However, he had reckoned without Milyukov’s resistance to any fait accompli as well as his insistence that they should wait until Guchkov and Shulgin — he counted on both as allies — got back to the Tauride Palace. As time went by, one question settled itself: that the manifesto had been circulated across the country and that the cat was well and truly out of the bag. The Soviet now also knew that Michael was Emperor, and the resulting clamour among the mutineers left the Duma majority in no doubt of what that meant for them. Impatient to get Michael out of the way, the transport minister Nekrasov set to work on drafting an abdication manifesto they would take with them to Millionnaya Street. By noon, the majority hoped that they would be bringing it back with his signature to the Tauride Palace. In presenting that to the Soviet, they could show themselves master of events — men of action, not chatter.
With no sign of Guchkov and Shulgin, held up by their adventures in the railway workshops, Milyukov could not delay the delegation any longer and by 9.15 a.m. it began to assemble in Millionnaya Street — later than Kerensky had hoped, but still time enough to believe they could be back triumphant in the Tauride Palace by noon. Michael, they accepted, must have heard the news that he was Emperor — since it was all round the city by now — but he would have had no time to think out what that entailed. He would also be alone, in a room packed with men determined in the main to get rid of him. How could they lose?
MICHAEL had found out that he was Emperor in the time in which he had been waiting to meet the delegation as Regent. The telephones were working, and as the news spread across the capital the line into Millionnaya Street was blocked with calls. Natasha, in Gatchina, could still not get through to Petrograd, but the local telephone system there was working as normal — there were 250 numbers on the Gatchina exchange — and that Friday morning her phone ‘never stopped ringing’ her daughter Tata remembered.14
That was hardly surprising: the garrison commandant in Gatchina had his copy of the cabled manifesto at 3 a.m., the same time as at Tsarskoe Selo, and woke up the house to tell Natasha that she was now wife of the Emperor. The excitement was matched by the frustration at not being able to contact Michael, and find out what was going on in Petrograd.
The only personal caller at Millionnaya Street as the capital awoke that Friday morning was Bimbo, Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, who lived in the palace across the road. Two evenings before, Bimbo — whose brother George was staying with Natasha — had joined Michael for supper,15 discussing his role as Regent, and as ever advancing his own liberal ideas on the shape of the monarchy to come. He returned early on Friday morning, for Princess Putyatina remembered him being there. Someone had called him with the news already racing around Petrograd. He was ‘up-to-date with everything and he knew that the Emperor had abdicated’, she wrote. According to her version, Bimbo said that ‘I am very happy to recognise you as Sovereign, since in fact you are already the Tsar! Be brave and strong: in this way you will not only save the dynasty but also the future of Russia!’16
In the excitement of the moment the princess did not recall Michael being in any way alarmed at developments before the first knock on the door announced the arrival of his prime minister Prince Lvov, and a quivering Rodzyanko. Putyatina, writing many years later, clearly failed to pick up or chose to forget the worries Michael had with that news. He had once been heir to the throne, and co-Regent with Alexandra for the baby Alexis. He was well versed in the laws of succession, for they had been drilled into him by constitutional experts at the time, and what he knew — as perhaps Bimbo, 24th in line to the throne when Alexis was born, ought also to have known— was that Nicholas could not bypass Alexis as he had done. There was no precedent for it, and it had left Michael in a very difficult position. It would be the reason why, when he did meet the delegation, that Kerensky remarked that he looked ‘much perturbed’ 17
TWO miles separate the Tauride Palace and Millionnaya Street. On snow-covered streets a car could make the journey in about ten or fifteen minutes, driving down the street towards the Winter Palace, then turning into the archway leading to the large inner courtyard behind the Putyatin apartment. Once inside the courtyard the several cars arriving from the Duma building would be concealed from view as the cadet guards closed the heavy black courtyard doors behind them. The delegation had not told the Soviet executive about the meeting, and did not want them to have wind of it until afterwards, when they would be able to trump their protests by flourishing Michael’s signed abdication.
Matveev, wearing his uniform as a reserve lieutenant in the Zemstovs Hussars,18 was given the role of meeting the arriving delegates. The well of the staircase was crowded with armed cadet officers, and the Duma men threw off their fur coasts there before climbing the shallow-stepped granite staircase, with its elaborate wrought-iron bannister, to the apartment landing and the waiting Matveev. They were then ushered into the drawing room, warmed by a roaring fire.
The room had been prepared to provide an informal setting. The settees and armchairs were arranged so that Michael, when he took the meeting, would be sitting in a tall-backed easy chair, facing a semicircle of delegates. Within fifteen minutes or so there were a dozen men gathered there. Seven of them were ministers in the newly-named Provisional Government and five were Duma deputies, led by Rodzyanko.
Before the meeting it had been agreed at the Tauride Palace that Lvov and Rodzyanko would lead the majority call for Michael’s abdication, while Milyukov argued the minority view, that preserving the monarchy was essential if Russia was to be saved from extremism.
However, the great division between the two sides was that unless Michael did abdicate, none of those opposed to his succession would remain in the government. That left Milyukov in the position where he could make only a token defence of the monarchy. And if Michael refused to abdicate, he would find himself only with a foreign minister and — assuming Guchkov arrived in time to join in the meeting — war minister. The prime minister and the other seven ministers present would all resign; Rodzyanko, nominally still president of the State Duma, had promised not to take office in any replacement government.
However, as Rodzyanko would blandly comment that morning, the decision none the less would be one for Michael alone. Small wonder, then, that the majority of men in that drawing room were confident of being back in the Tauride Palace by not later than noon. What choice could Michael have but abdicate, abandoned otherwise by the new government and surrounded by mutinous troops who wanted him dead?
At 9.35 a.m., with the delegates deciding that they could no longer wait for Guchkov and Shulgin, Matveev was told that they were ready to begin.19 The drawing room door opened, ministers and deputies rose to their feet, and in walked the man being hailed across the country as His Majesty Emperor Michael II. He moved around the room to greet each delegate individually. ‘We shook hands and exchanged courtesies,’ Kerensky would remember.20
Then Michael sat down in his tall-backed chair, looked around the men facing him, and the meeting began.