As written, the manifesto removed that advantage; furthermore it created confusion in the ranks of those who had been prepared to defend the lawful transfer of power, since in turn that would underpin their own claims to be the lawful government. The authority of the Duma men had been based in great degree on the continuity of the accepted order — and with a stroke of his pen Nicholas had swept that away.
Now it was the Duma men who saw their necks at stake. Fear is infectious and it was fear Rodzyanko spread through the Duma deputies and into the new government. No one was anxious to admit that, of course, and instead they thought up better reasons for their change of heart.
One easy excuse was Michael’s morganatic marriage to a woman ‘well known for her political intrigues’; another was that ‘he had never been interested in affairs of state’ — though that could hardly matter, given that it might be held an advantage in a constitutional monarchy where the Emperor was required not to interfere.
Even the republican Kerensky recognised them ‘as irrelevant arguments’15; the real issue for the new government was whether it stood by the monarchy or caved into the Soviet. The test was courage, and there was not much of that about in those early hours.
Milyukov was one of the few who did not lose his head, arguing that ‘what mattered was not who should be Tsar, but that there should be a Tsar’.16 However, their nerves rattled by Rodzyanko, the abdication manifesto was seized upon as excuse for abandoning the very case which the Duma Committee had argued so strenuously with the Soviet. Kerensky, hearing his own case being made for him, thought that ‘the decision of Nicholas II had really cut the Gordian knot.’ Everyone on his side of the political divide ‘felt with great relief that once the lawful and rightful succession had been broken, the immediate question of the dynasty had been settled’.17 Nicholas had done for the Soviet what the Soviet did not dare to do on its own.
But that was later when all was known. The immediate imperative for the Duma men was to keep the manifesto secret until they had time to think what to do for the best. Could publication of the manifesto itself be stopped before it was too late? Rodzyanko was among those who desperately hoped so, and he drove off to the war ministry to wire Pskov and ask Ruzsky to hold up general distribution of it. It was 5 a.m. when Rodzyanko’s tape, its own testimony to his blind panic, stuttered over the direct wire.
It is extremely important that the manifesto… should not be published until I advise you of it… it is with great difficulty that we managed to restraint the revolutionary movement with more or less bearable limits, but the situation is as yet far from settled and civil war is quite possible. Perhaps they would reconcile themselves to the Regency of the Grand Duke… but his accession as Emperor would be completely unacceptable… A mutiny of soldiers has flared up, the like of which I have not seen… little by little the troops were brought to order during the night, but the proclamation of Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich would pour oil onto the fire and a merciless extermination of everything that can be exterminated would start…18
An hour later he was sending the same message to Alekseev at Stavka. Alekseev, who had already sent out the abdication manifesto, was disturbed by his wire conversation with Rodzyanko, and at 7 a.m. he sent out his views to his other army commanders that ‘there is no frankness or sincerity in the communications of Rodzyanko’ and that ‘there is no unity within the State Duma and the Temporary Committee’.19
Alekseev suspected that it was the Soviet which was dictating affairs in the capital. His response was to propose that the army should demand that the manifesto as written be implemented and that there should be a meeting of all army commanders to ‘establish unanimity in all circumstances and in any eventuality’.
At the Tauride Palace, the new government knew that it could not delay much longer its meeting with Michael — whether he was Emperor or whether they could somehow return him to Regent. Everyone knew where he was. As they waited for Rodzyanko to return from his wire talks, Kerensky picked up a copy of the Petrograd telephone directory, flicked through the pages and ran his finger down the column to the name of Princess Putyatina. Her number was 1-58-48. A few moments later, at 5.55 a.m., the telephone rang in 12 Millionnaya Street.20
14. EMPEROR MICHAEL
THERE was never any chance of keeping secret the succession of Michael as Emperor. In the four hours which had elapsed between the first telegraphed despatches from Pskov and the desperate call from Rodzyanko, the news had spread out not only to the army but to cities across Russia. At first light, thousands of troops in frontline units were swearing an oath of allegiance to Emperor Michael II, and in the Fourth Cavalry Division General Krasnov announced the succession to ‘an enormous cheer’; over the next two days he decorated soldiers with the Cross of St George in the name of His Majesty Emperor Michael.1
At Pskov itself, with Nicholas gone, a Te Deum was ordered for the new Emperor in the cathedral. Dimitri’s sister Marie went to the morning service, as did Ruzsky and his generals. The square beside the cathedral was crowded with soldiers, many of them wearing a red rosette, ‘their faces agitated’. Inside, a packed congregation heard the manifesto of Nicholas read out, and then prayed ‘for the prolongation of the days of the new Tsar’.2
As the morning wore on, even in far-off Crimea, and around the ex-Tsar’s favourite home at Livadia, people celebrated Michael’s succession. The American-born Princess Cantacuzène, grand-daughter of US President Grant, and one of Petrograd’s leading hostesses, was on holiday at Yalta at that time, and remembered that Nicholas’s portraits disappeared ‘from shop windows and walls within an hour after the reading of the proclamation; and in their place I saw by the afternoon pictures of Michael Aleksandrovich. Flags were hung out, and all faces wore smiles of quiet satisfaction. It was very bad; now it will be better, was the general, calm verdict. The supposition of a constitutional monarch was the accepted idea.’3
In Moscow, where the garrison had also gone over to the revolution, although without any of the excesses which had occurred in Petrograd, the succession of Michael was greeted with ‘wooden indifference’ on the part of the revolutionaries;4 there were no marching protests or riots and no sign of resistance of the kind so feared by Rodzyanko in the hot-house of the Tauride Palace.
When Alexandra’s sister Grand Duchess Ella heard the news at the Chudov Abbey of which she was abbess, her sole concern was the question of Natasha. Told by a monk that in the next service the liturgy would be changed to ‘Our Right Orthodox and Sovereign Lord and Emperor Michael’, she protested: ‘What about…?’ The monk broke in hurriedly. ‘Ah, Matushka, there will be no mention of the lady.’5
There would be no prayers for Natasha, but otherwise the faithful crossed themselves and prayed for Michael. Even in Petrograd, the storm centre of the revolution, the news of his succession was greeted with cheers, at least outside the citadels of the revolutionaries.
At Warsaw station, when Guchkov and Shulgin arrived back from Pskov, the two delegates decided to make the first proclamation about Michael. ‘Long live Emperor Michael’ they cried as they hurried from their train, cheered by the people as they went by. When Shulgin walked into the station’s huge entrance hall, a transit battalion of frontline troops, surrounded by a curious crowd, was drawn up there as they waited to change trains. Shulgin read out the manifesto and, lifting his eyes from the paper, called for three cheers for ‘His Majesty Emperor Michael II’. The battalion and the crowd responded with cheers that ‘rang out, passionate, genuine, emotional’.6