Nicholas and Alexandra

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Last Winter at Tsarskoe Selo

DURING the dreary weeks of winter that followed Rasputin’s murder, the Tsar of all the Russias suffered something close to a nervous collapse. Utterly weary, craving only tranquillity and rest, he remained secluded at Tsarskoe Selo. There, in the bosom of his family, surrounded by a narrow circle of familiar figures, he lived quietly, avoiding decisions that affected ministers, munitions, his millions of soldiers and tens of millions of subjects. Rodzianko, who saw him twice during this period, recalled the audience in which Nicholas got up and went to the window. “How lovely it was in the woods today,” he said, looking out. “It is so quiet there. One forgets all these intrigues and paltry human restlessness. My soul felt so peaceful. One is nearer to Nature there, nearer to God.”

Nicholas remained all day in his private quarters. He converted his billiard room into a map room, and there, behind a door guarded by his motionless Ethiopian, he stood for hours over huge maps of the battlefields spread out on the billiard tables. When he left the room, he carefully locked the door and carried the key in his own pocket. At night, he sat with his wife and Anna Vyrubova in the Empress’s mauve boudoir, reading aloud. His public utterances were vague. He issued a manifesto to the army which, although written for him by General Gurko, was molded of Nicholas’s own continuing patriotic dream: “The time for peace has not yet come.… Russia has not yet performed the tasks this war has set her.… The possession of Constantinople and the Straits … the restoration of a free Poland.… We remain unshaken in our confidence in victory. God will bless our arms. He will cover them with everlasting glory and give us a peace worthy of your glorious deeds. Oh, my glorious troops, a peace such that generations to come will bless your sacred memory!” Paléologue, reading the manifesto and wondering at Nicholas’s meaning, decided that it “can only be … a kind of political will, a final announcement of the glorious vision which he had imagined for Russia and which he now sees dissolving into thin air.”

Visitors were shocked by the Tsar’s appearance; there were wild rumors that Alexandra was giving him drugs. On the Russian New Year, the diplomatic corps arrived at Tsarskoe Selo for its annual reception. Nicholas appeared, surrounded by his generals and aides, to exchange handshakes, smiles and congratulations. “As usual,” wrote Paléologue, “Nicholas II was kind and natural and he even affected a certain care-free air; but his pale, thin face betrayed the nature of his secret thoughts.” A private audience left the French Ambassador filled with gloom. “The Emperor’s words, his silences and reticences, his grave, drawn features and furtive, distant thoughts and the thoroughly vague and enigmatical quality of his personality, confirm in me … the notion that Nicholas II feels himself overwhelmed and dominated by events, that he has lost all faith in his mission … that he has … abdicated inwardly and is now resigned to disaster.”

Nicholas made a similar impression on Vladimir Kokovtsov, the former Prime Minister. Kokovtsov had always had a high regard for Nicholas’s quick, intuitive grasp of most subjects and his exceptional memory. Entering the Tsar’s study on February 1, Kokovtsov was deeply alarmed by the change in his sovereign: “During the year that I had not seen him, he became almost unrecognizable. His face had become very thin and hollow and covered with small wrinkles. His eyes … had become quite faded and wandered aimlessly from object to object.… The whites were of a decidedly yellow tinge, and the dark retinas had become colorless, grey and lifeless.… The face of the Tsar bore an expression of helplessness. A forced, mirthless smile was fixed upon his lips and he answered, repeating several times: ‘I am perfectly well and sound, but I spend too much time without exercise and I am used to much activity. I repeat to you, Vladimir Nicolaievich, I am perfectly all right. You have not seen me for a long time, and possibly I did not have a good night. Presently I shall go for a walk and shall look better.”

Throughout the interview, Kokovtsov continued, “the Tsar listened to me with the same sickly smile, glancing nervously about him.” Asked a “question which seemed to me perfectly simple … the Tsar became reduced to a perfectly incomprehensible state of helplessness. The strange, almost vacant smile remained fixed on his face; he looked at me as if to seek support and to ask me to remind him of a matter that had absolutely slipped his memory.… For a long time, he looked at me in silence as if trying to collect his thoughts or to recall what had escaped his memory.”

Kokovtsov left the room in tears. Outside, he found Dr. Botkin and Count Paul Benckendorff, the Grand Marshal of the court. “Do you not see the state of the Tsar?” he asked. “He is on the verge of some mental disturbance if not already in its power.” Botkin and Benckendorff both said that Nicholas was not ill, merely tired. Nevertheless, Kokovtsov returned to Petrograd with the strong impression “that the Tsar was seriously ill and that his illness was of a nervous character.”

Alexandra was bowed by Rasputin’s murder, but, drawing on the same reserves of inner fortitude which were to sustain her during the pitiless months ahead, she did not break. Rasputin had often told her, “If I die or you desert me, you will lose your son and your crown within six months.” The Empress had never doubted him. Rasputin’s death removed the savior of her son and her link with God. Without his prayers and counsel, any disaster was possible. The fact that the blow had come from within the Imperial family did not surprise her. She knew their feelings and understood that she had been the real target of the assassins.

After the murder, she sat quietly for a number of days, with tear-stained face, staring in front of her. Then, she rallied, and the face she showed even to those in the palace was calm and resolute. If God had taken her Friend, she was still on earth. While life remained, she would persevere in her faith, in her devotion to husband and family, in her resolve, sealed now by Gregory’s martyrdom, to maintain the autocracy given to Russia by God. Touched by the same sense of earthly doom that afflicted the Tsar, she steeled herself for the shocks to come. From that point, through the months left to her to live, Alexandra never wavered.

It was the Empress who took matters in hand. Since the day of the assassination, Anna Vyrubova’s mail had been filled with anonymous threatening letters. By the Empress’s command, Anna was moved for greater safety from her small house to an apartment in the Alexander Palace. Although the Tsar was in the palace, the Empress continued to exert a predominant influence on political affairs. The main telephone in the palace was not on his desk but in her boudoir on a table beneath the portrait of Marie Antoinette. Protopopov’s reports at the palace were given to either Nicholas or Alexandra, whoever was available, sometimes to both of them together. In addition, with her husband’s knowledge, the Empress took to eavesdropping on the Tsar’s official conversations. Kokovtsov sensed something of this kind in his interview. “I thought that the door leading from the [Tsar’s] study to his dressing room was half open, which had never occurred before, and that someone was standing just inside,” he wrote. “It may have been just an illusion but this impression stayed with me throughout my brief audience.” It was not an illusion, but it was a temporary device. Soon afterward, for greater convenience, the Empress had a wooden staircase cut through the walls to a small balcony overlooking the Tsar’s formal audience chamber. There, concealed by curtains, the Empress could lie on a couch and listen in comfort.

In the conduct of Russia’s government, Rasputin’s death changed nothing. Ministers came and went. Trepov, who had replaced Stürmer as Prime Minister in November, was allowed to resign in January to be replaced by Prince Nicholas Golitsyn, an elderly man whom the Empress had known as deputy chairman of one of her charitable committees. Golitsyn was horrified by his appointment and unsuccessfully begged the Tsar to choose another. “If someone else had used the language I used to describe myself, I should have been obliged to challenge him to a duel,” he said.

It made little difference. Protopopov was the only minister in whom the Empress had genuine confidence. The rest of the Cabinet scarcely mattered, and Protopopov rarely bothered even to attend its meetings. Rodzianko refused even to speak to him. At a New Year’s Day reception, the Duma President tried to avoid his former deputy. “I noticed he was following me.… I moved to another part of the hall and stood with my back [to him]. Notwithstanding … Protopopov held out his hand. I replied, ‘Nowhere and never.’ Protopopov … took me in a friendly manner by the elbow, saying, ‘My dear fellow, surely we can come to an understanding.’ I felt disgusted by him. ‘Leave me alone. You are repellent to me,’ I said.”

Dependent, like Rasputin, solely on the favor of the Empress, the Interior Minister hastened to clothe himself in Rasputin’s spiritual trappings. As the starets had done, he telephoned every morning at ten, to either the Empress or Anna Vyrubova. He reported that Rasputin’s spirit sometimes came to him at night; that he could feel the familiar presence and hear the familiar voice as it gave him advice. A story making the rounds in Petrograd depicted Protopopov in the middle of an audience with Alexandra suddenly falling on his knees and moaning, “Oh, Majesty, I see Christ behind you.”

Although the Empress was resolute, she had no joy in her work. Every Thursday evening, a concert of chamber music was given in a palace drawing room by a Rumanian orchestra. The Empress’s chair always was placed near the fire burning in the grate, and she sat absorbed by the music, staring into the glowing flames. On one of these nights, only two weeks before the Revolution, her friend Lili Dehn slid into a chair behind her. “The Empress seemed unusually sad,” she wrote. “I whispered anxiously, ‘Oh, Madame, why are you so sad tonight?’ The Empress turned and looked at me.… ‘Why am I sad, Lili?… I can’t say, really, but … I think my heart is broken.’ ”

A British visitor calling on the Empress during these same weeks was struck by her air of sadness and resignation. General Sir Henry Wilson, visiting Russia with an Allied mission, had known Alexandra as a girl in Darmstadt. Now, “taken down a long passage to the Empress’s own boudoir—a room full of pictures and bric-a-brac …,” he reminded her of “our tennis parties in the old days, 36 years ago, at Darmstadt.… She was so delighted with the reminiscences, and remembered some of the names I had forgotten. After this it was easy. She said her lot was harder than most people’s because she had relations and friends in England, Russia and Germany. She told me of her experiences and her eyes filled with tears. She has a beautiful face, but very, very sad. She is tall and graceful, divides her hair simply on one side, and it is done up at the back. The hair is powdered with grey. When I said I was going to leave her, as she must be tired of seeing strangers and making conversation, she nearly laughed and kept me on for a little while.”

Wilson was moved by this talk. “What a tragedy there is in that life,” he wrote. Nevertheless, when he left Russia a week later, he added, “It seems as certain as anything can be that the Emperor and Empress are riding for a fall. Everyone—officers, merchants, ladies—talks openly of the absolute necessity of doing away with them.”

The killing of Rasputin was a monarchist act. It was intended by the Grand Duke, the Prince and the Right-wing deputy to cleanse the throne and restore the prestige of the dynasty. It was also intended, by removing what they conceived to be the power behind the Empress, to eliminate the Empress herself as a force in the government of Russia. The Tsar, they thought, would then be free to choose ministers and follow policies which would save the monarchy and Russia. This was the hope of many members of the Imperial family, most of whom disliked the murder, but were glad the murdered man was dead.

The Tsar’s punishment of Grand Duke Dmitry and Prince Felix Yussoupov, mild though it was, disappointed these hopes. The family addressed a collective letter to Nicholas which combined a plea for pardon for Dmitry with a request for a responsible ministry. Nicholas, still outraged that members of his family had been involved in the assassination, was further offended by the letter. “I allow no one to give me advice,” he replied indignantly. “A murder is always a murder. In any case, I know that the consciences of several who signed that letter are not clear.” A few days later, hearing that one of the signers, the liberal Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, was going around his Petrograd clubs openly berating the government, the Tsar ordered him to leave the capital and remain in residence on one of his country estates.

The murder, far from closing the breach within the Romanov family, had widened it further. The Dowager Empress was greatly alarmed. “One should … forgive,” Marie wrote from Kiev. “I am sure you are aware yourself how deeply you have offended all the family by your brusque reply, throwing at their heads a dreadful and entirely unjustified accusation. I hope that you will alleviate the fate of poor Dmitry by not leaving him in Persia.… Poor Uncle Paul [Dmitry’s father] wrote me in despair that he had not even been given a chance to say goodbye.… It is not like you to behave this way.… It upsets me very much.”

From his home in Kiev, the Tsar’s cousin and brother-in-law Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich hurried to Tsarskoe Selo to plead that the Empress withdraw from politics and the Tsar grant a government acceptable to the Duma. This was the “Sandro” of Nicholas’s youth, the gay companion of his suppers with Kschessinska, the husband of his sister Xenia and the father-in-law of Prince Felix Yussoupov. He found the Empress lying in bed, dressed in a white negligee embroidered with lace. Although the Tsar was present, sitting and quietly smoking on the other side of their large double bed, the Grand Duke spoke plainly: “Your interference with affairs of state is causing harm … to Nicky’s prestige. I have been your faithful friend, Alix, for twenty-four years … as a friend, I point out to you that all the classes of the population are opposed to your policies. You have a beautiful family of children, why can you not … please, Alix, leave the cares of state to your husband?”

When the Empress replied that it was impossible for an autocrat to share his powers with a parliament, the Grand Duke said, “You are very much mistaken, Alix. Your husband ceased to be an autocrat on October 17, 1905.”

The interview ended badly, with Grand Duke Alexander shouting in a wild rage: “Remember, Alix, I remained silent for thirty months. For thirty months I never said … a word to you about the disgraceful goings on in our government, better to say in your government. I realize that you are willing to perish and that your husband feels the same way, but what about us?… You have no right to drag your relatives with you down a precipice.” At this point, Nicholas quietly interrupted and led his cousin from the room. Later, from Kiev, Grand Duke Alexander wrote, “One cannot govern a country without listening to the voice of the people.… Strange as it may appear, it is the Government which is preparing the Revolution … the Government is doing all it can to increase the number of malcontents and it is succeeding admirably. We are watching an unprecedented spectacle, revolution coming from above and not from below.”

One branch of the Imperial family, the “Vladimirs,” were not content to write letters, but talked openly of a palace revolution which would replace their cousin by force. Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna and Grand Dukes Cyril, Boris and Andrei—the widow and sons of the Tsar’s eldest uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir—carried resentments which stretched deep into the past. Vladimir himself, a forceful, ambitious man, always jealous of his older brother, Tsar Alexander III, had accepted with difficulty the accession to the throne of his mild-mannered nephew. A vociferous Anglophobe, he was infuriated when Nicholas chose as his consort a princess who, although born in Darmstadt, was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Vladimir’s widow, Marie Pavlovna, also was German, a Mecklenberger, and the third lady of the Russian Empire, ranking directly after the two Empresses. Socially, Marie Pavlovna was everything that Alexandra was not. Energetic, poised, intelligent, well read, devoted to gossip and intrigue, openly ambitious for her three sons, she turned her grand palace on the Neva into a glittering court which far outshone Tsarskoe Selo. In the lively conversations which dominated her dinner parties and soirees, amusement and scorn directed at the ruling couple were frequent themes. Never did the Grand Duchess forget that after the Tsarevich, who was ill, and the Tsar’s brother, who had married a commoner, the next in line for the throne was her eldest son, Cyril.

In addition, each of the Vladimir sons had separate personal reasons for prickly relations with the Tsar and the Empress. Cyril was married to the divorced wife of Alexandra’s brother Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse. Andrei kept as his mistress the ballerina, Mathilde Kschessinska, who had been in love with Nicholas II before his marriage. Boris, the middle Vladimir son, had proposed to his cousin Olga, the Tsar’s eldest daughter. The Empress, in writing to her husband, expressed some of the flavor of her rebuff to Boris: “What an awful set his wife would be dragged into … intrigues without end, fast manners and conversations … a half-worn, blasé … man of 38 to a pure fresh girl 18 years his junior and live in a house in which many a woman has ‘shared’ his life!! An inexperienced girl would suffer terribly to have her husband 4–5th hand—or more!” As the proposal had been transmitted not only in the name of Boris, but in that of his mother as well, Marie Pavlovna bore great bitterness toward Alexandra.

Rodzianko got a taste of this bitterness, and the conspiracy growing out of it, when in January 1917 he was urgently invited to lunch at the Vladimir Palace. After lunch, he wrote, the Grand Duchess “began to talk of the general state of affairs, of the Government’s incompetence, of Protopopov and of the Empress. She mentioned the latter’s name, becoming more and more excited, dwelling on her nefarious influence and interference in everything, and said she was driving the country to destruction; that she was the cause of the danger which threatened the Emperor and the rest of the Imperial family; that such conditions could no longer be tolerated; that things must be changed, something done, removed, destroyed.…”

Wishing to understand her meaning more precisely, Rodzianko asked, “What do you mean by ‘removed’?”

“The Duma must do something. She must be annihilated.”

“Who?”

“The Empress.”

“Your Highness,” said Rodzianko, “allow me to treat this conversation as if it had never taken place, because if you address me as the President of the Duma, my oath of allegiance compels me to wait at once on His Imperial Majesty and report to him that the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna has declared to me that the Empress must be annihilated.”

For weeks, the grand-ducal plot was the talk of Petrograd. Everyone knew the details: four regiments of the Guard were to make a night march on Tsarskoe Selo and seize the Imperial family. The Empress was to be shut up in a convent—the classic Russian method of disposing of unwanted empresses—and the Tsar was to be forced to abdicate in favor of his son, with the Grand Duke Nicholas as Regent. No one, not even the secret police who had collected all the details, took the Grand Dukes seriously. “Yesterday evening,” Paléologue wrote on January 9, “Prince Gabriel Constantinovich gave a supper for his mistress, formerly an actress. The guests included the Grand Duke Boris … a few officers and a squad of elegant courtesans. During the evening the only topic was the conspiracy—the regiments of the Guard which can be relied on, the most favorable moment for the outbreak, etc. And all this with the servants moving about, harlots looking on and listening, gypsies singing and the whole company bathed in the aroma of Moët and Chandon brut impérial which flowed in streams.”

The Imperial government was crumbling and among those who watched the process with dismay were some who were not Russian. The war and the alliance had conferred on the Ambassadors of France and Britain, Maurice Paléologue and Sir George Buchanan, positions of vast importance. Through the two Embassies in Petrograd and across the desks of the two Ambassadors flowed major questions of supply, munitions and military operations, as well as matters of diplomacy. As it became increasingly apparent that Russia’s domestic political crisis was affecting her capacity as a military ally, Buchanan and Paléologue found themselves in a delicate situation. Accredited personally to the Tsar, they had no right to speak on matters affecting Russian internal policy. Nevertheless, by the winter of 1917 both Ambassadors found themselves begged on all sides to use their access to the Tsar to plead for a government acceptable to the Duma. Personally convinced that nothing else could save Russia as an ally, they both agreed. Paléologue’s attempt, put off by Nicholas’s vagueness and gentle courtesy, failed completely. On January 12, Buchanan, in turn, was received at Tsarskoe Selo.

Sir George Buchanan was an old-school diplomat, distinguished by discretion, silvery hair and a monocle. Seven years’ service in Russia had left him weary and frail, but with a host of friends and admirers, including the Tsar himself. His only handicap in fulfilling his post was his inability to speak Russian. This made no difference in Petrograd, where everyone who mattered also spoke French or English. In 1916, however, Buchanan visited Moscow, where he was made an honorary citizen of the city and given a priceless icon and a massive silver loving cup. “In the heart of Russia,” wrote R. H. Bruce Lockhart, the British Consul General, who was assisting in Buchanan’s visit, “he had to say at least a word or two in Russian. We had carefully rehearsed the ambassador to hold it up and say to the distinguished audience, ‘Spasibo’ which is the short form of Russian for ‘thank you.’ Instead, Sir George, in a firm voice, held up the cup and said, ‘Za pivo’ which means ‘for beer.’ ”

At Tsarskoe Selo, Buchanan was surprised to be received by the Tsar in the formal audience chamber rather than in Nicholas’s study, where they usually talked. Nevertheless, he asked whether he could speak frankly, and Nicholas assented. Buchanan came straight to the point, telling the Tsar that Russia needed a government in which the nation could have confidence. “Your Majesty, if I may be permitted to say so, has but one safe course open to you—namely, to break down the barrier that separates you from your people and to regain their confidence.”

Drawing himself up and giving Buchanan a hard look, Nicholas asked, “Do you mean that I am to regain the confidence of my people or that they are to regain my confidence?”

“Both, Sire,” Buchanan replied, “for without such mutual confidence Russia will never win this war.”

The Ambassador criticized Protopopov, “who, if Your Majesty will forgive my saying so, is bringing Russia to the verge of ruin.”

“I chose M. Protopopov,” Nicholas interjected, “from the ranks of the Duma in order to be agreeable to them—and this is my reward.”

Buchanan warned that revolutionary language was being spoken not only in Petrograd but all over Russia, and that “in the event of revolution only a small portion of the army can be counted on to defend the dynasty.” Then he concluded with a surge of personal feeling:

“An ambassador, I am well aware, has no right to hold the language which I have held to Your Majesty, and I had to take my courage in both hands before speaking as I have done.… [But] if I were to see a friend walking through a wood on a dark night along a path which I knew ended in a precipice, would it not be my duty, Sire, to warn him of his danger? And is it not equally my duty to warn Your Majesty of the abyss that lies ahead of you?”

The Tsar was moved by Buchanan’s appeal and, pressing the Ambassador’s hand as he left, said, “I thank you, Sir George.” The Empress, however, was outraged by Buchanan’s presumption. “The Grand Duke Serge remarked that had I been a Russian subject, I should have been sent to Siberia,” Buchanan wrote later.

Although Rodzianko had disdained Marie Pavlovna’s suggestion that the Empress be “annihilated,” he agreed with the Grand Duchess that the Empress must be stripped of political powers. Earlier in the fall, when Protopopov had come to him and mentioned that the Tsar might appoint the Duma President as Premier, Rodzianko had stated as one of his terms that “the Empress must renounce all interference in affairs of state and remain at Livadia until the end of the war.” Now, in the middle of winter, he received a visit from the Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Michael. Michael, the handsome, good-natured “Misha,” was living with his wife, Countess Brassova, at Gatchina, outside the capital. Although after the Tsarevich he was next in line for the throne, he had absolutely no influence on his brother. Worried and realizing his own helplessness, he asked how the desperate situation might be saved. Again Rodzianko declared that “Alexandra Fedorovna is fiercely and universally hated, and all circles are clamoring for her removal. While she remains in power, we shall continue on the road to ruin.” The Grand Duke agreed with him and begged Rodzianko to go again to tell the Tsar. On January 20, Nicholas received him.

“Your Majesty,” said Rodzianko, “I consider the state of the country to have become more critical and menacing than ever. The spirit of all the people is such that the gravest upheavals may be expected.… All Russia is unanimous in claiming a change of government and the appointment of a responsible premier invested with the confidence of the nation.… Sire, there is not a single honest or reliable man left in your entourage; all the best have either been eliminated or have resigned.… It is an open secret that the Empress issues orders without your knowledge, that Ministers report to her on matters of state. … Indignation against and hatred of the Empress are growing throughout the country. She is looked upon as Germany’s champion. Even the common people are speaking of it.…”

Nicholas interrupted: “Give me the facts. There are no facts to confirm your statements.”

“There are no facts,” Rodzianko admitted, “but the whole trend of policy directed by Her Majesty gives ground for such ideas. To save your family, Your Majesty ought to find some way of preventing the Empress from exercising any influence on politics.… Your Majesty, do not compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country.”

Nicholas pressed his head between his hands. “Is it possible,” he asked, “that for twenty-two years I tried to act for the best and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?”

The question was astonishing. It was completely beyond the bounds of propriety for Rodzianko to answer, yet, realizing that it had been asked honestly, man to man, he summoned his courage and said, “Yes, Your Majesty, for twenty-two years you followed a wrong course.”

A month later, on February 23, Rodzianko saw Nicholas for the last time. This time the Tsar’s attitude was “positively harsh” and Rodzianko, in turn, was blunt. Announcing that revolution was imminent, he declared, “I consider it my duty, Sire, to express to you my profound foreboding and conviction that this will be my last report to you.”

Nicholas said nothing and Rodzianko was curtly excused.

Rodzianko’s was the last of the great warnings to the Tsar. Nicholas rejected them all. He had pledged to preserve the autocracy and hand it on intact to his son. In his mind, urbane grand dukes, foreign ambassadors and members of the Duma did not represent the peasant masses of the real Russia. Most of all, he felt that to give way during the war would be taken as a sign of personal weakness which would only accelerate revolution. Perhaps when the war was ended, he would modify the autocracy and reorganize the government. “I will do everything afterwards,” he said. “But I cannot act now. I cannot do more than one thing at a time.”

The attacks on the Empress and the suggestions that she be sent away only angered him. “The Empress is a foreigner,” he declared fervently. “She has no one to protect her but myself. I shall never abandon her under any circumstances. In any case, all the charges made against her are false. Wicked lies are being told about her. But I shall know how to make her respected.”

Early in March, after two months of rest with his family, Nicholas’s spirits began to improve. He was optimistic that the army, equipped with new arms from Britain and France, could finish the war by the end of the year. Complaining of the “poisoned air” of Petrograd, he was anxious to return to Stavka to plan the spring offensive.

Protopopov, meanwhile, sensing the approach of a crisis, tried to mask his fears by recommending forcible countermeasures. Four cavalry regiments of the Guard were ordered from the front to Petrograd, and the city police began training in the use of machine guns. The cavalry never arrived. At Stavka, General Gurko was disgusted at the prospect of fighting the people and countermanded the order. On March 7, the day before the Tsar left for Headquarters, Protopopov arrived at the palace. He saw the Empress first; she told him that the Tsar insisted on spending a month at the front and that she could not change his mind. Nicholas entered the room and, taking Protopopov aside, said that he had decided to return in three weeks. Protopopov in agitation said, “The time is such, Sire, that you are wanted both here and there.… I very much fear the consequences.” Nicholas, struck by his minister’s alarm, promised if possible to return within a week.

There was one moment, according to Rodzianko, when Nicholas wavered in his determination to refuse a responsible ministry. On the eve of his departure, the Tsar summoned several of his ministers, including Prince Golitsyn, the Prime Minister, and announced that he intended to go to the Duma the next day and personally announce the appointment of a responsible government. That same evening, Golitsyn was summoned again to the palace and told that the Tsar was leaving for Headquarters.

“How is that, Your Majesty?” asked Golitsyn, amazed. “What about a responsible ministry? You intended to go to the Duma tomorrow.”

“I have changed my mind,” said Nicholas. “I am leaving for the Stavka tonight.”

This conversation took place on Wednesday, March 7. Five days later, on Monday, March 12, the Imperial government in Petrograd collapsed.