The Last Tsar (30 page)

“… Paul was just here—and told me everything. I wholly understand your action, oh my hero. I know that you could not have signed anything that contradicted what you swore at your coronation. We know each other to perfection, we have no need of words, we shall see you again on your throne, restored by your people and troops to the glory of your realm.”

She did not force herself to read the manifesto until the following day. Then for the first time she heard his voice again. The telephone was working—he was calling from Headquarters. She spoke tender words of encouragement. Soon after the conversation a telegram was brought.

“Headquarters. 4 March, 10 o’clock in the morning. Your Highness [he called her that, as before, and would continue to call her that to the very end]. Thanks, my dear.… Despair is passing away. May God bless you all! Tender love.”

On the evening of March 4 she wrote him her last, 653rd letter:

“March 4th 1917. My dear, beloved Treasure! What a relief & joy to hear your dear voice, only it was very hard to hear, & anyway they listen to all our conversations now!—and your dear telegram today.… Baby has leaned across the bed & asks to send you a kiss. All 4 girls are lying in the green room in the darkness. Marie & I are writing, tho’ we can see almost nothing, since the curtains are lowered. Only this morning I read the manifesto.… People are beside themselves with despair, they adore my angel. Movement is
beginning among the troops.… Ahead, I feel, I foresee the sun shining. I am extremely angry with Ducky’s husband….

“People are being arrested right & left now, officers naturally. God knows what is going on: the riflemen are choosing their own commanders & acting abominably to them—show no respect, smoke right in the officers’ faces. I do not want to write all that is going on—so repulsive. The sick upstairs & down do not know your decision, I am afraid to tell them, & for the time being no need.… God! Of course He will repay you a hundredfold for all your sufferings. My beloved, angel dear, I am afraid thinking what you are enduring, am going mad. I must not write of this more, I cannot! How they humiliated you, sending those two swine! I didnt know who that was until you told me. I feel the army will rise up.”

The novel in letters had come to an end. Captivity commenced.

He had spoken briefly of the abdication in that first telephone conversation. She would learn the details upon his return.

On the night of February 28 he was on the train to Tsarskoe Selo.

Nicholas’s diary:

“1 March, Wednesday. Last night … turned back because Lyuban and Tosno have been taken by the rebels and went to Valdai, Dno, and Pskov, where the train stopped for the night.”

When he awoke in Pskov the next morning, he learned that there was nowhere for him to go.

“Gatchina and Luga have been taken too. The shame and disgrace! We could not get to Tsarskoe, but my thoughts and feelings are there always. So distressing for poor Alix to endure all these events alone! Help us, Lord.”

Gatchina was his childhood, the garden where at the beginning of his life they built bonfires … their constant, unshakable world. And now….

“2 March. Thursday. This morning Ruzsky [commander of the northwestern and northern fronts] came and related his very long telephone conversation with Rodzianko. According to him, the situation in Petrograd is such that now the Duma ministry will be powerless to do anything since they are being opposed by the Social Democratic Party in the guise of the workers’ committee [the Petrograd
Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies]. My abdication is necessary.”

Everything did occur very quickly. As sometimes happens, though, once he had what he had decided on in a moment of weakness and exhaustion, he did not want it anymore. He cursed his weakness and detested his helplessness and the entire horror that would not pass: Alix, alone with their sick children, and he himself locked in a train at the Dno station! (Such was its name, Dno, or “Bottom.”) He declared to Ruzsky that he was prepared to sign the abdication, but first all the commanders at the fronts must say whether or not he should abdicate.

Nicholas’s diary:

“2 March [continuation]. Ruzsky transmitted this conversation to Headquarters and Alexeyev to all the chief commanders. By 2.30 replies had come from all of them. The essence is that, to save Russia and keep the army at the front quiet, this is a necessary step. I agreed.”

That afternoon he learned that the Duma in Petrograd had already sent for his abdication.

The hour is late. Nicholas walks out on the platform to stretch his legs. It is cold—the frost is hardening. All the lights are on in the imperial train. The “gentlemen”—as he teasingly refers to his suite—are not sleeping; they are waiting.

Several tracks away, a locomotive emerges from the darkness pulling a single car.

Two men get out and walk over to his train; one is Vasily Shulgin, whom Nicholas knows: a monarchist who once pleased him with a speech in the Duma. But the other—the other is Guchkov, his lifelong enemy. His despised enemy!

It is the seventh decade of the twentieth century, Leningrad. A documentary is being readied for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. The floodlights are off on the set at Lenfilm studios. In the grimy dimness an old man sits on a chair—a bald skull, a prophet’s beard, and a young man’s flashing eyes. I have come over from the set where they are shooting my film to look at this old man, who spent time in Stalin’s camps and later, according to legend,
worked as a doorman in a restaurant in Vladimir. After Khrushchev’s Thaw, the decorated Soviet director Fridrikh Ermler got the idea of shooting a documentary about this old man. Today on the set the director and the old man are discussing an episode in
Abdication of the Tsar
. In his book, the old man described the scene in the train car. Now he is recalling once again how they entered the car. Where each man stood. How the tsar entered. The old man bears a name once known to all of Russia: Vasily Shulgin.

It is a parlor car. Green silk on the walls. An old general with loops of gilt cord hanging from his shoulders—the minister of the imperial court, Count Fredericks.

They sit at a small table: the tsar, wearing a gray Circassian coat, across from Guchkov and Shulgin.

Guchkov launches into a long, bombastic speech. Nicholas listens in silence, his elbow propped against the wall. Shulgin is watching the tsar: there are bags under his eyes, brown, wrinkled, singed-looking skin from hard, sleepless nights.

Finally Guchkov speaks of the abdication, his voice trembling. When he finishes, Nicholas says calmly, indifferently, with his particular guardsman’s accent: “I have taken the decision, gentlemen, to renounce the throne.… Until three o’clock today I thought I could abdicate in favor of my son, but at that point I changed this decision in favor of my brother Michael. I hope, gentlemen, that you will understand a father’s feelings.”

Rising from the table, he picks up the Duma’s draft manifesto, which Guchkov had brought, and walks out.

While he is gone, Guchkov and Shulgin learn that the tsar is consulting with Dr. Feodorov—who tells him definitively that there is no hope for Alexei’s recovery.

So everything is the way Nicholas himself had wished all along. Michael will rule, and they—Alix and the family—will remain at liberty. For some reason, though, he now feels … not even sadness, but horror!

He returns to the train car and places on the table the text of abdication that he had written that afternoon, typed on telegraph blanks.

“How pitiful the sketch we brought seemed,” recalls Shulgin, “and how noble his parting words.”

“In these times of great struggle against an external enemy who for nearly three years has been trying to enslave our homeland, the Lord God has seen fit to send down upon Russia yet another difficult trial. Popular domestic upheavals threaten to reflect calamitously on the further conduct of a sustained war. The fate of Russia, the honor of her heroic army, the good of her people, the entire future of our dear Fatherland demand that this war be waged to a victorious conclusion no matter what.… During these decisive days in the life of Russia, we have deemed it a matter of conscience to facilitate for our people the close unity and serried ranks of all our popular forces for the speedy attainment of victory and, in agreement with the Duma, have recognized it as a good to abdicate the Throne of the Russian State and disencumber ourselves of supreme power. Not wishing to part with our beloved son, we transfer our legacy to our brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich and bless him on his ascension to the Throne of the Russian State.… We command our brother to rule state affairs in full and inviolable unity with the representatives of the people.… On those principles which they shall establish.… May the Lord God help Russia.”

Although they are touched, they immediately ask him to bend the truth so that no suspicion should arise that the abdication was torn from him: they ask him to put down not the true hour when he signed it but when he
himself
came to this decision. And he agrees. He signs: “March 2, 15:00”—although by the clock it is already midnight.

Later there is another lie: they propose that the new prime minister, Prince Lvov, be appointed by the sovereign himself. “Ah, Lvov? Well, all right, so be it, Lvov.” He signs that as well. He is doing almost everything mechanically. All his thoughts are at Tsarskoe Selo.

Nicholas’s diary:

“2 March [continuation].… They sent the draft manifesto from Headquarters. In the evening Guchkov and Shulgin arrived from Petrograd. Spoke with them and gave them the signed and revised manifesto. At 1 in the morning left Pskov with the heavy sense of what I had been through. Am surrounded by betrayal, cowardice, and deceit.”

Having signed the manifesto, he could leave immediately for Tsarskoe Selo. To everyone’s surprise, though, he returned to Headquarters, to Mogilev.

It may have been too much for him to see her and the children right after his downfall. He may have wanted to give them time to get used to the situation. Also, he had to say goodbye to the army. There was a war in progress, and he discharged his duties as commander-in-chief to the end.

In the very depths of his soul, though, he may still have held out hope. She might suddenly turn out to be right: loyal troops could rise up and a miracle could happen. He did not want to return to Tsarskoe Selo like this, laid low.

Also, he had to say goodbye to his mother.

On March 3 he returned to Headquarters. No one knew how he should be met or indeed whether he should be met at all. Naturally, though, Alexeyev decided to greet him as usual. His generals formed up in the special pavilion for meeting the tsar’s trains. They waited in silence. Only the sarcastic Sergei Mikhailovich spoke, discussing the conduct of another grand duke, Kirill, “calling things by their proper names.”

The imperial train approached. No one got out. Finally, one of the servants emerged and called to Alexeyev, who disappeared after him into the train car. Everyone waited.

Then Nicholas appeared—with a new face: yellow skin stretched across his temples, distinct bags under his eyes. Behind him was Count Fredericks: carefully clean-shaven and erect as always. The tsar (the former tsar now) began his review by greeting each and every one of them as usual.

“3 March. Friday. Slept long and hard. Woke up long past Dvinsk. The day was sunny and freezing.… Read a lot about Julius Caesar. At 8.20 arrived in Mogilev. All the staff officers were on the platform. Received Alexeyev in my car. At 9.30 moved to the house. Alexeyev came with the latest news from Rodzianko. Misha, it turns out, has abdicated. His manifesto ends with a four-line addendum about elections for a Constituent Assembly in 6 months. God knows who gave him the idea of signing such rot! The riots have stopped in Petrograd—if only things would continue like this.”

A new world was drawing near.

The abdication in favor of Michael did not work out. Nor could it have: the new world did not want the Romanovs. The workers nearly
dismembered Guchkov when he dared make the announcement about Tsar Michael Romanov.

On March 3, Guchkov and Shulgin were driven by car to obtain the new abdication from Michael. Soldiers lay on the automobile’s front fenders holding bared bayonets.

On February 27, Rodzianko had summoned Michael from Gatchina to Petrograd. At Rodzianko’s request, Michael had got on the phone directly with Headquarters and asked Nicholas to cede to the Duma—to form a government of confidence. Nicholas refused. But Michael did not make it back to Gatchina—the railway was seized by rebels. He spent the night in the Winter Palace and in the morning found himself right in the thick of things. Generals came over from the Admiralty building to the Winter Palace (among them War Minister Belaev) and proposed that Michael head a detachment to save Petrograd. Michael refused. He preferred hiding on Millionnaya Street in the apartment of Prince Putyatin.

In that apartment on Millionnaya Street, the expensive fur coats of Duma figures were tossed down in the entryway (this was still the overthrown regime—soon, very soon, both the fur coats and their owners would disappear).

Michael came in, tall, pale, his face very young. They spoke in turn.

Socialist Revolutionary and Duma member Alexander Kerensky:

“By taking the throne you will not save Russia. I know the mood of the masses. Right now everyone feels intense displeasure at the monarchy. I have no right to conceal the dangers taking power would subject you to personally. I could not vouch for your life.”

Then silence, a long silence. And Michael’s voice, his barely audible voice: “Under these circumstances, I cannot.”

Silence, and almost distinct sobbing.

Michael was crying. It was his fate to end the monarchy. Three hundred years—and it all ended with him.

And Kerensky’s happy shout: “I deeply respect your gesture! As does all Russia.”