Though Peter Suvorin and Karpenko remained in Moscow, the rest of the family had all moved to the country and Alexander was interested to see how each person seemed to have their own appointed task. Mrs Suvorin was busy helping a new Zemstvo organization to house the flood of refugees from the front. ‘We’ve even got two Jewish families in the village,’ she informed them. Vladimir had converted the Russka cloth-works into a small armaments factory, making cartridges and grenades. As for Dimitri, he was playing and composing each day. A dozen suites for piano and two movements of his first symphony were already written, the scores being kept in a locked cupboard which was treated by all the family with the reverence that used to be reserved for an icon.
And then there was Nadezhda.
Her father had set up a little nursing home where wounded soldiers could convalesce in Russka, and every day she would go over there to nurse them. Sometimes those that were fit enough were brought over for tea at the house. And though Alexander sometimes observed a slight coldness in the girl towards her mother, it seemed to him that there was a new gentleness in her manner: a gentleness that, in particular, was meant for him.
And so the month of July passed peacefully, and that of August. During that month the doctor allowed him, twice, to be taken by cart to the monastery. How delightful it was, he thought, to be back amongst such familiar sights.
Except for one thing: the village.
‘It’s extraordinary,’ he remarked to Vladimir. ‘What happened? I never saw the place so prosperous.’
It was true. For while, by the summer of 1915, the great cities were suffering from the war, in the huge Russian countryside, the First World War ushered in a time of plenty. How could this be?
‘Actually,’ Vladimir explained, ‘it’s quite simple. Like most administrations in wartime, the government’s paying for things by printing money. Consequently there’s inflation. And the one thing everyone needs, which the peasants have, is grain. Grain prices are high, we’ve just had a bumper harvest, and the villagers have all got excess income.’ He grinned. ‘Do you know, that rogue Boris Romanov’s even bought himself a phonograph. He even plays Tchaikovsky on it, I believe.’
A week later, visiting Boris Romanov’s comfortable house, Alexander saw this marvel for himself. And he wondered to himself: Could it be, after all, that this war would be the saving of Russia, and that his optimistic father was right?
The blow fell in late August. The Tsar dismissed the Duma. At the same time, he decided to take over, personally, as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies. He would go to the front himself.
In the first week of September, Alexander received a long letter from his father. It was no longer optimistic. And its ending was filled with foreboding.
Everyone pleaded with him, from Rodzianko down; but the Tsar is an obstinate fellow who believes it is his duty to be an autocrat. So democracy under tsardom is dead, I’m sure of it. As for his attempts to revive the army, they are bound to be unlucky. I can foresee only chaos.
Rasputin has reappeared here. I hear he saw the Tsar himself. God save us.
1917, 2 March
Yet even now, it was hard to believe.
The rule of the Tsar was over. Russia was free.
Nicolai Bobrov stood at the window and looked out eagerly. A head cold had kept him indoors that day. It was three hours now since his son Alexander had gone over to the Taurida Palace where the Duma met to see if the news had come. Any moment he would be back.
Surely the news must have come. Surely by now the Tsar must have signed the abdication. ‘For God knows,’ he murmured, ‘the Tsar can’t possibly go on.’ Not now that Bobrov and his friends had taken power.
For in the end, it was the Duma who had deposed the Tsar.
What a strange business it had been; yet not really so surprising. The fears he had expressed back in that fateful summer of 1915 had been justified.
The Tsar had been frequently away at the front. True the army had not done so badly. The great Brusilov offensive of 1916, mounted while the British were making their mass attack on the Somme, though it had failed to break the enemy, had made some gains on the western front. Down in the Caucasus, Russian troops had advanced into Turkey. But in the south, Germany and Austria had pushed to the western shore of the Black Sea through Rumania and the British had been forced to pull out of Gallipoli, leaving Russia still blockaded at the entrance of the Black Sea and unable to export her grain.
The war on the Russian front, as on the western front, was a grim stalemate.
But at the centre – Bobrov could only shake his head. It had been a nightmare. The Empress, that foolish and ignorant German woman, had been left holding the reigns of government. It seemed she had got it into her head that she was another Catherine the Great – so she once told a startled official. And beside the Empress – seen or unseen – had been the terrible Rasputin.
It had been bewildering to watch. It sometimes seemed to Bobrov that anyone who had an ounce of talent was dismissed. Only blind loyalty to the Tsar was rewarded. And the endless list of appointments and dismissals – over forty new provincial governors in a single year! – had made one Duma wit remark that the administration was having an epileptic fit. All faith in the government had evaporated. Ugly rumours about the Empress and Rasputin had even reached the troops at the front. They were said to be secretly in league with the Germans.
Thank God, in December 1916, two aristocratic patriots had murdered the evil Rasputin; but by then the damage had been done.
Before his eyes, Bobrov had witnessed the signs of the breakup. Every party in the Duma, even the conservatives, had turned against the Tsar. Though the army held firm along the front, there had been a million desertions. And then a terrible winter had left the capital short of food and fuel.
It couldn’t go on. For weeks the entire Duma had been in an uproar. Those close to the Tsar said he showed signs of depression. Even some of his relations, the Archdukes, said he should step down to save the monarchy and spoke of a regency.
‘But personally,’ Nicolai Bobrov would always say afterwards, ‘I think it was the weather that really did for the Tsar.’
For suddenly in February 1917, after a bitter winter, the weather turned warm, and in Petrograd everyone came out on to the streets.
The demonstrations were spontaneous. The people had had enough. Not only strikes but massive street disruptions began. The police and Cossacks were hopelessly outnumbered. And then the authorities made a huge mistake: they called out the garrisons.
They were not regular troops. Most of them were recent conscripts, taken from their villages and cooped up for months in overcrowded barracks. Why should they fire on the people? They mutinied, and joined the protestors.
And then, on 28 February, it was over. The Tsar, trapped outside the capital after visiting the front, sent word that the Duma should disband until April. ‘And we refused,’ Bobrov would say, with a calm smile. ‘We refused to go, and suddenly realized we were the government.’
The deputies declared it. The mobs in the street seemed to agree. After all, what else was there, if not the Duma? The next day, the Duma asked the Tsar to abdicate, and the Russian monarch found that he had not a friend in the world.
Where was the young fellow? Nicolai was very proud of his son. Alexander was able to walk about now; he was still an officer, but had been pronounced unfit for further active service and had been spending the last weeks in the capital with his father. Though still a monarchist, he nowadays tolerated his father’s liberal views with good humour; and even he had been shocked by the conduct of the government in recent months. He’s been gone such a time, Nicolai now concluded, there must be some news just coming through.