Nicholas and Alexandra

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“His Majesty’s Government Does Not Insist”

GILLIARD could not have known it, but, from the earliest days of the revolution, an overriding preoccupation of the Provisional Government had been to get the Tsar and his family to safety. “The former Emperor and the Imperial family were no longer political enemies but simply human beings who had come under our protection. We regarded any display of revengefulness as unworthy of Free Russia,” said Kerensky. In keeping with this spirit, the new government had immediately abolished capital punishment in Russia. As Minister of Justice, Kerensky initiated this law, partly because he knew it would help forestall demands for the Tsar’s execution. Stubbornly, Nicholas objected to the law. “It’s a mistake. The abolition of the death penalty will ruin the discipline of the army,” said the Tsar. “If he [Kerensky] is abolishing it to save me from danger, tell him that I am ready to give my life for the good of my country.” Nevertheless, Kerensky held to his view. On March 20, he appeared in Moscow before the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and listened to an angry cacophony of cries for the Tsar’s execution. Boldly, Kerensky replied, “I will not be the Marat of the Russian Revolution. I will take the Tsar to Murmansk myself. The Russian Revolution does not take vengeance.”

Murmansk was the gateway to England and it was to England that all of Kerensky’s fellow ministers hoped that the Tsar could be sent. As early as March 19, while Nicholas was still with his mother at Stavka, Paul Miliukov, the new Foreign Minister, was saying anxiously, “He should lose no time in getting away.” On the 21st, when Buchanan and Paléologue confronted Miliukov with the news of the Tsar’s arrest at Mogilev, Miliukov eagerly explained that Nicholas had simply been “deprived of his liberty” in order to ensure his safety. Buchanan officially reminded Miliukov that Nicholas was a relative of King George V of England, who was expressing a strong interest in his cousin’s welfare. Seizing upon the relationship, Miliukov agreed that the Tsar must be saved and begged Buchanan to wire London immediately asking for asylum for the Imperial family. Imploring Buchanan to hurry, he explained, “It’s the last chance of securing these poor unfortunates’ freedom and perhaps of saving their lives.”

Buchanan was equally concerned, and the following day his urgent telegram was placed before the British War Cabinet. At the head of the table at 10 Downing Street sat the Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. The fiery Welshman had little sympathy for the Russian autocracy. In a famous speech made in August 1915, he had thundered grim approval of Russia’s terrible defeats: “The Eastern sky is dark and lowering. The stars have been clouded over. I, regard that stormy horizon with anxiety but with no dread. Today I can see the colour of a new hope beginning to empurple the sky. The enemy in their victorious march know not what they are doing. Let them beware, for they are unshackling Russia. With their monster artillery they are shattering the rusty bars that fettered the strength of the people of Russia.”

When Imperial Russia fell, Lloyd George exuberantly telegraphed the Provisional Government: “It is with sentiments of the profoundest satisfaction that the people of Great Britain … have learned that their great ally Russia now stands with the nations which base their institutions upon responsible government.… We believe that the Revolution is the greatest service which they [the Russian people] have yet made to the cause for which the Allied peoples have been fighting since August 1914. It reveals the fundamental truth that this war is at bottom a struggle for popular Government as well as for liberty.”

In his own heart, Lloyd George was highly reluctant to permit the deposed Tsar and his family to come to England. Nevertheless, he and his ministers agreed that, as the request for asylum had come not from the Tsar but from Britain’s new ally, the Provisional Government, it could not be refused. Buchanan was signaled that Britain would receive Nicholas but that the Russian government would be expected to pay his bills.

On March 23, Buchanan carried this message to Miliukov. Pleased but increasingly anxious—the unauthorized descent on Tsarskoe Selo by armored cars filled with soldiers had occurred the day before—Miliukov assured the Ambassador that Russia would make a generous financial allowance for the Imperial family. He begged, however, that Buchanan not reveal that the Provisional Government had taken the initiative in making the arrangement. If the Soviet knew, he explained, the project was doomed.

But the Soviet, rigidly hostile to the idea of the Tsar leaving Russia, already knew. Kerensky had told them, in Moscow, that he would personally escort the Imperial family to a British ship. On March 22—the same day that Nicholas returned to his family, that Rasputin’s corpse was disinterred, that the British Cabinet decided to offer asylum—the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet was shouting hoarsely, “The Republic must be safeguarded against the Romanovs returning to the historical arena. That means that the dangerous persons must be directly in the hands of the Petrograd Soviet.” Telegrams were wired to all towns along the railways leading from Tsarskoe Selo with instructions to the workers to block the passage of the Tsar’s train. At the same time, the Soviet resolved that the Tsar should be taken from Tsarskoe Selo, properly arrested and clapped into the bastion of the Fortress of Peter and Paul until the time of his trial and execution. The fact that this last resolution was never carried out was attributed by one scornful Bolshevik writer to the domination of the Soviet at that point by irresolute Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.

For the moment, the question of the Tsar’s fate became a stand-off between the Soviet and the Provisional Government. The Soviet lacked the strength to penetrate the Alexander Palace and simply drag the family off to the Fortress. The government, on the other hand, was not sufficiently master of the country, and especially of the railways, to embark on an enterprise such as moving Nicholas to Murmansk. This journey, from Tsarskoe Selo, south of the capital, through the heart of Petrograd, meant running the very real risk that the train would be stopped, the Imperial family pulled off and carted away to the Fortress or worse.

Unwilling to take this risk, Kerensky, Miliukov and their colleagues decided to postpone the trip until the psychological atmosphere improved. In the meantime, they appeased the Soviet. On the 24th, the day after the British offer of asylum arrived, the Provisional Government pledged to the Soviet that the deposed sovereigns would remain in Russia. On the 25th, Miliukov informed Buchanan that he could not even deliver to the Tsar a personal telegram from King George which declared harmlessly, “Events of last week have deeply distressed me. My thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I always have been in the past.” When Buchanan argued that the telegram had no political significance, Miliukov replied that he understood this, but that others would misinterpret it as part of a plot to escape. The only indication Nicholas and Alexandra ever had of this telegram was Kerensky’s comment during his first visit to Tsarskoe Selo that the King and Queen of England were asking for news of their Russian relatives.

Days passed and the impasse remained. On April 2, Buchanan wrote to the Foreign Office, “Nothing has yet been decided about the Emperor’s journey to England.” On April 9, Buchanan talked to Kerensky, who declared that the Tsar’s departure would be delayed for several more weeks while his papers were examined and he and his wife were questioned. In England, meanwhile, the news that asylum had been offered had been received coldly by the Labor Party and many Liberals. As opposition to the invitation began to mount, the British government began backing away. On April 10, a semi-official Foreign Office statement coolly announced that “His Majesty’s Government does not insist on its former offer of hospitality to the Imperial family.”

On April 15, even Buchanan began to withdraw his support for asylum, explaining to London that the Tsar’s presence in England might easily be used by the extreme Left in Russia “as an excuse for rousing public opinion against us.” He suggested that perhaps Nicholas might be received in France. Hearing this, Lord Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador in Paris, wrote a scathing personal letter to the Foreign Secretary, brimming with vicious misinformation about the Empress Alexandra. “I do not think that the ex-Emperor and his family would be welcome in France,” wrote Bertie. “The Empress is not only a Boche by birth but in sentiment. She did all she could to bring about an understanding with Germany. She is regarded as a criminal or a criminal lunatic and the ex-Emperor as a criminal from his weakness and submission to her promptings. Yours ever, Bertie.”

From April until June, the plan remained suspended. Kerensky admitted later that, during this period, the suspension had nothing to do with the views of English Liberals and Laborites but was determined by the internal political situation in Russia. By early summer, however, conditions in Russia had changed and the moment seemed ripe for a discreet transfer of the Imperial family to Murmansk. Once again, the Russian government approached England on the matter of asylum.

“[We] inquired of Sir George Buchanan as to when a cruiser could be sent to take on board the deposed ruler and his family,” said Kerensky. “Simultaneously, a promise was obtained from the German Government through the medium of the Danish minister, Skavenius, that German submarines would not attack the particular warship which carried the Royal exiles. Sir George Buchanan and ourselves were impatiently awaiting a reply from London. I do not remember exactly whether it was late in June or early in July when the British ambassador called, greatly distressed.… With tears in his eyes, scarcely able to control his emotions, Sir George informed … [us] of the British Government’s final refusal to give refuge to the former Emperor of Russia. I cannot quote the exact text of the letter.… But I can say definitely that this refusal was due exclusively to considerations of internal British politics.” Apparently, Bertie’s letter from Paris had done its poisonous work, for Kerensky remembers the letter explaining that “the Prime Minister was unable to offer hospitality to people whose pro-German sympathies were well-known.”

Subsequently, confusion, accusations and a sense of guilt appeared to permeate the recollections of all those involved in this inglorious episode. Both Sir George Buchanan and Lloyd George flatly contradicted Kerensky, insisting that Britain’s offer of asylum was never withdrawn and that the failure of the project was solely due to the fact that the Provisional Government—in Buchanan’s words—”were not masters in their house.” Meriel Buchanan, the Ambassador’s daughter, later overrode her father’s account, explaining that he had offered it in order to protect Lloyd George, who was responsible for the refusal. She recalled that a telegram refusing to let the Tsar come to England did arrive in Petrograd on April 10; she remembered the words her father used and the anguished expression on his face as he described the telegram. Lloyd George did not respond formally to her charge, but she noted that the former Prime Minister “is reported to have said in an interview that he does not remember refusing the late Emperor admission to England, but that, if the matter had been considered, he probably would have given such advice.” In his memoirs, Lloyd George left no doubt of his lack of sympathy for Imperial Russia or its Tsar. The Russian Empire, he said, was “an unseaworthy Ark. The timbers were rotten and most of the crew not much better. The captain was suited for a pleasure yacht in still waters, and his sailing master had been chosen by his wife, reclining in the cabin below.” Nicholas he dismissed as “only a crown without a head … the end was tragedy … but for that tragedy this country cannot be in any way held responsible.”

King George’s attitude on the matter vacillated. At first, he wanted to help his relatives, but by March 30, his private secretary was writing to the Foreign Secretary, “His Majesty cannot help doubting not only on account of the dangers of the voyage, but on general grounds of expediency, whether it is advisable that the Imperial family should take up their residence in this country.” By April 10, the King was concerned about the widespread indignation felt in England against the Tsar. He realized that if Nicholas came to England he would be obliged to receive his cousin, an act which would bring considerable unpopularity down on him. Accordingly, he suggested to Lloyd George that, because of the outburst of public opinion, the Russian government should perhaps be informed that Britain was obliged to withdraw its offer.

Later, of course, when the murder of the Imperial family had outraged the King, memories tended to blur. “The Russian Revolution of 1917 with the murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family had shaken my father’s confidence in the innate decency of mankind,” recalled the Duke of Windsor. “There was a very real bond between him and his first cousin, Nicky.… Both wore beards of a distinctive character and as young men, they had looked much alike.… It has long been my impression that, just before the Bolsheviks seized the Tsar, my father had personally planned to rescue him with a British cruiser, but in some way the plan was blocked. In any case, it hurt my father that Britain had not raised a hand to save his cousin Nicky. ‘Those politicians,’ he used to say. ‘If it had been one of their kind, they would have acted fast enough. But merely because the poor man was an emperor—’ ”

In Switzerland, Lenin’s first reaction to the revolution in Russia was skepticism. Only seven weeks had passed since his statement on January 22, 1917, that “we older men may not live to see the decisive battles of the approaching revolution.” Even the news of the Tsar’s abdication and the establishment of a Provisional Government left him with reservations. In his view, the replacement of an autocracy by a bourgeois republic was not a genuine proletarian revolution; it was simply the substitution of one capitalist system for another. The fact that Miliukov and the Provisional Government intended to continue the war confirmed in his mind that they were no more than tools of Britain and France, which were capitalist, imperialist powers. On March 25, Lenin telegraphed instructions to the Bolsheviks in Petrograd, “Our tactics: absolute distrust, no support of the new government, Kerensky especially suspect, no rapprochement with the other parties.”

Lenin became desperate to reach Russia himself. “From the moment the news of the revolution came, Ilyich did not sleep and at night all sorts of incredible plans were made,” Krupskaya recalled. “We could travel by airplane. But such things could be thought of only in the semi-delirium of the night.” He considered donning a wig and traveling via France, England and the North Sea, but there was the chance of arrest or of being torpedoed by a U-boat. Suddenly, through the German minister in Berne, it was arranged that he should travel through Germany itself to Sweden, Finland and then to Russia. The German motive in this bizarre arrangement was sheer military necessity. Germany had gained little from the fall of tsarism, as the Provisional Government meant to continue the war. Germany needed a regime which would make peace. This Lenin promised to do. Even if he failed, the Germans knew that his presence inside Russia would create turmoil. Accordingly, on April 9, Lenin, Krupskaya and seventeen other Bolshevik exiles left Zurich to cross Germany in a “sealed” train. “The German leaders,” said Winston Churchill, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.”

On the night of April 16, after ten years away from Russia, Lenin arrived in Petrograd at the Finland Station. He stepped from his train into a vast crowd and a sea of red banners. In an armored car, he drove to Mathilde Kschessinska’s mansion, which had been commandeered as Bolshevik headquarters. From the dancer’s balcony, he addressed a cheering crowd, shouting to them that the war was “shameful imperialist slaughter.”

Although Lenin had been welcomed with the blaring triumph due a returning prophet, neither the Petrograd Soviet as a whole nor the Bolshevik minority within the Soviet were by any means ready to accept all of his dogma. In the early days of the revolution, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who dominated the Soviet believed that some degree of cooperation should be shown the Provisional Government, if only to prevent the restoration of the monarchy. Besides, Marxist theory called for a transitional period between the overthrow of absolutism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet might argue whether Nicholas belonged in his palace or in a cell, but its over-all policy was to support the policies of the Provisional Government “insofar as they correspond to the interests of the proletariat and of the broad masses of the people.” Even some Bolsheviks supported this program.

Lenin would have none of this. Speaking to the All-Russian Conference of Soviets on the morning after his return, he issued his famous April Theses, demanding overthrow of the Provisional Government, the abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. Most important, he demanded an end to the war and urged the troops at the front to begin fraternizing with the enemy. Amazement and consternation greeted Lenin’s words; he was interrupted in the middle of his speech by shouts, laughter and cries of “That is raving! That is the raving of a lunatic!” Even Molotov, who had remained one of the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd, and Stalin, who returned on March 26 from three years’ exile in Siberia, were caught off guard. Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper which they had been editing, had been agreeing that a protracted period of bourgeois government was necessary before proceeding to the final stage of the socialist revolution. Lenin’s enemies hastened to gibe. He had been away too long, they said, living comfortably in exile; he had taken no part in the overthrow of tsarism; he had been transported back to Russia under the protection of the most autocratic and imperialistic regime remaining in Europe, As word got around that the Soviet had disowned him, the Provisional Government was vastly relieved, “Lenin was a hopeless failure with the Soviet yesterday,” said Miliukov gleefully on April 18. “He was compelled to leave the room amidst a storm of booing. He will never survive it.”

Yet Lenin scarcely noticed his defeat. A brilliant dialectician, prepared to argue all night, he gained ascendancy over his Bolshevik colleagues by sheer force of intellect and physical stamina. On May 17, Trotsky, who had been living on East 162nd Street in New York City and writing for Novy Mir, an émigré Russian newspaper, while studying the American economy in the New York Public Library, returned to Petrograd. Nominally a Menshevik, within weeks of his return he and Lenin were working together. Of the two, Lenin was leader.

Through the spring and summer, Lenin hammered away at the Provisional Government. The Marxian subtleties of the April Theses were laid aside; for the masses, the Bolsheviks coined an irresistible slogan combining the two deepest desires of the Russian people: “Peace, Land, All Power to the Soviet.” In May, when Miliukov once again proclaimed that Russia would honor its obligations and continue to fight, a massive public outcry forced him from office. Guchkov also resigned and, early in July, Prince Lvov decided that he could no longer continue as Prime Minister. Kerensky became simultaneously Prime Minister and Minister of War.

In constantly urging that Russia continue to fight, Russia’s allies played directly into Lenin’s hands. Terrified that Russia’s withdrawal from the war would release dozens of enemy divisions for use in the west, Britain, France and the newly belligerent United States exerted heavy pressure on the shaky Provisional Government. Beginning in June, the U.S. government extended loans of $325 million to the Provisional Government. But Elihu Root, who led President Wilson’s mission to Russia, made clear that the terms were: “No war, no loan.”

Pressed by the Allies, the Provisional Government began to prepare another offensive. Kerensky made a personal tour of the front to exhort the soldiers. In early July, Russian artillery opened a heavy bombardment along forty miles of the Galician front. For the first time, supplies and munitions were plentiful, and the thirty-one Russian divisions attacking the Austrians quickly broke through. For two weeks, they advanced while Kerensky exulted and Nicholas, at Tsarskoe Selo, radiated happiness and ordered Te Deums to celebrate the victories. Then, on July 14, the news darkened. German reserves arrived and checked the advance. On the Russian side, Soldiers’ Committees debated the wisdom of further attacks and whole divisions refused to move. When the enemy counterattacked, there was no resistance. The Russian retreat became a rout.

In Petrograd, news of the debacle provided the spark for an atmosphere already electrically charged. On July 16, half a million people marched through the streets carrying huge scarlet banners proclaiming “Down with the War!” “Down with the Provisional Government!” Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not prepared for the rising, and the Provisional Government crushed it, mainly by circulating among the loyal regiments a document purporting to prove that Lenin was a German agent and that the uprising was intended to betray Russia from the rear while the Germans advanced at the front. The disclosure was temporarily effective. The Bolshevik strongholds—Kschessinka’s house, the offices of Pravda, the Fortress of Peter and Paul—were stormed and occupied. Trotsky gave himself up to the police, and Lenin, after spending the night hidden in a haystack, escaped over the border into Finland disguised as a fireman on a locomotive. The first Bolshevik uprising, later known as “the July uprising,” was over. Admitting that it had been halfhearted, Lenin was to describe it later as “something considerably more than a demonstration but less than a revolution.”

Despite his narrow victory, the rising made plain to Kerensky the danger of any further delay in moving the Imperial family away from Petrograd. Even before the rising, the new Prime Minister had come to warn Nicholas, “The Bolsheviks are after me and then will be after you.” He suggested that the family would be safer in some distant part of Russia, far from the seething revolutionary passions of the capital. Nicholas asked if they might go to Livadia. Kerensky replied that Livadia might be possible, but he explained that he was also investigating a number of other spots. He suggested that the family begin packing in secret to avoid arousing the suspicions of the palace guard.

The thought that they might soon be leaving for Livadia was a tonic to the family’s spirits. In their excitement, they talked openly about it until Benckendorff begged them to keep silent. Yet, as Kerensky weighed the advantages and disadvantages of the Crimea, it became increasingly obvious that it could not be managed. It was remote, the Tartar population was favorable and many of the Tsar’s relatives, including the Dowager Empress, were already there, but it was a thousand miles away across the breadth of Russia. To reach Livadia, a train would have to pass through densely populated industrial towns and rural provinces where a revolutionary peasantry was already terrorizing landlords and expropriating land. Under these conditions, Kerensky felt no greater certainty that he could safely deliver his prisoners to Livadia than that he could place them aboard a British cruiser in Murmansk. The same considerations ruled out the country estate of Grand Duke Michael near Orel in central Russia, which Kerensky himself was inclined to favor.

Eventually, by elimination, he settled on Tobolsk, a commercial river town in western Siberia. The choice had nothing to do with a vengeful poetic justice. Rather, it was a matter of security on the railways. The Northern Route across the Urals to Siberia passed through wide expanses of virgin forest, with towns and villages thinly scattered along the track. Once in Tobolsk, the Imperial family would be relatively safe. “I chose Tobolsk,” Kerensky later explained, “because it was an out-and-out backwater … had a very small garrison, no industrial proletariat, and a population which was prosperous and contented, not to say old-fashioned. In addition … the climate was excellent and the town could boast a very passable Governor’s residence where the Imperial family could live with some measure of comfort.”

On August 11, Kerensky returned to the palace and, without telling Nicholas where he was being taken, warned that they would leave within a few days and should take plenty of warm clothes. Nicholas immediately understood that their destination was not to be Livadia. When Kerensky, embarrassed, began to explain vociferously why the family’s safety required this decision, Nicholas interrupted him with a penetrating look. “I have no fear. We trust you,” he said quietly. “If you say we must move, it must be. We trust you,” he repeated.

Preparations went ahead rapidly. The Tsar and the Empress chose the people they wanted to accompany them: Countess Hendrikov and Prince Dolgoruky as lady- and gentleman-in-waiting; Dr. Botkin; and Pierre Gilliard and Mlle. Schneider, the tutors. Baroness Buxhoeveden was to remain behind for an operation and would join the family in Tobolsk. To his immense regret, Count Benckendorff had to remain behind because of his wife’s severe bronchitis. Asked whom he wished to replace the Count, Nicholas named General Tatishchev, an aide-de-camp. Without hesitation, Tatishchev packed a small suitcase and reported to the palace.

August 12 was the Tsarevich’s thirteenth birthday, and at the Empress’s request a holy icon was brought for the celebration from the Church of Our Lady of Znamenie. The icon arrived in a procession of clergy from the village which was admitted to the palace, proceeded to the chapel and there asked prayers for the safe journey of the Imperial family. “The ceremony was poignant … all were in tears,” wrote Benckendorff. “The soldiers themselves seemed touched and approached the holy icon to kiss it. [Afterward, the family] followed the procession as far as the balcony, and saw it disappear through the park. It was as if the past were taking leave, never to come back.”

The following day, August 13, 1917, was the last which Nicholas and Alexandra were to spend at Tsarskoe Selo. Through the day, the children rushed excitedly about, saying goodbye to the servants, their belongings and their favorite island in the pond. Nicholas carefully instructed Benckendorff to see that the vegetables they had raised and the piles of sawed wood were fairly distributed among the servants who helped with the work.

Within the government, Kerensky’s plan had been kept a successful secret. Only four men including the Premier knew about the transfer to Tobolsk. The subject was never discussed at Cabinet meetings; Kerensky managed all the details by himself. On the night of departure, Kerensky left a Cabinet meeting at eleven p.m. to supervise the final arrangements. His first task was to speak to the troops selected to act as guards when the family reached Tobolsk. For this assignment, three companies—six officers and 330 men—had been culled from the 1st, 2nd and 4th Regiments of Sharpshooter Guards on duty at Tsarskoe Selo. Most of the men selected were noncommissioned officers who had been at the front. Many had been decorated for bravery. On Kerensky’s orders, they had been issued new uniforms and new rifles and told that they would receive special pay. Despite these blandishments, some of the men were reluctant to go. Through the barracks ran a current of restlessness, grumbling and uncertainty.

With Colonel Kobylinsky, who was to command the detachment, Kerensky made for the barracks, gathered the new guard around him and addressed them persuasively: “You have guarded the Imperial family here; now you must guard it at Tobolsk where it is being transferred by order of the Provisional Government. Remember: no hitting a man when he is down. Behave like gentlemen, not like cads. Remember that he is a former Emperor and that neither he nor his family must suffer any hardships.” Kerensky’s oratory worked. The men, partially shamed, prepared to leave. The Prime Minister then wrote a document for Kobylinsky which said simply: “Colonel Kobylinsky’s orders are to be obeyed as if they were my own. Alexander Kerensky.”

By evening, the family had finished packing and was ready to leave except for trunks and chests scattered through the palace. Fifty soldiers, ordered to pick up the baggage and assemble it in the semicircular hall, flatly refused to work for nothing. Benckendorff, disgusted, eventually agreed to pay them three roubles each.

In the middle of these preparations, as the semicircular hall was filling with trunks and suitcases, Grand Duke Michael arrived to say goodbye to his older brother. Kerensky, who had arranged the meeting, entered the Tsar’s study with the Grand Duke and watched the brothers embrace. Not wishing to leave them completely alone, he retreated to a table and began thumbing through the Tsar’s scrap-book. He overheard the awkward conversation: “The brothers … were most deeply moved. For a long time they were silent … then they plunged into that fragmentary, irrelevant small-talk which is so characteristic of short meetings. How is Alix? How is Mother? Where are you living now? and so on. They stood opposite each other, shuffling their feet in curious embarrassment, sometimes getting hold of one another’s arm or coat button.”

The Tsarevich, nervous and excited, had spotted Michael upon his arrival. “Is that Uncle Misha who has just come?” he asked Kobylinsky. Told that it was, but that he could not go in, Alexis hid behind the door and peeked through a crack. “I want to see him when he goes out,” he said. Ten minutes later, Michael walked out of the room in tears. He quickly kissed Alexis goodbye and left the palace.

The night was confused and sleepless. Alexis, holding his excited spaniel Joy on a leash, kept running from the semicircular hall into the family rooms to see what was happening. The Empress, sitting up all night in her traveling clothes, was unable to hide her anxieties. “It was then,” wrote Kerensky, “that I first saw Alexandra Fedorovna worried and weeping like any ordinary woman.” The soldiers, milling about carrying trunks into the hall and out to the railroad station, kept their caps on and cursed and grumbled at the work they were doing. Their officers sat at a table drinking tea with Countess Benckendorff and the other ladies. When the Tsar approached and asked for a glass, the officers stood up and loudly declared that they would not sit at the same table with Nicholas Romanov. Later, when the soldiers were not looking, most of the officers apologized, explaining that they feared being brought before the soldiers’ tribunal and accused of being counterrevolutionaries.

The hours passed, but the train, ordered for one a.m., did not appear. The railwaymen, suspicious and hostile, had refused to shunt the cars together, then refused to couple them. Kerensky himself went repeatedly to telephone the yards. Kobylinsky, exhausted and still unwell, collapsed into a chair and fell asleep. At one point, Benckendorff got Kerensky’s attention and asked him before witnesses how long the Imperial family would stay in Tobolsk. Kerensky confidently assured the Count that, once the Constituent Assembly had met in November, Nicholas could freely return to Tsarskoe Selo or go anywhere he wished. Undoubtedly, Kerensky was sincere. But in November he himself was a fugitive from the Bolsheviks.

Between five and six a.m., the waiting group at last heard the blare of automobile horns in the courtyard. Kerensky informed Nicholas that the train was ready and the baggage loaded. The family entered the automobiles, and the little procession was surrounded by a mounted escort of Cossacks. As they left the palace grounds, the early-morning sun cast its first rays on the sleeping village. The train, wearing Japanese flags and bearing placards proclaiming “Japanese Red Cross Mission,” was standing on a siding outside the station. The family walked beside the track to the first car, where, for lack of steps, the men lifted Alexandra, her daughters and the other women onto the car platform. As soon as all were aboard, the train began moving eastward, toward Siberia.