She was anything but, and while she had become friends with a number of Duma deputies they were by no means ‘deputies of the left’. Her first Duma friend and regular lunch companion was Count Kapnist, a monarchist albeit one who like most wanted constitutional government, not autocracy — a view which Natasha strongly supported, however distorted that view became when embellished for the benefit of Tsarskoe Selo. But not everything said about her was gossip.
One of the most remarkable statements with which the names of Michael and Natasha were linked politically came at a conference of the majority Progressive Bloc on October 25, 1915, when relations between crown and Duma were at rock bottom. The conference, with the Duma suspended by Nicholas, was in effect the Duma by another name.
The first speaker, a non-party liberal, M. M. Fedorov, was quoted as saying: ‘Grand Duke Michael has been told about the situation by a person close to his wife. He has spoken to the Tsar, and says that the Tsarita, Goremykin, and Rasputin are prepared to go as far as closing the Duma.’ That was true: Alexandra did not want it suspended, as it was; she wanted it to be shut down permanently, never to be heard of again.
Fedorov then went on to say: ‘To the question of whether or not he would be prepared to succeed to the throne, the Grand Duke replied “May this cup pass me by. Of course, if this were, unfortunately to come about, I sympathise with the British system. I can’t understand why the Tsar won’t take it calmly.”’16
Aleksandr Kerensky, a leading socialist destined to play a decisive role in the drama to come, was also to recount an incident so astonishing and so unlike Michael that at face value it cannot seem true. ‘In the autumn of 1915’ he would recall in his memoirs, ‘I was visited by an old friend, Count Pavel Tolstoy, the son of one of the Tsar’s equerries. He was a close friend of the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael, whom he had known since childhood.’ So far, so good. He then went on: ‘He told me that he had come at the request of the Grand Duke, who knew that I had connections with the working class and left-wing parties and who wanted to know how the workers would react if he took over from his brother, the Tsar.’17
Michael would never have authorised nor suggested such an approach to Kerensky. At the same time, Kerensky had no reason to invent it. The question is therefore whether Count Tolstoy went to see him on his own initiative, or was sent there by someone else — and the only person who was likely to have done that was Natasha. Since Kerensky dodged the answer, nothing of this encounter reached Michael’s ears and so it never went any further. However, the probable truth is that Natasha was behind this, and that when Tolstoy reported that he had drawn a blank, the question was buried.
Although Michael never sought nor desired his brother’s downfall, he feared for his future if Nicholas did not bring about change, curb the power of Alexandra and dismiss Rasputin. Shortly after returning from his week at Mogilev, Michael sat on the verandah at Nikolaevskaya Street one Sunday evening and talked to Dimitri Abrikosov about the future. Everyone else had gone for a drive.
‘He told me that he often thought how difficult it was for his brother, who sincerely wanted to do only what was good for the people, but who was hindered by his wife. Several times he had tried to convey to his brother what people were saying about him, and about the dangerous influence of the Empress…’ Michael thought that ‘Nicholas was indifferent to his fate, leaving everything in the hands of God, but under the influence of Rasputin, God had assumed a strange shape.’ As dusk came, Abrikosov turned on the light. ‘I was shocked by the utter despair on the pale face before me…’18 Abrikosov, in the weeks he had come to know Michael, came to think of him as far superior to Natasha, despite the greater force of her personality. ‘I have never met another man so uncorrupted and noble in nature’, was his final judgement.19
Whatever he told Abrikosov in confidence, Michael never said anything critical of his brother in public. When the British consul Bruce Lockhart met him in Moscow, at a conference about improving the railway system — critical to the war effort — he observed that Michael ‘talked quite freely about the war’ but made only one comment which could be thought to have political overtones.
‘Thank God’, he said, ‘the atmosphere at the front is so much better than the atmosphere of St Petersburg’. The diplomat left Michael thinking that here ‘was a prince who would have made an excellent constitutional monarch’.20
This was also the image which Natasha indirectly projected among her contacts in the Duma by her own support of the reforms the ‘constitutionalists’ sought. If Michael were Regent, in place of Alexandra, all would be accomplished. Much was inferred, but what could not be ignored was the stark contrast between the wife of the Tsar and the wife of the Tsar’s brother. Both were strong-minded and opinionated; one hated the Duma and wanted unrestricted autocratic power; both were thought of as having a decisive influence over their husbands. Inevitably Natasha was seen as an ally by those who saw Alexandra as an enemy.
Public recognition of the difference between the two — and indeed the difference between the brothers — came in February, 1916, at the re-opening of the Duma at the Tauride Palace. Abrikosov escorted Natasha there and into the box reserved for distinguished guests, though several members of the Duma were also seated there. Abrikosov noted that ‘from the respect they showed her it was obvious she was becoming known in Duma circles’.21
That day was an historic occasion, for the Tsar had agreed to be present. On the few times he had addressed the Duma over the past ten years he had always done so at the Winter Palace — now, for the first time he was not demanding that they went to him, but instead he was going to them. Although it was widely hoped that this was to be signal for a new relationship between crown and Duma it would prove, in fact, no more than a ploy to smooth over the introduction of his newly-appointed prime minister, Boris Stürmer, pushed forward by Alexandra and blessed by Rasputin.
The old prime minister Goremykin had finally been retired in January; Stürmer, at sixty-eight, was only ten years younger, but Alexandra has pressed his appointment on Nicholas because he ‘very much values Grigory wh. is a great thing’.22 In the real world he was damningly seen as ‘worse than a mediocrity’ with a ‘third-rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea of State business’.23
To give himself moral support at the Duma, Nicholas took along Michael; it was their first State appearance together in the capital since Michael’s marriage and exile. Michael, pushed to the sidelines since his return to Russia, was now being brought centre-stage for the convenience of the moment. In the eight years in which she had known Michael, this was the first time that Natasha, sitting in her box, had ever seen the two brothers together. It would be the only day she — or any of the Duma members present — would do so.
That morning Michael and Natasha had breakfasted with Duma deputy Count Kapnist, who had then escorted Natasha to the Duma and the waiting Abrikosov while Michael went off to the Pavilion at the Tauride Palace to join his brother at the ceremonial entrance into the adjacent Catherine Hall. Nicholas was ‘deadly pale and his hands were trembling with agitation’.24 He was not looking forward to the ceremony.
The Catherine Hall was packed, with diplomats as well as Duma members, the mood hopeful that the Tsar’s visit would prove the beginning of change for the better, an expectation encouraged by the presence of Michael, whose support for the Duma was taken as fact by those lobbied by Natasha over the past year. Duma members wanted the Tsar to be no less supportive. As the influential Kadet leader Pavel Milyukov put it to Paléologue, what Nicholas had never understood was that his party was not ‘the opposition against His Majesty but His Majesty’s Opposition’.25 Perhaps today he would alter that view. Most hoped so.