The Last Tsar (31 page)

The new world sent congratulatory telegrams to Michael Romanov, a congratulatory telegram came even from Turukhansk, where the Bolsheviks were in exile.

Nicholas was living in the governor’s house in Mogilev. Daily he walked to the quarters of the general staff, where Alexeyev reported to him and read agents’ telegrams. As if nothing had happened.

“4 March. Saturday.… Just before 12 went to the platform to
meet dear mother arriving from Kiev. Brought her to my place and had lunch with her and our people. Sat and talked for a long time.… Just before 8 went to dine at Mama’s and sat with her ’til 11.”

A new world was walking around the city: clerks, drivers bedecked with red armbands and ribbons, red cockades on their caps. Endless meetings, speeches by “the freest citizens of the freest country in the world” about “the damn regime.”

Gathered in the train car of the dowager empress, however, were “his people”: Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich (now simply Boris Romanov), Prince Alexander of Oldenburg (now simply Alec), and simply Sergei … and simply Sandro. At the time they still believed that Nikolasha would come soon and take over as commander-in-chief. Alexeyev, the generals—they all wanted him.

But the new world did not. Nikolasha had to refuse. He was already on his way to Headquarters when he was informed in the name of the Provisional Government: “Popular opinion has expressed itself decisively and insistently in opposition to members of the house of Romanov occupying any position whatsoever.… The Provisional Government is convinced that you, in the name of love for your Homeland,” etc. His reply to the telegram did not lack sarcasm: “I am happy once again to prove my love for my Homeland. Of which Russia has yet to have any doubt.”

Popular opinion. When to the question “What is your name?” one of the grand dukes answered “Romanov,” the clerk said sympathetically: “What an ugly name you have.”

The new rule was beginning—the rule of the victorious crowd, the rule of Nicholas’s former soldiers. The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Those once bold talkers of the Duma and the Provisional Government—how they feared that power now and tried to ingratiate themselves with it.

Once he was back at Tsarskoe Selo Nicholas would observe with a certain malicious pleasure the once terrible orators of the Duma becoming increasingly helpless to do anything about the natural disaster they had provoked.

Alexeyev was negotiating the departure of the tsar’s family. Through Murmansk, it was assumed, to England. Nicholas wanted it all arranged before his return to Alix.

But something else happened. The new world did not want his departure. On March 3, immediately after his abdication, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies passed a decree “On
the arrest of Nicholas II and the other members of the Romanov dynasty.”

The Provisional Government was forced to yield, so much did they fear this new world, despite the fact that he had met all their conditions without a murmur and had signed the manifesto.

“The journal of the Provisional Government’s sessions of March 7.

“Considered: The incarceration of the abdicated emperor and his spouse.

“Resolved: To approve the incarceration of the abdicated Emperor Nicholas II and his wife and to remove the abdicated emperor to Tsarskoe Selo.”

Kerensky later explained the reasons for the arrest:

“The extremely agitated state of the soldiers at the rear and the workers. The Petrograd and Moscow garrisons were hostile to Nicholas.… Recall my speech of March 20 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet—demands for execution were heard then, addressed directly to me. I said I would never take on the role of Marat, that an impartial court would examine Nicholas’s guilt before Russia.”

The Provisional Government had more or less defended him from the Soviets’ arbitrariness. But this arrest “tied the knot later broken in Ekaterinburg” (V. Nabokov, administrator of affairs for the Provisional Government).

True, Alexeyev informed him of what the government had implied: all this was temporary, for purposes of placating the crowd’s fury. A special commission of inquiry was being created—it would prove the tsar’s innocence and the nonsense of the rumors about Alix’s treason. And then—bon voyage—to England!

Nicholas’s diary:

“8 March, Wednesday. Last day in Mogilev. At 10.15 signed a parting decree to the army.”

He wanted good and reconciliation for Russia. That was why he ceded power and asked his people to serve the new government loyally: “I address you for the last time, my ardently loved troops. Do your duty—defend our valorous homeland, obey the Provisional Government, heed your leaders: may God bless you and the great martyr St. George the Conqueror lead you to holy victory.” At that moment Nicholas fell for good in monarchists’ eyes as well.

Meanwhile, no one dared publish the decree—its author was too unpopular.

Nicholas’s diary:

“8 March [continuation].… At 10.30 went to the Guards
building, where said goodbye to all the officials of the staff and administration. At home said goodbye to the officers and Cossacks of the Convoy and Mixed Regiment—my heart nearly burst. At 12 went to see Mama in her train car, had lunch with her and her suite, and sat with her ’til 4.30. Said goodbye to her, Sandro, Sergei, Boris, and Alec.”

He was seeing them all for the last time.

“At 4.45 left Mogilev. A touching crowd of people saw me off. Four members of the Duma are accompanying me in my train.… It is hard, painful, and miserable.”

“Accompanying”—his delicate way of noting his arrest.

According to the government’s resolution:

1. The family and everyone who remained with them were to be isolated from the outside world.

2. An inside and outside guard was formed.

3. The family was permitted to move about only within the confines of the Alexander Palace.

4. Papers were confiscated from the tsar and tsaritsa, to be handed over to the conduct of the Special Commission of Inquiry.

On March 8, General Kornilov’s automobile drove up to the Alexander Palace. Lavr Kornilov, a distinguished military general—with his peaked martial mustache—left his automobile at the main gates of the palace and was met by the empress’s secretary, Count Apraxin, and taken to see Alix.

“Your Highness, it has most burdensomely fallen upon me to inform you of your arrest.”

After Kornilov’s departure Alix called in Lieutenant Zborovsky of the Convoy. Her words were worthy of the moment.

“Beginning with me, we are all going to have to submit to fate. I knew General Kornilov before. He is a knight, and I am at peace now for my children.”

(Exactly one year later, in March 1918, Kornilov would perish on the field of battle in the Civil War. His corpse would be dug out of its grave and burned by the Red victors on the outskirts of Ekaterinoslav.)

The surrender of posts at Tsarskoe Selo was set for 4:00
P.M
. His Imperial Highness’s Convoy had to quit the palace. The tragic play
continued: they acted out the parting scene wonderfully, the empress and the Convoy. She gave them small icons and gifts from the family. Accepting an icon, each officer dropped to one knee. Then she led Lieutenant Zborovsky into a darkened room—to say goodbye to the sick grand duchesses (Marie too had fallen ill by that time). Zborovsky bowed low to the tsar’s daughters, but he thought they seemed bewildered. No, they still did not know everything.

The empress gathered her “people” and suite in a hall. “Anyone who does not leave the palace by four o’clock this afternoon will be considered under arrest,” she told them. “The sovereign is arriving tomorrow morning.”

The hardest of all now remained: to tell
them
. She told her daughters herself. It was a dreadful conversation. “Mama was grieving, and I was crying, too.… But later we all tried to smile at tea,” Marie told Anya.

Gilliard took on the task of informing his pupil.

“You know, Alexei Nikolaevich, your father does not want to be emperor any longer.”

The boy looked at him with astonishment, trying to read what was happening on his face.

“He is awfully tired and he has had many difficulties of late.”

“Oh, yes! Mama told me that they stopped his train when he wanted to come here, but father will be emperor again, won’t he, later on?”

Gilliard explained that the sovereign had abdicated in favor of Michael, but Uncle Michael had refused the throne.

“In that case, who will be emperor?”

“Now—no one.”

Alexei flushed furiously and said nothing for a long time, but did not ask about himself. Then he said: “In that case, if there is not going to be a tsar anymore, who is going to rule Russia?”

This question seemed naive and childish to the good Swiss, but millions of others, too, were asking: Who will be tsar? The new tsar in a country that had always had tsars.

The revolution could not wipe out autocracy because it was in the people’s blood. And he would come again—a new tsar. A revolutionary tsar. But a tsar.

“If there is not going to be a tsar anymore, who is going to rule Russia?”

At four o’clock the revolutionary soldiers replaced the Tsar’s Convoy. But they were not protecting the family; they were guarding it. Lieutenant
Zborovsky looked on with horror at this new sentry with their red ribbons. The world had fallen apart. “We had it … we had it … and now it is gone. This is something savage … incomprehensible.” So he wrote in his diary.

Alix’s first night under arrest, the last night before the arrival of the overthrown emperor.

A cruel frost, and the snow in the Tsarskoe Selo park sparkling under the moon. In the nighttime silence, Lili Dehn went downstairs with a blanket and linens to the boudoir next to the empress’s bedroom. The grand duchesses had asked her not to leave Alix alone.

Alix, with enthusiasm, made Lili’s bed on the couch: “Oh, Lili, Russian ladies don’t know how to make their own beds. When I was a girl, my grandmother showed me how it is done.”

The bed “in the style of Queen Victoria” was ready; she had played the role of concerned mistress. Alix left her bedroom door open so Lili “would not be lonely.” Both were left alone with their thoughts in the moonlit rooms. Neither slept. Lili listened to the empress’s coughing and a new sound: the steps of the sentry in the hallway—back and forth, back and forth.

On March 9, at eleven o’clock in the morning, automobiles drove out of the palace garage to the station—to the imperial pavilion. The train pulled in, and Nicholas emerged wearing a Caucasian fur cap and soldier’s greatcoat, his yellow skin taut across his temples. Behind him the members of his suite began to jump off the train and run away down the platform. Not looking back—they fled. This was not only the effect of banal fear. This was the first demonstration of the camarilla’s true attitude toward Nicholas.

The tsar got in the automobile. Next to him was Marshal of the Court Dolgorukov. In the front seat was his orderly, Pilipenko, a sergeant-major in the convoy. (Dolgorukov would be shot in 1918, Pilipenko in 1920.) The order was given: “Open the gates for the former tsar.”

The gates opened and the automobile of living corpses drove in to Tsarskoe Selo.

By this time the empress had burned her papers in her beloved lilac study. In Vyrubova’s room she destroyed all her letters to her friend. She probably burned her brother Ernie’s letters as well. And her diaries. Given her passion for the pen, one can imagine what quantity
this amounted to! She did decide to preserve the memory of these days, though, so she invented a style for keeping a new diary. Only events and times. That was all, not a single opinion—a canvas for future reminiscences.

That was how she transmitted to us everything that happened from the early part of the terrible year 1917. That was how her diary of the empire’s collapse was created. English words in this diary are interspersed with Russian. She often joined individual letters—Russian and English—to make it harder to read if it were ever confiscated.

“March 1. 11:00. Benck. Tea.”

This means Count Benckendorff had been invited for tea and on that day they discussed the latest news from Petrograd.

“O. 38 and 9, T. 38, A. 36 and 7, Ania 38”—these are the temperatures of her sick children and her friend.

“Ivanov—1–2.5 night.”

This was a notation about that tragic nighttime conversation with General Ivanov, when she understood the full extent of their defenselessness.

Here is the day that interests us especially:

“March 9. O. 36.3, T. 36.2, M. 37.2, An. 36.5, A. 36.2.

“11:45—N. arrived.” Yes, this was Nicholas arriving.

When the car drove up with the sovereign, she was sitting in the playroom with Little One.

“She ran down the corridors of the palace like a fifteen-year-old girl,” Anya would write. The perpetually youthful girl was greeting her perpetual sweetheart. The two young people embraced passionately.

The valet Volkov observed this meeting: “The empress rushed to meet him, smiling. And they kissed.”

The parlormaid Anna Demidova observed her as well:

“When they were left alone together, they began to cry.”

More precisely—he cried. Her other boy.

“Lunch with N.… Alexei in the playroom.”

Afterward, when he was again calm and steady, Alix led him to the playroom to see Alexei. At lunch they talked cheerful nonsense with their son, and neither he nor she nor their son spoiled this new game. Nothing had happened, everything was as before.

Yes, everything was as before. After he saw his daughters in their darkened room, he left the palace for his cherished long walk.

Out the window, Alix saw the soldiers pushing the former tsar
back toward the palace, jostling him with their rifles: “You can’t go there, colonel sir, go back, that’s an order.”

He returned to the palace in silence.

Nicholas’s diary:

“9 March, Thursday. Arrived quickly and safely at Tsarskoe Selo at 10.30. But Lord, what a change! There are guards outside and around the palace, and ensigns of some kind inside the entry. Went upstairs and there saw my sweetheart Alix and my dear children. They looked cheerful and healthy, but they were all lying in a dark room. They all feel good except Marie, who got the measles only recently. Had lunch and dinner in the playroom with Alexei. Took a walk with Valya Dolgorukov and worked with him a bit in the garden, since we are not allowed to walk any farther….