Rodzyanko’s response was as frank as the question invited him to be. ‘The entire policy of the government must undergo a radical change. Ministers must be appointed whom the country trusts, not men whose very presence in the government is an insult to public feeling. I am sorry to tell you that this can only be done on condition that the Empress is removed. She exercises a deplorable influence on all appointments, even those in the army. Alexandra Fedorovna is fiercely and universally hated and all circles are clamouring for her removal. While she remains in power, we shall continue on the road to ruin.’
‘Buchanan said the same thing to my brother,’ replied Michael ‘The whole family is aware of her evil influence. She and my brother are surrounded by traitors. All decent people have gone. But things being so, what is to be done?’
‘Your Highness, you, as his only brother, must tell him the whole truth — point out the pernicious results of the Empress’s influence…’
‘Do you think there must be a responsible ministry?’
‘The general demand is only for a strong government…the country’s desire is to see at the head of the Cabinet a man enjoying the confidence of the nation. Such a man would form a ministry responsible to the Tsar…for God’s sake, Your Highness, use your influence to get the Duma summoned, and Alexandra Fedorovna and her set put out of the way.’
According to Rodzyanko this interview lasted for more than an hour. ‘The Grand Duke agreed with everything and promised to help…’10 Rodzyanko’s wife thought Michael was there ‘on some mysterious mission, I think he was sent secretly by his brother’. But she reported to a relative that ‘he knows and understands everything, and listened attentively to all that was said and promised to prevail upon the Emperor to see [my husband]’. When Nicholas then did agree to meet Rodzyanko, she wrote that ‘it is more than likely that the audience was granted after Michael Aleksandrovich’s expositions.’11
That meeting between the Tsar and the Duma president came on Saturday January 7 in Nicholas’s study at Tsarskoe Selo. Rodzyanko spoke frankly about the mood of the country, the disastrous influence of the Empress, and the mistakes which now threatened to plunge Russia into anarchy. His message was blunt: unless he agreed to grant concessions and to remove Alexandra from politics, he faced disaster. ‘Your Majesty, do not compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country.’
The Tsar pressed his head with his hands and said, ‘Is it possible that for 22 years I tried to act for the best, and that for 22 years it was all a mistake?’ Rodzyanko did not flinch from his answer. ‘Yes, Your Majesty, for 22 years you have followed the wrong course.’12
But if Rodzyanko hoped for a new start he was to be disappointed. Once he had bowed and set off to return to the capital, Nicholas went on as before. Nothing was to be done, nothing would change. The Tsar would retreat to his army headquarters in distant Mogilev leaving Alexandra in their Tsarskoe Selo palace to deal with ministers who did whatever she demanded.
There was little more immediately that Michael could do, for on January 19 he departed back to the front line. Three days later he was in Kiev, and on his way to the south-western headquarters of his 2nd Cavalry Corps. His new appointment, effective as of January 29, was that of Inspector General of Cavalry, but before taking up the post he needed to hand over his Corps formally and to make his farewells to the divisions, brigades and regiments. Over the next days he travelled the front line by sleigh, inspecting trenches and outposts. He thanked ‘the riflemen for their service, tasted the food, inspected the wooden barracks of the lower-ranking men, and then went to a hut for a bite to eat.’13 After the atmosphere in Petrograd it was almost a relief to him to be at the front line and he enjoyed his tour. He found nothing in his Corps to suggest that morale was low, or that the ferment in the capital had affected his troops. As before, when he had left the Savage Division ten months earlier, they cheered him, played trumpet farewells, sang songs, gave him tea and looked sorry to see him go, he noted in his diary.14 What he also noted was that he had been spared making a speech, as he did when departing the Savage Division. Doing so, he lamented, ‘must have taken at least three years of my life. I am always so frightfully nervous, but I pulled myself together and spoke loudly, slowly, and clearly.’
Yet politics could not be kept at bay. Before returning to Gatchina he went to say goodbye to his commander-in-chief Brusilov at his headquarters in Kamenets-Podolsky, arriving there on Wednesday, February 1.
‘I was very fond of him’. Brusilov recalled, ‘for he was an absolutely honourable and upright man, taking no sides and lending himself to no intrigues…he shunned every kind of gossip, whether connected with the services or with family matters. As a soldier he was an excellent leader and an unassuming and conscientious worker.’15
As the two men said farewell on February 1, Brusilov thought the situation too serious for just polite talk. ‘I expounded most earnestly…the need for immediate and drastic reforms… begging him to explain all this to the Tsar and to lend my views his personal support.’ Michael promised to do so, but cautioned that ‘my brother has time and time again had warnings and entreaties of this kind from every quarter, but he is the slave of influence and pressure that no one is in a position to overcome.’16 He meant the Empress.
The two men shook hands, and Michael set off home next day. It was a slow journey. ‘We are moving with a delay of 3 hours, probably because of snowdrifts. I say “probably”, as you can never know the real cause of happenings. But the truth is that everything is in complete disorder everywhere.’17
It was going to get worse.
THE serious plotters were now well advanced in their plans for a palace coup. Discounting the near-hysterical ‘champagne plot’ at the Vladimir palace, which served only to extinguish any hopes that the Romanovs could put their own house in order, there were a number of conspiracies, none knowing much if anything of the others. All necessarily were shadowy and perhaps only two were credible.
The Progressive Bloc of conservatives and liberals in the Duma had prepared a list of ministers who would form the government after a coup, with Michael as Regent, though they were vague as to how this was to be accomplished.
Demands that something should be done could be heard on all sides. Vladimir Stankevich, a henchman of the radical left-wing Duma deputy Aleksandr Kerensky, saw ‘a general determination to have done with the outrages perpetrated by court circles and to overthrow Nicholas. Several names were suggested as candidates for the throne, but there was unanimous agreement that Michael Aleksandrovich was the only one who could guarantee the constitutional legitimacy of government.’18
But talk was not action. Among those determined to act were Aleksandr Guchkov, the 55-year-old leader of the Octobrists, a right-wing party in the Duma, but one which favoured ‘constitutional government’; among his supporters were the liberal Nikolai Nekrasov, and industrialist Mikhail Tereshchenko, all destined to play a leading part in the events to come. Nekrasov and Tereshchenko were young men, the former 36 and the other only 29.
Guchkov, a former President of the Duma, had been hated by the Empress since 1912 when he had bitterly denounced Rasputin — ‘Oh, could not one hang Guchkov?” was her response.19 The gossipy French ambassador Paléologue called him ‘the personal enemy of Their Majesties’,20 so it was no surprise that he should now want to be rid of them.
Guchkov’s reasoning was that without change a revolution was inevitable and if it was left to extremists and the street mob then it would be they who would rule afterwards. ‘I fear that those who make the revolution will be at the head of that revolution’. The alternative was to be a bloodless palace coup, for none wanted that Michael should become Regent for Alexis ‘surrounded by lakes of blood’.21 The plan which they slowly pieced together was to capture the Tsar’s train while it was travelling between the capital at the army headquarters at Mogilev, and thus present the country next morning with a fait accompli. To make this feasible Prince Dimitri Vyazemsky, a brother of Michael’s ADC Vladimir, had been charged with the task of recruiting ‘like-minded’ army officers.22