The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

19. CITIZEN ROMANOV

KERENSKY had blundered badly in arming the Bolsheviks in the face of Kornilov’s advancing columns. He had sacked him as Supreme Commander and placed him under arrest, but in humbling Kornilov he had lost the trust of the other generals. He had made his bed in the extremist camp and he now had to lie on it. Declaring a republic on September 1 had done nothing to win over the workers. That month, there were strikes across Russia, and mass unemployment as industrial plants closed and manufacturing slumped. As Kerensky’s stock fell, that of the Bolsheviks rose. ‘Down with the war’, they cried, a call that was echoed throughout the Petrograd garrison and beyond.

The Bolshevik coup, rumoured for mid-September, came later but when it did come Kerensky had no Savage Division, no Krymov, and no Kornilov to crush it. Kerensky was on his own, as he discovered when the three Cossack divisions he had ordered to the defence of the capital refused ‘to saddle up’.¹ The bulk of the Petrograd garrison also refused to rally to him, and for the defence of the Winter Palace — which he had made the centre and symbol of his power — he had to rely on officer cadets and a ‘women’s battalion’.²

At Gatchina, the Bolshevik threat dominated discussion from October 19, when Michael noted that ‘an action… is expected daily’. Five days later he wrote that ‘all bridges in Petrograd are swung apart because of the action expected every moment by the Bolsheviks’. The next day, Monday, October 25, Petrograd fell. ‘The Winter Palace is occupied by the Bolsheviks… The Council of the Republic is dismissed by the Bolsheviks and the military staff of the District is in their hands. There is shooting in some streets. The whole garrison went over to the Bolsheviks… Kerensky has gone to Dno to summon help.’³

The following day he recorded that ‘all power is in the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committee. All the banks, ministries are seized. The Winter Palace, which was heavily bombarded was defended by cadets and the Women’s Battalion and many lives were lost. All Cabinet ministers were arrested and are in the Kresty prison. In short, the Bolsheviks have won a complete victory… but for how long?’ ⁴

Although Petrograd had fallen, Gatchina was still in the hands of loyal government troops, reinforced by artillery and tough-looking Cossacks. The local Bolsheviks fled at the first sight of them. Kerensky, having abandoned the capital, now turned up at Gatchina Palace, defiantly promising a counter-offensive.

Walking about the town, Michael and Natasha were briefly encouraged. There were reports of more troops on their way. Cavalry, guns, and armed soldiers seemed to be everywhere, though there were not yet enough for General Peter Krasnov, commander of the diminished Third Cavalry Corps; even so, he seemed confident.

In his own show of confidence, and as signal to the townspeople that all would be well, Michael and Natasha went to the local cinema, in the evening of Friday, October 27 — two days after Petrograd fell — to see the film She Put Him To Sleep Forever, starring the Italian actress Franchese Bertini.⁵ It was a curious place to find the last man proclaimed Emperor of All the Russias, but sitting in the packed cinema, surrounded by soldiers and townsfolk, it was a gesture intended to show Michael’s contempt for the Bolsheviks and his faith in Krasnov, now marching to Tsarskoe Selo to do battle with the enemy.

In the event, it would be a disaster. Heavily out-numbered, Krasnov was soundly beaten, retreating with the remnants of his Corps after what would be the only battle between loyal troops and the triumphant Bolsheviks. It was the end for Kerensky, no longer dictator but a hunted man. It was also the end of any hope that Michael had that the Bolshevik uprising would leave him untouched in Gatchina. He had to get out before they came for him.

He still had his Finnish permit for two cars, but how much time had he? On Monday, October 30, Johnson was sent to the palace to find the answer to that. He returned at 11.30 p.m., his face grim. ‘The position of Gatchina is critical,’ he reported.⁶ It was now or never.

With that, the household began packing valuables, working until 4 a.m. with the ever-practical Natasha ‘sitting down and prising out the precious stones from various Oriental orders’ which Michael had been awarded over the years.⁷ After a few hours’ sleep they resumed packing and continued doing so for the rest of that day. Michael went out and returned to report that a truce had been declared ‘until midday tomorrow’ — Wednesday, November 1.⁸ It was going to be touch-and-go.

The plan was that the children and Miss Neame, would leave early in the morning in the Packard, and go to Batova, an estate owned by Natasha’s close friend Nadine Vonlyarlarskaya, sister of the lawyer Vladimir Nabokov, 15 miles to the south of Gatchina. Nadine and her young daughter would go with them, and they would wait there until Michael and Natasha arrived in the second car.

Arriving safely, the car started back to Gatchina to pick up possessions and provisions while the children, Nadine and Miss Neame sat down to breakfast. ‘Suddenly the manageress of the estate came hurriedly in to say that Bolshevik centres were being formed in all surrounding villages; that our car had been seen coming to the house; and that the Commissars intended to arrest the occupants, thinking that they were members of the Provisional Government trying to escape.’⁹ All telephone lines to the house had already been cut.

Knowing that Michael had to be warned if he was not to fall into the same trap, Nadine quickly saddled a horse and rode off to the local hospital and used their telephone to call him. There was only one line working but she got through to Nikolaevskaya Street. Speaking in English to confuse eavesdroppers she told Michael what had happened. He replied that he would send the Packard back with a message.

The little party waited anxiously all day but it was not until 8 p.m. that the Packard returned, with an armed Bolshevik sitting next to the chauffeur.¹⁰

The plan was in ruins. Even before the truce deadline passed, Gatchina had fallen into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and sailors had turned up at Michael’s house and confiscated both the Packard and his Rolls-Royce.¹¹ Their only concession was that, Michael having persuaded the new local Bolshevik commandant Semen Roshal that the children had gone only on a day trip, to permit the Packard to return and bring them home.

At least they still had a home. Kerensky at that moment was a refugee, hiding in a peasant’s cottage. The Provisional Government, born on March 3, was no more.

THREE days later, on Saturday November 4, the Bolshevik commandant Roshal returned to Nikolaevskaya Street. Roshal was a prominent figure in the Petrograd party, and a leader of the Kronstadt sailors whose revolutionary fervour had made them the ‘shock troops’ of the Bolshevik coup. Roshal produced an order of the Military Revolutionary Committee that Michael was to be taken to the Bolshevik headquarters in Petrograd. Michael protested, and after a long argument Roshal compromised: Michael could select his own accommodation in the capital and he would be free to go out, provided he stayed in the city. ¹² Once more Michael was under arrest, but on rather more generous terms than had been the case under Kerensky ten weeks earlier. Yes, he would wait, said Roshal, until Michael could arrange something. He would come back tomorrow.

Michael telephoned 12 Millionnaya Street. Princess Putyatina had gone to Odessa, but her sister was staying there with her husband and brother. They would be delighted to have Michael and Natasha join them, but there was no room for the children. Michael called Matveev. The children and Miss Neame would stay with him.¹³

The following afternoon, Sunday, Roshal re-appeared with both of Michael’s car and a squad of sailors. At 5.30 p.m. the household set off in convoy, followed by Roshal and two truckloads of guards.

Having seen the children safely into Matveev’s apartment, Michael drove to Millionnaya Street, where Princess Putyatina’s brother-in-law came out to greet them. Michael put a finger to his lips, as warning to him to be careful what he said in front of the two armed sailors standing behind him, flanking Roshal, ‘a tall man, with dark, piercing eyes’, and dressed in a soldier’s tunic and fur cap. Roshal motioned them to go into the building, and once inside repeated his instructions on the terms of his ‘arrest’. He then left, leaving the two sailors as sentry on the door.¹⁴

Although officially ‘under surveillance’, the Bolsheviks left him alone over the next days. He walked around the city, going first to the square in front of the Winter Palace where he ‘admired its appearance’ as he caustically put it. ‘All the walls were spotted with bullets, and also the windows’.

Bolshevik propaganda would later portray ‘the storming of the Winter Palace’ in heroic terms as if a triumphant victory against a determined enemy, but it was nothing like that. There were only enough defenders to guard three doors, and the Red Guards, soldiers and sailors massed in the palace square simply broke in through the undefended doors and disarmed the tiny garrison once inside. The government ministers who had been working there, including Tereshchenko, were arrested. Three cadets were wounded, and six sailors were said to have been killed in the square earlier, but storm it was not.

On his return to Millionnaya Street, Michael and Natasha entertained friends. The conversation inevitably turning to politics, it became so heated with Natasha and the others so ‘worked up and shouting’, that ‘we had to employ drastic measures’, Michael suggesting that he should be given ‘a chairman’s bell to restore order’ and if that failed, ‘a revolver’.¹⁵

Eight days later, on Monday, November 13, Michael was told that he could go back to Gatchina under ‘house arrest’, though again the conditions were so lax that the order seemed not worth the paper it was written on.¹⁶

Although Michael was returning with everyone else, Natasha decided to stay on in Millionnaya Street for a few more days, though her motive was wholly practical: she was determined to go into the state Bank and rescue her valuables held there in a strong-box. The bank had been closed because of a strike, but it was due to re-open in two days’ time. She would be back on Saturday.

When he got home he dashed off a letter to her in Millionnaya Street, laconically addressing the envelope to ‘Comrade Nathalie Sergeyevna Brasova from Comrade MAR’. He reported that ‘two of our people kept watch in the house during the night because our guard had been removed, but, as of tomorrow, we are supposed to have a guard again. Everything is quiet and comfortable here, it was a great pleasure to return home and breathe the wonderful fresh air. Johnnie is going to town tomorrow and will call at Millionnaya for a minute, and will come back with you on Saturday. It is now 9.30 p.m. and he and I are going for a little sledge ride in the wonderful moonlight…’¹⁷

Natasha got what she wanted at the bank. Telling officials that she needed access to her strong-box in order to examine papers, she was escorted into the vault and the box given to her. When she left the bank her muff was ‘stuffed full of some of her more valuable and portable jewellery’.¹⁸ She would need it all in the days to come.

Although Michael was released from his notional ‘house arrest’ shortly after his return to Gatchina, he would not be free from minor harassment. On November 25, 1917, a party of soldiers arrived at the house with an order authorising them to confiscate wine and provisions. They took ‘80 bottles of our wine and a quantity of sugar…some bottles were drunk and smashed on the spot’.¹⁹

Determined to put an end to such petty looting and hooliganism, and to obtain some form of guarantee that the Bolsheviks would ‘leave me in peace’, Michael went back to Petrograd next day and walked into the party headquarters to confront one of Lenin’s henchmen, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, Secretary of the Soviet of the People’s Commissars. After Michael’s protestations, Bonch-Bruevich drew up a permit on official paper declaring Michael to have ‘free residence’ as an ordinary citizen.²⁰

For the next three months the Bolsheviks left Michael Romanov in peace. He walked around the town unmolested, with people still bowing to him in the street. What he had not realised was that local volunteers had organised a discreet watch over him in case of trouble, and were also guarding his house against hooliganism.

When he did find out about this private protection, he made it known than he did not need it and that ‘nobody will touch me here. I do not have the right to give orders, but I want the guard to be removed.’²¹

One change for the better at Gatchina was the appointment of the young Vladimir Gushchik as palace commissar. Destined one day to be a celebrated writer, Gushchik still thought of Michael as a Grand Duke, and he would say of him that he had ‘three rare qualities: kindness, simplicity, and honesty…None of the parties were hostile towards him. Even socialists of all colours treated him with respect…’²²

Gushchik became a close friend of Johnson and so trusted that he even became guardian of confidential papers which Michael did not feel it was safe to keep in his house. He proved himself a valuable friend and ally, and did what he could to make life as tolerable as the situation allowed. To protect Michael he would later burn the confidential papers entrusted to him;²³ what they would have revealed about Michael and Natasha’s political contacts and activities is unknown.

But that would be later. Outwardly, life in Nikolaevskaya Street had settled down to so ordinary a routine that it might almost have been that the revolution had passed him by. When Christmas came ‘we lit the tree, danced around it, and played cat-and-mouse. The children made masks and danced around the room in a comical way…’ On New Year’s Eve ‘we sat down to eat at 12, not so much to greet the New Year as to say goodbye to damned 1917 which brought so much evil and misfortune to everyone’.²⁴

THE New Year brought no sign that 1918 was going to be any better. The delayed elections for the Constituent Assembly, which the socialists had insisted should go ahead as the price of their support for the Bolsheviks, got them the victory they had expected, with the Bolsheviks capturing less than 25% of the vote and winning only some 170 of the 700-plus seats decided, less than half of those won by the Socialist Revolutionaries, which emerged, with some hundred results still to come in, as the majority party and seemingly destined to become Russia’s first elected government. ²⁵

This was a mandate for a democratic republic, not a constitutional monarchy. Subject to a formal resolution, Michael’s caretaker role as Emperor appeared to be over. But when the Assembly met for its opening session on January 5, the Bolsheviks closed it down that same day by sending in armed and drunken troops, and that was the end of that — the last hope that Russia would decide its own future as Michael had decreed in his Millionnaya Street manifesto nine months earlier.

Two prominent liberal members elected to that Assembly — Aleksandr Shingarev and F. F. Kokoshkin, both sometime ministers in the Provisional Government — were murdered immediately afterwards. Russia was no longer a monarchy, a republic, or a democracy; henceforth it was to be ruled by Bolshevik diktat, with opponents shot or arrested. Murder and robbery became commonplace.

For most ordinary people, including Michael’s staff, though not Michael himself, the war had ceased to matter. The very British governess Miss Neame was as patriotic as anyone, but ‘it had come to such a pitch of terror,’ she said later, ‘that we were all praying and waiting anxiously for the arrival of the Germans, as we then knew we would be safe’.²⁶

Fighting their own people, the Bolsheviks could not afford to continue fighting Germany. Over the next two months Michael’s diary would be dominated by the negotiations with the Germans for a separate peace. ‘What a disgrace to Russia!’ he wrote when he first heard of the talks.²⁷ They would stop and start and in the end the peace terms agreed would be worse than the ones first on offer. Signed on March 3 — the Bolsheviks had adopted the Western calendar, February 1, 1918 becoming February 14— the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended the war between Russia and Germany, and cleared the way for a civil war. Russians would now concentrate on killing each other.

For the nervous servants at Nikolaevskaya Street, the regret was that the advancing Germans had stopped short of Gatchina. ‘Everyone was in despair,’ wrote Miss Neame. It would quickly prove to be more than justified.

Four days later, at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, March 7, Michael was on his bedroom balcony, overlooking the snow-covered street beyond his garden. It was a beautiful morning, with bright sunshine. Troubled by his ‘damned stomach pains’ he was lying on his couch, beginning his diary for the previous day, noting that he had been playing the guitar in the afternoon. As he started to write: ‘In the evening…’²⁸ he was interrupted by the sight of a group of armed men running up the road towards the house. Minutes later they were on the path, and forcing their way into the house itself.

Michael heard them running up the stairs, and then they were in his bedroom, the officer in charge bursting onto the balcony.²⁹ In his hand he carried an order for the arrest of Michael and Johnson.

The order was signed by Moisei Uritsky, the head of the feared Petrograd Cheka — formally the Extraordinary Commission on the Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution, Speculation and Sabotage — and which was designed as an instrument of terror, with powers which in effect made it a law unto itself.

Miss Neame, cowering downstairs, would never forget Michael’s arrest. This time his protestations were ignored. This time there would be no negotiations, no compromises, no acceptance that he could make his own arrangements for accommodation in Petrograd, no opportunity even to pack a bag. He was pulled from his couch, and pushed out to the stairs with shouts and brandished bayonets. The cries of Natasha and the rest of the household were ignored as they were thrust aside, and Michael and Johnson marched down the path and into the trucks which had driven up to the house.

Watching him go, Miss Neame was struck by the ‘sad look in his eyes —so tired and ill, he was hurt at all the injustice’.³⁰ He would never come home ever again.

Driven to the capital, he was taken to the Smolny, once an exclusive girls’ school, a few streets beyond the Tauride Palace and now Bolshevik headquarters. Michael would quickly find that he was not just under arrest as before — he was a prisoner of the revolution.

A distressed Natasha, quickly packing a suitcase, followed Michael to the capital, catching the train, and spending the night at the home of her friend Maggie Abakanovich on the Moika. Having telephoned Millionnaya Street, she met up with Princess Putyatina next morning and together they walked to the grey-painted Smolny. Passing through the colonnaded entrance, past machine-guns and guards with fixed bayonets, they were given permission to see Michael; they found him in a large room, furnished now with eight beds and a few chairs. He was standing in a window recess, talking to Johnson as armed guards stood around, smoking and laughing loudly. When Natasha walked in, he came quickly over to her and ‘kissed her hand without speaking’.³¹

As they all sat down in the chairs and began talking quietly, a door opened and Uritsky came in, dressed in a leather jacket, high boots and a grey fur hat. Princess Putyatina remembered ‘a man of under-average height, with a prominent, fleshy nose, large lop-ears, small ferrety eyes with an expression of cold cruelty’. He gave a short nod, pulled up another chair, sat down and lit a cigarette. He refused to answer any questions about the reason for Michael’s imprisonment, and after a few vague promises about improving conditions, he got up and left.

The following day, Thursday, Natasha and Princess Putyatina returned again, but were allowed to see Michael for only thirty minutes. Desperate to do something, Natasha decided to go directly to Lenin, who was somewhere in the same building. ‘Noticing that there was a sentry in front of one of the doors, we presumed that must be his office. Natasha brusquely opened the door without giving the sentry time to bar the way,’ and marched in. Lenin, sitting at his desk, looked up startled, as Natasha firmly closed the door behind her.

The confused sentry outside made no attempt to follow her in, though he did bar the princess from doing so. She collapsed on a bench. ‘I do not know how long I waited, but I do know that I got up several times and paced the corridor nervously’. At last the door opened and Natasha peeped out, beckoning her in. The sentry hesitated, but stepped aside as the princess swept by him.

Natasha was standing in the office on her own. Lenin had disappeared through another door, promising to look into the matter, but ‘saying that it not only depended on him’. After a long wait, the inner door opened and instead of Lenin his friend Bonch-Bruevich walked in, nodded a greeting, and tried to sound reassuring. The question of Michael’s arrest would, he promised, be reviewed later in the day. No, he could not say more. ³²

It was all they could get out of him, and with that Natasha and the princess left and walked back into the capital. Was there hope? They could only reassure each other through their tears that there must be.

That evening, as Natasha waited anxiously for news, twenty-four party leaders met at the Smolny, among them Lenin and Joseph Stalin, the man who would one day succeed him. Fearing that Petrograd was too near the German lines, and the counter-revolutionary movement in Finland, the meeting was to finalise the decision to move to the greater safety of Moscow.

One of their last decisions was to decide the fate of the ‘former Grand Duke M. A. Romanov’. Given his prominence, and the potential threat he posed as a rallying point for counter-revolutionaries, not least the monarchists, the meeting was in no doubt that he could not be left behind. The answer was that he was to be exiled ‘until further notice’ to the distant Urals. Johnson was also to be exiled, but ‘shall not be accommodated in the same city’. The arrangements were ‘entrusted to Comrade Uritsky’.³³

Next morning, Friday, a protesting Natasha was refused permission to see Michael. With that she and Princess Putyatina hurried away to find Uritsky. It was a very long walk back into the centre of the capital, and down to 2 Gorokhovaya Street at the bottom of the Nevsky Prospekt; the building they were looking for, formerly the offices of the City Governor, beside the Alexander Gardens and opposite the Admiralty, was now the headquarters of the Cheka.

Natasha waited by the steps, and the princess went inside to find Uritsky. He was in his office, and motioned her in, telling her that she had come ‘just at the right time’. Michael, he told her, was to be exiled to Perm, a thousand miles away.

Shocked, the princess hurried out to the waiting Natasha, and broke the news. ‘It was a terrible blow, but she bore it with courage and resignation’.³⁴

Late that night Michael sat down in his prison room at the Smolny and wrote his farewell letter to Natasha.

Uritsky has just read to us the resolution of the Soviet of People’s Commissars ordering our immediate move to Perm. They gave us half an hour to be ready… everything has happened so unexpectedly… Don’t be disheartened, my dearest — God will help us to go through this dreadful ordeal. I kiss and most tenderly embrace you. Your Misha.³⁵

At 1 a.m. that Saturday, March 11, Michael and Johnson were driven out of the Smolny through the darkened, freezing and snow-covered streets to the dimly-lit and near-deserted Nicholas station. After three shivering hours, with no means of keeping warm, they were marched to the train which would take them into exile and to a fate it was best they could not know.