The Russian Revolution

7

Toward the Catastrophe

The whole purpose of the Progressive Bloc was to prevent revolution so as to enable the government to finish the war.

—V. V. Shulgin¹

In the second year of the war, Russia succeeded in solving her most pressing military problems. The shortages of artillery shells and rifles were largely made good by the efforts of the Defense Council and imports. The front which in the late summer of 1915 had seemed close to collapse, stabilized once the German High Command decided to suspend offensive operations in the east. By the summer of 1916, the Russian army had recovered sufficiently to launch a major offensive. But just as the front stiffened, the rear displayed alarming symptoms of malaise. In contrast to 1915, when disaffection had been largely confined to the educated elite, it now spread to the mass of the urban population. Its causes were primarily economic—namely, growing shortages of consumer goods, especially foodstuffs, and inflation. The government, treating these problems as transitory and self-correcting, did next to nothing to correct them.

The urban inhabitants of Russia, having had no previous experience with shortages and rising prices, had difficulty grasping their causes. Their instinct was to blame the government, an attitude in which they were encouraged by the liberal and radical intelligentsia. By October 1916 the discontent in the cities reached such intensity that the Department of Police in confidential reports compared the situation to 1905 and warned that another revolution could be in the offing.

In the hope of averting an explosion, the Duma resumed pressures on the government to concede it the power to make ministerial appointments, something that had become an idée fixe with a good part of its membership. This demand, which Nicholas and Alexandra stubbornly resisted, added fuel to popular passions, with the result that economic discontent acquired a political dimension. The sudden contact between the restless urban masses, with the mutinous military garrisons, and the frustrated politicians which occurred in the winter of 1916–17 produced the short circuit that sent the Imperial regime up in flames.

Although compared with the major industrial powers, Russia was poor, before the war her currency was regarded as one of the soundest in the world. The Russian Treasury followed stringent rules for the issuance of paper money. The first 600 million rubles of notes had to be backed 50 percent with gold reserves: all bank-note emissions above that sum required 100 percent gold backing. In February 1905, the Treasury had in its vaults 1,067 million rubles’ worth of bullion; with 1,250 million paper rubles in circulation, the ruble was 85 percent gold-backed.² On the eve of World War I, Russian bank notes were 98 percent backed by gold. At the time, Russia had the largest gold reserve in Europe.³

The outbreak of World War I threw Russia’s finances into disarray from which they never recovered.

The steep inflation in the latter stages of the war can be traced partly to national poverty and partly to fiscal mismanagement. Unlike the richer belligerents, Russia could not extract much of the money needed to pay for the war either from current revenues or from internal loans. It has been estimated that whereas the national per capita income of England in 1913 was $243, of France $185, and of Germany $146, Russia’s was a mere $44. And yet Russia’s war costs would be equal to England’s and inferior only to Germany’s.⁴ Even so, the government could have done more to pay for the war from revenues had it imposed direct taxes, made a greater effort to sell war bonds, and maintained state income at the prewar level. As it was, a good part of the war deficit had to be covered by emissions of paper money and foreign borrowing.

One cause of the decline of state revenues was the introduction at the outbreak of the war of prohibition on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. Russia took this measure—the first major country in the world to do so—in an effort to reduce alcoholism, which was believed responsible for the physical and moral degeneration of her inhabitants. Prohibition, however, had little effect on alcohol consumption since the closing of state-owned outlets immediately led to a rise in the output of moonshine. During the war, in addition to homemade vodka, a popular beverage was khanzha, made of fermented bread reinforced with commercial cleaning fluids. But while alcoholism did not decline, the Treasury’s income from alcohol taxes did, and these had formerly accounted for one-fourth of its revenues. These and other losses of income, such as declines in customs duties, caused a sharp drop in revenues.

During the war, the “ordinary” income of the Russian Treasury more than covered the “ordinary” part of the budget; but this part did not include the costs of the war. In 1915, “ordinary” revenues were 3 billion rubles and “ordinary” expenditures 2.2 billion; in 1916, they were 4.3 billion and 2.8 billion, respectively.⁵ But, of course, the bulk of expenses went for the war, and here “ordinary” revenues were of little help. Russia’s total wartime deficit is estimated at 30 billion rubles, half of which was covered by domestic and foreign loans and the rest by emissions of paper currency.

On July 27, 1914, the government suspended for the duration of the war (but, as it turned out, permanently) the convertibility of paper rubles into gold as well as the gold-reserve requirements for the issuance of bank notes. The Treasury was empowered to print notes upon receipt of authorization without regard to the amount of gold in its vaults. The immediate effect of this ruling was the disappearance from circulation of specie. On the outbreak of the war, the Treasury issued 1.5 billion rubles in bank notes, which had the effect of doubling the quantity of paper money. This procedure would be repeated several times in the course of the war. By January 1917, the quantity of paper in circulation had increased fourfold, according to some sources, and fivefold or even sixfold according to others.* The gold backing of paper currency declined proportionately, from 98 percent (July 1914) to 51.4 percent (January 1915), 28.7 percent (January 1916), and 16.2 percent (January 1917).⁶ This development contributed to the drop in the exchange rate of Russian currency abroad: in Stockholm, between July 1914 and January 1916, the ruble declined by 44 percent; it stayed at this level until the summer of 1917.†

Thus, in two and a half years, the amount of paper notes in Russia increased by as much as 600 percent. This compares with a 100 percent increase in France, a 200 percent increase in Germany, and no increase at all in Great Britain during the four years these countries were at war.⁷ Russia printed more money than any other belligerent power and, as a consequence, suffered more severely from inflation.

In theory, the sale of domestic bonds covered slightly more than one-quarter of the Russian wartime deficit. This sum, estimated (through October 1916) at 8 billion rubles,⁸ was, however, in some measure fictitious, for neither the population nor the banks showed much enthusiasm for Russian war bonds. The government cajoled banks to make purchases, but even so, the bonds were difficult to move. A German expert estimates that the 3 billion bond issue of October 1916 brought in only 150 million rubles.⁹ Thus, the deficit had to have been larger than the official statistics indicated.

The overwhelming bulk of foreign loans incurred during the war, totaling between 6 and 8 billion rubles, came from England, which helped finance Russia’s purchases of war matériel from herself as well as the United States and Japan.

Russia was not immediately afflicted by inflation because the suspension of exports at the beginning of the war meant that for a while the quantity of goods on the market matched and even exceeded demand. Inflation made itself felt only toward the end of 1915, rising dramatically the following year. It fed on itself as owners of commodities, especially foodstuffs, withheld them from the market in anticipation of still higher prices. The following table depicts the relationship between the emissions of paper money and the movement of prices in wartime Russia:*

Inflation not only did not hurt but positively benefited the rural population, for the peasants commanded the most valuable commodity of all, food. Descriptions of the countryside in 1915–16 concur that the village basked in unaccustomed prosperity. The military draft had claimed millions of men, easing pressures on the land and, at the same time, raising wages for farm laborers. The conscripted millions were now on the governmental payroll. True, the same draft caused seasonal labor shortages, which the employment of prisoners of war and refugees from the combat zone only partly alleviated. But the muzhik managed to cope with these difficulties, in part by curtailing the area under cultivation. He was swimming in money. It came from a variety of sources: higher prices fetched by farm produce, payments made by the government for requisitioned livestock and horses, and allowances sent to the families of soldiers. The closing of taverns also left large sums at the peasants’ disposal. The peasant saved some of this “mad money,” as it came to be known, by depositing it in government savings accounts or hoarding it at home. The rest he spent on such luxuries as “cocofee” (kakava), “shchocolate” (shchokolat), and phonographs. The more industrious used excess cash to buy land and livestock: statistics compiled in 1916 indicate that peasants owned 89.2 percent of the cultivated (arable) land in European Russia.¹⁰ Contemporary observers were struck by the prosperity of the Russian village in the second year of the war: the war was said to have put an end to its “Chinese-like” immobility.¹¹ Perhaps the best authority of all, the Department of Police, while growing increasingly alarmed over the situation in the cities, reported in the fall of 1916 that the village was “contented and calm.”¹² Such sporadic violence as occasionally erupted in the countryside was directed against neither the government nor landlords, but against the owners of the detested otruba and khutora, fellow peasants who had taken advantage of the Stolypin legislation to withdraw from the commune.¹³

Inflation and shortages bore exclusively on the urban population, which had expanded considerably from the influx of industrial workers and war refugees and the billeting of troops. The urban population is estimated to have grown from 22 to 28 million between 1914 and 1916.¹⁴ The 6 million newcomers from the rural areas swelled the ranks of peasants who had moved into the cities before the war. Like them, they were not urban inhabitants in any meaningful sense, but rather peasants who happened to live in the cities: peasants in uniform waiting to be shipped to the front, peasants employed in war industries to replace workers inducted into the armed forces, peasant peddlers. Their roots remained in the village, to which they were prepared to return at a moment’s notice, and to which, indeed, most of them would return after the Bolshevik coup.

Russia’s urban inhabitants first suffered the effects of inflation and food shortages in the fall of 1915. These shortages grew worse in 1916 and came to a head in the fall of that year. Everyone was affected: the industrial and white-collar workers and, in time, the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and even police employees. Although it is impossible to determine the matter with mathematical precision, contemporary sources agree that during 1916 the rise in prices exceeded wages by a wide margin. The workers themselves believed that while their earnings had doubled, prices had quadrupled. In October 1916, the Police Department estimated that in the preceding two years wages had risen on the average 100 percent while prices of essential goods had gone up 300 percent.¹⁵ Inflation meant that many town residents could not afford to buy even those commodities that were available. And they became less and less available as the war went on, largely because of the deterioration of transport. Russia’s principal food-growing areas as well as deposits of fossil fuels (coal and petroleum) were in the southern, southeastern, and eastern regions, at some distance from the urban and industrial areas of the north. Before the war it had been more economical to bring coal to St. Petersburg from England than from the Donets Basin. When the sea lanes to England through the Baltic were closed to Allied shipping on the outbreak of the war, the Russian capital immediately experienced fuel shortages. The supply of food was affected by two additional factors: the unwillingness of peasants to sell and the shortage of farmhands to cultivate the private estates, in peacetime a major supplier of grain to the market. By 1916, while the grain-growing regions drowned in food, the northern cities suffered shortages: here as early as February 1916 it was common to see “long queues of poor people waiting for hours in the cold for their turn at the bread-shops.”¹⁶

Alexander Khvostov, who would soon be appointed Minister of the Interior, warned already in October 1915 of looming shortages of fuel and food in the central and northwestern regions. Petrograd, in his judgment, was especially vulnerable: instead of the 405 railway cars needed daily to meet the capital city’s needs, that month it received on the average only 116.¹⁷ During 1916, the transport situation grew worse still from breakdowns of equipment caused by overuse and inadequate maintenance. Rolling stock ordered in the United States piled up at Archangel and Vladivostok for lack of facilities to move it inland.

People grumbled, but they did not, as yet, revolt: Russians patiently bore deprivations. The government’s threat to induct troublemakers into the armed forces also had a sobering effect.

The recovery of the army in 1916 surprised everyone, including Russia’s allies, who had more or less written it off. This was in good measure due to the ability of Polivanov and his associates to secure the cooperation of the Duma and the business community. The military command was now staffed with able officers who had profited from the lessons of the 1914 and 1915 campaigns. The flow of war supplies from the West which had gotten underway in mid-1915 made a great difference: in the winter of 1915–16, Russia’s allies sent her over 1 million rifles, a quantity equal to the annual output of the home industries.¹⁸ Adequate supplies of artillery shells were also assured. After Polivanov had taken over the Ministry of War, Russia began to place orders for artillery shells abroad: in 1915–16, she obtained from the West over 9 million 76mm shells as well as 1.7 million medium-caliber shells: this compared with 28.5 million and 5.1 million such shells produced at home. Of the 26,000 machine guns delivered to the armed forces in 1915–16, nearly 11,000 came from abroad, mainly the United States.¹⁹

In early 1916, the Allies prepared for the Somme offensive, scheduled to begin on June 25. It was agreed with the Russian General Staff that ten days prior to its opening—that is, on June 2/15—the Russians would attack Galicia: this operation, it was hoped, would finish off the Austrians. The command of the four armies assigned to the operation was entrusted to General Aleksei Brusilov:

The preparations ordered by Brusilov’s staff were thorough beyond anything hitherto seen on the Eastern Front. The front-trenches were sapped forward, in places to within fifty paces of the enemy lines—at that, on more or less the entire front. Huge dug-outs for reserve-troops were constructed, often with earth ramparts high enough to prevent enemy gunners from seeing what was going on in the Russian rear. Accurate models of the Austrian trenches were made, and troops trained with them; aerial photography came into its own, and the position of each Austrian battery noted …²⁰

In response to pleas from the Italians, who came under heavy Austrian pressure in the Trentino, the Russian operation was advanced to May 22/June 4. It began with an intense one-day bombardment, following which the Russians charged Austrian trenches north of Lemberg. As it unfolded, the offensive extended along a front 300 kilometers wide, from Pinsk to the Romanian border. The Austrians were caught napping: believing the Russians incapable of further offensive operations, they had drained the front to support their operation against the Italians. The Russians took 300,000 prisoners and killed and wounded possibly double that number. Austria-Hungary stood on the verge of collapse, from which she was saved, once again, by the Germans, who transferred fifteen divisions from the west to help her.

The Russian advance continued for ten weeks, after which it ran out of steam. It neither conquered much territory nor altered significantly the strategic position on the Eastern Front, but it did shatter the morale of the Austro-Hungarian army beyond repair: for the rest of the war, the Austrian armies had to be meshed with and reinforced by German units. The 1916 offensive marked the emergence of a fresh spirit in the Russian army, as officers with strategic insight and technical knowledge began to replace commanders who owed their posts to seniority and political patronage.

By departing for the front, Nicholas lost direct contact with the political situation in the capital. Much of his information on conditions there came from Alexandra, who did not understand much of politics to begin with and had a personal interest in persuading him that everything was under control. He was unaware of the grumbling in the cities and the mounting economic problems. He was, nevertheless, nervous and ill at ease. The outward composure which never left him was deceiving: the French Ambassador learned in November 1916 that the Tsar was suffering from insomnia, depression, and anxiety, for which Alexandra supplied sedatives prepared by a friend of Rasputin’s, the Tibetan healer P. A. Badmaev, believed to contain hashish.²¹

The Tsar’s absence left a great deal of power in the hands of Alexandra, who thought herself much more capable of handling the obstreperous opposition. She sent him reassuring letters:

Do not fear for what remains behind—one must be severe & stop all at once. Lovy, I am here, dont laugh at silly old wify, but she has “trousers” on unseen, & I can get the old man to come & keep him up to be energetic—whenever I can be of the smallest use, tell me what to do—use me—at such a time God will give me the strength to help you—because our souls are fighting for the right against the evil. It is all much deeper than appears to the eye—we, who have been taught to look at all from another side, see what the struggle here really is & means—you showing your mastery, proving yourself the Autocrat without wh[om] Russia cannot exist. Had you given in now in these different questions, they would have dragged out yet more of you. Being firm is the only saving—I know what it costs you, & have & do suffer hideously for you, forgive me, I beseech you, my Angel, for having left you no peace & worried you so much—but I too well know y[ou]r marvelously gentle character—& you had to shake it off this time, had to win your fight alone against all. It will be a glorious page in y[ou]r reign & Russian history the story of these weeks & days—& God, who is just & near you—will save your country & throne through your firmness.*

In the final year and a half of the monarchy, Alexandra had much to say about who would and would not be a minister and how domestic policies would be conducted. She was heard to boast of being the first woman in Russia since Catherine II to receive ministers—an idea which could have been planted in her mind by Rasputin, who liked to compare her with Catherine.²² It is only now that Rasputin began to influence policies. He communicated with the Empress daily by telephone, visited her occasionally, and maintained indirect contact through her only intimate friend, Anna Vyrubova. Rasputin and Alexandra led Russia toward disaster by their refusal to acknowledge political and economic realities and blind insistence on the principle of autocracy.

With her lack of knowledge of politics and economics, Alexandra concentrated on personalities. In her view, placing in authority individuals of proven loyalty to the dynasty was the surest way of preserving the country and the Crown, between which she drew no clear distinction. With her encouragement, Nicholas carried out purges of high officials, usually replacing them with incompetents whose principal qualification was devotion to him and his wife. This “ministerial leapfrog,” as it came to be known, not only removed able and patriotic functionaries but disorganized the entire bureaucracy by making it impossible for ministers to remain in office long enough to master their responsibilities.

The dismissal in September 1915 of three ministers who had opposed Nicholas’s decision to go to the front has already been mentioned. In January 1916, Goremykin was let go. This step was taken, not in response to the almost universal clamor from both bureaucracy and parliament, but from a fear that he would be unable to cope with the Duma, which was scheduled to reconvene for a brief session in February. He was not only seventy-seven years old but, judging from his testimony the following year to a commission of inquiry, also in an advanced stage of senility. Worried about the Duma, Nicholas wanted as chief of cabinet a more competent and forceful personality. Goremykin wished to limit Duma debates to purely budgetary matters, which the Tsar thought unrealistic.²³ He was replaced by Boris Stürmer (Shtiurmer), a sixty-eight-year-old bureaucrat with a background of service as governor and member of the State Council. Although Nicholas believed that Stürmer would get along with the Duma, this was not to be. He was a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist who had once been close to Plehve and was chiefly remembered for manhandling the Tver zemstvo. He also had a reputation for servility and corruption. The appointment to the highest administrative post of a man with a German surname at a time when anti-German feelings ran high testified to the insensitivity of the Court. But Stürmer was loyal and close to Rasputin.

27. Alexandra Fedorovna and her confidante, Anna Vyrubova.

Few regretted Goremykin’s departure, but the dismissals which followed were badly received. On March 13, 1916, Polivanov was let go. His splendid work in restoring the fighting capacity of the Russian armies did not save him: he was politically quite unacceptable. In the letter in which he informed Polivanov of his dismissal, Nicholas gave as the reason the minister’s insufficient “control” of the Military-Industrial Committees.²⁴ This was a polite way of expressing displeasure with Polivanov’s closeness to Guchkov, the chairman of these committees, and through him to the business community. The authorities were especially chagrined that Guchkov had invited worker representatives to the Central Military-Industrial Committee: Alexander Protopopov, the Minister of the Interior, told Knox that the committee was a “dangerous syndicalist society.”²⁵ Such was the reward given a man whom no less an authority than Hindenburg credited with having saved the Russian army.* Polivanov was replaced, again on Rasputin’s recommendation, by the decent but unqualified General Dmitrii Shuvaev. A specialist in military logistics, with particular expertise in footwear, he had neither combat nor command experience. (“They said about him,” according to one contemporary, “that in every question which he discussed he invariably turned to that of boots.”²⁶) He had the advantage of being untainted by any political connections. He was also mindlessly devoted to the Imperial couple and was their “Friend”: he once told Colonel Knox, with tears in his eyes, that if the Tsar ordered him to jump from the window he would gladly do so.²⁷ Since jumping out of windows was not part of his duties, the poor man found himself swamped by responsibilities beyond his capacity to manage. He had no illusions about his merits. When the public began to complain of “treason in high places,” he is said to have exclaimed indignantly: “I may be a fool, but I am no traitor!” (“Ia byt’ mozhet durak, no ia ne izmennik”)—a bon mot that was to provide the rhetorical theme for Miliukov’s Duma address of November 1, 1916.

The next to go was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The ostensible reason for Sazonov’s dismissal was advocacy of Polish autonomy; the real one was contact with oppositional circles. His departure was badly received in London and Paris, where he was known as a reliable friend of the alliance. Stürmer took over Sazonov’s post, adding the Foreign Ministry portfolio to that of Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior—a heavy load indeed.

The Council of Ministers, considerably weakened after the death of Stolypin by the absence of strong chairmen, now reverted to its pre-1905 prototype—that is, an assemblage of individuals who no longer acted as a body. It met less and less frequently since it had less and less to do.²⁸

The disorganization of the administrative machinery was not confined to the ministries. It now became practice also to shuffle governors, the main representatives of state authority in the provinces. In 1914, twelve new governors had been appointed. In 1915, the number of new appointees rose to thirty-three. In the first nine months of 1916 alone, forty-three gubernatorial appointments were made, which meant that in less than one year most of Russia’s provinces received a new head.²⁹

The situation brought to mind the witticism of the Minister of Justice, Ivan Shcheglovitov, who in 1915 had spoken of “the paralytics in the government … struggling feebly, indecisively, as if unwillingly, with the epileptics of the revolution.”³⁰

The scent of revolution, indeed, hung in the air. It took two forms: resentment of the government for its failure to deal with economic difficulties, and something new, animosity of the urban population toward the peasantry. The war produced tension between town and country which Russia had not experienced before. The city accused the village of hoarding and profiteering: Knox warned as early as June 1916 that the “town population may give trouble in the winter.”³¹

During the summer and fall of 1916, the Police Department was in receipt from its provincial branches of a steady flow of disturbing reports. They stated with near-unanimity that in the cities of the Empire inflation and shortages gave rise to dissatisfaction and wild rumors. Industrial workers, after long hours in the factory, went shopping only to find the shelves bare. The strikes which occurred with growing frequency at this time were mostly one-day stoppages to enable workers to buy provisions. The department denied any political motives behind the economic unrest: it felt confident that it was spontaneous in origin and that the professional revolutionaries, most of whom were in prison, Siberian exile, or abroad, had no influence on the masses. But it warned that the economic unrest could easily assume political forms. A police report to the Ministry of the Interior in October 1916 summarized the situation as follows:

It is essential to concede as an unqualified and incontrovertible fact that at present the internal structure of Russia’s political life confronts the very strong threat of the relentless approach of great turbulence brought about and explainable exclusively by economic factors: hunger, the unequal distribution of food and articles of prime necessity, and the monstrous rise in prices. For the broadest strata of the population of the vast empire, the problem of food is the one dreadful inspiring impulse that drives the masses toward gradual affiliation with the growing movement of discontent and hostility. There exist in this case concrete and precise data that make it possible to assert categorically that until now this entire movement has had a purely economic basis, virtually free of any affiliation with strictly political programs. But this movement needs only to take a concrete form and find expression in some specific act (a pogrom, a large-scale strike, a major clash between the lower strata of the population and the police, etc.) to assume at once, absolutely, a purely political aspect.³²

In the fall of 1916, the chief of the Petrograd Corps of Gendarmes reported:

The exceptional seriousness of the period which the country is living through and the countless catastrophic disasters with which the possible imminent rebellious actions of the lower classes of the Empire, angered by the difficulties of daily existence, can threaten the entire vital structures of the state, urgently demand, in the opinion of loyal elements, the extreme necessity of speedy and comprehensive measures to remove the existing disorder and to relieve the excessively laden atmosphere of social dissaffection. As recent experience has shown, under existing conditions, halfway decisions and some palliative, accidental measures are entirely inappropriate …³³

Especially disturbing to the security organs were indications that popular discontent was beginning to focus on the monarchy. The police chief of Petrograd reported toward the end of September 1916 that in the capital opposition sentiment among the masses had attained a level of intensity not seen since 1905–6. Another high-ranking police official noted that for the first time in his experience, popular anger directed itself not only against the ministers but against the Tsar himself.³⁴

In sum, in the view of the best-informed as well as most loyal observers, Russia in October 1916 found herself in a situation which the radical lexicon classified as “revolutionary.” These assessments should be borne in mind in evaluating allegations of pro-monarchist politicians and historians that the February Revolution, which broke out a few months later, was instigated by liberal politicians and foreign powers. Contemporary evidence indicates that it was mainly self-generated.

While the rear was beginning to seethe, the morale of the front-line troops remained reasonably satisfactory, at least on the surface. The army held together. Such is the verdict of two foreign observers most familiar with the subject from personal observation. Knox says that as late as January-February 1917 the “army was sound at heart,” and Bernard Pares concurs: “the front was clean; the rear was putrid.”³⁵ But even among the troops destructive forces were quietly at work. Desertions assumed massive proportions: Grand Duke Sergei, the Inspector General of Artillery, estimated early in January 1917 that one million or more soldiers had shed their uniforms and returned home.³⁶ There were problems with military discipline. By 1916, most of the professional officers had fallen in battle or retired because of wounds: the casualties were especially heavy among junior staff who lived in closest contact with the troops. These had been replaced with freshly commissioned personnel, many of them of lower-middle-class background, who had the reputation of “throwing their weight around” and on whom the troops, especially combat veterans, looked with disdain. Instances occurred of officers refusing to lead troops into combat for fear of being shot by them.³⁷ The inductees taken into service in 1916 were largely drawn from the older categories of reservists in the National Militia who had believed themselves exempt from conscription and served very grudgingly.

Another troubling factor involved rumors current in the trenches and rear garrisons. In the letters which the soldiers sent home and received from home at the end of 1916, military censors found a great deal of malicious gossip about the Tsar and his wife. The police reported the wildest rumors circulating at the front: that soldiers’ wives were evicted and thrown out on the streets, that the Germans gave the ministers a billion-ruble bribe, and so on.³⁸

These disturbing trends affected the 8 million troops deployed at the front, but they were especially troublesome among the 2 to 3 million reservists and recruits stationed in the rear. Living in overcrowded barracks and in contact with the increasingly disaffected civilian population, they constituted a highly volatile element. In Petrograd and environs alone there were 340,000 of them: disgruntled, excitable, and armed.

The authorities realized the social dangers of scarcities and inflation, but had no solutions: there was a great deal of talk and hand-wringing but no action.

As noted, the landlords, for lack of farm labor, were unable to fulfill their traditional role as suppliers of food to the cities. The peasants had a surplus, but did not want to part with it since they already had more money than they knew what to do with, manufactured goods having become virtually unobtainable. Rumors circulated in 1916 that grain prices would soon rise sky-high: from the two and a half rubles per pud (16.38 kilograms) which grain was then fetching to twenty-five rubles and more. Naturally, they preferred to hoard.

The government discussed imposing fixed prices for grain, forceful requisitions, and even nationalizing grain and the related branches of agriculture and transport.³⁹ In September, the new Acting Minister of the Interior, Alexander Protopopov, took steps to transfer the management of food supply to his ministry on the grounds that it was acquiring a political dimension and affecting internal security. It was also planned to ensure industrial workers, especially those engaged in war production, of adequate food. But nothing came of these good intentions. Protopopov, a businessman and believer in laissez-faire, who disliked requisitions and other forms of regimentation, preferred to let things take their course. Instead of organizing the supply of foodstuffs to the cities, he persuaded the Minister of Agriculture, A. A. Bobrinskii, to restrain his provincial agents from showing excessive zeal in extracting grain from the peasants.

The possibility existed of allowing private bodies to collect and distribute food. On a number of occasions, the Municipal Councils offered to assume responsibility for this matter, but they were always turned down. Even though it lacked the ability to do the job, the government was afraid to entrust it to elected bodies.⁴⁰

As a consequence, in late 1916 the food and fuel situation in the major cities became critical. By then, Petrograd and Moscow were getting only one-third of their food requirements and faced hunger: the reserves covered at best a few days’ consumption.⁴¹ Fuel shortages compounded the difficulties: Petrograd could obtain only half of the fuel it needed, which meant that even when bakeries got flour they could not bake. The Petrograd Municipal Council petitioned the government for authority to organize the distribution of foodstuffs, only to be once again turned down.⁴² To prevent an explosion of popular fury, Stürmer drafted plans to evacuate from Petrograd 60,000–80,000 soldiers, as well as 20,000 refugees, but as with all the other good intentions of the Imperial Government in its last days, this proposal came to naught.

Petrograd, which by virtue of its remoteness from the food-producing areas suffered the most, entered the winter of 1916–17 in desperate straits. Factories had to be repeatedly shut either for lack of fuel or in order to enable their workers to scour the countryside for food.

These developments alarmed also liberal and conservative circles, because they threatened revolution, which they were desperately anxious to prevent. They blamed Nicholas and Alexandra, especially the latter. For the first time ever, liberals and monarchists made common cause in opposition to the Crown. In late 1916, the oppositional mood spread to the generals, the upper bureaucracy, and even some Grand Dukes who went over in order, as it was said, “to save the monarchy from the monarch.” Russia had never known such unity and the Crown such isolation. The 1917 Revolution became inevitable once the uppermost layers of Russian society, which had the most to lose, began to act in a revolutionary manner.

They were inspired by diverse motives. The conservatives, including right-wing politicians, Grand Dukes, bureaucrats, and generals, rallied against the Crown from fear that it was dragging Russia either to defeat or to a disgraceful separate peace. The liberals worried about riots, which would enable the socialists to stir the masses. The Progressive Bloc, which revived in the fall of 1916, kept on expanding to the right and left, until it came to embrace virtually the entire political spectrum, including much of the official establishment. In early February 1917, in a memorandum prepared for a visiting English delegation, Struve wrote: “The old cry ‘struggle with the bureaucracy’ has lost meaning. In the present conflict, all the best elements of the bureaucracy are on the side of the people.”⁴³

Persistent rumors that the monarchy was secretly negotiating a separate peace added to the unhappiness of upper society. They were not entirely groundless, for the Germans and Austrians did, indeed, put out feelers to Petrograd. One such approach was made through Alexandra’s brother, Prince Ernst Ludwig of Hesse.⁴⁴ Protopopov, while traveling in Sweden, was contacted by a German businessman. These and similar approaches met with no response from the Russian side. Researches in Russian and Western archives after the Revolution have failed to reveal any evidence that the Imperial Government desired or even contemplated a separate peace.⁴⁵ Nicholas and Alexandra were determined to wage war to the bitter end regardless of the domestic consequences. But the rumors caused the monarchy untold harm, alienating its natural supporters among the conservatives and nationalists who were ferociously anti-German.

Even more harmful was gossip about the alleged treasonous activities of the Empress and Rasputin. This also lacked any substance. Whatever sins Alexandra had on her conscience, she deeply cared for her adopted homeland, as she would prove later, after the Revolution, when her life was at stake. But she was a German and hence regarded as an enemy alien. Her reputation was further sullied by Rasputin’s contacts with suspicious individuals from the Petrograd demimonde, some of whom were rumored to have German connections. The root of the problem was that even if Alexandra and Rasputin did not actually engage in demonstrable treason, in the eyes of many patriotic Russians they could not have worked more effectively for the enemy if they were full-fledged enemy agents.

The liberal opposition faced a problem with which it did not quite know how to cope. The Kadets knew as well as the police of the popular discontent; they feared that unless they acted promptly and decisively to take charge, things would get out of control. They also were aware of the fact, reported on by the police, that the masses were losing faith in the Duma because it was not acting energetically enough.⁴⁶ From this assessment they concluded that unless they challenged the government, they would dissipate their prestige and lose out to the radicals. Some Kadets worried that even if Russia somehow muddled through the war without a revolution, she would certainly have one when it was over because peace would bring with it massive unemployment and peasant land seizures.⁴⁷ So it appeared essential to act in a bold, even revolutionary manner. And yet, pressing the government too hard would disorganize still further what was left of the administrative apparatus and fuel the very anarchy the liberals wished to prevent. One had to push the authorities hard enough to win over the masses and compel the government to yield power, but not so hard as to bring the state structure crashing down—a most delicate undertaking.

Unexpectedly, the monarchy seemed to make this task easier with the appointment in mid-September of Alexander Protopopov as Minister of the Interior.* This move aroused the most exaggerated hopes. The extraordinary aspect of Protopopov’s appointment was that he was entrusted with the second most important post in the Imperial administration although he had neither bureaucratic experience nor rank. He was not the first private citizen to be given a ministerial post—he had been preceded in July 1916 by the Minister of Agriculture, Bobrinskii—but it was entirely without precedent for an individual without chin to be put in charge of the country’s administrative machinery. This was the Crown’s supreme effort at compromise, a step to meet the demand of the Duma for control of the cabinet, for Protopopov, a well-to-do landlord and textile manufacturer, an Octobrist and member of the Progressive Bloc, was not only a member of the Duma but also its deputy chairman. Rodzianko and Guchkov had a good opinion of him, as did other parliamentarians.⁴⁸ Given this background, Protopopov’s appointment could have been reasonably interpreted as a surrender to the Progressive Bloc—the first of a succession of ministerial appointments which would result in a cabinet enjoying the Duma’s confidence. This is how A. I. Konovalov, a leading Kadet and member of the Progressive Bloc, viewed the Tsar’s move. At a private gathering of Kadets and associates early in October, he characterized Protopopov’s appointment as a complete “capitulation” of the regime:

By capitulating to society, the authorities have taken a giant, unexpected leap. The best that one might have expected was the appointment of some liberal-minded bureaucrat. And all of a sudden it is the Octobrist Protopopov, a man essentially alien to the bureaucratic world. For the authorities, this capitulation is almost tantamount to the act of October 17. After an Octobrist minister, a Kadet minister will no longer be such a fright. Perhaps in a few months we will have a ministry of Miliukov and Shingarev.* It all depends on us. It is all in our hands.⁴⁹

28. Alexander Protopopov.

This assessment was shared by much of the press. The unofficial Petrograd stock exchange rose sharply when Protopopov took office.

Such sanguine expectations were soon shattered. The appointment of Protopopov was not a capitulation by the monarchy but a clever political maneuver. The Court had called on the Duma to convene on November 1 because the constitution required it to approve the budget. It was expected that the opposition would use this opportunity to renew the assault on the government. Protopopov seemed to the Court the ideal man to handle the legislature. His membership in the October Party and the Progressive Bloc gave him credibility in the eyes of the opposition; at the same time, the Court knew Protopopov for what he really was—a devoted monarchist. The strong endorsement which Rasputin gave Protopopov served as a guarantee of his loyalty. He was an exceedingly vain man, overwhelmed by the honor which the Imperial couple had bestowed on him, and unlikely to make common cause with the opposition. Alexandra understood well why and how Protopopov would serve the dynasty’s interests: “Please, take Protopopov as Minister of the Interior,” she urged Nicholas on September 9, “as he is one of the Duma it will make a great effect amongst them & shut their mouths.”⁵⁰ In the words of Pares, she wanted to use “a Duma man to curb the Duma.”⁵¹ Here was an ideal minister—endorsed by Rasputin and yet acceptable to Rodzianko and Guchkov. He had also made an excellent impression on King George V and the French the preceding summer while heading a diplomatic mission in the West. Nicholas gave Protopopov carte blanche to run the country: “Do what is necessary, save the situation,” he asked.⁵² Backed by the Tsar, who appreciated his polite manner and charm, and Alexandra, who is said to have wanted to run Russia as if it were “their farm,”⁵³ exuding boundless optimism in an atmosphere of widespread gloom, Protopopov became a virtual dictator.

He proved a disastrous choice. The only qualification Protopopov had for high office was a “talent for adapting himself to people of different political views,” a relative rarity in Russia.⁵⁴ It gained him many supporters. But his driving force was vanity. Flattered by his appointment, he enjoyed to the limit its perquisites: access to the Court, the opportunity to treat condescendingly his onetime Duma colleagues, the power to conceive ambitious reform projects. It was the psychic gratifications of power that he held dear. Later, when things turned sour, to a friend who urged him to resign, he said indignantly: “How can you ask me to resign? All my life it was my dream to be a Deputy Governor, and here I am a Minister!”⁵⁵

He had no administrative talents: he had even managed to drive his textile business to the brink of bankruptcy.⁵⁶ He spent little time at his desk, and ignored the remarkably prescient analyses of the country’s internal situation prepared by the Department of Police. His achievement as the most important civil servant of the Empire at a critical juncture in its history was all image-building and public relations: his testimony given after the Revolution revealed a thoroughly confused man.⁵⁷ His erratic behavior spawned suspicions that he was mentally ill from the effects of venereal disease.

On assuming office, Protopopov drew up a liberal reform program, centered on the abolition of the Pale of Settlement and the other Jewish disabilities⁵⁸—a long overdue move, but hardly at the heart of Russia’s concerns, the more so that the mass expulsions of Jews from the front zone had the effect of lifting the Pale.* This proposal, meant to meet one of the demands of the Progressive Bloc, was inspired by Rasputin, who favored equality for Jews. Protopopov also toyed with the idea of a responsible ministry—responsible, however, for illegal as well as “inexpedient” (netselesoobraznye) actions, not to the Duma but to the Senate, a wholly appointed judiciary body.⁵⁹ He neither thought out nor pursued any of these plans. A few weeks after taking over the ministry, he met with the opposition in the hope of agreeing on a joint course of action, but this endeavor, too, had no result.

Disillusionment with the new Minister of the Interior set in very quickly: hope gave way to hatred. His obsequiousness to Nicholas and Alexandra revolted Duma politicians. So did his tactless actions, such as releasing General Sukhomlinov from prison and placing him under house arrest (done at the request of Rasputin) and appearing in the Duma in a gendarme’s uniform.⁶⁰ On the eve of the convocation of the Duma, he was widely perceived as a renegade. Instead of serving as a bridge between administration and parliament, he caused a virtual break between the two, because no respectable political figure would so much as talk to him.

Time was running out. Information reaching political leaders in Moscow and Petrograd (and corroborated confidentially, as we now know, by the police) indicated that the economic hardships of the urban population could any day explode in mass unrest. If such unrest was to be prevented, the Duma had to seize power and do so soon. There was not a moment to lose: if riots broke out before it took charge, the Duma, too, could be swept aside. This imperative—the perceived need to act before the outburst of popular fury—lay behind the irresponsible and, indeed, dishonorable conduct of the opposition leaders in late 1916. They felt they were racing against the clock: the question was no longer whether a revolution would occur, but when and in what form—from above, as a coup d’état directed by themselves, or from below, as a spontaneous and uncontrollable mass revolt.⁶¹

In September and October the main opposition parties, meeting at first separately and then jointly, as the Progressive Bloc, held secret conferences to devise a strategy for the forthcoming Duma session. Their mood was unyielding: the government had to surrender power. This time there would be no temporizing and no compromises.

The driving force behind this revolutionary challenge was the Constitutional-Democratic Party. At the meeting of its Central Committee on September 30-October 1, complaints were heard that the party had lost contact with the country because it no longer behaved like an opposition. The Left Kadets wanted to launch a “merciless war” against the government, even at the risk of provoking the Duma’s dissolution.⁶² The Kadet Party formally adopted the strategy of confrontation at a conference on October 22–24. Thanks to the information supplied by police agents,⁶³ we are well informed of the proceedings of this meeting, perhaps the most consequential in the party’s history. Miliukov came under attack for being too cautious and too eager to maintain the legitimacy of the party in the eyes of the authorities. The country was lurching to the left and unless the Kadets followed suit they would lose influence. Some of the provincial delegates, who were more radical than the party’s Duma deputies, thought it a mistake even to waste time on parliamentary debates: they preferred that the party appeal directly to the “masses”—that is, engage in revolutionary agitation as the Union of Liberation and the Union of Unions had done in 1904–5. Prince P. D. Dolgorukov thought that the moderate Miliukov retained his position as the party’s leader only because there was still hope that the government would dismiss Stürmer: should it refuse to do so and send the Duma packing, Miliukov would be finished. It was the last chance to confront the government in parliament.⁶⁴ Colonel A. P. Martynov, the outstanding chief of the Moscow Okhrana, passed to his superiors the information gathered by agents at the Kadet conference, along with personal comments. In his opinion, the thrust of the Kadets’ strategy lay in the resolution which spoke of the necessity of “maintaining contact with the broad masses of the population and organizing the country’s democratic elements for the purpose of neutralizing the common danger.” He added that the Kadets were terrified of a revolution breaking out either now or after the war, when the country would face problems beyond the government’s ability to solve.⁶⁵

To force the government to capitulate, the Kadets adopted the riskiest course imaginable: it was so out of character for a party which prided itself on respect for law and due process that it can only be explained by a mood of panic. The party resolved publicly to charge the Prime Minister with high treason. There was not a shred of evidence to support this accusation, and the Kadets well knew this to be the case. Stürmer was a reactionary bureaucrat, ill qualified to head the Russian government, but he had committed nothing remotely resembling treason. Rumors of treason, however, were so rife in the rear and at the front that they decided to exploit them for their own ends, playing on the Prime Minister’s German surname.*

The Kadets coordinated their plan with the other parties in the Progressive Bloc. On October 25, the bloc agreed on a common platform: to demand the dismissal of Stürmer, to call for the repeal of laws issued under Article 87, and “to emphasize rumors that the right was striving for a separate peace.”⁶⁶

The opposition leaders thus set out on a collision course from which there was no retreat: they would confront the Crown with a revolutionary challenge.

Stürmer, whom the police kept informed of these developments, was understandably outraged. He informed Nicholas that when the Duma reconvened the opposition would launch an all-out attack charging the ministers with high treason.⁶⁷ Such behavior in time of war was nothing short of criminal, inconceivable in any other belligerent country. He recommended, as a first step, withholding the deputies’ pay and threatening those of military age with conscription. He further requested the authority, if the situation required it, to dissolve both chambers of parliament and order new elections. Nicholas equivocated. He wanted to avoid, if at all possible, a confrontation. Stürmer could dissolve the Duma, he said, only in an “extreme case.”⁶⁸ He was letting power slip from his hands. He was tired from lack of sleep and thoroughly discouraged. He could not even bear the sight of the daily press: the only newspaper he read was Russkii invalid, a patriotic daily put out by the Ministry of War.⁶⁹

Although he had failed to obtain a carte blanche, Stürmer felt he had the authority privately to inform the Duma leaders that if they dared to accuse the government of treason, the Duma would be at once prorogued and possibly dissolved.⁷⁰

These warnings threw confusion into the ranks of the Progressive Bloc, dividing its radical wing, represented by the Left Kadets and Progressives, from the more conciliatory wing of mainstream Kadets, Octobrists, and individual conservatives. The Kadets, bound by resolutions of the party conference, warned their conservatives that if they did not support them, the Kadets would introduce a still more sharply worded resolution.⁷¹ V. V. Shulgin and other nationalists expressed unhappiness over the Kadet proposal, arguing that public accusations of treason could have disastrous consequences. Eager to retain conservative support, the Kadets agreed to a bloc resolution from which the word “treason” was removed.⁷² The Progressive Party, unhappy over this compromise, withdrew from the bloc. The Left Kadets also threatened to defect, but Miliukov managed to dissuade them with the promise to deliver a “sharp” address in the Duma.⁷³

The Duma opened at 2:30 p.m. on November 1 in an atmosphere laden with unprecedented tension.

Rodzianko, the chairman, began the proceedings with a brief patriotic address. As soon as he had finished, all the ministers, led by Stürmer and Protopopov, rose to their feet and left the chamber, followed by the foreign ambassadors.* The socialist deputies responded with hoots and catcalls.

S. I. Shidlovskii, the leader of the Octobrists and spokesman for the Progressive Bloc, delivered the first major address. He criticized the government for having prorogued the Duma in order to rule by Article 87, neglecting the food supply, and using military censorship to safeguard its “nonexistent prestige.” He warned that Russia faced serious dangers. The country had to have a government of public confidence: the Progressive Bloc would strive for this objective “employing all the means permitted by law.”⁷⁴

Kerensky made a hysterical speech that in vituperation exceeded anything previously heard in the halls of the Duma.⁷⁵ He accused Europe’s “ruling classes” of having pushed “democracy” into an intolerable war. He charged the Russian Government with conducting a “White Terror” and filling its prisons with working people. Behind all these acts stood “Grisha Rasputin.” Excited by the sound of his own words, he demanded rhetorically:

Gentlemen! Will everything that we are living through not move us to declare with one voice: the main and worst enemy of our country is not at the front, but here, in our midst. There is no salvation for our country until, with a unanimous and concerted effort, we force the removal of those who ruin, humiliate, and insult it.

Comparing the ministers to “hired killers” and pointing at their empty seats, he demanded to know where they had gone, “these men suspected of treason, these fratricides and cowards.”

Although reprimanded by the chair, Kerensky continued his diatribe, warning that Russia stood on the brink of her “greatest trials, unprecedented in Russian history,” which threatened anarchy and destruction. Russia’s real enemies were those who placed their private interests above those of the country:

You must annihilate the authority of those who do not acknowledge their duty: they [pointing again at the empty ministerial seats] must go. They are the betrayers of the country’s interests.

At this point, the chairman asked Kerensky to step down.

Although cheered by the left, Kerensky did not enjoy much respect from the majority of the Duma since his rhetorical excesses were familiar. It was a different matter when Miliukov mounted the rostrum, for he was widely known as a responsible and levelheaded statesman. His speech, only slightly less vituperative than Kerensky’s, carried, therefore, much greater weight. It must be borne in mind that his address was the result of a compromise struck between the left and right factions of the Progressive Bloc: in deference to the former, which included a sizable segment of his own party, Miliukov accused the government of treason; to placate the latter, he muted the charge, posing it in the form of a question.

Miliukov began by recalling the changes which had taken place in Russia in 1915 in consequence of military defeats and the hopes which these changes had aroused. But now, with the war in its twenty-seventh month, the mood of the country was different: “We have lost faith that the government can lead us to victory.” All the Allied states had formed governments of national unity, involving in the management of the war effort the most qualified citizens, without regard to party. And in Russia? Here all the ministers capable of gaining parliamentary support had been forced from office. Why? To answer his question, Miliukov resorted to insinuation of treason based on information which he claimed to have secured on a recent trip to Western Europe:

The French Yellow Book has published a German document outlining the principles of how to disorganize an enemy country, to instigate in it unrest and disorders. Gentlemen, if our government wanted deliberately to carry out this mission, or if the Germans wanted to use for this purpose their own means, such as influence and bribery, they could not have done it better than the Russian Government. [The Kadet deputy F. I. Rodichev from his seat: “Alas, it is so!”]⁷⁶

The government’s behavior caused rumors of treason in high places to sweep the country. Then Miliukov produced his bombshell/Citing from the Berliner Tagwacht of October 16, he reported that the private secretary of Stürmer, Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, a journalist with a shady past, had been employed before the war by the German Embassy to bribe the conservative daily Novoe vremia. Why was this individual first arrested and then released? Because, Miliukov explained, as Manasevich-Manuilov himself had admitted to the prosecutor, he had passed on some of that German money to Prime Minister Stürmer. Miliukov went on to read from German and Austrian newspapers expressions of satisfaction over the dismissal of Sazonov as Foreign Minister and his replacement by Stürmer. The impression which these citations conveyed was that Stürmer had secret communications with the enemy and worked for the conclusion of a separate peace.

At this point, the right disrupted Miliukov with shouts of slander. When order was restored, Miliukov made some murky but ominous hints of pro-German ladies active abroad and in Petrogad. What did all these bits and pieces of information add up to? That something was seriously amiss:

We need a judiciary inquiry of the kind given to Sukhomlinov. When we accused Sukhomlinov, after all, we did not have in our possession the facts that the inquiry would uncover. We had what we have now: the instinctive voice of the entire country and its subjective certainty.

On his visit to Paris and London, Miliukov went on, he had been told that the Central Powers had access to Russia’s most sensitive state secrets. This was not the case when Sazonov ran foreign policy. Miliukov next mentioned a meeting between Protopopov and a German businessman in Stockholm the preceding spring (which was no secret and on which Protopopov had reported to the Tsar), once again planting in the minds of his audience the ideas of treason and separate peace. Referring to Stunner’s quitting the Duma earlier that day, Miliukov exclaimed: “He heard the shouts with which you welcomed his departure. Let us trust that he will never set foot here again!”

Reverting to the subject of his opening remarks, Miliukov said that once there had been a possibility of cooperation between the Duma and government but this was no longer the case. Citing Shuvaev’s “I may be a fool, but I am no traitor,” Miliukov concluded his speech with a rhetorical flourish, repeated several times. “Is it stupidity or is it treason” that Russia was unprepared to conduct operations in the Balkans after Romania had entered the war on her side? That she had delayed granting Poland autonomy until the Germans had beaten her to it? That the government treated as sedition the Duma’s efforts to organize the home front? That the Police Department instigated factory strikes and engaged in other “provocations” to provide an excuse for peace negotiations? To each of these questions, the audience lustily responded: “Stupidity!” “Treason!” “Both!” But, Miliukov answered himself, it really did not matter, since the effect was the same. His parting words demanded the dismissal of the cabinet.

The “subjective certainty” which Miliukov claimed to possess of high officials’ acts of collusion with the enemy had no basis in fact: to put it bluntly, it was a tissue of lies. Miliukov knew, even as he spoke, that neither Stürmer nor any other minister had committed treason, and that whatever his shortcomings, the Prime Minister was a loyal Russian. Later on, in his memoirs, he admitted as much.⁷⁷ Nevertheless, he felt morally justified slandering an innocent man and sowing the most damaging suspicions about the government because he thought it essential for the Kadets to take charge of the country before it fell apart.⁷⁸

In reality, he contributed as much as anything the government did or failed to do to inflaming revolutionary passions. The effect of his speech, which attracted immense attention since he spoke for Russia’s most important political party, was enhanced by his reputation as a prominent scholar: it seemed inconceivable that a man of his stature would make such grave accusations unless he had incontrovertible proof. Some Russians even believed that Miliukov received from Allied sources additional incriminating evidence which he withheld for security reasons. The government forbade the press to publish Miliukov’s speech or to comment on it. The prohibition only served to heighten interest. Reproduced by typewriter, mimeographed, and printed on broadsheets, Miliukov’s address is said to have spread in the rear and at the front in millions of copies.⁷⁹ It had an immense impact: “The people and the troops, simplifying the speech, concluded: Duma deputy Miliukov had proven that the Empress and Stürmer were selling out Russia to Kaiser Wilhelm.”⁸⁰ The passions unleashed by Miliukov’s speech played a major role in promoting the February Revolution,⁸¹ in which anger over alleged government treason was initially the single most important motive.

The Duma sessions which followed brought the authorities little comfort. Shulgin, the leader of the Progressive Nationalists, said that the country which for two years had bravely fought the enemy “had come to be mortally afraid of its own government … the men who had fearlessly looked Hindenburg in the eye lost courage confronting Stürmer.”⁸² And the left applauded this monarchist and anti-Semite. The only speaker to defend the authorities was N. E. Markov (known as Markov II), a notorious reactionary and pathological Judeophobe, who later, in emigration, would back the Nazis: in this period he happened to receive regular subsidies from Protopopov.

The November 1–5, 1916, sessions of the Duma marked the onset of a revolutionary psychosis: an intensely felt, irrational desire to pull down the entire edifice of monarchic Russia. This psychosis, long prevalent among radical intellectuals, now seized the liberal center and even spilled into conservative ranks. General V. N. Voeikov, who observed this phenomenon from headquarters at Mogilev, speaks of a “widespread conviction that something had to be broken and annihilated—a conviction that tormented people and gave them no peace.”⁸³ Another contemporary wrote in December 1916 of a “siege of authority that has turned into sport.”⁸⁴

How pervasive this attitude had become may be demonstrated on the behavior of the Tsar’s immediate family, the grand dukes, who now lined up with the Progressive Bloc. In late October, before the Duma had met, Nicholas spent some days in Kiev with his mother and several relatives, who warned him against the influence of his wife and Rasputin.⁸⁵ On November 1, he received at headquarters Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, who, besides being a well-known amateur historian, took pride in his reputation as the most radical of the Romanovs, the Russian Philippe-Egalité. He brought a letter addressed to the Tsar in which he implored him to be rid of Rasputin. But he went further, alluding to the evil influence of the Empress, an issue obviously of the greatest delicacy:

You trust Alexandra Fedorovna, this is quite natural. Still, what she tells you is not the truth; she is only repeating what has been cleverly insinuated to her. If you are not able to remove this influence from her, at least protect yourself from constant systematic maneuvers attempted through the intermediacy of the wife you love.… When the hour comes—and it is already near—from the height of the throne you could make the ministers responsible to yourself and to the legislative institutions, and to do that simply, naturally, without pressure from the outside, and differently from the memorable act of October 17, 1905…. You stand on the eve of an era of new troubles, on the eve of an era of outrages [attentats.] Believe me, if I insist so much of your freeing yourself from the chains that have been forged, I do so … only in the hope of saving you and saving the throne of our dear country from the irreparable.⁸⁶

Without bothering to read it, Nicholas forwarded the letter to Alexandra, whom it sent into a paroxysm of rage: she asked that Nikolai Mikhailovich be exiled from Petrograd.⁸⁷

On November 7, the Tsar received Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, now in command of the Caucasian Front, who urged him to let the Duma choose the cabinet.⁸⁸ Incredibly, even the United Nobility, the staunchest pillar of the monarchy, passed in Moscow and in Petrograd resolutions supporting the program of the Progressive Bloc.⁸⁹ Indeed, it would be difficult to find any prominent individual or group, including those on the most conservative, nationalist end of the political spectrum, who did not join in the clamor for fundamental changes in the structure and personnel of the government.

Stürmer felt justified, not only on personal grounds but also those of state security, to request that the Duma be dissolved and Miliukov placed under arrest.⁹⁰ But he did not find the support he had expected: the Tsar and the cabinet were paralyzed with fear. In the Council of Ministers only Protopopov sided with him. The others wanted to avoid anything rash. Nicholas did not want a break with the Duma and sought to appease it without giving in on the critical issue of a responsible ministry. On November 4 he sent the Ministers of War and of the Navy to the Duma to deliver conciliatory speeches.⁹¹ Alexandra was urging him to stand firm, but Nicholas no longer had the will. So instead of defending his Prime Minister against slanderous accusations—whose real target was the Crown—he decided to sacrifice him and put in his place someone more acceptable to the Duma. On November 8, Stürmer was dismissed. He never understood what had happened to him, why he was accused of treason which he had not committed, and why the Tsar did not defend him against these false charges. Shortly afterward, the French Ambassador saw him on the street, shuffling along, lost in thought.⁹² He died the following year, a broken man.

The Duma rejoiced over Stunner’s dismissal, which it took as proof that no minister whom it did not want could stay in office.⁹³ This feeling received encouragement from the appointment, as Stunner’s successor, of the Minister of Transport, A. F. Trepov. The new Prime Minister, relatively young (fifty-two) by the standards of the late Imperial government—which saw in dotage assurance of loyalty—descended of an old servitor family. He wanted to emulate Stolypin, being similarly convinced that Russia could no longer be properly governed without the parliament’s cooperation. To secure it, he was prepared to make far-reaching concessions: forming a cabinet acceptable to the Duma, putting a stop to legislating through Article 87, and improving the status of workers, Jews, and Finns.⁹⁴ In private meetings with Duma leaders during the recess (November 6–17), he obtained promises of support, on condition that he get rid of Protopopov.

In the first half of November 1916, Nicholas, for all practical purposes, capitulated to revolutionary demands; to his entourage he appeared apathetic and indifferent.⁹⁵ If Russia’s liberal politicians had been able to view the situation rationally, they would have realized that they had achieved, in substance if not in form, their principal demands. By firing Stürmer for no good cause and replacing him with a Prime Minister amenable to the program of the Progressive Bloc, by keeping the revolutionary Duma in session instead of dissolving it, the Tsar had surrendered to the opposition. But the opposition, smelling blood, wanted more.

For all his good intentions, therefore, Trepov had little success. On November 19, when the Duma reconvened, he delivered to it a programmatic speech. The left, led by Kerensky and Chkheidze, received him with abusive screams that went on for forty minutes during which he could not utter a word.* When order was finally restored, he gave a conciliatory address very reminiscent, in tone and content, of Stolypin’s Duma speeches. He promised to put an end to illegality. He asked for help:

Let us forget our quarrels, let us postpone our feuds.… In the name of the government, I declare directly and openly that it wishes to commit its energies to constructive, pragmatic work in cooperation with the legislature.⁹⁶

The duty of patriots was not to destroy the government but to strengthen it. Trepov used the occasion to reveal that the Allies had promised Russia Constantinople and the Straits.

It was to no avail. Heckled and disrupted, Trepov faced an audience that spurned conciliation: now that Stürmer had been sacrificed, it wanted Protopopov’s head. When he had finished, Vladimir Purishkevich asked for the floor. Cheered on by the socialists, this extreme monarchist demanded that the government cease “selling Russia out to the Germans” and rid itself of Rasputin and “Rasputinism.”

The sessions that followed gave no sign that passions were cooling. The radical deputies now shed such few inhibitions as had constrained them in the past and openly incited the country to rebellion. The Mensheviks and the other socialists walked out of parliament on December 2, after the Progressive Bloc had unanimously supported the government’s rejection of German proposals for a separate peace. Two weeks later, Kerensky exhorted the population to disobey the government.⁹⁷

Nor did Trepov obtain countervailing support from the Court. Alexandra intrigued against him out of fear of losing influence. In letters to Nicholas she branded him a liar who deserved to be hanged.⁹⁸ Nicholas for once ignored his wife’s advice and agreed with Trepov that Protopopov had to go. On November 11, he informed Alexandra that Protopopov was unwell and would be replaced: he asked her not to involve Rasputin in this matter because the responsibility for the decision was entirely his. Alarmed, Alexandra requested Nicholas by telegram not to act until they had had a chance to talk, and the next day departed with the children for Mogilev. Face to face, she promptly turned her husband around. When Trepov arrived in Mogilev to have the Tsar approve Protopopov’s successor, Nicholas curtly informed him that Protopopov would stay, after all. Not even Trepov’s threat of resignation would make him relent. A. I. Spiridovich cites this incident as the most glaring example of Rasputin’s influence.⁹⁹

As 1916 drew to a close, all the political parties and groupings united in opposition to the monarchy. They agreed on little else. The extreme left would be satisfied with nothing short of a radical transformation of Russia’s political, social, and economic system. Liberals and liberal-conservatives would have been content with parliamentary democracy. Both, for all their differences, thought in terms of institutions. The extreme right, which by now had also joined the opposition, by contrast, dwelled on personalities. In its view, Russia’s crisis was the fault, not of the system, but of the individuals in charge, notably the “German” Empress and Rasputin. Once these two were out of the way, all would be well. It was not possible to get at the Empress directly, since this would have required a palace coup, but some monarchists believed they could attain the same end by isolating her from Rasputin. Alexandra’s well-known emotional attachment to the starets suggested that separation from him would induce in her a psychic breakdown. Freed from his wife’s baneful influence, Nicholas would come to his senses and yield power to the Duma. Should he fail to do so, he could be replaced with a regent chosen from among the grand dukes, most likely Nikolai Nikolaevich. Such talk was common in November and December of 1916 in the capital’s highest social circles: at the Yacht Club, frequented by the grand dukes, in the halls of the Duma and the State Council among monarchist deputies, in aristocratic salons, even at Army Headquarters in Mogilev. It was a repetition of February 1801 when the plot against Paul I, which ended in his murder, was the talk of St. Petersburg society.

Rasputin was a natural target of right-wing critics because of his influence on the Imperial couple and through them, on ministerial appointments. Stürmer, Protopopov, and Shuvaev, holders of the most important posts in the administration, owed their positions to him. True, his protege Stürmer was replaced by an enemy, Trepov, but even so it was widely believed that crossing Rasputin’s path meant a broken career. Rasputin was even suspected of meddling in military operations. Indeed, in November 1915 he had given, through the Empress, strategic advice to headquarters. “Before I forget,” Alexandra wrote Nicholas on November 15, 1915,

I must give you a message from our Friend, prompted by what he saw last night. He begs you to order that one should advance near Riga, says it is necessary otherwise the Germans will settle down so firmly through all the winter, that it will cost endless bloodshed and trouble to make them move.¹⁰⁰

Neither Nicholas nor his generals paid attention to such counsel. Rasputin was strictly forbidden to come near headquarters. Still, the fact that this semi-literate peasant felt free to give advice on military matters incensed the conservatives.

At Tsarskoe Selo, his word was law. Rasputin frequently prophesied that should any harm befall him, Russia would go through another Time of Troubles. He had visions of rivers of blood, of fire and smoke, an uncanny and rationally inexplicable foreboding of what would soon, in fact, occur.¹⁰¹ His predictions alarmed the Empress and made her more than ever anxious to protect him from his enemies, who, in her eyes, were also the enemies of the dynasty and of Russia.

Rasputin basked in his power. His drinking bouts, his boasting and insolence, grew more scandalous with each day. Ladies of high society were fascinated by the brute with the hypnotic eyes and gift of prophesy. Rasputin belonged to the sect of Khlysty, who preached that sinning reduced the quantity of sin in the world. At his private villa, with the ever-present gypsies, liquor flowed freely. Whether Rasputin really possessed the sexual prowess with which he was credited is more than questionable. A physician named R. R. Vreden, who examined him in 1914 after he had been knifed by a jealous mistress, found Rasputin’s genitals shriveled, like those of a very old man, which led him to wonder whether he was even capable of the sexual act: he ascribed this to the effects of alcohol and syphilis.*

Rasputin could behave so scandalously because he felt above the law. In March 1915, the chief of the Corps of Gendarmes, V. F. Dzhunkovskii, had the courage to inform the Tsar that his agents had overheard Rasputin boast at a dinner party in Moscow’s Praga Restaurant that he “could do anything he wanted” with the Empress. His reward was to be sacked and sent to the front. After this incident, the police thought it prudent to keep to itself adverse information on Rasputin. Sycophants and aspirants to office fawned on him; honest patriots risked disgrace if they dared to incur his displeasure. Guchkov and Polivanov, who had done the most to revitalize Russia’s war effort after the debacle of 1915, were kept at arm’s length and, in the case of Polivanov, fired because of Rasputin’s enmity. That such a charlatan had a hold on the monarchy offended the monarchists most of all.

Nicholas’s attitude toward Rasputin was ambivalent. He told Protopopov that while he had not cared for Rasputin at first, in time he had grown “accustomed to him.”¹⁰² He rarely saw the starets, however, leaving him to Alexandra, who always received Rasputin in company, usually that of Vyrubova. Nicholas told Kokovtsov in 1912 that “personally he hardly knew ‘this peasant’ [muzhichek], having met him, in passing, no more than two or three times, and, moreover, at considerable intervals.”¹⁰³ Even so, the Tsar would not listen to any criticism of Rasputin, treating him strictly as “une affaire de famille,” as he told Stolypin, requesting him never again to allude to this matter.¹⁰⁴ Rasputin was a “family affair” in the sense that he had the unique ability to stop the bleeding of the tsarevich, whose illness never left the family’s thoughts. The imperial children adored the old man. But Nicholas insisted Rasputin stay out of politics.¹⁰⁵

By the end of 1916, the Imperial couple had concluded that the opposition, determined to unseat them, attacked their appointees and friends as a matter of principle: every choice of the monarchy, whatever his merits, was bound to come under fire. The true target of these attacks was the dynasty. That this was so Nicholas and Alexandra concluded from the example of Protopopov, who had been named to placate the opposition but upon assuming office became the target of its abuse. Alexandra wrote Nicholas:

Remember that the question is not Protop[opov] or X, Y, Z. The question is the monarchy and your prestige.… Don’t think that it will end with this. They will remove one after another all who are devoted to you, and then, ourselves.¹⁰⁶

When Rodzianko assured Nicholas that Protopopov was mad, the Tsar responded, smiling: “Probably from the time I appointed him minister.”¹⁰⁷ The same held true for Rasputin. Alexandra, and to some extent her husband, came to believe that enemies abused their “Friend” only to get at them.

29. Rasputin with children in his Siberian village.

Rasputin’s influence reached its apogee late in 1916 following an unsuccessful attempt to bribe him. Trepov was told by the Duma leaders that the price for their cooperation was the removal of Protopopov. He accordingly informed Protopopov that he wished him to give up the Ministry of the Interior and take over that of Commerce. As soon as he learned of this development, Rasputin concluded that a Trepov-Rodzianko intrigue was in the making and intervened with the Empress on Protopopov’s behalf.¹⁰⁸ Protopopov stayed on the job. The incident persuaded Trepov that unless Rasputin was removed he would not be able to carry out his duties. Rasputin was known to take bribes left and right: Protopopov alone paid him a monthly subsidy of 1,000 rubles from the funds of the Department of Police.¹⁰⁹ Aware of these facts, Trepov decided to tempt Rasputin with a bribe to end all bribes. Using as intermediary his brother-in-law, General A. A. Mosolov, who happened to be one of Rasputin’s drinking companions, he offered Rasputin up to 200,000 rubles in cash as well as a monthly allowance, if he would return to Siberia and stay out of politics. Rasputin promised to consider the offer, but sensing an opportunity to bring down Trepov and enhance his own reputation with the Court, he informed the Empress. This marked the beginning of the end for Trepov.¹¹⁰ Rasputin’s prestige at the Court rose commensurately, for he now had proven that he was, indeed, an “incorruptible man of the people.”

The failure of Trepov’s maneuver persuaded right-wing enemies of Rasputin that they had no choice but to kill him. A conspiracy was hatched in Petrograd in early November, before Trepov’s ill-fated venture, and got underway the following month. Implicated were persons from the very highest strata of St. Petersburg society, including a grand duke and the husband of a grand duchess. The central figure was twenty-nine-year-old Prince Felix Iusupov. Educated in Oxford, handsome in an effeminate way, an admirer of Oscar Wilde, he was known as a superstitious coward. Iusupov initially hoped to influence Rasputin to change his ways and to this end befriended him, but when this effort failed, he decided on drastic action, having become convinced that Rasputin was drugging the Tsar as well as maintaining contact with enemy agents. His mother, Zinaida Iusupov-Elston, the richest woman in Russia (her family income for 1914 was estimated at 1.3 million rubles, equivalent to nearly one ton of gold), had once been friendly with the Empress, but the two had fallen out over Rasputin. Suggestions have been made that it was she who persuaded her apolitical son to organize the plot.¹¹¹ But it is more likely that the main influence on Iusupov was twenty-five-year-old Grand Duke Dmitrii Pavlovich, a favorite nephew of the Tsar and a leading contender for the hand of Grand Duchess Olga, who filled Iusupov’s head with stories of Rasputin’s alleged treachery.

Once he had made up his mind to kill Rasputin, Iusupov looked for accomplices.* Having heard Vasilii Maklakov attack Rasputin in the Duma, Iusupov invited him to join the conspiracy. He assured Maklakov that no later than two weeks after Rasputin’s death, the Empress would be confined to a mental institution:

Her spiritual balance depends entirely on Rasputin: the instant he is gone, it will disintegrate. And once the Emperor has been freed of Rasputin’s and his wife’s influence, everything will change: he will turn into a good constitutional monarch.¹¹²

Iusupov told Maklakov that he intended to hire either revolutionary terrorists or professional assassins, but Maklakov dissuaded him: if the deed must be done—and he did not dispute that—then Iusupov and his accomplices had to do it. Maklakov offered to provide advice and legal help, but regretted being unable personally to take part in Rasputin’s murder, because on the night when it was to occur (December 16) he had a speaking engagement in Moscow. “Just in case,” he gave Iusupov a rubber truncheon with a lead tip.

Iusupov next contacted Purishkevich, who had become persuaded from conversations with the military that the government was leading the country to disaster. Early in November, he used his private Red Cross trains to distribute Miliukov’s speech among frontline troops. On November 3 he dined with Nicholas at headquarters and pleaded with him to be rid of the new False Pretender, as he called Rasputin.¹¹³ The Duma speech which Purishkevich delivered against Rasputin on November 19 was second only to Miliukov’s in the attention it received nationwide. Iusupov listened to it from the gallery and two days later contacted him. Purishkevich unhesitatingly agreed to join.¹¹⁴ Two additional persons were brought in: a young lieutenant and a physician named Lazavert, who served on Purishkevich’s train. Grand Duke Dmitrii, the fifth member of the group, was of invaluable assistance because his status as member of the Imperial family gave the conspirators immunity from police searches. The plotters were anything but tight-lipped. A number of outsiders, among them a visiting British diplomat, Samuel Hoare, knew well in advance what was about to happen.¹¹⁵ Purishkevich boasted to more than one acquaintance that on December 16 he would assassinate Rasputin.¹¹⁶

The plan was to commit the murder in such a way as to give the impression that Rasputin was not dead but had disappeared. Iusupov, who had the victim’s confidence, was to lure him to his palatial residence on the Moika, poison him, and with the help of associates tracelessly dispose of the corpse. Detailed preparations were made in late November. The conspirators pledged never to divulge what they had done—a pledge that both Purishkevich and Iusupov would break.

The date for the murder was set for the night of December 16–17, the eve of the closing session of the Duma.

Rasputin had received many warnings of a plot on his life and was not easily enticed from his apartment at Gorokhovaia 64, where he lived under the protection of the police and his own bodyguards. Nevertheless, on December 13 he agreed to visit Iusupov to make the acquaintance of his wife, Irina, a niece of the Tsar. On the fatal day, Rasputin received explicit warnings from Protopopov, Vyrubova, and anonymous callers. He seems to have had premonitions, for he was said during these days to have destroyed his correspondence, made deposits in his daughters’ bank accounts, and spent much time in prayer.¹¹⁷

It was arranged that Iusupov would arrive at Rasputin’s house by car at midnight, after the police guards had been withdrawn, and come up through the back stair. Rasputin attired himself for the occasion in his most seductive clothing: wide trousers of black velvet, new leather boots, a white silk shirt with blue embroidery, and a satin waistband decorated in gold, a gift from the Empress.¹¹⁸ Iusupov recalled that he exuded a powerful odor of cheap soap and looked cleaner than he had ever seen him.

Iusupov pulled up at Gorokhovaia 64 shortly past midnight in Purishkevich’s car, driven by Dr. Lazavert disguised as a chauffeur. Rasputin put on a beaver hat and rubber boots. They then drove to Iusupov’s residence. The conspirators had carefully prepared the scene of the crime. Iusupov led his guest to a room on the ground floor which normally stood empty but which had now been furnished to look like a salon: scattered teacups and wineglasses gave the impression that a party had recently taken place there. Iusupov said that his wife was upstairs but would soon come down to join them (in reality, she was in the Crimea, a thousand miles away). Iusupov’s fellow conspirators were gathered in the room directly above, which served as a study and was linked to the ground floor by a narrow staircase. From there came the sounds of “Yankee Doodle” played over and over on a gramophone. While pretending to await his wife, Iusupov offered Rasputin refreshments from a nearby table, on which stood a tray with almond and chocolate pastries: Dr. Lazavert had inserted into the chocolate cakes powerful doses of powdered potassium cyanide. A bottle of Rasputin’s favorite Madeira was also available, and next to it glasses with the same poison in liquid form. Annoyed at being kept waiting, Rasputin refused to drink or eat, but Iusupov eventually cajoled him into partaking of the pastries and wine. He waited anxiously for the poison to take effect (according to the physician, this should have happened within fifteen minutes) and at Rasputin’s request sang to the accompaniment of a guitar. Rasputin seemed a bit unwell but he did not collapse. The alarmed Iusupov excused himself and went upstairs. By now, two hours had passed since Rasputin’s arrival.

A consultation took place in the second-floor dining room. Grand Duke Dmitrii thought it best to let Rasputin go and try again some other time. But the others would not hear of it: Rasputin was not to be allowed to leave alive. Iusupov offered to shoot Rasputin. He borrowed Dmitrii’s revolver and returned to the ground floor, the weapon concealed behind his back. Rasputin looked thoroughly sick and was breathing heavily, but a sip of Madeira revived him and he suggested a visit to the gypsies—“with God in mind but mankind in the flesh.”¹¹⁹ Like many murderers, Iusupov had a dread of his victim’s eyes: being superstitious, he also feared that Rasputin could be as impervious to bullets as to poison. To ward off evil spirits, he invited Rasputin to inspect an elaborate seventeenth-century Italian crucifix made of rock crystal and silver which stood on a commode. As Rasputin bent over it and crossed himself, Iusupov fired into his side. With a wild scream, Rasputin fell to the floor.

The instant they heard the shot, the conspirators rushed down. They saw Iusupov bending over the body. In Iusupov’s recollection, Rasputin was dead, but Purishkevich recalled him writhing in agony and still breathing. Dmitrii, Dr. Lazavert, and the lieutenant departed in Purishkevich’s car to the Warsaw Railroad Terminal to dispose of Rasputin’s overcoat and rubber boots in the stove of his Red Cross train. Purishkevich and Iusupov, awaiting their return, relaxed in the study.

According to his memoirs, Iusupov was suddenly seized with an urge to see Rasputin’s body. Rasputin lay motionless, to all appearances dead. But on scrutinizing the victim’s face more closely, Iusupov noticed the left eye twitch and open, followed by the right: Rasputin stared at him with boundless hatred. As Iusupov watched in disbelief, frozen with fear, Rasputin struggled to his feet and seized him by the throat, screaming through foaming lips, “Felix, Felix!” Iusupov managed to tear himself away and run upstairs, where Purishkevich was enjoying a cigar. As Purishkevich recalled the scene:

Iusupov was literally faceless: his lovely large blue eyes were still larger and bulging. Half conscious, virtually oblivious of me, seemingly out of mind, he flung himself at the door leading to the main hall and ran to his parents’ apartment …¹²⁰

Purishkevich seized his gun and rushed downstairs. Rasputin was gone. He found him in the garden, staggering through the snow toward the gate, bellowing, “Felix, Felix, I will tell everything to the Empress!” He fired at him but missed. He fired again and missed again. Rasputin was nearing the gate leading to the street. Steadying his arm, Purishkevich fired a third shot, which felled Rasputin. He shot him one more time and, bending over the lifeless body, kicked it in the temple.

A short time later a policeman who had been patrolling the neighborhood appeared and said that he had heard shots. Iusupov explained that a party had just broken up and some revelers had fired in the air. But as bad luck would have it, police officers at a nearby station at Moika 61 had also heard the sounds of shooting and soon more policemen appeared. Purishkevich, who never could control his tongue, blurted out: “We have killed Rasputin.”

The sight of Rasputin’s lifeless corpse in the snow drove Iusupov into a frenzy. He ran up to his study and brought out of the desk drawer the truncheon which Maklakov had given him. With it he beat the body like a man possessed, screaming, “Felix, Felix!” He then collapsed in a faint. On regaining consciousness, he ordered a servant to shoot one of the dogs to provide an alibi.

With the help of domestics, Rasputin’s body was tied and weighed down with iron chains. Loaded into Dmitrii’s car, it was driven to a remote and sparsely populated spot, the bridge linking Krestinskii and Petrovskii islands, and dumped into the Malaia Moika canal, along with his coat, which had not been destroyed because it was too large to fit into Purishkevich’s train stove. Dr. Lazavert, noting the victim’s rubber boots in the car, threw them into the canal, but he missed and one of them fell on the bridge, where its subsequent discovery led the police to Rasputin’s body.

The news of Rasputin’s death spread rapidly: the French Ambassador claims to have heard it before the day was out. The Empress received from Protopopov a fairly accurate account of what had happened, but as long as the corpse had not been found she continued to believe that Rasputin was hiding. On December 17, she wrote Nicholas: “I cannot & won’t believe He has been killed. God have mercy.” She drew some encouragement from Iusupov’s letter in which he flatly denied any knowledge of Rasputin’s where-abouts and indignantly rejected accusations of complicity in his murder.¹²¹ In the city, however, Rasputin’s death was taken for granted and joyously celebrated. Dmitrii, who attended the theater on the evening of December 17, had to leave because the public was about to give him an ovation.¹²² One contemporary says that the atmosphere in Petrograd resembled Easter, as the rich toasted with champagne and the poor with such drink as they could lay their hands on.¹²³ “Sobake sobachaia smert’” (“For a dog, a dog’s death”), the French envoy heard the people say.*

Rasputin’s battered corpse, encased in ice, was dragged out on December 19. The autopsy revealed the victim had been dead from three bullet wounds by the time he struck water, which did not stop the spread of legends that the lungs were filled with water. No traces of poison were found.† At Alexandra’s wish, Rasputin was buried in Tsarskoe Selo, outside the palace grounds, on land belonging to Vyrubova, and a chapel constructed over it, although officially he was reported to have been taken for burial to Siberia. Immediately after the outbreak of the February Revolution the body was disinterred, burned, and the ashes scattered.¹²⁴

It fell to General Voeikov, the Tsar’s aide, to communicate to him the news of Rasputin’s death. In his recollections, he described Nicholas’s reaction as follows:

From the very first report, about Rasputin’s mysterious disappearance, to the last, about the placement of his body in the chapel … I did not once observe signs of sorrow in His Majesty, but rather gathered the impression that he experienced a sense of relief.¹²⁵

Iusupov claims having heard from people who traveled with Nicholas to Tsarskoe on December 18–19 that the Tsar was “in a happy mood such as he had not shown since the outbreak of the war.”¹²⁶ In fact, in his diary for December 17–19 Nicholas made no reference to Rasputin, and noted that on the night of December 18–19 he had “slept soundly.”¹²⁷

It so happened that Nicholas had planned, before Rasputin’s murder, to return home to be with the family for Christmas. The Okhrana now encouraged him to do so from fear that Rasputin could be the first victim of a terrorist campaign.¹²⁸ Indeed, as will be discussed later, several conspiracies against Nicholas were in progress.

Rasputin’s death had the contrary result from the one the assassins had expected. They had intended to separate Nicholas from Alexandra and make him more amenable to Duma pressures. Instead, Rasputin’s murder drew him closer to his wife and confirmed the correctness of her belief that there could be no compromises with the opposition. He was revolted by the involvement of his nephew Dmitrii in a murder plot and disgusted by the cowardly lies of Iusupov. “I am ashamed before Russia,” he said, “that the hands of my relations should be smeared with the blood of this peasant.”¹²⁹ After Dmitrii’s involvement became known, he ordered him to Persia to join the Russian armies there. He was appalled by the reaction of high society to this punishment. When sixteen grand dukes and duchesses pleaded with him to allow Dmitrii to remain in Russia, he responded: “No one is entitled to engage in murder.”¹³⁰ The petition compromised in his eyes many of the grand dukes and led him to cut off relations with them. Some, among them Nikolai Mikhailovich, were asked to leave Petrograd. To ingratiate himself with the Imperial couple, Protopopov would show Nicholas and Alexandra congratulatory messages sent by prominent public figures to Purishkevich and Iusupov intercepted by the police: among them was one from Rodzianko’s wife.¹³¹ This evidence embittered Nicholas and reinforced his sense of isolation.*

Trepov was dismissed in late December and replaced by Prince N. D. Golitsyn, who would be the last Prime Minister of the old regime. Aware that he was utterly unsuited for the job, Golitsyn begged to be spared on the grounds of ill health, old age, and inexperience, but the Tsar would not hear of it. By then, the cabinet, for all practical purposes, had ceased to function anyway, so that the office of Prime Minister had become largely ceremonial.

The Imperial family, having taken up residence in the more intimate Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, led a quiet life after the return of Nicholas. They broke off contact with most of the family: at Christmas of 1916, there were no exchanges of gifts. Protopopov came once or twice a week with his reports, which were subtly attuned to the Imperial couple’s mood, as conveyed to him by Vyrubova.¹³² He was invariably reassuring: rumors of plots against the Imperial family were groundless, the country was quiet, and the government disposed of ample force to quell any disorders. To make these assurances more convincing, Protopopov organized letter-writing campaigns from ordinary people who told the Court of their love and loyalty and opposition to political changes: these Alexandra proudly displayed to visitors.¹³³ They helped reinforce Nicholas and his wife in the conviction that all the troublemakers lived in the capital. The fact that an unusually severe winter had brought railway traffic in some parts of the country to a virtual standstill, further depleting food and fuel supplies in the cities, went unreported. So did the fact that workers in Petrograd, driven to desperation by shortages and high prices and locked out of their factories, were roaming the streets. So, too, did information obtained by the Police Department that conspiracies were being hatched to arrest Nicholas and force him to abdicate. Everything was under control, the genial Minister of the Interior assured the Imperial couple.

Life at Tsarskoe Selo followed a quiet, dull routine. The Empress spent much time in bed, attended by Vyrubova, who, for her own protection, had moved into the Alexander Palace. Nicholas sank into a depression, of which his furrowed face and expressionless eyes bore testimony. In the morning and afternoon he went through the motions of receiving officials and foreign diplomats: on such occasions, Alexandra eavesdropped from a back room reached by a secret passage.¹³⁴ In the late afternoon, he took walks and sometimes rode with the children in a motorized sled built by one of the chauffeurs. In the evening, he read aloud from the Russian classics, played dominoes, worked on puzzles, and from time to time viewed moving pictures: the last film shown, early in February, was Madame Du Barry.¹³⁵ Some visitors tried to warn the Imperial couple of an impending explosion. Alexandra reacted with anger, sometimes ordering the bearers of such unwelcome news to leave. Nicholas listened politely, fidgeting with a cigarette or studying his fingernails, without displaying great interest. He was deaf to the appeals of Grand Duke Aleksander Mikhailovich, his brother-in-law and father of Irina Iusupova, one of the few grand dukes with whom he remained on speaking terms.¹³⁶ When foreigners offered him advice, he cut them short. The British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, on a New Year’s Eve call urged Nicholas to appoint as Prime Minister someone enjoying the nation’s confidence, to which the Tsar responded: “Do you mean that I am to regain the confidence of my people or that they are to regain my confidence?”*

Power in his instance did not so much corrupt as isolate.

A frequent visitor to Tsarskoe Selo during those last weeks says that the atmosphere there resembled a household in mourning.¹³⁷ The Tsar’s diaries, which he kept up regularly, give no hint of the state of his mind or psyche: only on December 31, the day when he saw the British Ambassador and dismissed rumors of danger, he noted that he and Alexandra had prayed fervently to the Lord “to have mercy on Russia.”¹³⁸ On January 5, 1917, Golitsyn reported to him that Moscow talked openly of the “next tsar,” to which Nicholas responded: “The Empress and I know that all is in God’s hands—His will be done.”¹³⁹

Nicholas, who was always perfectly composed, only once lost self-control to reveal under his habitually frozen mask a deeply troubled human being. This occurred on January 7, 1917, during a visit by Rodzianko. He listened politely to the familiar warnings, asked some questions, but when Rodzianko pleaded with him “not [to] compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country,” Nicholas “pressed his head between his hands,” and said: “Is it possible that for twenty-two years I tried to work for the best, and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?”¹⁴⁰

Having failed in their attempt to alter policy by disposing of Rasputin, the conservatives concluded that “the only way to save the monarchy was to remove the monarch.”¹⁴¹ Two conspiracies to this end have been identified, but there must have been more. One was organized by Guchkov. According to his memoirs, Guchkov concluded that the incipient Russian Revolution would not follow the French model of 1848, in which the workers toppled the monarchy and let the “better people” take charge. In Russia he expected power to pass into the hands of revolutionaries who would in no time drive her to ruin. Hence, arrangements had to be made for a legitimate transfer of Imperial authority from Nicholas to his minor son, Alexis, with the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael, serving as Regent. Guchkov involved in his plot Nicholas Nekrasov, the deputy chairman of the Duma and member of the Progressive Bloc, M. I. Tereshchenko, a wealthy businessman, and Prince D. L. Viazemskii. The conspirators planned to seize the Imperial train while it was en route from headquarters to Tsarskoe Selo and force Nicholas to abdicate in favor of his son.¹⁴² The plot did not make much headway because it failed to secure a broad base of support, especially among the senior officers.

More advanced was a second plot directed by Prince George Lvov, the chairman of Zemgor and the future Prime Minister of the First Provisional Government, with the assistance of the chief of staff, General Alekseev.¹⁴³ This group planned to compel Alexandra to retire to the Crimea and to have Nicholas turn over effective authority to Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. The plotters contacted the Grand Duke, then serving as commander on the Caucasian Front, through A. I. Khatisov, the mayor of Tiflis. Nikolai Nikolaevich requested a day to consider the proposal, then turned it down on the grounds that neither the peasants nor the soldiers would understand such a change. Khatisov sent Lvov a cable with the agreed code for a negative response: “The hospital cannot be opened.” It is indicative of the mood of the time that Nikolai Nikolaevich did not see fit to inform his sovereign of the plot against him.

There were all kinds of rumors of “Decembrist” conspiracies among Guard officers and of a terrorist plot on the Imperial couple,¹⁴⁴ but none of these ever seems to have gone beyond the talking stage.

Protopopov, basking in his moment of glory as de facto Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, exuded confidence—a fact that caused many contemporaries to question his sanity. He did not worry about the plots against the Imperial family reported by the police: he dismissed the plotters, with good reason, as idle talkers. The village was quiet. It was another threat that troubled him, although he felt confident he could handle it. The Duma was scheduled to reconvene on February 14 for a twelve-day session. The police informed him that “society” talked of nothing else and that convening the Duma could provide an occasion for massive anti-government demonstrations; proroguing it, however, could produce a wave of popular protests. The police felt it essential to prevent street demonstrations, lest they provoke clashes with the police and trigger a revolt. K. I. Globachev, the highest police official in Petrograd, advised Protopopov on January 26 that the leaders of the opposition, among whom he listed Guchkov, Konovalov, and Lvov, already regarded themselves as the legitimate government and were distributing ministerial portfolios.¹⁴⁵ Protopopov wanted authority to arrest Guchkov, Konovalov, and the other political oppositionists, along with the Central Workers’ Group, which they intended to use for mass demonstrations.¹⁴⁶ He would dearly have liked to take into custody Guchkov and three hundred “troublemakers” whom he viewed as the soul of the incipient rebellion, but he did not dare. So he did the next-best thing and ordered the arrest of the Workers’ Group, which by this time (the end of January) had turned into an openly revolutionary body. Under the leadership of Gvozdev, the Workers’ Group pursued a double policy, typical of the Mensheviks and, later, of the revived Petrograd Soviet, of which it was in some respects the immediate forerunner. On the one hand, it supported the war effort and helped the Central Military-Industrial Committee to maintain labor discipline in defense industries. On the other hand, it issued inflammatory appeals calling for the immediate abolition of the monarchy and its replacement by a democratic provisional government—that is, for a political revolution in the midst of the very war they wanted to pursue.¹⁴⁷ One of their proclamations, released on January 26, claimed that the government was exploiting the war to enslave the working class. Ending the war, however, would not improve the latter’s situation “if carried out not by the people themselves but by the autocratic authority.” Peace achieved by the monarchy will bring “yet more terrible chains”:

The working class and democracy can wait no longer. Every day that is allowed to pass brings danger: the decisive removal of the autocratic regime and the complete democratization of the country are tasks that must be solved without delay.

The proclamation concluded with a call for factory workers to prepare themselves for a “general organized” demonstration in front of Taurida Palace, the seat of the Duma, to demand the creation of a provisional government.¹⁴⁸

This appeal stopped just short of calling for a violent overthrow of the government: but it was by any standard seditious. It is known that the Workers’ Group indeed planned, almost certainly with the encouragement of Guchkov and other members of the Progressive Bloc, on the day of the opening session of the Duma to bring out hundreds of thousands of workers on the streets of Petrograd with calls for a radical change in government, the demonstration to be accompanied by massive work stoppages.¹⁴⁹ Protopopov was determined to prevent this.

On January 27, one day after the Workers’ Group had issued its proclamation, its entire leadership was arrested and incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Protopopov ignored the expressions of outrage from the business community, convinced that he had nipped in the bud a revolutionary coup planned for February 14. One month later, when the mobs freed the Workers’ Group leaders from their prison, they would proceed directly to Taurida Palace and there help found the Petrograd Soviet.

After the arrest of the Workers’ Group, Nicholas asked the onetime Minister of Justice Nicholas Maklakov to draft a manifesto dissolving the Duma. Elections to the new Duma—the Fifth—were to take place in December 1917, nearly a year later.¹⁵⁰ News of this proposed move reached the Duma, causing a great deal of excitement.¹⁵¹

To insure Petrograd against disturbances in connection with the opening of the Duma, Protopopov withdrew military control of the capital city from the Northern Front, whose commander, General N. V. Ruzskii, was regarded as sympathetic to the opposition. It was placed under a separate command headed by General S. S. Khabalov, an ataman of the Ural Cossacks.¹⁵²

The measures produced the desired effect. The arrest of the Workers’ Group and the stern warnings of Khabalov caused the February 14 pro-Duma demonstration to be called off. Even so, 90,000 workers in Petrograd struck that day and marched peacefully through the center of the city.¹⁵³

In the meantime, the administration of the country was grinding to a halt. The Council of Ministers virtually ceased to function, as members absented themselves under one pretext or another, and even Protopopov failed to attend.¹⁵⁴ At this, the monarchy’s most dangerous moment, the Department of Police was decapitated: General P. G. Kurlov, a personal friend of Protopopov’s, whom the minister had invited to assume the post of director, met with strenuous opposition from the Duma, and after serving as acting director for a short time, retired without being replaced.¹⁵⁵ The chief of the Special Department (Osobyi Otdel) of the Police Department, charged with counterintelligence, I. P. Vasilev, later wrote that under Protopopov his office received no specific assignment.¹⁵⁶ The opposition was flouting government prohibitions on meetings and assemblies. Military censorship broke down in January 1917, as editors of newspapers and periodicals no longer bothered to submit advance copy to the Censor’s office.¹⁵⁷

None of this much troubled Protopopov, who was in regular communication with the spirit of Rasputin.¹⁵⁸

*Rudolf Claus, Die Kriegswirtschaft Russlands (Bonn-Leipzig, 1922), 15. A. L. Sidorov, Finansovoe polozhenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914–1917 gg. (Moscow, 1960), 147, gives the higher figure.

†Claus, Die Kriegswirtschaft, 156–57. The London currency market registered a similar decline: Emil Diesen, Exchange Rates of the World, I (Christiania, n.d.), 144.

*Sidorov, Finansovoe polozhenie, 147. Of the sum for the first half of 1914, 1,633 million rubles was in paper currency, the remainder in coinage.

*Bernard Pares, ed., Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–16 (London, 1923), 114. “The old man” refers to Goremykin.

*Pares, Letters, xxxiii. After his dismissal, Polivanov was appointed to the State Council. In 1918–19, he helped Trotsky organize the Red Army. He died in 1920 while serving as adviser to the Soviet delegation at the Polish peace talks in Riga.

*Protopopov was initially made acting minister; he was promoted to minister in mid-December, following the assassination of Rasputin: V. S. Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1917) (Leningrad, 1967), 265.

*A. I. Shingarev was a prominent Kadet and expert on agrarian problems. He served as Minister of Finance in the Provisional Government and was murdered in early 1918 by pro-Bolshevik sailors.

*Because they were suspected of German sympathies, numerous Jews living near the combat zone—estimates run as high as 250,000—were forced in 1915 to move into the interior of the country.

*E. D. Chermenskii, IV Gosudarstvennaia Duma i sverzhenie tsarizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1976), 204–6; Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 241. On the unpopularity of Stürmer due to his German name: IA, No. 1 (1960), 207. If not for that they would have targeted Protopopov, making an issue of his talks with a German representative in Stockholm.

*According to the French Ambassador, this was done at Stunner’s request: Maurice Paléo-logue, La Russie des Tsars pendant la Grande Guerre, III (Paris, 1922), 86–87.

*Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 251. The most vociferous of the hecklers, Kerensky and Chkheidze among them, were suspended by Rodzianko for fifteen days.

*Archive of S. E. Kryzhanovskii, Box 5, File “Rasputin,” Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, New York, N. Y. Vyrubova dismisses gossip of his alleged sexual excesses, saying that he was entirely unlovable and that she knew of no woman who had had an affair with him: Anna Viroubova, Souvenirs de ma vie (Paris, 1927), 115.

*There exist two eyewitness accounts of Rasputin’s murder. Purishkevich wrote down his recollections in diary form two days after the event, which he published in southern Russia in 1918; this version was reprinted in Moscow in 1923 as Ubiistvo Rasputina. Iusupov’s memoirs, Konets Rasputina, came out in Paris four years later. Of secondary accounts, the most informative is that by A. S. Spiridovich (Raspoutine, Paris, 1935): the author, a general in the Corps of Gendarmes, was Commandant of the Guard at the Imperial residence in Tsarskoe Selo.

*According to Miliukov and Maklakov, however, tales of popular rejoicing at Rasputin’s death are “an aristocratic legend”; in reality, ordinary people were troubled by the murder: Spiridovich, Raspoutine, 413–15.

†The absence of poison in Rasputin’s remains must mean that, in fact, it had not been inserted into the wine and pastries. The records of the judiciary inquiry into the Rasputin murder were offered for sale in Germany sometime in the interwar period by the firm of Karl W. Hiersemann (Originalakten zum Mord an Rasputin, Leipzig, n.d., Library of Congress, DK 254.R3H5), but their present whereabouts are unknown. The advertisement (pp. 8–9) confirms that the autopsy revealed no traces of poison.

*“The assassins of Rasputin were never tried, apparently owing to the intercession of the Dowager Empress. After spending some time with the Russian forces in Persia, Dmitrii went to England, where he led a carefree life among the British aristocracy. He later married an American heiress. His diaries, deposited at the Houghton Library, Harvard, show no concern for his native country. Iusupov, who was exiled to one of his estates, eventually made his way to the West. Purishkevich was arrested by the Bolsheviks and then released. He later joined the White armies and died in France in 1920.

*G. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, II (Boston, 1923), 45–46; cf. A. I. Spiridovich, Velikaia voina ifevra’skaia revoliutsiia, 1914–1917 gg., III (New York, 1962), 14. Buchanan, however, is not an entirely reliable witness. According to his Buchanan’s daughter, Nicholas further said that rumors of impending unrest were exaggerated and that the army would save him: Meriel Buchanan, Petrograd, the City of Trouble (London, 1918), 81. Nicholas received from the police information that the British Embassy was in contact with anti-government groups in the Duma and even providing them with financial assistance: V. N. Voeikov, S tsarem i bez tsaria (Helsingfors, 1936), 175.