had the slightest doubt about the coming revolution. Plots were being hatched in luxurious Petrograd apartments. And in the palaces.

The plot of the grand dukes—here, of course, the name of the army’s favorite immediately surfaced: the former commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. Sixteen grand dukes sent an emissary to Tiflis to the out-of-favor Nikolasha. Duma plotters, too, began open negotiations with Nicholas Nikolaevich. In the name of Duma member Prince Georgy Lvov, it was already being openly proposed to Nikolasha that he replace the other Nicholas on the throne. Nicholas Nikolaevich hesitated—and refused. He remained a loyal subject.

The sons of Vladimir Alexandrovich went into action and called the monarchist Purishkevich to the palace of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. “Still under the impression of my conversation with them, I left the grand duke’s palace with the firm conviction that he, Guchkov, and Rodzianko were plotting something inadmissible … with respect to the sovereign,” Purishkevich wrote in his diary. In fact, this never went beyond seditious conversations either. Many in the large Romanov family at the time could have repeated the words that burst from Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich: “He [the tsar] infuriates me, yet I still love him!”

Endless meetings in Duma members’ apartments. General Krymov arrived from the front and told of the tragic situation in the army—the rumors of treason and the numerous defeats. The conclusion: a coup was inevitable.

At this time, as once before in the nineteenth century, the opposition was allying itself increasingly in secret Masonic lodges, which flourished in Russia after the 1905 revolution. By 1917 they had united society’s liberal elite, which was fed up with the Rasputin business. The paradox of the situation was that on the eve of 1905, when the police had frightened Nicholas with Masons, Masonry scarcely existed in Russia. Now, on the eve of 1917, when Masonry had become a real force, the police knew little about it. Meanwhile, the Masonic lodges included among their members tsarist ministers, generals, members of the State Council, Duma figures, prominent diplomats, industrialists: P. Balk, minister of finance; N. Pokrovsky, minister of foreign affairs; N. Polivanov, minister of war; Generals V. Gurko, A. Krymov, and N. Ruzsky; K. Dzhunkovsky, the chief of police, and so on. No, they did not want revolution—but they did want changes. Even in the lodges, then, activity was limited to seditious conversations. “Quite enough was done to get someone hanged, but not enough actually to carry out any plans,” one of the chief opposition leaders, Duma member Guchkov, would later say. Guchkov was trying to take practical steps: he was beginning to prepare a coup for March, when military units loyal to the Duma would be moved up toward Petrograd. To avoid bloodshed, he was planning to seize the tsar’s train and force the tsar to abdicate then and there. But none of the prominent military men (other than Krymov) joined in his plot. “I will never enter into a plot, I have sworn an oath.” Many could have repeated this statement by Duma Chairman Rodzianko.

At that time the head of the Petrograd secret police was submitting endless reports to Internal Affairs Minister Protopopov.

January 9: “Alarming mood among the revolutionary underground and widespread propagandization of the proletariat.”

January 28: “Events of extraordinary importance, fraught with exceptional consequences for Russian statehood, are not beyond the hills.”

February 5: “Animosity is mounting.… Spontaneous demonstrations by the popular masses will be the first and last stage on the path to senseless and merciless excesses of the most horrible thing of all—anarchical revolution.”

Protopopov blithely shelved the reports. After all, the empress had said: “There is no revolution in Russia, nor could there be. God would not allow it.”

Nicholas’s diary:

“29 January. Sunday.… In the afternoon took a walk and worked in the snow a while.… At 6 received old Klopov.”

Yes, this was the same Klopov who had come to see Nicholas at the dawn of his reign. Then Klopov had wanted to tell Nicholas the people’s truth. He came now one more time, to save his beloved tsar.

After the revolution Klopov worked quietly as a bookkeeper, and he died in 1927. Klopov left a note among his papers about his 1917 audience with Nicholas. He talked to the tsar about the court’s egoism, about the government’s criminal actions. Nicholas listened with a strange smile on his face, as if he were absent. Klopov left frightened by the incomprehensible equanimity of the tired man who had sat before him.

At this time Nicholas’s childhood friend Sandro, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, wrote Nicholas a letter. He wrote it at several sittings, decided to send it, and then changed his mind.

Nicholas’s diary:

“10 February.… Sandro arrived at 2 and had a long talk with Alix in my presence in the bedroom.”

Alix lay in bed for Sandro’s visit, as she was unwell. Sandro kissed her hand, and her lips grazed his cheeks. Sandro wanted to talk with her alone, but Nicky remained. She feared a tête-à-tête.

Later Alexander Mikhailovich told all about his conversation
with Alix in his memoirs. But we are all strong in hindsight. It would be more accurate to draw on his own letter, which he wrote to Nicholas at the time and never sent:

“… We are living through a most dangerous moment in Russia’s history.… Everyone senses it: some with their mind, some their heart, some their soul….

“Certain forces inside Russia are leading you, and consequently Russia as well, to irrevocable ruin. I say ‘you and Russia’ wholly consciously, since Russia cannot exist without a tsar. One must remember, nevertheless, that the tsar alone cannot rule a state such as Russia.… The current situation, in which all responsibility lies on you and you alone, makes no sense.

“… Events have shown that your advisers are continuing to lead Russia and you to certain ruin,” Sandro repeated. “It leads one to utter despair that you do not care to heed the voices of those who know the state Russia is in and advise you to take the measures necessary to lead us out of chaos.

“… The government today is the organ preparing the revolution. The people do not want it, but the government is taking every possible measure to create as many dissatisfied people as possible and is succeeding completely at it. We are assisting at an unprecedented spectacle of revolution from above, rather than below.”

In his conversation at Alix’s bedside, Sandro begged Alix to confine herself to family matters, and Alix cut him off. He persisted. She raised her voice; so did he. During their stormy exchange Nicholas smoked silently. Sandro left, promising that one day Alix would recognize his truth. He kissed her hand in parting but received no parting kiss in response.

The entire conversation with Sandro made Alix see one thing: they wanted to remove Protopopov, whom the holy man had bequeathed to them. She was furious. What they needed was to disband the Duma, not remove devoted people from the throne.

That day Nicholas was forced to listen to a great deal more. He recorded in his diary, laconically and in order as always, the day’s chain of events.

“Took a walk with Marie, Olga’s ear hurt. Before tea received Rodzianko.”

His conversation with the Duma chairman was ominous. The usually restrained Rodzianko was unrecognizable.

Rodzianko: “A change of faces and not only faces but the whole system of government is imperative.”

Nicholas: “You keep demanding the removal of Protopopov. But
he was your comrade in the Duma. Why do you all hate him so now?”

Rodzianko: “I do demand it. Before I asked, now I demand. Your Excellency, we are on the eve of great events whose outcome we cannot foresee. I have been reporting to you for an hour and a half, but everything tells me you have already selected the most dangerous path—disbanding the Duma. I am convinced that before three weeks are out a revolution will ignite that will wipe away everything, and you will not be able to rule.”

When Rodzianko had entered the study to see the tsar, he had run into Alexander Volkov and asked him to note how long he stayed in the sovereign’s study.