The monarchy’s prestige in Russia had reached a nadir in the winter of 1916–17 when even committed monarchists turned against it. Guchkov, for all his royalist sentiments, had to admit that in the first days of the Revolution, “around the throne, there was an utter vacuum.” And Shulgin noted on February 27: “in this whole immense city one could not find a few hundred men sympathetic to the government.”105 The significance of this fact can scarcely be overestimated: it exerted a critical influence not only on the outbreak of the Revolution but on its whole subsequent course. Centuries of historical experience had inculcated in Russians—that is, the mass of peasants, workers, and soldiers—the habit of viewing the tsar as the khoziain or proprietor of the country. This notion prevented them from conceiving of sovereignty as something distinct from the person of the sovereign. Russia without a true—that is, “terrible” or “awesome”—tsar, let alone without any tsar, in the people’s minds was a contradiction in terms: for them it was the person of the tsar that defined and gave reality to the state, not the other way around. The decline in the prestige of tsardom which had occurred after the turn of the century, as a result of the monarchy’s inability to suppress the opposition and its ultimate surrender of autocratic authority, lowered in their eyes the prestige of the state and its government as well. Without its khoziain, the country, as the people understood it, fell apart and ceased to exist, just as a peasant household fell apart and ceased to exist upon the death of its bol’shak. When this happened, Russia reverted to its original “Cossack” constitution of universal volia, or liberty, understood in the sense of unbridled license, in which the will of the commune was the only acknowledged authority.
In view of this tradition, one might have expected the mass of the population to favor the retention of the monarchy. But at this particular historic juncture two factors militated against such a stand.
The peasantry remained monarchist. Nevertheless, in early 1917 it was not averse to an interlude of anarchy, sensing that it would provide a chance finally to carry out a nationwide “Black Repartition.” Indeed, between the spring of 1917 and the spring of 1918, the communal peasantry would seize and distribute among themselves virtually all the land in private possession. Once this process was completed, its traditional monarchist sentiments would reassert themselves, but then it would be too late.
The other consideration had to do with the fear of punishment on the part of the Petrograd populace, especially the troops. The February events could be seen in different ways: as a glorious revolution or as a sordid military mutiny. If the monarchy survived, even though constitutionally circumscribed, it was likely to view the actions of the Petrograd garrison as mutiny:
The half-conscious revulsion against the monarchy among the [Petrograd] masses seems to have been motivated by a sense of apprehension over what had been done … a revolution that ended with the reestablishment of the old dynasty would essentially turn into a rebellion, participation in which … carried the risk of retribution.106
When he arrived in Pskov on March 1, Nicholas had no thought of abdicating. On the contrary, he was determined to reassert his authority by force; in his diary the preceding day he noted that he had sent General Ivanov to Petrograd “to introduce [vodvorit’] order.” But in Pskov he fell under the influence of opinions which touched him where he was the most sensitive: his patriotism and love of the army. From a conversation with General Ruzskii shortly after arrival and throughout the twenty-four hours that followed, Nicholas heard from everyone that as long as he remained tsar Russia could not win the war. Nicholas discounted the opinion of politicians as self-serving, but he paid heed to the generals. As the Hughes telegraph at the Northern Front headquarters registered telegram after telegram from the military commanders urging him, for the sake of the country and its armed forces, first to allow the Duma to form the cabinet and then to abdicate, his resolve weakened. Alexandra anticipated the effects of such pressures on him and on March 2 urged him not to sign a “constitution” or some such “horror” (uzhas). She added:
If you are compelled to make concessions, then you are under no conditions obliged to fulfill them, because they have been extracted in an unworthy manner.107
General Alekseev, who in the Tsar’s absence from Mogilev assumed the duties of Commander in Chief, had sound practical reasons to be worried by the news from Petrograd: the continuation of strikes and mutinies in the capital city threatened to disrupt the railway service and halt the flow of supplies to the front.108 In the longer run there was the danger of the mutiny spreading to front-line troops. In the morning of February 28 he concluded that there was no hope of suppressing the Petrograd mutiny by force because Khabalov had wired that he had only 1,100 loyal troops left and even they were running out of ammunition.109 In these circumstances he saw no way of saving the front from collapse other than by granting the political concessions urged by Rodzianko. Having learned of the spread of disorders to Moscow, on March 1 he cabled the Tsar:
A revolution in Russia—and this is inevitable once disorders occur in the rear—will mean a disgraceful termination of the war, with all its inevitable consequences, so dire for Russia. The army is most intimately connected with the life of the rear. It may be confidently stated that disorders in the rear will produce the same result among the armed forces. It is impossible to ask the army calmly to wage war while a revolution is in progress in the rear. The youthful makeup of the present army and its officer staff, among whom a very high percentage consist of reservists and commissioned university students, gives no grounds for assuming that the army will not react to events occurring in Russia.
Insofar as the Duma was trying to restore order in the rear, Alekseev continued, it should be given the opportunity to form a cabinet of national confidence.110 He followed this cable with the draft of a manifesto prepared, at his request, by N. A. Basily, the chief of the diplomatic chancellery at headquarters,111 in which Nicholas empowered the Duma to form a cabinet. Alekseev’s recommendation was endorsed by Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, the Inspector of Artillery and the Tsar’s cousin once removed.
Around 10 p.m., while these messages were en route, Nicholas received General Ruzskii. In response to the Tsar’s request that he give free expression to his opinions, Ruzskii came out in support of a Duma cabinet. Having heard him out, Nicholas explained why he disagreed. As Ruzskii later recounted:
The sovereign’s basic thought was that he wished nothing for himself, in his own interest, that he held on to nothing, but that he did not feel he had the right to transfer the entire task of administering Russia into the hands of people who, being in power today, could inflict grievous harm on the fatherland and tomorrow wash their hands, “handing in their resignation.” “I am accountable to God and Russia for all that has happened and will happen,” the sovereign said. “It is a matter of no consequence that the ministers will be responsible to the Duma and State Council. If I see that they are not acting for Russia’s good, I will never be able to agree with them, consoling myself with the thought that this is not the work of my hands, not my responsibility.”