The plan was that the children and Miss Neame, would leave early in the morning in the Packard, and go to Batova, an estate owned by Natasha’s close friend Nadine Vonlyarlarskaya, sister of the lawyer Vladimir Nabokov, 15 miles to the south of Gatchina. Nadine and her young daughter would go with them, and they would wait there until Michael and Natasha arrived in the second car.
Arriving safely, the car started back to Gatchina to pick up possessions and provisions while the children, Nadine and Miss Neame sat down to breakfast. ‘Suddenly the manageress of the estate came hurriedly in to say that Bolshevik centres were being formed in all surrounding villages; that our car had been seen coming to the house; and that the Commissars intended to arrest the occupants, thinking that they were members of the Provisional Government trying to escape.’9 All telephone lines to the house had already been cut.
Knowing that Michael had to be warned if he was not to fall into the same trap, Nadine quickly saddled a horse and rode off to the local hospital and used their telephone to call him. There was only one line working but she got through to Nikolaevskaya Street. Speaking in English to confuse eavesdroppers she told Michael what had happened. He replied that he would send the Packard back with a message.
The little party waited anxiously all day but it was not until 8 p.m. that the Packard returned, with an armed Bolshevik sitting next to the chauffeur.10
The plan was in ruins. Even before the truce deadline passed, Gatchina had fallen into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and sailors had turned up at Michael’s house and confiscated both the Packard and his Rolls-Royce.11 Their only concession was that, Michael having persuaded the new local Bolshevik commandant Semen Roshal that the children had gone only on a day trip, to permit the Packard to return and bring them home.
At least they still had a home. Kerensky at that moment was a refugee, hiding in a peasant’s cottage. The Provisional Government, born on March 3, was no more.
THREE days later, on Saturday November 4, the Bolshevik commandant Roshal returned to Nikolaevskaya Street. Roshal was a prominent figure in the Petrograd party, and a leader of the Kronstadt sailors whose revolutionary fervour had made them the ‘shock troops’ of the Bolshevik coup. Roshal produced an order of the Military Revolutionary Committee that Michael was to be taken to the Bolshevik headquarters in Petrograd. Michael protested, and after a long argument Roshal compromised: Michael could select his own accommodation in the capital and he would be free to go out, provided he stayed in the city. 12 Once more Michael was under arrest, but on rather more generous terms than had been the case under Kerensky ten weeks earlier. Yes, he would wait, said Roshal, until Michael could arrange something. He would come back tomorrow.
Michael telephoned 12 Millionnaya Street. Princess Putyatina had gone to Odessa, but her sister was staying there with her husband and brother. They would be delighted to have Michael and Natasha join them, but there was no room for the children. Michael called Matveev. The children and Miss Neame would stay with him.13
The following afternoon, Sunday, Roshal re-appeared with both of Michael’s car and a squad of sailors. At 5.30 p.m. the household set off in convoy, followed by Roshal and two truckloads of guards.
Having seen the children safely into Matveev’s apartment, Michael drove to Millionnaya Street, where Princess Putyatina’s brother-in-law came out to greet them. Michael put a finger to his lips, as warning to him to be careful what he said in front of the two armed sailors standing behind him, flanking Roshal, ‘a tall man, with dark, piercing eyes’, and dressed in a soldier’s tunic and fur cap. Roshal motioned them to go into the building, and once inside repeated his instructions on the terms of his ‘arrest’. He then left, leaving the two sailors as sentry on the door.14
Although officially ‘under surveillance’, the Bolsheviks left him alone over the next days. He walked around the city, going first to the square in front of the Winter Palace where he ‘admired its appearance’ as he caustically put it. ‘All the walls were spotted with bullets, and also the windows’.
Bolshevik propaganda would later portray ‘the storming of the Winter Palace’ in heroic terms as if a triumphant victory against a determined enemy, but it was nothing like that. There were only enough defenders to guard three doors, and the Red Guards, soldiers and sailors massed in the palace square simply broke in through the undefended doors and disarmed the tiny garrison once inside. The government ministers who had been working there, including Tereshchenko, were arrested. Three cadets were wounded, and six sailors were said to have been killed in the square earlier, but storm it was not.
On his return to Millionnaya Street, Michael and Natasha entertained friends. The conversation inevitably turning to politics, it became so heated with Natasha and the others so ‘worked up and shouting’, that ‘we had to employ drastic measures’, Michael suggesting that he should be given ‘a chairman’s bell to restore order’ and if that failed, ‘a revolver’.15
Eight days later, on Monday, November 13, Michael was told that he could go back to Gatchina under ‘house arrest’, though again the conditions were so lax that the order seemed not worth the paper it was written on.16
Although Michael was returning with everyone else, Natasha decided to stay on in Millionnaya Street for a few more days, though her motive was wholly practicaclass="underline" she was determined to go into the state Bank and rescue her valuables held there in a strong-box. The bank had been closed because of a strike, but it was due to re-open in two days’ time. She would be back on Saturday.
When he got home he dashed off a letter to her in Millionnaya Street, laconically addressing the envelope to ‘Comrade Nathalie Sergeyevna Brasova from Comrade MAR’. He reported that ‘two of our people kept watch in the house during the night because our guard had been removed, but, as of tomorrow, we are supposed to have a guard again. Everything is quiet and comfortable here, it was a great pleasure to return home and breathe the wonderful fresh air. Johnnie is going to town tomorrow and will call at Millionnaya for a minute, and will come back with you on Saturday. It is now 9.30 p.m. and he and I are going for a little sledge ride in the wonderful moonlight…’17
Natasha got what she wanted at the bank. Telling officials that she needed access to her strong-box in order to examine papers, she was escorted into the vault and the box given to her. When she left the bank her muff was ‘stuffed full of some of her more valuable and portable jewellery’.18 She would need it all in the days to come.
Although Michael was released from his notional ‘house arrest’ shortly after his return to Gatchina, he would not be free from minor harassment. On November 25, 1917, a party of soldiers arrived at the house with an order authorising them to confiscate wine and provisions. They took ‘80 bottles of our wine and a quantity of sugar…some bottles were drunk and smashed on the spot’.19
Determined to put an end to such petty looting and hooliganism, and to obtain some form of guarantee that the Bolsheviks would ‘leave me in peace’, Michael went back to Petrograd next day and walked into the party headquarters to confront one of Lenin’s henchmen, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, Secretary of the Soviet of the People’s Commissars. After Michael’s protestations, Bonch-Bruevich drew up a permit on official paper declaring Michael to have ‘free residence’ as an ordinary citizen.20