Chapter 10
in which millionaires Alexander Guchkov and Pavel Ryabushinsky try to engage big business in managing the country
On 15 April 1912 the steamer Titanic, owned by the British company White Star Line, crashes into an iceberg off Greenland. A total of 2,224 people are on board, of which 1,514 perish. The first reports of the wreck of the Titanic appear in the world’s media on 17 April—except in Russia, which, like its Old Style calendar, lags several days behind. Russians first learn of the incident on 4 May.
The main event in Russia at that moment is the visit of the recently appointed Prime Minister Vladimir Kokovtsov (still also the finance minister) to Moscow, Russia’s economic capital. Kokovtsov replaced Stolypin as prime minister more than six months ago, but only now does he decide to talk with big business. He visits the stock exchange, and in the evening Grigory Krestovnikov, the head of the Stock Exchange Council (a union of industrialists), hosts a ceremonial dinner in honor of the prime minister. The merchant class does its best to make a good impression on the head of government,* who expresses polite regret that industrialists cannot serve in the Duma “in sufficient numbers” because of Stolypin’s electoral law.
Big business as a whole is loyal to the authorities, but there are a few troublemakers. Their leader is Pavel Ryabushinsky, the eldest of eight brothers, a banker and an industrialist, and the publisher of the newspaper Morning of Russia. During the dinner, Ryabushinsky rises to his feet to talk about the numerous grievances of big business against the government (not least the persecution of the Old Believers, since they form the entire Russian business elite). Ryabushinsky’s speech is effectively a challenge to the government, but Kokovtsov fails to hear the message, describing it as “incoherent babble.” The “loose-tongued” (according to Kokovtsov) Ryabushinsky ends his tirade with a toast: “Here’s not to the government, but to the patient, long-suffering Russian people still awaiting true liberation.”
The host Grigory Krestovnikov is livid with Ryabushinsky for such tactlessness. The head of the Moscow Duma, Nikolai Guchkov, a descendant of a merchant family and the brother of the former chairman of the State Duma, Alexander Guchkov, is also indignant: “Pavel Ryabushinsky is the vilest scoundrel ever to have seen the light of day. In this private home, in such an intimate circle, he allows himself to lecture the chairman of the Council of Ministers?!”
But for many entrepreneurs, Ryabushinsky is a hero. “You alone spoke from a nationwide perspective, not as a wheeler-dealer,” writes Yuly Guzhon, the owner of a Moscow steelworks. “I am sure that many will follow your example—it’s high time.” According to the police, who have an eye on the public mood, the speech “causes people to chatter and raises Ryabushinsky’s popularity.”
Ryabushinsky fronts the “young entrepreneurs”—a group of millionaire Old Believers who actively demand reforms and greater involvement of the merchant class in politics. The most active members of the group are Ryabushinsky’s friends, Alexander Konovalov and Sergey Tretyakov (the grandson of one of the founders of the Tretyakov Gallery), who are co-financers of the newspaper Morning of Russia. Back in early 1911 they, together with Ryabushinsky, spearheaded the famous “Letter of the 66” —the first protest action by business on a matter that did not directly concern it. That was when the business world spoke out in support of Moscow University professors dismissed after the student unrest in memory of Leo Tolstoy. The press reported at the time that the signees of the “Letter of the 66” were collectively worth more than half a billion roubles.* But writing a letter to a newspaper is one thing, while publicly voicing dissatisfaction with the prime minister in his presence is quite another. Such behavior is for left-wing Duma members, not Moscow tycoons.
On the eve of the upcoming elections, Ryabushinsky and the “young entrepreneurs” create their own party called the Progressive Party, intended to represent the interests of business, fight for reforms, and squeeze out both the Kadets and the Octobrists.
DYING FOR GOLD
On the day when Ryabushinsky publicly slams Kokovtsov at a dinner party in Moscow, six thousand kilometers away a tragedy occurs. In the village of Bodaibo, in the Irkutsk region (in eastern Siberia, near the Lena River, about 4,500 kilometers from Saint Petersburg), the capital of the Russian gold mining industry, striking workers hold a rally for better pay, improved housing conditions, and the release of arrested comrades. The troops open fire on the demonstrators, killing around one hundred and fifty to two hundred people, according to various sources, with as many wounded. The gold deposit belongs to the British company Lena Goldfields, and its shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange, although it is managed by Russian shareholders—the Ginzburg family.
The Lena massacre makes the headlines. Journalists cite Kokovtsov’s speech the previous day to Moscow’s bankers, in particular his words that “state power should set an example of respect for the individual. It must value human life.” The shooting of the workers provokes a new conflict among big business. The conservatives, led by Krestovnikov, believe that another wave of strikes throughout the country must be avoided at all costs by imposing fines on all strikers and dismissing the instigators. Ryabushinsky and his supporters oppose the suggestion. They believe that what happened in Bodaibo was a crime, and big business should support the protestors by protesting themselves.
Police reports say that Ryabushinsky’s popularity is growing, which worries the Octobrists loyal to Guchkov. What is more, the term of the current Duma is about to expire, with only four months remaining before the next elections.
On 9 April, after the Easter recess, the State Duma holds a meeting. Its chairman, Mikhail Rodzianko, begins by expressing his condolences to the “friendly English nation” in connection with the recent sinking of the Titanic. He makes no mention of the Lena massacre. Only after lunch do three Duma factions raise the matter with the government, comparing the tragedy at Bodaibo with Bloody Sunday in 1905. Even Guchkov, a recent ally of Stolypin, sides with those calling for an investigation of the incident.
Two days later Interior Minister Makarov attends a Duma session to explain what happened: “When a crowd is spurred on by malicious agitators to attack the army, the only option for the soldiers is to open fire. That is how it was and how it will be!” This last phrase provokes an unlikely reaction. Two investigations are launched simultaneously: the government sends former Justice Minister Manukhin to Bodaibo, while the Duma opposition conducts its own fact-finding mission, headed by the renowned lawyer Alexander Kerensky. The Siberian execution puts an end to the political hibernation of recent times. The Duma, loyal to the government for the past five years, starts to loosen the shackles.
MAN-AT-ARMS
On 22 April 1912, the recent chairman of the State Duma, Alexander Guchkov, arrives in the Saint Petersburg suburb of Staraya Derevnya, not far from the palace where his close friend Pyotr Stolypin resided before his assassination. Guchkov has come to fight a duel with Colonel Sergei Myasoyedov, the head of military counterintelligence and an aide to the war minister. The colonel misses with his shot, while the Duma member shoots into the air. Both are unscathed. The reason for the duel was an interview with Guchkov for the paper New Time, in which he accused Myasoyedov of spying for Austria. Guchkov had no evidence—some officer friends from the General Staff had simply mentioned that Myasoyedov seemed a suspicious type. In the end, the colonel challenged Guchkov to a duel.
Alexander Guchkov is a hotheaded politician for whom dueling is commonplace. He once very nearly fought with Pavel Milyukov (their seconds dissuaded them). Later, on becoming chairman of the Duma, he drew pistols with another parliamentarian and wounded him. After this latest, bloodless duel, Myasoyedov resigns, while the newspapers print cartoons and satirical articles with headings such as “Cyrano de Guchkov.”
The Guchkovs, a family of Moscow Old Believer merchants, who made their fortune in textile production, have always dabbled in politics: Alexander Guchkov’s grandfather served as the head of the Moscow City Duma, while his father and uncle were its members. Alexander is the same age as Savva Morozov and Konstantin Stanislavsky, and ten years older than Pavel Ryabushinsky. Unlike them, he has never been infatuated with the theatre or art. Back at school, he wanted to fight for Russia in the war against Turkey, but ended up following in his father’s footsteps, becoming a member of the Moscow City Duma by the age of thirty. At thirty-seven, he suddenly left for South Africa—to fight in the Anglo-Boer War on the side of the Boers. He was wounded and taken prisoner. Four years later, in 1903, he took part in the Macedonian uprising against the Ottoman Empire. During the Russo-Japanese War he worked in the Red Cross and was again captured, having refused to retreat from Mukden and been abandoned by the Russian army. By the age of fifty, Guchkov has earned the reputation of an honest lunatic, someone who is ready to die for his beliefs.
In 1905 Guchkov headed the Union of 17 October, Sergei Witte’s party of reformists, after which he fell in with Stolypin. Despite his merchant roots, inside the Duma he represents the interests not of business, but of the military. He witnessed for himself the horror of defeat in the Far East and understands its causes, for which reason he dreams of reforming the army and turning it into a modern and combat-ready force. Something akin to an officers’ circle forms around Guchkov, in which the question of reforming the armed forces is paramount.
At the same time, the irascible Guchkov does not excel in the field of military discipline. He delivers a blazing speech in the Duma, blaming all the woes of the army on the tsar’s relatives in command, calling on the grand dukes to resign. After this speech, Milyukov runs up to him: “Alexander Ivanovich [Guchkov], what have you done? They’ll disband the State Duma!”
From that moment on, Guchkov and his officers’ circle are looked upon with suspicion and likened disparagingly to the Young Turks (a political reform movement in the Ottoman Empire). Guchkov’s references to the Turkish experience only strengthen these suspicions. His officer allies are gradually dismissed from the General Staff, including some very senior figures. The new war minister, Sukhomlinov, tries to hide important matters from the Duma defense commission, of which Guchkov is a part. Guchkov believes that Sukhomlinov rose to prominence by telling jokes to the tsar, instead of feeding him with reports. Sukhomlinov is clearly not interested in army reforms, believes Guchkov.
Guchkov’s duel with Sukhomlinov’s friend and aide Myasoyedov is only the start of the cold war between them. Sukhomlinov reports to Nicholas II that Guchkov’s “Young Turks” hate him for his loyalty to the sovereign. After a recent speech about Rasputin, Nicholas II considers Guchkov, himself a monarchist, an enemy of the regime.
7,200 GRAMOPHONES
The third “Stolypin” Duma, having served its term, is dissolved. September 1912 sees the start of the pre-election race. The government has developed a taste for power and makes use of “administrative resources” to secure the right outcome. The 1912 elections are unprecedented on that score.
A full two years before the election, Stolypin ordered 4 million roubles* to be allocated to support the government’s chosen candidates. The philosopher Sergei Bulgakov, one of the authors of Vekhi, who recently castigated the Russian intelligentsia, cannot believe his eyes: there is widespread intimidation of voters; candidates are excluded at the last moment; and there is direct interference on the part of officials. To the horror of the deeply religious Bulgakov, the driving force behind the electoral manipulation is the clergy—for it is they who ensure the desired result at the polling stations. “The voting public has been replaced by 7,200 priests,” says the Kadet candidate Fyodor Rodichev during a campaign rally. “It’s the same as cranking up 7,200 gramophones and saying that it is the voice of the people.”
Oppositionists begin to unite against the bureaucratic onslaught in the summer of 1912. New life is breathed into the Freemasonry movement. The liberal parliamentarians need a non-partisan organization to act in unison and nominate single candidates to stand against the government’s intended placeholders. The Kadets suggest using the Freemasons as a vehicle.
With that in mind, the Freemasons overhaul their organization: one of the main reformers is the thirty-two-year-old Kadet Duma member Nikolai Nekrasov. He and his comrades propose simplifying the admission procedure, abolishing the system of Masonic degrees, rejecting past rituals, and basically creating their own Masonic brotherhood, independent of the French, to be called the “Great East of the Peoples of Russia.” Parliamentarians from various factions are invited to join the new lodge—even the head of the Social Democrats, the Duma member from Tbilisi, Nikolai Chkheidze. Up-and-coming politicians who intend to run for the Duma are welcomed, too. One is the lawyer Alexander Kerensky, who is winning hearts and minds with his investigation of the Lena massacre. Ryabushinsky and Konovalov also join the Moscow lodge.
Nekrasov is duly elected chairman of the Masonic convention. The new organization is far more active than all previous versions. It is not a pre-election campaign office, but a platform for discussing joint plans.
As a result, despite the immense pressure from the authorities, the Duma ends up being fairly heterogeneous. Ryabushinsky’s Progressive Party is the most impressive debutant, gaining forty-eight seats (about 10 percent of the Duma). Ryabushinsky himself did not run, but his friend Konovalov was elected.
The thirty-one-year-old Alexander Kerensky is elected for the first time, having run a very active campaign both in the press and through the Masonic lodge. A candidate from the Socialist-Revolutionaries, during his recent trip to Lena to investigate the massacre he met and befriended the legendary SR exile Babushka Breshko-Breshkovskaya. Now in the Duma, he becomes the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary faction.
The Social Democrat faction is very small, just eight Mensheviks and six Bolsheviks. The most curious figure among them is the Bolshevik Roman Malinovsky, the new star of the party. Having met Lenin just two years ago, he is already an insider. It is through Malinovsky’s efforts that the now-legal Bolshevik newspaper Pravda is published for the first time. At the same time, Malinovsky is a secret police agent—and the Interior Ministry’s greatest infiltration since Azef.
THE TSAREVICH IS DYING
The imperial family spends most of 1912 away from the capital: spring is whiled away in Crimea, summer is spent swimming off the coast of Finland, and September sees a trip to Belovezhskaya Pushcha.*
Emperor Nicholas II is bogged down in family problems. His mother dislikes his wife, and his younger brother Mikhail is having an affair with his adjutant’s wife. They have an illegitimate child and want to marry, but Nicholas is firmly opposed to the idea.
Meanwhile, Nicholas’s second cousin, King Constantine I of Greece, has started a war against Turkey, in alliance with Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro. The idea of helping their “Slavonic brothers” is very popular in Russian society. The newspapers immediately send correspondents to the Balkans, including Leon Trotsky for Kiev Life.
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the tsar’s uncle and commander of the imperial guard, is especially keen to fight. His wife Stana and her sister Milica, the daughters of the Montenegrin king, beg Nicholas II to help their father. The late Stolypin had always strongly opposed any military action, saying that Russia cannot afford a war until the internal enemy is defeated. Now the role of “pacifist-in-chief” is taken by Rasputin. According to Vyrubova, practically on his knees, he implores the tsar that “Russia’s enemies are waiting for her to get caught up in this war,” and that “Russia will suffer inevitable misfortune.”
In early October, the imperial family goes hunting in Poland for a month. There, the eight-year-old heir to the throne is playing by a pond. As he tries to jump into a boat, he bangs his leg and suffers an internal hemorrhage. Unable to move his foot, he screams in pain day and night, while Empress Alexandra sits by his bedside. On 19 October, the heir develops a fever. The doctors, duly summoned from Saint Petersburg, say that his condition is hopeless. “When I die, put up a small monument to me in the park,” Alexei says to his mother. Nicholas, on leaving his son’s room, sobs violently in front of his retinue.
The minister of the court, Baron Fredericks, insists on issuing an official press release regarding the health of the tsarevich, but Nicholas and Alexandra consider his illness to be a state secret. The empress asks Vyrubova to send a telegram to Rasputin. “The illness is not as dangerous as it seems,” he replies. “Just make sure that the doctors do not torture him.” The boy does indeed begin to recover.
On 17 October Grand Duke Mikhail, despite promising not to, secretly marries his civil-law wife, Natalia Wulfert, in Austria. Nicholas II punishes him by dismissing him from all his posts and barring him from entering Russia.
THE ROMANOVS 300 YEARS LATER
The year 1913 marks the three hundredth anniversary of the House of Romanov. Lavish celebrations are due to begin on 21 February—the day when the first Romanov, Mikhail I, became tsar in 1613.
That month the imperial family moves from Tsarskoye Selo to the Winter Palace. Alexandra is in very low spirits. She remembers life at the Winter Palace a decade ago, when seventeenth-century balls and costumes were in vogue at court. Since then, her health has deteriorated sharply, and she hates public appearances: “I’m a wreck,” she says to Vyrubova.
The celebrations continue into spring with a royal trip to Kostroma, Yaroslavl, and Nizhny Novgorod. The peasants, seeing the tsar’s steamer, wade waist-deep into the water, singing the national anthem. Such scenes of popular adoration convince the empress that the common folk really do love her husband, and that all of Russia’s woes stem from the evil intelligentsia. The Moscow leg of the festivities is a triumph. With the sun smiling, Nicholas II enters the Kremlin on foot at the head of a procession of censer-swinging clergymen, while Alexandra and Alexei ride in an open carriage behind. The bells ring, the people rejoice.
The trip introduces the imperial couple’s children to the other Russia. The girls are very patriotic. They speak Russian at home and are horrified that one day they may have to marry and live abroad. Prior to this trip, they have seen almost nothing of their own country, having spent their entire lives shuttling between Tsarskoye Selo and Livadia Palace in Crimea.
The Romanovs almost never travel in Russia, and many family members sojourn at length in Europe. The tsar’s mother spends most of her time in Copenhagen, where she was born, or visiting her sister, the queen of England, or vacationing in Biarritz. The tsar’s brother Mikhail, meanwhile, is forced to live abroad. Traveling in Europe, the grand dukes and their families stay in the most expensive hotels, reserving not just rooms, but entire floors.
The lifestyle of Kirill, Boris, and Andrei, the children of Grand Duke Vladimir, Diaghilev’s former patron, is more extravagant than most: Boris is forever to be found in Nice surrounded by prostitutes. Nicholas regularly complains about such “disgraceful” behavior. Andrei, along with his mistress Kschessinskaya, spends a lot of time in Monaco, since he is a gambler, as indeed is his mother, Grand Duchess Miechen.
The luxury of the Russian court is renowned across Europe. Rumors about the enormous accounts held by the tsar and his relatives in European banks are not groundless: after 1905, when Nicholas II was thinking about fleeing Russia for Germany, secret accounts were opened for him at the Berlin bank Mendelssohn & Co (up to 20 million roubles*), plus smaller amounts with Crédit Lyonnais and the Bank of England.
Their good knowledge of Europe is combined with a poor knowledge of Russia. Years later, Grand Duchess Maria, a cousin of the tsar, writes that neither she nor her relatives had any idea of the extent to which the Russian and European provinces differed in terms of standard of living.
“COME TO YOUR SENSES!”
In 1913, Russian society gradually comes out of hibernation, and the debates and polemics resume. The investigations of the Lena massacre and the murder of Andrei Yushchinsky in Kiev are the two hottest topics. Both cases are highly politicized: the left-wing parties use the Lena incident as revolutionary propaganda, while the Beilis case is exploited by the right-wing parties to promote anti-Semitism.
Senator Manukhin finishes his report in the autumn of 1912. It remains classified for quite a while, meaning that the Duma discusses it only in the spring of 1913. The conclusions of the senator coincide completely with those of Kerensky: the living conditions at the mine are horrendous; the demands of the strikers were purely economic; and the shooting was totally unprovoked. The government, however, does seek to punish the guilty—a few managers are fired, and the officer who ordered the shooting is demoted, but nothing more. The inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic, which occurred almost on the same day as the Lena massacre, resulting in the deaths of around fifteen hundred people, is also a whitewash.
Kiev, on the other hand, sees the start of a high-profile court case. Mendel Beilis is arrested, which splits society, just like during the Dreyfus case in France fifteen years earlier.
Back in November 1911 the “conscience of the nation,” the fifty-eight-year-old writer Vladimir Korolenko, wrote an open letter stating that “blood libel”—the charge that Jews drink the blood of infants—was originally a pagan slur against the early Christians.
Korolenko’s open letter is signed by nearly all the leading Russian intellectuals of the day: Maxim Gorky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Dmitry Filosofov, Leonid Andreyev, Alexander Blok, Alexander Benois, almost the entire liberal bloc inside the Duma, and hundreds of professors and journalists. A campaign is also launched in Europe in support of Beilis. Supportive letters are written by some of the continent’s most famous writers, including Thomas Mann, H.G. Wells, and Anatole France. The “blood libel” charge is rejected by many nationalists, too, including, for instance, the publisher of the newspaper The Kievite, Dmitry Pikhno, and his son-in-law, Vasily Shulgin, the one who tried to prevent the Kiev pogrom of 1905. Pikhno writes an article against his own Black Hundred acolytes: “You yourselves make human sacrifices!” The Kievite publishes an in-depth and convincing account of the murder of Yushchinsky, effectively proving that Beilis is innocent and pointing the finger at the black marketeer Vera Cheberyak and her accomplices.
WHO KILLED ANDREI YUSHCHINSKY
The Beilis trial becomes a matter of national—and international—significance. The prosecution is led by the conservative Justice Minister Ivan Shcheglovitov. Despite the flimsy evidence, he decides to press ahead with court proceedings so that he and the government are not accused of “selling out to the yids.” In an effort to please the authorities, officials go after anyone who criticizes the investigation or the prosecution: newspapers containing articles in support of Beilis are confiscated.
The trial begins on 23 September. “It feels like the sixteenth century,” writes Korolenko inside the courtroom, although “outside lies modern Kiev, with beautiful houses, signboards, newspapers and electricity.” The makeup of the jury (comprising seven peasants, three members of the bourgeoisie, and two minor officials) is unusual—not a single intellectual, which is rare for a university city. The paper that publishes Korolenko’s article, which goes on to accuse the authorities of manipulation, is confiscated, and he himself faces criminal charges.
The loudest protest comes from big-city lawyers: they write an appeal describing the trial of Beilis as violating the foundations of communal existence and abasing Russia in the eyes of the world. The text is published by four newspapers in Saint Petersburg and Kiev. After the trial, the instigators of the appeal—Alexander Kerensky and Nikolai Sokolov—are sentenced to eight months in prison for insulting the authorities.
On the final day of the trial, 28 October 1913, everyone is expecting a guilty verdict and a mass pogrom in Kiev. Pogromist forces have already assembled in advance.
The jury vote comes as a surprise: six return a verdict of guilty, and six of not guilty. According to the legal rules, if there is no majority guilty verdict, the defendant is acquitted. Beilis is released right there in the courtroom. “The nightmare is fading,” writes Korolenko about the pogrom so narrowly avoided, for now the authorities will prevent it. It is a victory for the liberal section of society. Beilis and his family leave Russia for Palestine, and the investigation is closed. The fateful question of who killed Andrei Yushchinsky is not raised in public again.
THE SCANDAL OF SPRING
On 29 May 1913, a theatre on the Champs Élysées hosts the premiere of Diaghilev’s new ballet The Rite of Spring. Even before the premiere, Diaghilev talks of a musical revolution. Right from the start, it is clear that this is no ordinary performance, full of imitation pagan dances to the accompaniment of Stravinsky’s atonal composition. For the twenty-four-year-old Nijinsky, it is a special moment—his debut as a choreographer. Recently the papers have been writing that he is “a young terrorist who has throttled the ballet.”
The audience starts whispering, and soon the murmurs turn into chortling, whistling, and outright swearing. Stravinsky’s nerves fail, and he leaves the theatre. Fans of Diaghilev’s troupe shout back at the dissenters: the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio and the composer Claude Debussy leave their private box and charge at the audience with fists practically flying. With the performance still in progress, a major scuffle breaks out, reminiscent of a football match, not a night at the theatre. Diaghilev orders the lights in the hall to be turned on and off to try to placate the public, but eventually the police have to be called. In the midst of the catcalling and brawling, some audience members cheer and applaud: Nijinsky and Diaghilev even come on stage for a bow.
Diaghilev is delighted by the scandal: “Just what I wanted!” he cries. The whole company goes out to dinner, before strolling through the Bois de Boulogne until sunrise. Jean Cocteau recalls that during the taxi ride back Diaghilev starts muttering something in Russian. Stravinsky and Nijinsky listen to him attentively. When Diaghilev starts weeping, Cocteau asks what the matter is. They say that Diaghilev is reciting his favorite poem by Pushkin.
But the scandal backfires. Covent Garden, the Grand Opera, and other theatres refuse to stage ballets choreographed by Nijinsky for fear of the audience reaction. Orchestras revolt against Stravinsky’s music. Diaghilev himself considers The Rite of Spring to be overlong and wants it cut, but Stravinsky is possessive. On top of everything, Bakst refuses to design costumes and scenery for Nijinsky’s ballets, while the lovers Diaghilev and Nijinsky quarrel endlessly. Diaghilev is jealous of Nijinsky’s relationships with women, and they often have bitter arguments in public.
Nijinsky’s diary, which he starts to keep much later when suffering from mental illness, describes their separation in detail. He depicts with disgust Diaghilev’s dyed-gray hair and false front teeth, comparing him to an old woman. They sleep in different rooms, and Nijinsky keeps his door locked at all times. When he goes to visit prostitutes, Diaghilev orders a servant to follow him.
In August 1913 the troupe goes on tour to Latin America—without Diaghilev, who is afraid of steamboats. On board, Nijinsky makes the acquaintance of Romola de Pulszky, the daughter of a Hungarian aristocrat. Almost immediately on arrival in Buenos Aires, he proposes to her, and on 10 September 1913 they are married. The dancer’s sister and mother are at that time in Saint Petersburg and learn about the wedding from the newspapers. Diaghilev is on vacation in Venice. When he receives a telegram with the news, he becomes hysterical. He immediately fires Nijinsky, who then tries to form his own troupe. His efforts to entice Stravinsky are not successful, and a tour to London ends in failure: he gives two performances, announces that he is ill, and rips up the contract.
Diaghilev is lucky: in the autumn of 1913 he meets the seventeen-year-old dancer Leonid Myasin, who is the complete opposite of Nijinsky. Neither tall nor handsome, Myasin is more cerebral and intellectual. Diaghilev also finds new set designers in the shape of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov. The twenty-three-year-old composer Sergei Prokofiev is also eager to come on board.
Diaghilev no longer seeks recognition in Petersburg high society, which is alien to new concepts and “persistently defends outdated traditions.” Instead, he focuses on the intelligentsia and the merchant class—“the middle class that made the Moscow Art Theatre a success.” Turning his back on Saint Petersburg, he plans a series of performances at Mamontov’s former opera house in Moscow. The tour is scheduled for January-February 1914.
THE NEW AMERICA
The year 1913 is the peak of Russia’s economic development, the apogee of the “stable, well-fed years.” Russian GDP is the fourth largest in the world, behind only the United States and Germany, but ahead of Britain.
Capitalism has transformed the face of Russia. The tsar’s brother-in-law, Grand Duke Sandro, notes with irritation that in Saint Petersburg everyone seems to be “doing business”: officers discuss the rise in steel prices; society ladies invite “financial geniuses” to their salons; even priests dabble in the stock market.
The main driver of the Russian economy is the merchant class. “It is time for the Russian merchants,” says Pavel Ryabushinsky, “to become the preeminent social class and proudly wear the label of ‘Russian merchant’ without chasing after the degenerate nobility.” Debates are raging about whether Russia will become the new America, a new breed of economic giant.
The government even develops a new policy to that effect. It is the brainchild of Agriculture Minister Alexander Krivoshein, one of the co-authors of the late Stolypin’s agrarian reforms and the latter’s former right-hand man. Now Krivoshein comes up with a program to stimulate economic growth: he wants to invest in the creation of major state enterprises, build new railways, and carry out large-scale land improvement. It smacks of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which will appear in the depression-hit United States only sixteen years later. Though, as agricultural minister, Krivoshein is primarily focused on agribusiness.
Krivoshein’s plan runs counter to the policy of the incumbent prime minister, Vladimir Kokovtsov. A thrifty financier, Kokovtsov wants a deficit-free budget and a curb on government spending. Industry should be developed on the back of private investment, he believes.*
While Nicholas II is away on vacation, the government intrigues become more Machiavellian. In his struggle against the prime minister-cum-accountant Kokovtsov, the reform-minded Krivoshein decides to enlist the help of the new interior minister, Nikolai Maklakov, who is popular with the imperial family for his ability to tell anecdotes and perform entertaining mime routines. His party trick is the “jump of the amorous panther,” which greatly amuses the royal daughters. Maklakov is not a reformer at all, having recently drafted a new censorship law. But like Krivoshein, he despises Kokovtsov and wants to ruin him.
A campaign is launched against the prime minister. Krivoshein convinces the tsar that the Russian Empire needs financial reform, which Kokovtsov is hampering (this much is true). Krivoshein believes that it is high time to abolish the state monopoly on the alcohol trade and to introduce income tax. The campaign against Prime Minister Kokovtsov is joined by the sixty-four-year-old former prime minister, Sergei Witte. He wants to head the government once more and starts to openly criticize the Finance Ministry’s law to combat drunkenness, saying that Kokovtsov (who is also the finance minister) is pushing the country into alcoholism, which was certainly not the case when he, Witte, was in charge. Witte finds an unusual ally in the shape of Grigory Rasputin. The “elder” increasingly complains to “mother” and “father” (Alexandra and Nicholas) that the Russian people are taking to the bottle—and the alcohol monopoly is to blame.
The tsar dismisses his prime minister, but even Rasputin’s influence is not enough to resurrect Witte’s career in government: “Mother and father hate Witte’s guts,” he says. Nicholas offers the post of prime minister to Krivoshein. But Krivoshein knows from the experience of Stolypin and Kokovtsov how difficult the job of prime minister is—a balancing act between taking action and not provoking the tsar’s irritation. Moreover, he is suffering from a heart condition. Krivoshein decides to remain in the shadows and promote the candidacy of a “puppet” prime minister. The role is perfectly suited to the seventy-four-year-old Ivan Goremykin, the same aged placeholder who gleefully handed power over to Stolypin in 1906. Seven years later he is offered the prime minister’s chair again—and submissively accepts the appointment.
Goremykin’s appointment comes as a real shock to society. Particularly outraged are Ryabushinsky and other young Moscow-based progressive entrepreneurs hoping for political reform. “The government has taken insolence to a new level, ignoring all opposition in the belief that the country is sound asleep,” says the businessman Konovalov.
Ryabushinsky invites that selfsame opposition to attend a meeting at his home, including members of not only the Progressivists, the Kadets, and the Octobrists, but also the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and even the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks, of course, have no intention of agreeing to anything. Lenin instructs his comrades to use the opportunity to get some money from the industrialists: “No less than 10,000 roubles.”* The other oppositionists take the meeting with Ryabushinsky more seriously.
SECTARIANS AND PROVOCATEURS
The end of 1913 sees a general amnesty for all sorts of enemies of the regime, of which the monk Iliodor is one. He sits inside a monastery prison and writes letter after letter, cursing Rasputin, Vyrubova, and the “minister of the church” Sabler. In May Iliodor petitions the Holy Synod to defrock him. Saint Petersburg acquaintances write to him that there is no need to hurry: there will soon be an amnesty, so just calm down and wait. “Let my tongue fall out before I calm down!” is Iliodor’s response. “My whole being is consumed by a tormenting thirst for holy vengeance.… I will never accept a pardon. Only criminals are pardoned. I am not a criminal. I have accomplished a great feat.”
In December 1913, realizing that the Holy Synod is planning to hush the matter up, Iliodor writes another repudiation of the church—this time he cuts a vein and signs it in blood. Again he curses the church leaders for being in league with Rasputin, ending his missive with the words: “Henceforth, I do not know your God. I do not recognize you as hierarchs.” Only now is Iliodor defrocked and let out of the monastery prison. He returns to his parents’ village on the Don River. There he creates a sect called “New Galilee,” and invites his former parishioners from Tsaritsyn to join.
While this is going on, Maxim Gorky is busy abandoning his “sect” on the island of Capri and heading back to Russia. The long-anticipated amnesty in honor of the tercentenary of the House of Romanov allows political émigrés to return to their homeland. Gorky goes to Finland, although other Social Democrats do not dare to follow suit, since, despite the amnesty, they are still being hunted in Saint Petersburg—so far in 1913 the secret police have arrested all the prominent Bolsheviks they can find.
The Mensheviks believe that there is a traitor inside the party and point the finger at Roman Malinovsky. Lenin is sure that this is revenge for Malinovsky’s anti-Menshevik activity. However, one of Malinovsky’s next victims (for he is indeed a double agent) is the Bolshevik Josef Dzhugashvili, who returns to Saint Petersburg under false documents and becomes the editor of the newspaper Pravda, taking the pseudonym Stalin. Malinovsky invites his “comrade” to a masquerade ball, where the police are waiting. Stalin tries to escape, even changing into women’s clothing, but he is caught, arrested, tried, and exiled to Turukhansk, a village in western Siberia. Stalin’s attempt to flee dressed as a woman is never mentioned in later Soviet history books. In fact, it is the Bolsheviks’ enemy Alexander Kerensky who is accused of such an unmanly action.
NOTHING DEPENDS ON US
Many contemporaries will later assert in their memoirs that they saw the coming of the First World War. However, there is nothing in their behavior to suggest such foresight. In early 1914, it is (lack of) business as usual. Intellectual oppositionists and monarchist courtiers alike are sure that nothing will change and that nothing depends on them.
But the supreme authorities are also treading water. Tired of bad news, complaints, ultimatums, and intrigues, the tsar is very rarely seen in the capital and lives with his family elsewhere on near-permanent vacation. In Crimea he receives ministers, but during his summer yachting trips around the Gulf of Finland he isolates himself from officialdom. Rumors circulate in Petersburg salons that Rasputin is in charge of the country, but in reality no one is. Rasputin lives in his Siberian village and corresponds with Empress Alexandra. Prime Minister Goremykin tries very hard to do nothing at all—after all, his brief is “not to overshadow the tsar.”
In the spring of 1914 Alexandra begins to harbor terrible suspicions. She is jealous of her husband over Anna Vyrubova. Alexandra suffers from migraines, heart trouble, and nervous seizures. During that summer’s yachting in the Gulf of Finland, she keeps repeating that this is their last trip. Many years later Vyrubova will interpret these words as a premonition of war.
Most members of the imperial family move to London. The tsar’s mother, Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna, spends June with her beloved sister, Queen Alexandra, the wife of the late Edward VII. The youngest son of Maria Feodorovna, Mikhail, expelled from Russia for his mésalliance, is also in London, as are Maria’s husband, Prince Shervashidze, daughters Olga and Xenia, son-in-law Sandro, and granddaughter Irina and her husband—the young Felix Yusupov. Felix knows London very well, the star of the local beau monde. The family has a great time. Almost every day is spent going to the theatre and strolling in Hyde Park. On the morning of 15 June (according to the Old Style Russian calendar) they are having breakfast at Buckingham Palace when they are informed that Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife have been assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “What savagery! Thank God that when they died they were together,” Maria Feodorovna writes in her diary. In the evening, they go to Castle Combe, where Chaliapin is performing.
FOUR MURDERERS
What a century later looks like a carefully conceived plan was, in fact, nothing more than a string of random occurrences. On the day when the Austrian emperor’s nephew and heir, Franz Ferdinand, arrives in Sarajevo, a group of nine terrorists is plotting to assassinate him. In 1908 the Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed by Austria-Hungary and now, just six years later, the anti-Habsburg movement is flourishing.
The Young Bosnia movement that wants to kill Franz Ferdinand consists more of fanatics than professional killers. Many of them are sick with tuberculosis, for which reason they are perfectly willing to die for the cause. On the day of the assassination, the leader of the group, the nineteen-year-old Nedelko Chabrinovich, stands in the crowd and greets the archduke’s motorcade with everyone else. As the archduke’s car approaches, Chabrinovich throws a grenade into the road. The driver sees it coming and puts his foot to the floor. The explosion occurs under the car behind, injuring some of its occupants, but the heir to the Austrian throne is unharmed. Chabrinovich takes a capsule of cyanide and jumps into the nearby Miljacka River. But the poison is ineffective, and the river is too shallow. The terrorist is caught alive.
The archduke asks to go with the wounded to the local hospital, but the driver takes a wrong turn. The accompanying general stops the car and orders it to be turned around. This hiccup occurs a just few meters from where Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen-year-old Young Bosnia activist and tuberculosis sufferer, is standing. Unable to believe his eyes, he runs up to the car and shoots at the couple. Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia die a few minutes later. Like Chabrinovich, Princip tries and fails to commit suicide.
The next day, 16 June (Old Style), a woman named Khionia Guseva arrives in the village of Pokrovskoe in Siberia, home to Rasputin. She is thirty-three years old and has lost her nose to syphilis. Khionia is a fan of Iliodor. When she lived in Tsaritsyn, he called her his spiritual daughter, and now she is a member of New Galilee.
The defrocked monk preaches to his followers not to consider themselves Orthodox, for the Russian Church has been hijacked by the false prophet “Grishka” Rasputin. “My dear father, Grishka is indeed a devil. I’ll kill him! I’ll slaughter him like the prophet Elijah, on God’s command, slaughtered the 450 false prophets of Baal! Father, give me your blessing,” she asks. She sets off for Rasputin’s hometown and duly finds him. Dressed as a beggar, Guseva approaches and stabs him in the stomach. Rasputin runs off, but she goes after him. Rasputin grabs a metal bar lying on the ground and hits her over the head. Khionia falls to the ground. The next day the newspapers publish reports of Rasputin’s death, but a day later they are refuted. Rasputin is alive, but in the hospital, where he remains for some time.
On 31 July a man with a notebook is walking around Montmartre. He is twenty-nine-year-old Raoul Villain, a member of the League of Young Friends of Alsace-Lorraine, and a fanatic like Princip and Guseva. The notebook is used to chart the movements of Jean Jaurès, France’s pre-eminent leftist politician, the leader and unifier of the French socialists. Jaurès is a pacifist and opposes the retaking of Alsace-Lorraine (annexed by Germany during the Franco-Prussian War). For the nationalist Villain, this is treason. He enters the cafe Croissant and sees Jaurès dining at a table by the window. He shoots Jaurès twice in the head, killing his victim instantly.
Chabrinovich and Princip are both sentenced to twenty years in prison, where they die from tuberculosis. Khionia Guseva is sent to a psychiatric clinic, where she regales inmates with her story of how she “killed Grishka.” “I’m a national hero,” she says. In 1917 she is released, whereupon she immediately tries to assassinate Patriarch Tikhon.* Raoul Villain will spend five years behind bars before being acquitted in 1919 to the delight of French nationalists, who believe that by killing the pacifist he helped secure victory in the First World War. The legal costs are charged to the widow of the murdered Jaurès.
CHRONICLE OF A GROWING PATRIOTISM
The murder of the heir to the Austrian throne in Sarajevo fails to stir the Russian press, which writes that his death is a positive development, since Franz Ferdinand was anti-Russian.
On 10 July Austria-Hungary presents Serbia with an ultimatum. Leon Trotsky, working as a journalist in Vienna, is struck by the patriotic excitement of the Austrians—the slogan “Death to the Serbs” is ubiquitous.
On 15 July Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, whereupon Saint Petersburg starts to discuss its response: Should Russia mobilize in support of its Orthodox ally? The empress telegraphs Rasputin: “We are horrified. Do you also think war is a reality? Pray for us, advise us.” Still in hospital, Rasputin replies: “Do not go to war. It will be the end of Russia.”
The next day Nicholas II sends a telegram to his wife’s cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, with a proposal to discuss the Austria-Serbia question at an international conference in The Hague. It is a delaying tactic. Russian officers are sure that war is inevitable, but believe that it will last no longer than six months.
On 18 July Nicholas II publishes a national mobilization order. Anna Vyrubova runs to Empress Alexandra, who tells her that it must all be some mistake—only the provinces bordering Austria need to be mobilized. Alexandra hurries to her husband and leaves him in tears, crying: “It’s over. We are at war and I didn’t even know anything about it.”
On 19 July Nicholas receives a telegram from Wilhelm, who urges him to stop the mobilization of the Russian army and to meet for talks. “What will I say to my people?” the tsar asks his wife. Later that evening, the German ambassador to Russia hands Sazonov a piece of paper with a declaration of war. The empress sobs, but Nicholas perks up: “Now at least we know where we stand.” On the same day, the former monk Iliodor, now Sergei Trufanov, secretly crosses the Russian-Swedish border. He has gone into hiding after Guseva’s failed attempt on Rasputin’s life.
On 20 July Russia publishes an imperial manifesto declaring war. The mood everywhere is upbeat: people are patriotic and enthusiastic. A huge banner-waving rally is held on Saint Petersburg’s Palace Square. Nicholas goes onto the balcony and the entire crowd falls to its knees and sings “God Save the Tsar!” “They’re all sober,” remarks the tsar’s cousin, Grand Duke Andrei, referring to the fact that during the mobilization period all liquor stores across the country have been closed. The measure is subsequently extended throughout the war, effectively introducing a dry law.
On 21 July Germany declares war on France. It is just three days since the murder of Jaurès. Although he was a pacifist, his party supports the war. Likewise, that same day, the German Social Democratic Party unanimously votes for the war. Lenin, having received the latest issue of the party’s newspaper Vorwärts, believes that it is a hoax: his Second International comrades could not do such a thing.
ATROCITIES AND DEFEATISTS
On 22 July Saint Petersburg is gripped by a powerful patriotic surge: a mob storms the German embassy on Saint Isaac’s Square, smashing it for more than an hour under the tolerant gaze of the police. The wine cellar is looted, and crystalware, antique paintings, and a collection of Renaissance-era bronze artifacts are destroyed. Only the portraits of Nicholas and Alexandra in the reception hall are left intact, although they are removed and carried through the city by the crowd to the tune of the national anthem.
People climb onto the embassy roof, where there stands a huge bronze statue of the Greek mythological twins Castor and Pollux, holding their horses’ bridles. The statue is somehow toppled off the building to cheers from below. The embassy is set on fire, and it burns to the ground. The next day the Russian Foreign Ministry expresses deep regret over the incident.
However, it is only the beginning of the campaign. On 31 July Saint Petersburg’s anti-German Czech community calls for the city to be renamed. Without hesitation, Nicholas II adopts the name “Petrograd.” No one cares to remember that the name “Petersburg” is in fact of Dutch origin (Peter the Great spent several months working incognito in the Netherlands), for it sounds the same in German—and anti-German sentiment is snowballing. Theatres remove Schiller and Goethe from their repertoires, and the Imperial Theatres prohibit the staging of Wagner’s operas. Newspapers suggest replacing the German “Butterbrod” with the English “sandwich.”
According to the census of 1897, almost two million ethnic Germans live in Russia, speaking German at home. And the number of Russified Germans with German surnames is even greater. Threatened with anti-German pogroms, many start to change their names. German bakeries and sausage shops close down. Describing the “German atrocities” in Europe, Russian newspapers write that Germany is no ordinary foe, but the “enemy of civilization itself.” The portrayal of Germans as cruel and barbaric is a common motif in the Russian press.
Russian subjects vacationing in Europe hurry home. Everyone faces difficulties, and their stories are published in the “German Atrocities” section that graces every newspaper.
Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna returns from London by train. In Berlin she is informed that she cannot proceed overland and must travel to Denmark and onwards by sea. The husband of her granddaughter Irina, Felix Yusupov, is arrested by the Germans—albeit just for a day. When war breaks out, Grand Duke Konstantin is receiving treatment in Germany. He and his family are allowed to leave, but the train does not take them all the way to the border, and the journey must be completed on foot, which the infirm fifty-six-year-old grand duke cannot do. A Cossack detachment discovers him and his family sitting on the roadside.
Members of the imperial family start withdrawing money from European banks, and soon Nicholas orders all foreign-held funds to be returned to Russia.* Around seven million roubles† cannot be withdrawn from banks in Berlin.
Leon Trotsky manages to take his family from Vienna to Zurich. Lenin, meanwhile, is in Galicia, the western-most territory of modern Ukraine (then part of Austria-Hungary). He is arrested and jailed for two weeks. Yevgeny Azef, who lives in Berlin under a false passport, is confident that his Russian origins will not be uncovered, but he is mistaken—a year later, in 1915, he is sent to prison for being a Russian anarchist.
The war is welcomed by most denizens of the Russian Empire, and even some long-term émigrés, including Prince Kropotkin, Georgy Plekhanov, and Boris Savinkov. Seized by patriotic fervor, “Sherlock” Vladimir Burtsev returns to Russia, whereupon he is immediately put on trial and exiled to Turukhansk in Siberia, where Stalin is serving time. Meanwhile, Savinkov, the former leader of the militant organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, quarrels with party comrades over the war. Savinkov’s slogan is “Victory before revolution.” He even writes an open letter saying that in wartime any démarche against the tsar is a démarche against Russia. His relations with former party members are severed, and Savinkov goes to Paris to work as a war correspondent for various Russian newspapers.
Russia experiences unprecedented political unity: “Even Purishkevich now acknowledges the Jews and shakes Milyukov’s hand. Sheep and wolves are lining up together—they’ve found a common enemy they can both eat,” quips Gippius. Ivan Bunin, a future Nobel laureate, writes an anti-German appeal. It is signed by several thousand people, including Chaliapin, Struve, Stanislavsky, and his friend Gorky. The latter is surprised that “yesterday’s anarchists are now patriotic statists.”
Amongst all the flag-waving rhetoric, the few doubting voices are ear-jarring. They belong to the so-called “defeatists.” Gippius is one of them. Never one to follow the crowd, she has no desire to partake in the “patriotic pacing through the streets” or be a “chip of wood in the stream of events.” Any war that ends with the victory of one state over another is the germ of a new one, believe Gippius and Merezhkovsky. On the side of the “defeatists” is the Merezhkovsky family’s new friend, Duma member Alexander Kerensky. However, the most inveterate pacifists are the socialists. Throughout the entire autumn and winter of 1914, Lenin and Trotsky use the press to pour scorn over the patriots, especially Plekhanov. Lenin writes an article entitled “Studenthood on Its Knees,” in which he accuses Russian university students of betraying the revolution and caving in to jingoism.
Later, in 1915, Lenin, Martov, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and the SRs Chernov and Natanson (plus representatives from other belligerent nations, but far fewer) will gather in the Swiss town of Zimmerwald to adopt a declaration, penned by Trotsky, calling for “peace without annexations and indemnities.” Come 1917, this phrase, advocating the rejection of all military gains, will be the most popular slogan in Russia.
On 26 July 1914, an emergency meeting of the Duma and the State Council is convened. The parliamentarians are heartened by the outpouring of patriotism on both sides of the political divide. However, it soon transpires that the government has no plans to make use of this unprecedented unity. In connection with the war, Interior Minister Maklakov proposes that the Duma be suspended for a year—until autumn 1915. Rodzianko manages to persuade Prime Minister Goremykin that the members of Duma could be of use, as a result of which the recess is shortened. The next meeting of the Duma is scheduled for February 1915.
The political struggle inside the country seems to be ending. Most former oppositionists sincerely believe that all efforts should be focused on helping the army and securing victory, and only then should the political infighting resume. Pavel Ryabushinsky begins to raise funds from the stock exchange and merchant societies for mobile hospitals, and personally oversees their dispatch to the front. His newspaper, Morning of Russia, becomes a popular patriotic publication. Alexander Guchkov goes to the front to work with the Red Cross, as he did during the Russo-Japanese War.
THE POLISH QUESTION
The fighting on the Eastern Front erupts in two places: Russian troops advance on East Prussia (today’s Kaliningrad region) and on Galicia (today’s western Ukraine). In other words, the war breaks out in lands inhabited by Poles and Ukrainians, who face the prospect of having to fight their own people who, divided by history, happen to live on the other side of the border in Germany and Austria-Hungary.
The question of what to do with Poland and how to motivate the Poles to fight for Russia is crucial. Poland at this time is split between three empires: the central and eastern parts, including Warsaw, belong to the Russian Empire; the northern part, including Danzig (today’s Gdansk) belongs to Germany, while the southern region, including Krakow, is part of Austria-Hungary. In none of these empires do the Poles have autonomy.
Throughout the nineteenth century Poland was the main hot spot of the Russian Empire. The great-grandfather of Emperor Nicholas II, Nicholas I, brutally suppressed the Polish Uprising of 1830-1831, vowing to obliterate Warsaw should it reoccur. But now, with the outbreak of global war, the Russian authorities have an entirely different goal—to win Polish hearts and minds.
The first step, on 16 August, is when the new supreme commander of the Russian armed forces, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (the tsar’s uncle), publishes a manifesto promising to reverse the unjust partition of Poland and grant the Kingdom of Poland autonomy, should all Polish territories be conquered by Russia: “Let the borders that divide the Polish people be erased. And let them be reunited under the scepter of the Russian Tsar.”
Despite the grandiloquent words, the war in Poland is not going well. The Germans are advancing on Warsaw with worrying speed. One option discussed is to consolidate Poland’s status within the empire by holding another coronation of Nicholas II in Warsaw, in order to demonstrate Russia’s special respect for the Poles—just as Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria was re-crowned in 1868 in Budapest to appease the Hungarians, renaming his empire Austria-Hungary in the process.
Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov, the brother-in-law and friend of the late Stolypin, believes that the Poles should be granted self-administration and the right for schools to teach in the Polish language without delay.
THE UKRAINIAN QUESTION
The offensive on the Southwestern Front, in Galicia, is far more successful. Russian troops take Halych and Lvov (today, cities in western Ukraine), and begin a siege of Przemysl in modern Poland. In the occupied territories, Russia creates two new provinces—Lvov and Ternopil, followed by two more around Chernovtsy and Przemysl. Most of the pro-Russian local intelligentsia was arrested and sent to Thalerhof internment camp before the offensive of the Russian army, so the new authorities had nobody to work with.
Local officials are mostly appointees brought in from other regions of Russia. Meanwhile, some members of the Lvov elite suspected of harboring sympathy and spying for Austria are exiled to remote regions of Russia. Russian laws are enacted prohibiting Jews from owning land; land belonging to local Jews is expropriated, and several thousand of them are deported to the other side of the front line to Austria-Hungary.
As Russia captures the Ukrainian-speaking territories from Austria, the Ukrainian media raise the “Ukrainian question.” It all begins when Konstantin Levitsky, who represents Lvov in the Austro-Hungarian parliament, publishes an article in the German newspaper Berliner Tageblatt on 1 October, proposing the creation of a unified Ukrainian state under the rule of the Austrian emperor that would include Galicia and Bukovina (today’s western Ukraine, at that time part of Austria-Hungary) and the Ukrainian-speaking provinces of the Russian Empire. “Muscovite Russia should be pushed back from the Black Sea, and the Ukrainian lands should become a wedge between Russia and the Balkans,” writes the Duma member Levitsky. In response, Peter Struve, now a patriotic publicist, calls Levitsky impudent and ignorant for asserting that Odessa, Nikolaev, and Kherson are Ukrainian cities, when they were built on land taken from the Ottomans: “If Ukrainian nationality is to be recognized at all, then Ukraine’s historical right to these Russian cities is even weaker than Turkey’s,” writes Struve.
Even before Levitsky, the concept of a “single Ukrainian state” has been discussed in Lvov and Vienna for many decades. A major contributor to the debate is Mykhailo Hrushevsky, a professor of history at Lvov University. His multivolume work The History of Ukraine-Rus’ posits Ukraine’s existence as a separate entity from Russia. In December 1914 Hrushevsky is sent into exile—first to Simbirsk, then Kazan. When eminent academics and writers intercede on his behalf, his place of exile is changed to Moscow.
THE ARMENIAN QUESTION
On the day when Nicholas II stands on the balcony of the Winter Palace with the crowd kneeling in front of him, singing the national anthem, Turkey signs a secret treaty with Germany. Under the treaty, the Turkish army passes under German command. The officer Enver Pasha yearns to avenge the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the recent Balkan Wars and the loss of its European territories. In October 1914, the Turkish fleet raids Sevastopol, Odessa, Novorossiysk, and Theodosia; the Young Turks declare a jihad on the countries of the Triple Entente, whereupon Russia opens another front—the Turkish Front.
The role of the Poles on the German Front, and the Ukrainians on the Austrian Front, is, on the Turkish Front, played by the Armenians. Both empires, Russian and Ottoman, try to win over the Armenian population, which lives on either side of the border. The Russian governor in the Caucasus poses the idea of Armenian autonomy (although no such plans exist), while the Turkish authorities try to persuade the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (a political party also known as “Dashnaktsutyun”) to organize a pro-Turkish uprising in the Russian Transcaucasus. The party’s leaders declare that the Armenians of Russia and Turkey will fight to a man for an independent Armenia.
The military conflict between the Ottomans and the Russians begins in December. In January Russian troops take the city of Sarakamish (in today’s eastern Turkey). A consequence of the Ottoman defeat is a brutal repression of the empire’s Armenian population. War Minister Enver Pasha claims that his men were betrayed by the Armenians. The Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman army are disarmed and executed.
In February 1915, at the request of the Russian command, Britain and France, Russia’s allies, open up a second front in Turkey. A landing force is dispatched to the shore of the Sea of Marmara, launching the Gallipoli Campaign. Soon afterwards, the Turkish authorities take the decision to deport 1.8 million Turkish nationals of Armenian origin. “Deportation” is a misnomer: in the period 1915-1918 anywhere from 600,000 to 1.5 million people, according to various estimates, will perish in the Armenian Genocide.
NEW HEROES
Nicholas II initially plans to lead the Russian army himself, but he is persuaded not to, since the mobilization of troops will be a drawn-out process and there could be early setbacks. Nicholas is advised not to harm his image during the initial phases, but to lead the army a little later when victory is assured.
In August 1914, supreme command of the Russian army is handed to Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, “Uncle Nikolasha” as the tsar calls him. He is fifty-seven years old and considered the most experienced military leader of all the Romanovs. Churches across the empire are ordered daily to pray for the health of the supreme commander, and his portrait hangs in every home. Uncle Nikolasha’s popularity irritates Nicholas, who does not like to be overshadowed, and Alexandra, who is jealous.
The initial front-line skirmishes produce heroes and anti-heroes. One of the first battles ends in disaster when the First Army under General Samsonov, advancing into East Prussia, is surrounded. The general commits suicide.
Many officers and reporters are convinced that Samsonov’s death is the fault of the Second Army under General Rennenkampf, who suppressed the unrest in Siberia in autumn 1905 and rooted out the self-proclaimed Krasnoyarsk Republic. Everyone discusses Rennenkampf’s German roots, and many in the army are sure that he is a traitor who deliberately delayed sending in his army to relieve Samsonov. Grand Duke Andrei recounts that Rennenkampf ordered his units not to shell areas in Germany that belonged to his relatives and issued them “protection letters” to safeguard their estates from looting. The tsar refuses to believe the stories at first, but his cousin Grand Duke Dmitry persuades him otherwise. Rennenkampf is summarily dismissed and investigated.
However, according to the French ambassador Maurice Paléologue, Rennenkampf is not to blame for the rout of the Samsonov’s army: the decision to sacrifice it was taken intentionally by the High Command. On the Western Front the German army was threatening to take Paris, so the French command asked the allies to distract the Germans by all means available. Hence, Samsonov contributed to the Anglo-French victory on the Marne and helped save Paris.
The main heroes in the eyes of the Russian press are the victorious commanders in Galicia—General Nikolai Ivanov and General Mikhail Alekseyev. Lvov is occupied by the Third Army under General Nikolai Ruzsky, assisted by the Eighth Army under General Alexei Brusilov. These four commanders are extolled in the press throughout the autumn of 1914. They are the main protagonists of Russia’s war, upon whom the country’s military and political fate hinges.
Though, not everyone considers Ivanov, Alekseyev, Ruzsky, Brusilov, and Supreme Commander Nikolai Nikolaevich to be brilliant strategists. Another grand duke, Nicholas Mikhailovich, a friend of the late Tolstoy and a well-known historian, the most educated member of the imperial family, is sure that the early victory in autumn 1914 paved the way to eventual defeat. The commanders do nothing to protect their soldiers, and the losses of the victorious Russians (killed, wounded, or captured) are comparable to those of the vanquished Austrians. The country’s finest forces have already perished, Nicholas Mikhailovich believes, so the war will now have to be waged with poorly trained recruits, meaning almost certain defeat in spring 1915.
THE OMNIPOTENT VYRUBOVA
As soon as the war breaks out, many women in the imperial family become nurses, known as “sisters of mercy.” Olga, the tsar’s own sister, goes to the front. Empress Alexandra sets up an infirmary at Tsarskoye Selo, where she, her daughters, and Vyrubova help wounded soldiers.
Anna Vyrubova goes everywhere with Alexandra and feeds her with reports about every stare and incautious word. There are enemies in the woodwork, it seems. The officers at the infirmary become accustomed to Alexandra’s visits and cease to accord her due respect. Vyrubova advises her to go less frequently to the infirmary as their punishment.
On 2 January 1915 Vyrubova takes a train from Tsarskoye Selo to Petrograd. About six miles into the journey, it comes off the rails. Vyrubova, who was traveling in the first carriage, is found beneath the rubble. She is placed on a makeshift stretcher and taken to a lodge for the wounded and dying. Her memoirs recount her emotions in detail. She lies on the floor for four hours without assistance. The doctor finally arrives and says: “She’s dying, don’t touch her.” It is then that Rasputin arrives, having recovered from his own ordeal in Siberia, and declares that Vyrubova “will live, but remain a cripple.”
As a result, the thirty-year-old Vyrubova becomes like another dependent daughter to the empress, and starts to behave like a capricious child. The empress visits her every day and practically abandons the infirmary. Vyrubova starts to feel important and even allows herself to reproach Rasputin for not praying enough for her health. Other members of Alexandra’s entourage start to despise her.
Rasputin is right. Vyrubova does indeed survive, but spends the rest of her life in a wheelchair or on crutches.
GRAND DUKE ANDREI
Come winter, the fighting on all fronts subsides to be replaced by intrigues inside the High Command and the imperial court. They are meticulously documented by a young officer, the supreme commander’s nephew and another of the tsar’s cousins, the son of the late Vladimir and his wife Miechen, and the lover of Matilda Kschessinskaya, Grand Duke Andrei. He is the only member of the imperial family to have been present at the trial of Gershuni, and was the one to persuade the tsar to deprive Diaghilev of government patronage.
In the army Grand Duke Andrei is a minor figure. An avid gambler, even during the war he spends more time in the restaurants and casinos of Warsaw than at the front. When he is commended for an award, he confesses that he has never been in the zone of military operations and does not deserve it.
According to Grand Duke Andrei’s diary, it is easy to see how the attitude of the officer corps changes over the winter of 1915. After the destruction of the army’s most combat-ready units, more and more soldiers surrender to captivity, often entire divisions. “Everyone is now afraid for their own skin,” writes Grand Duke Andrei. The officers discuss what to do: deprive the capitulators of Russian citizenship or shoot them (assuming they survive captivity)?
Yesterday’s triumphant military leaders are losing their resolve. General Ruzsky, victor of Lvov, is appointed commander-in-chief of the Northern Front. He quarrels incessantly with his former head, the commander-in-chief of the Southern Front, General Ivanov. Each commander argues that, given the circumstances, retreat is the best option for them, while asserting that the other commanders should go on the offensive.
In the winter of 1915 Nicholas II asks Grand Duke Andrei if it is true that General Ruzsky is addicted to morphine. Andrei is shocked by the question. The tsar is known for his delicacy and desire to avoid bluntness. Andrei himself has issues with Rutzsky. The general does not communicate with his soldiers and barely leaves his quarters for fear of catching cold. He is very religious and carries a huge icon everywhere he goes. At the front there are rumors that Ruzsky is about to be dismissed and replaced by Kuropatkin, the former war minister and anti-hero of the Russo-Japanese War.
On 18 March Ruzsky is indeed dismissed for health reasons and replaced with Alekseyev. Grand Duke Andrei reproaches the new commander for having no empathy with the troops and for sugar-coating reality by reporting only successes. Andrei’s irritation is perhaps explained by the fact that he dreams of victories, but the cautious Alekseyev issues an order to retreat.
SPIES AND SHELLS
The main reason for the setbacks is that the Russian army has run out of artillery shells and cartridges. The War Ministry did not plan for a long-term war, expecting to finish it in six months. Unsurprisingly, the army blames War Minister Sukhomlinov. Supreme Commander Nikolai Nikolaevich goes so far as to accuse Sukhomlinov of espionage and treason, refusing to countenance the view that inadequate training, incompetence, and corruption are the main factors. The supreme commander is on the lookout for saboteurs—the army’s failings are all down to traitors, he believes. He is not alone. The High Command and Petrograd are also in the grip of spy mania.
On the night of 19-20 February, Colonel Myasoyedov (who fought a duel with Guchkov) and fifteen others, including his wife (a close friend of Ekaterina Sukhomlinova, the wife of the war minister), are arrested on suspicion of espionage. It is a serious blow to Sukhomlinov’s reputation.
For the grand duke, Nikolai Nikolaevich, it is a clear-cut case: “We need to put an end to this affair as soon as possible.” He demands that a guilty verdict be delivered before Holy Week, when, according to tradition, death sentences are not carried out. Myasoyedov is executed on 20 March, despite the lack of evidence—the supreme commander does not need any.
Myasoyedov’s execution is a high-profile event. Everyone believes in his guilt, which prompts a witch-hunt for other spies and traitors. Alexander Guchkov becomes known as the man who unmasked “Myasoyedov the spy” long before the war even began.
In the midst of the Myasoyedov affair, on 9 March, Russian troops gain another victory when they take Przemysl Fortress. The public rejoices and glorifies the military genius of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. No one suspects that this will be the Russian army’s last success of 1915.
By early April, the German troops are advancing to the north, where they seize the territories of modern Latvia and Lithuania. Simultaneously, an Austro-German offensive breaks through the Russian line at Galicia. In late May they retake Przemysl from the Russians, followed by Lvov in June. The “great retreat of the Russian army” begins.
GET THEE TO A NUNNERY
On 13 May the leaders of the Young Turks movement issue a law on the deportation of most of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. That same day, the newspaper Voice of Moscow publishes an article demanding the deportation of all subjects of Germany and Austria-Hungary living in Russia’s second capital—two thousand people in all. The paper was founded by Guchkov, a Russian admirer of the Young Turks, and is the official mouthpiece of his Octobrist Party. May 17th sees the appointment of Felix Yusupov Sr. as the new commander of the Moscow Military District, and by 23 May he has ordered the deportation from Moscow of all subjects of states that are at war with Russia.
The defeats at the front cause a wave of anti-German publications in the press: “Battling the secret influence of the Germans,” “German espionage in Russia,” “The German stranglehold on music,” and “Moscow merchants in the fight against German dominance” are all headings in Guchkov’s Voice of Moscow. The anti-German mood is naturally shared by the supreme commander. The High Command decides to deport all Germans living in the front-line areas, including the indigenous inhabitants of the Baltic regions. They are forcibly evicted at their own expense.
The anti-German propaganda even affects Empress Alexandra. An ethnic German by birth, she was born and lived in Germany until the age of eight. Her brother, Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse, serves in the German army. The accusations soon extend to Alexandra’s sister Ella, despite the latter’s impeccable reputation and enormous popularity in Moscow. Rather outlandishly, she is said to be a German spy and rumored to be hiding her brother inside the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent.
It all leads to an anti-German pogrom in Moscow, which begins on 26 May when several women try to find employment with the charity organization of Grand Duchess Ella, but are turned away. They start complaining, and soon an anti-German throng assembles by the home of the governor-general. Several thousand people gather in no time at all. The governor-general does not disperse them. Neither does the head of city police, Andrianov, who says that “the crowd is good, cheerful and patriotic.” There begin three days of violence and looting. Mobs force their ways into shops, private houses, and apartments, demanding to see the owners’ documents. If the surname sounds German, everything is smashed. Five people are killed, and hundreds of shops destroyed. On the third day, the crowd gathers on Red Square and hurls insults at the empress and her sister, demanding that they be exiled to a convent. They also call for Rasputin to be hanged and for the tsar to abdicate in favor of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich.
The Moscow City Duma convenes on 28 May. One of its members announces in horror that people are saying that the government has sanctioned four days of pogroms. A modern Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre is again expected. Only on the fourth day are the troops brought in to quell the unrest. Twelve people lie dead as a result. Nicholas and Alexandra are briefed in detail about what has happened. The empress is irritated and angered by the anti-German hysteria—but even more so by the popularity of the supreme commander.
EVERYTHING FOR VICTORY
The setbacks in the war stir society. As early as March the chairman of the Duma, Rodzianko, proposes that the country’s rich industrialists should start supplying the army. The supreme commander instructs War Minister Sukhomlinov to arrange a meeting between big business and the heads of the Main Artillery Directorate.
Pavel Ryabushinsky spends the entire winter and spring at the front, where he oversees the setting up of mobile hospitals and infirmaries. On 15 May he receives a message that Moscow’s industrialists have nominated him for the position of head of the stock exchange committee. Ryabushinsky returns to Moscow. His newspaper, Morning of Russia, for the first time raises the topic of big business becoming involved in the war effort. It could not do so before, because the existing censorship forbade writing about problems in the army.
It marks the start of a new phase in Russian politics and the war: big business proposes to save the army, but wants political power in return.
On 27 May Petrograd hosts the Industrial and Commercial Congress, where Ryabushinsky proposes that private industry should start producing shells and rifles at its own expense. For this purpose, military-industrial committees should be set up consisting of officers and business representatives to coordinate the production and supply of weapons to the army. Ryabushinsky’s speech makes a deep impression on both participants and journalists: “Never before has the challenge of the ‘third estate’ to the obsolete forces of Russian statehood been so boldly expressed,” writes Stock Exchange News.
Rodzianko attends the congress, but is afraid that the entrepreneurs’ appeals will seem too revolutionary to the authorities, and that Interior Minister Maklakov will disperse the gathering and arrest the leaders.
After Ryabushinsky’s speech, the creation of a central military-industrial committee and a regional network is discussed. Guchkov is nominated as the chairman of the central body, with Konovalov as his deputy, while Ryabushinsky heads the Moscow committee. Finally, the congress participants demand the convocation of the State Duma. The proposal is strongly supported by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich.
Not only industrialists but also the whole of society takes up the cause. Since the state has failed to defend the country, volunteers must do the job. “The whole of Russia should become a vast military organization, a gigantic arsenal for the army,” says Prince Lvov, chairman of the Union of Zemstvos and the Union of Towns.
But the proposals do not please the empress. “It is proposed that you should order factories to manufacture shells,” the empress writes to her husband. “Just demand to see a list of factories and then select a few. It’s better to do it yourself than through commissions that spend weeks chattering without solving anything.”
However, the government’s decisive meeting on this matter is held not in Petrograd, but at the High Command. Under pressure from society and the supreme commander, the tsar dismisses Sukhomlinov and appoints General Polivanov, a friend of Guchkov and a member of his circle, as the new war minister. Sukhomilov’s removal is followed by that of other ministers non grata: the interior minister, the justice minister, and the “minister of the church.”
A new government is formed and factories start producing munitions, but the catastrophe at the front continues. “The Germans’ overwhelming artillery and inexhaustible supplies of shells are forcing us to retreat,” the newly appointed War Minister Polivanov reports at a government meeting on 16 July. “Our artillery is forced to remain silent even during major clashes. The enemy bears almost no losses, whereas our people are being killed by the thousands.”
Goremykin did not plan to convene the State Duma until August, but parliament meets in early July. A week later German troops take Warsaw. The Duma demands an investigation to ascertain whether Sukhomlinov is a traitor (like his sidekick Myasoyedov) or simply a corrupt official. Also on the agenda is the resignation of Grand Duke Sergei, the head of the Artillery Department, who is also suspected of corruption: his mistress, Matilda Kschessinskaya, is said to have interfered in the placement of defense contracts and received large bribes from factories in return for preferential treatment.
Russian troops withdraw from Kaunas (a city in modern Lithuania, then named Kovno) on 9 August and from Grodno (a city in modern Belarus) on 19 August; the Germans are advancing towards Riga (today, the capital of Latvia). The great retreat continues as the situation becomes increasingly desperate. There is even talk of moving the tsar and the government from Petrograd to Moscow.
A MOSCOW ORGY
On 1 June Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, a former Moscow governor, brings Nicholas II a report—having waited patiently for all the details in it to be confirmed. It tells that on the night of 26 March Rasputin and some cohorts visited Yar, a fashionable restaurant for the Moscow Bohemia. Everyone was drinking, singing, and dancing. The inebriated Rasputin began to boast in front of strangers (mostly a female choir) that his shirt had been sewn by the empress herself (whom he called “Mama” and “old lady”). Then, according to the police report, Rasputin exposed his genitals while talking with the singers, before dancing around in a trance, oblivious to his surroundings. Rumors of the “Yar orgy” spread throughout Moscow, and witnesses confirm them during the subsequent investigation.
The investigation is the catalyst for the year’s main political intrigue. Rasputin defends himself, describing the Yar story as slander concocted by enemies of the tsar. He easily persuades the empress of his version of events, for “Our Friend” (as she calls Rasputin in her letters) can do no wrong. Alexandra is convinced that she is surrounded by ill-wishers. Rasputin listens to her attentively, praises those whom she likes, and curses those whom she does not. It is most likely during these conversations that the idea of evil forces conniving against Nicholas II is born.
Above all, Alexandra and Rasputin dislike Nikolai Nikolaevich. It is said in Petrograd that relations between the preacher and the supreme commander deteriorated when the former wanted to visit the High Command and duly sent the latter a telegram: “I will come and console you,” to which the grand duke allegedly replied: “Come and I will hang you.” In fact, matters are far more complicated. Grand Dukes “Nikolasha” and “Petyusha” (Peter Nikolaevich), and their Montenegrin wives, have long known Rasputin. They believe all the stories emanating from the high clergy. Rasputin and Vyrubova, in turn, feed gossip to the empress about the supreme commander: that the Montenegrins want to make him king of Galicia or Poland, that the people call him Nicholas III. It hits home. The empress is vexed by his rising political influence as well as by the creation of the military-industrial committees and the government meetings he holds at the High Command.
Besides Nikolasha, the empress and Rasputin collectively view the enemy as the “Moscow clique,” which includes Alexandra’s sister, Grand Duchess Ella, who hates Rasputin and tries to voice her concerns about him. The clique also features Deputy Interior Minister Dzhunkovsky and the new minister of the church, Samarin, plus a fair few anti-Rasputin Muscovites.
By July, the jigsaw puzzle of suspicion is nearly complete: the supreme commander and his brother, together with the Montenegrin princesses, are hatching a plot. They allegedly want to exile the empress to Moscow and relocate to Petrograd. Two months later the empress openly tells her relatives, including Aunt Miechen, that she fears a conspiracy.
But there is no evidence of a plot, other than Alexandra’s inner conviction. In early August she and Rasputin persuade Nicholas II to dismiss his uncle, the supreme commander, and exile him to the position of viceroy of the Caucasus, and to assume command of the army himself.
On 5 August, after supper, the tsar asks his family to pray for him as he enters the next room to announce his decision to the assembled ministers. Vyrubova gives him an icon. The meeting lasts for several hours. Unable to bear it, Alexandra takes the children for a walk in the park outside and peeks through the window into the meeting room.
Nicholas II returns in good cheer: “I was resolute. Look how I’m sweating! After listening to all the long boring ministerial speeches, I said: ‘Gentlemen! My will is made of iron. I am leaving for the High Command in two days.’ Some of the ministers looked crestfallen.”
Almost all the assembled ministers vainly try to dissuade the emperor. Nicholas’ mother is pole-axed by the news: “Grigory’s evil spirit has returned. A[lexandra] wants Nicky to take over as supreme commander in place of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. One has to be insane to want such a thing.” On 12 August, she visits her son to try to change his mind, for everyone will say that he is obeying Rasputin’s orders. They speak for two hours, but Nicholas does not back down. “It is not Nicky, it is not him. He is sweet, honest and kind. It is all her doing,” the empress dowager complains to her nephew, Grand Duke Andrei, after talking with her son. Andrei, for his part, does not consider it to be so bad—the arrival of the tsar could inspire the troops.
Nicholas appoints General Mikhail Alekseyev as his chief of staff. Henceforth, it is Alekseyev who will de facto lead the entire Russian army, since Nicholas II knows nothing of military affairs and has no interest in them.
THE SOCIETY HATES YOU
In August the investigation into the orgy at the Yar restaurant is coming to an end. An imperial aide-de-camp journeys to Moscow to interrogate the witnesses once again. Whether the new investigator formulates the questions differently, or makes it clear that Rasputin should not be slandered, is unknown. In any case, the witnesses change their testimony. They now say that everything was perfectly innocuous and that Rasputin did not mention the imperial family or take off his trousers. Dzhunkovsky is dismissed from the Interior Ministry and sent to the front. Also fired are the tsar’s old friend and adjutant Vladi Orlov and Felix Yusupov Sr., who hates Rasputin, gets on well with Nikolai Nikolaevich, and sees the underhanded plotting of the “German party” everywhere.
At the same time, a new scandal erupts: on the way to his native village aboard the steamship Tovarpar, Rasputin gets drunk and starts flinging money around. He takes some soldiers to the onboard restaurant, forces them to sing, and threatens the other passengers. No one dares report his behavior to the authorities or the tsar.
“Madness is to isolate oneself and discard one’s truly loyal friends,” the tsar’s mother writes in her diary. In conversation with Grand Duchess Miechen and her son, Grand Duke Andrei, she says that she is afraid for her son, who, she believes, has not a single devoted person left—as in the time of Pavel I, who in the last year of his life began to distance himself from loyal supporters and was eventually assassinated by members of his inner circle. “The grievous end of our great-grandfather looms before her in all its horror,” writes Miechen.
The whole family blames the situation on Alexandra. But whereas the empress dowager hates her, Miechen feels sympathy. According to the prevailing gossip, in a private conversation she tells Alexandra (apparently with the best of intentions) that society hates her. Alexandra, in no need of tough love, ends their relationship.
THE CABINET OF DEFENSE
At that very moment, Pavel Ryabushinsky is promoting his idea of creating a “defense cabinet.” On 4 August he proposes to his colleagues that they collectively solicit the tsar to appoint a government consisting of representatives of the public. According to the police report (the police have an agent among the participants), Ryabushinsky says that the “incompetence and inactivity of the ruling classes” and “the government’s inability to secure victory” can no longer be tolerated, calling for steps to be taken to seize executive and legislative power. The author of the police report believes that the Moscow City Duma and the Moscow stock exchange committee will soon demand a change of government.
Ryabushinsky does not hide in the shadows: as early as 13 August Morning of Russia publishes a proposed list of future government members, the “Cabinet of Defense.” The current chairman of the Duma, Rodzianko, is to be prime minister, with Guchkov as interior minister, Milyukov as foreign minister, Konovalov as trade and industry minister, and the Kadet and head of the Masonic supreme council Nekrasov as transport minister. The other key positions are to be left for members of the current government: for instance, Polivanov could remain in the post of war minister and Krivoshein as agriculture minister.
That same day the leaders of the Progressive Party begin talks about unifying with representatives of other factions and mounting a joint struggle for a new “Duma” government. Krivoshein, the current agriculture minister, supports the idea of a government of national confidence and offers the tsar a compromise: appoint Polivanov as prime minister and instruct him to form a cabinet. Nicholas II refuses.
On 19 August, on behalf of the Moscow stock exchange committee, Ryabushinsky sends a telegram to the tsar with a request for the government to include “persons enjoying broad public trust” and for them to be granted full authority. The next day he even travels to Petrograd with a delegation of representatives of society, expecting to be received by the tsar. The royal reply is that the merchants should stick to taking care of the wounded and not meddle in politics.
Finally, on 25 August, the Duma signs an agreement on the creation of the Progressive Bloc, which includes the Kadets, the Octobrists, the Progressive Party, and even some nationalists. The declaration on the creation of the bloc calls for “new persons entrusted with the confidence of the country to join the Council of Ministers forthwith.” On the same day, Ryabushinsky gathers the merchants together for an emergency sitting of the Moscow military-industrial committee: “We will not send any more telegrams,” he says. “We have nothing to fear; they will meet us halfway out of necessity, for our [Russia’s] armies are scattering before the enemy.” The meeting backs the Progressive Bloc’s demand, and a resolution to that effect is adopted at the next Old Believer congress.
Moscow’s merchants have already raised 4.5 million roubles* for the military-industrial committee, bought two plants, equipped them with machinery from the United States and Sweden, and laid railway lines to supply them. In the autumn of 1915 the factories begin to produce shells. Over the remainder of the year, rifle production almost doubles, shell production nearly triples, and machine-gun production quadruples.
In September Guchkov and Ryabushinsky are elected to the State Council as representatives of industry. But the negotiations on the creation of a new government do not resume. The main supporter of the “Cabinet of Defense” among the acting ministers is Alexander Krivoshein, who resigns, having mistakenly believed that he could be the “de facto prime minister” under Goremykin. Nestled in the prime ministerial chair, Goremykin is not a feeble old man at all, but an immovable bureaucratic monster. Having failed to form a government of national confidence, Krivoshein leaves to work for the Red Cross at the front.
On 3 September the tsar issues a decree to suspend the State Duma indefinitely. On the eve of the dissolution, Duma member Alexander Kerensky phones his friend Zinaida Gippius. “What will happen now?” she asks. “There will be … something beginning with ‘a,’” he replies, reluctant to say the word in full, for the phone is tapped. He means anarchy.
* In the early twenty-first century large business representatives will still be very careful when dealing with the authorities. The Yukos affair was triggered by Mikhail Khodorkovsky holding a report on corruption at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs’ convention in the presence of Vladimir Putin. After that no more so-called “oligarchs” took a chance with publicly criticizing the authorities. On the contrary, representatives of large business have publicly stated that they are ready to hand over all their property to the state if need be.
* About $6,591,666,667 in 2017.
* About $52,733,333 in 2017.
* Territory on the border of modern Belarus and Poland where the Belavezha Accords were signed in 1991 declaring the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
* About $263,666,667 in 2017.
* Differences between Kokovtsov and Krivoshein are very similar to the dilemma that Russia will face exactly 100 years later, in the “fat noughties.” Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, just like his predecessor, will be advocating for a stabilization fund while many of his opponents will insist that excess profit from oil trade should be invested in infrastructure development and modernization of the Russian economy. This conflict will end almost the same way as the one of the early twentieth century: the “fat noughties” will come to an end and no reforms will have taken place.
* About $131,833 in 2017.
* Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia in 1917-1925 elected for the reinstated Moscow Patriarchate.
* Similar to Vladimir Putin’s 2013 bill banning Russian officials from holding foreign bank accounts.
† About $92,283,333 in 2017.
* About $59,325,000 in 2017.
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