The Last Tsar (29 page)

Nicholas did not manage to carry his decision through to completion. He had expected that the Duma would control the situation, that the coup everyone was so certain of had been readied. He would find out, however, that the mob had gone out into the street. From the telegrams he realized with horror that in fact the Duma’s big talkers were not in control of the situation. That was when he got scared—for Alix and the children. Riots in the city could spread to his beloved Tsarskoe Selo. Nicholas was forced to act.

On Monday, February 27, he wrote in his diary: “Riots began in Petrograd several days ago. To my regret, troops have begun to take part in them. It is a hateful feeling to be so far away and receive such poor, fragmentary news! Was not long at report. In the afternoon took a walk down the road to Orsha. After dinner decided to go to Tsarskoe as soon as possible and at I moved into the train.”

He (telegram): “Am starting to-morrow at 2.30. The Cavalry Guards have received orders to leave Nov[gorod] for town immediately. God grant that the disorders among the troops will soon be stopped.”

Nicholas’s diary:

“28 February. Tuesday. Went to bed at 3.15, having spoken at length with N. I. Ivanov [General Nikolai Iudovich Ivanov], whom I am sending to Petrograd with troops to establish order. Slept until 10. Left Mogilev at 5 in the morning. The weather was frostily sunny. In the afternoon traveled through Vyazma, Rzhev, and Likhoslavl at 9”

But he never did get as far as his beloved Tsarskoe Selo.

Lermontov’s
Masquerade
is a play with dreadful associations. On the day war was declared in 1941,
Masquerade
premiered in Moscow.
Masquerade
also premiered then, at the end of February 1917, during the empire’s fall.

The street lamps were no longer burning. Only a searchlight on
the Admiralty side beat down on Nevsky, and in this dead light, people were walking to the theater. There was shooting in the streets. A murdered student lay in the lobby. There were a great many rumors about the readied performance. All theatrical Petrograd had gathered at the Alexandrinsky Theater. Indeed, it was a fantastic spectacle. On the stage, improbable luxury no one had ever seen in a theater: huge mirrors, gilded doors. The stage presented a glittering palace hall. The apotheosis of luxury. A hymn to a palace. It was a theatrical set of the world that was drowning on that February street, moving off into nonbeing. In the Tauride Palace the Duma was in permanent session. Hoarse, ecstatic speakers….

On February 28, the last day of winter, the garrison at Tsarskoe Selo rebelled: 40,000 soldiers with antiaircraft guns.

Rodzianko, as chairman of the Duma the sole authority in the mutinous capital, made a call on the palace. Rodzianko spoke with Benckendorff, marshal of the imperial court, and asked him to tell Alix to flee the Alexander Palace as quickly as possible.

“But the sick children—” said Benckendorff.

“When a house is on fire, sick children are carried out,” Rodzianko replied (his voice said: if only you had listened to me earlier!).

“I am not going anywhere! Let them do what they wish,” the empress answered Benckendorff.

By now the station at Tsarskoe Selo had been taken by the rebels. The trains were not running. So she sent two Cossacks from the convoy to Petrograd by rail. Their fur coats hid the uniform they had recently worn so proudly.

The Cossacks returned with news: the city was firmly in the hands of the rebellion. The mobs had opened the prisons and were storming the police stations and picking up policemen. The center was overflowing with people, and there were flags everywhere. The city was awash in blood-red calico.

In the palace all day February 28 they heard disorderly firing. It was the mutinous soldiers of the Tsarskoe Selo garrison shooting ecstatically (so far still in the air). Bands were thundering the “Marseillaise.” All day—that music. Half a kilometer from the palace, the first victim: a Cossack was killed. But the 40,000 insurrectionists were not yet threatening the palace.

Along the iron fence of the palace, astride their magnificent
horses, were the mounted Cossack patrols of His Imperial Highnesses Convoy.

She called in Generals Resin and von Groten, in whose hands she now placed the palace’s defense.

The many faces of Alix: the obedient granddaughter of Queen Victoria, the eternal Sweetheart, the sequestered Muscovite tsarevna, the insane fanatic of autocracy. And finally Alix, in March 1917. The heroine of an antique tragedy: overthrown but ever the warrior. The blood of Mary Stuart.

At nine o’clock the palace trumpeters sounded the alarm, and the inspection of her troops began.

They formed up before the main entry of the palace: the Life Guards Second Kuban and Third Tersk companies. Two companies of the Convoy’s Cossacks lined up.

Next to the Cossacks, having come from the barracks, was a battalion of the Marine of the Guard under the command of Grand Duke Kirill. (The Marine had thinned out, some daring sailors having already begun to disappear mysteriously in the night.)

Finally, a battalion of a mixed infantry regiment and an antiaircraft battery—two guns on motorized platforms.

Here was all her army surrounded by a sea of gray greatcoats—the garrison of Tsarskoe Selo.

Lanterns burned by the palace entrance. Several hundred defenders stood silently in the freezing night. Commands were heard: “From the Convoy—constant mounted patrols along the railway between the station and the barracks. Anti-aircraft batteries and the Marine’s machine-guns—take a position suitable for opening fire, down the streets leading to the palace.” Midnight, when she would emerge from the palace, was drawing nigh.

Across the crunching snow, in the fierce frost, a fur coat draped over her shoulders, she walked down the rank. Her proud bearing. The leading tragic actress in the drama of the revolution. Beside her was Grand Duchess Marie, her only healthy daughter. Together they passed down the rank. Alix gathered the officers in the palace’s guard room: “Gentlemen, please, there is no need to shoot. No matter what happens. I do not want blood shed because of us.”

She had realized: one shot and everything would go up in a puff of smoke. Gray coats fanned out around the palace.

The next day, when she awoke, a new blow awaited her. The palace’s pride and glory, the Marine of the Guard, under the command of Grand Duke Kirill, had left the barracks. A red ribbon on
his high-collared jacket and the tsar’s monogram on his epaulets, the tsar’s cousin had taken his unit to the Tauride Palace—to swear allegiance to the Duma. Kirill had not forgotten the humiliations of 1905. Nor had he forgiven Nicholas and Alexandra the filthy muzhik who had soiled the dynasty.

That same morning, a company of the railway battalion left for Petrograd in the Marine’s wake. Two companies of Cossacks, two guns, and an infantry battalion—such was her army then.

She realized that the palace could be stormed at any moment—the mutinous garrison no longer had anyone to fear.

As before, though, they did not approach. This was an ominous calm, however. Rumors were going around the palace—the rebels’ cannons were already aimed at the cathedral and palace. They had to wait from hour to hour.

By the afternoon she had nearly forgotten the inevitable threat rushing between her sick children and sick friend.

That night she could not sleep. She went down to the palace’s half-cellar, where the Convoy’s Cossacks were resting in the warmth of the furnace, and tried to encourage them, to strengthen their spirit through prayers. Later, before dawn, she talked with Lili Dehn. And all this time she kept sending him telegrams, which returned with the mocking comment: “Place of residence unknown.” The place of residence of the Autocrat of All the Russias was unknown! She could not stand it—she sent for Paul, who had not been called to the palace since his son killed Rasputin. He came and told her that Nicky’s train had been held up, but Nicky was alive and well.

She begged Paul to do something. Catastrophe was imminent. He did not try to explain to her that the catastrophe had already occurred; he pitied her. He informed her that he, Kirill, and Misha had written a draft manifesto, which they intended to take to the Duma and in which the tsar granted a ministry accountable to the Duma. Yes, yes, she now understood: concessions were needed. (No one paid any attention to the manifesto signed by the three grand dukes. The Duma was waiting for a very different manifesto.)

On the night of March 1, Alix received yet another blow. At about one in the morning General Ivanov appeared at the palace—the same man whom Nicky had sent out with a crack detachment of highly decorated men.

In her lilac study, the old general told Alix how the railway had been seized and the echelon surrounded by rebels. And propagandized. Those men with their St. George’s Crosses refused to leave their train cars—no one would come to the aid of the palace. Again
her delusions emerged: she begged the old man to try to get through to Nicky.

After the general’s departure she realized she was totally defenseless. The mutineers could come at any moment. Again she sent a Cossack lieutenant from the Convoy for Paul. The emissary walked up to the gate of the grand duke’s palace and rang for a long time. Receiving no response, he scaled the fence and was amazed to see the formal entry to the palace open. He wandered through the endless halls of the empty palace and realized the servants had fled. Finally he came to Paul’s bedroom. At the door slept Paul’s valet, all that remained of a great many servants.

He explained to Paul that the palace was expecting the mutineers at any moment. The grand duke started making phone calls, negotiating. Finally he asked the lieutenant to tell Alix that the Duma guaranteed the palace’s safety and Alix should not worry. He would sooner part with his own life than let … and so on.

On the morning of March 2 Alix wrote two long letters to Nicky. Two Cossacks from the Convoy sewed the tiny envelopes under their trouser stripes.

She: “My heart breaks from the thought of you living through all these tortures & upsets totally alone—& we know nothing of you, & you know nothing of us. I am sending Soloviev & Gramotin to you, giving each a letter, & hope at least one shall reach you. I wanted to send an aeroplan, but all have vanished. The young men will tell you all so I have nothing to tell of the state of affairs. It is all hateful, & events are progressing with colossal speed. I firmly believe, though—& no one shall shake this belief—that all will be alright.… Clearly they dont want to let you see me so above all you must not sign any paper, constitution, or other such horror—but you are alone, without your army, caught like a mouse in a trap, what can you do? This is supremely base and mean, unprecedented in history, to detain one’s sovereign.… What if you show yourself to the troops in other places and gather them around? If you must make concessions, under no circumstances are you obliged to honor them since they were obtained in ignoble fashion.… Your little family is worthy of their father. I gradually explained the situation to the Older Girls and the Cow [Anya]; before they were too ill.… It was very difficult to pretend before them. I have only told Baby half, he has 36.1 [his body temperature: 97°F] & is quite merry. Only everyone is in despair that you are not coming.… Last night was with Ivanov from 1 til 2.30.… I think he could go through Dno to see you, but could he get through? He had hoped to pull your train behind his. [Count] Fredericks’s home was burned down, and his
family now in the Cavalry Guards hospital. The two movements—the Duma and the revolutionaries—are two snakes & I hope they bite each others heads off, which would save the situation. I feel that God will do something. What bright sun. If only you were here! There is only bad, even the Marine has abandoned us. They absolutely do not understand a thing, some microbe has implanted in them.… When people find out they have not let you go, the troops will be outraged & will rise up against them all….

“Well then let them bring order & show that they are good for something in the Duma. They have ignited too great a fire, tho’—how is it to be put out now?… The children are sleeping peacefully in the darkness, the elevator has not worked for 4 days, the cable broke.… Right now am going out to greet the soldiers standing in front.… I can advise you nothing, only be yourself, my precious one. Should you have to submit to circumstances, God will help you free yourself from them. Oh my holy sufferer.

“Postscript: … Wear his [Rasputin’s] cross, even if it is uncomfortable, for my peace of mind.”

The children began to recover in their darkened bedroom.

Anya awoke from her illness and high temperature. She had fallen ill in a world where she was the omnipotent friend of the most powerful woman in Russia; she woke up in a disgraced, besieged palace.

There were horrifying, maddening rumors beginning on March 2: Nicholas had abdicated!

Again she appealed to Paul.

Paul brought her the newspaper with the text of the abdication manifesto. “No, no, I do not believe it, these are all rumors, newspaper slander.” She said something else that made no sense: she did not want to read the manifesto. She fell prostrate, whispering in French:
“Abdiqué! Abdiqué!”
Her life was over. They had stolen her Little One’s legacy. All was lost. She remained, however, the Beautiful Lover. She did not blame him—not for a second, not in a word.

“March 3rd. My beloved, Soul of my soul—Oh, how my heart bleeds for you. I am going mad not knowing anything at all other than the vilest rumors which are enough to drive one insane. I would like to know whether the two young men I sent with my letters ever reached you today?… Oh for the love of God, at least a line. An
officer’s wife will give you this letter. I know nothing about you, only heart-rending rumors. You are doubtless hearing the same.

“My heart is breaking with pain for you and your total isolation. I shall only write a little, since I do not know whether my letter will get to you, whether they will search her en route—so crazy have people become. This evening Marie & I are making a tour of the cellar to see the men—very heartening.… In town, Ducky’s husband [Grand Duke Kirill] is behaving repulsively, though acting as if he were toiling for the good of the monarch and the Homeland.… My love, my love! We had marvelous prayers & acathistus at the ikon of the Mother of God, which was brought into the green bedroom, where they were all lying—very encouraging. Everything shall—must—be alright. I shall not waver in my faith. Oh, my dear angel, I love you so much, I am with you always, night & day. I realize what your poor heart is experiencing now. God shall have mercy & send you strength & wisdom. He shall help & reward you for these mad sufferings.… We shall all fight for you, we are all in our places.… One could go mad, but we shall not for we believe in a bright future.