The Empress-Mother is still at Kiev; she ought to be here, as her son still fears her a little (not very much). The Allied Embassies would like her back in Petrograd.
Unluckily the bag goes out this afternoon, and I shall only have all the news at dinner as it is the Russian Christmas Eve and I dine at the Grand Duchess’s [Grand Duchess Vladimir]. Tomorrow I shall go to the Emperor’s church at Tsarskoye Selo to see how they are all getting on down there.
Until the unexpected arrest of Dmitri Pavlovich, the whole tribe of Romanovs, along with almost every other aristocrat, had believed that, with Rasputin out of the way, the Tsar would somehow regain control. They still hoped that, with the passage of time, he would. Stopford would learn that night that Grand Duke Dmitri was already under escort – in a train without a restaurant car – to Kasmin, on the Persian front, one of the hardest postings of the war. Felix Yusupov had been banished to Archangelskoye, the legendary family palace outside Moscow. A few days later Stopford wrote:
He is so clever he will always get all he wants, whereas the other boy is always helpless and desolate; he had une crise de nerfs, and completely broke down in the train next day in his famished condition.
The British were waiting for great developments of a different kind. Hoare was not the only one who saw in Rasputin’s murder the coming of a new dawn. Sir George Buchanan was convinced that the Duma would take advantage of the situation and push the Tsarina into the background, clearing the way for the Tsar to listen to sensible advice from a pro-Ally perspective. The very day before Rasputin’s death, the Duma’s proceedings had been summarily halted by imperial command because so many parliamentarians had spoken up against Rasputin and the politicians and churchmen he had put in place. Now that he was gone, and there was such visible public support on every side for his supposed assassins, the British expected the liberals in Parliament to rally their forces and reconstitute the Duma as an effective force firmly behind the Allies in the war, instead of the limp assembly it had become.
Buchanan and the others miscalculated badly. The pro-Ally members of the Duma had neither influence nor ability, nor sufficient drive to take action.
On the morning of Friday 31 December/12 January, Sir George Buchanan had an audience with the Tsar. He was realistic about the desperately precarious state of political order in Russia and knew he must speak frankly; no one else would. He asked the Foreign Office for permission to say his piece on behalf of the King, but London replied that the King was out of town. Sir George would have to make it clear to the Tsar that his views were purely personal.
On all previous occasions His Majesty had received me informally in his study, and after asking me to sit down, had produced his cigarette case and asked me to smoke. I was, therefore, disagreeably surprised at being ushered this time into the audience chamber and at finding His Majesty awaiting me there, standing in the middle of the room. I at once realized that he had divined the object of my audience… My heart, I confess, sank within me… The Emperor of all the Russias was then an autocrat, whose slightest wish was law; and I was about not only to disregard the hint which he had so plainly given me but to put myself in the wrong by overstepping the bounds of an Ambassador’s sphere of action.20
The forthcoming Allied Mission – a deputation from England and France, due to arrive in less than three weeks – was to see people of influence and set up links to enable Russia to get in step with the other two Allied powers. Buchanan explained that it was difficult for the English and French visitors to have any faith in this process when one hardly knew which Minister would be in power from one week to the next. It was important to allow good people to make their own decisions about the team they wanted to work with. And on this topic, he felt he must warn His Majesty (again) that the Tsarina must not be used as a tool of the German propaganda machine by those around her. He tried to tell him (again) how important it was to work with the people of Russia. Warming to his theme, Sir George suggested that the Tsar had come to the parting of the ways.
If I were to see a friend walking through a wood on a dark night along a path which I knew ended in a precipice, would it not be my duty, sir, to warn him of his danger? And is it not equally my duty to warn Your Majesty of the abyss that lies ahead of you?21
The Tsar thanked him but told him not to exaggerate Russia’s problems. If they were in any way as severe as he implied, he could in any case rely on his army to defend him from an uprising.
According to Stopford, who met him bounding up the embassy stairs, Sir George came back from the audience looking rather chipper. However, at some point the following day, his mood was to change to one of concern and trepidation. Quite how or when it reached him is not clear, but his own diary leaves us in little doubt that Buchanan received news of the most unwelcome kind – news that could have catastrophic diplomatic consequences for Britain. Rather than wait to see if he would be summoned, Buchanan decided to take the bull by the horns and raise the matter directly with the Tsar himself at the Russian New Year’s Reception.
The stunning news Buchanan had heard on the grapevine was to the effect that evidence had recently come into the possession of the Tsar that led him to suspect ‘a certain British subject’ of being Rasputin’s killer. According to Buchanan:
I took the opportunity of assuring him that the suspicion was absolutely groundless. His Majesty thanked me and said that he was very glad to hear this.22
Whether or not the Tsar believed Buchanan’s assurance and indeed how assured Buchanan himself actually was that no British subject was in anyway involved is equally unclear. It would seem that Buchanan had contacted Hoare for his reaction, but then again, Hoare was not necessarily aware of what his own men were up to a good deal of the time.
Who then was this nameless mystery man who had come to the Tsar’s attention and who had caused Buchanan at least one night’s troubled sleep? The Tsar had supported the Allies in the first place in order to get foreign debt written off and access to Constantinople as a reward when they won, so he did not want to offend them. But he, the Okhrana and Rasputin’s friends had been asking themselves exactly who had had an interest in murdering Rasputin, and had drawn certain conclusions.
FOUR
THE SPIES WHO CAME INTO THE COLD
Robert H. Bruce Lockhart was a handsome rugger player with a weakness for dangerous love affairs. He was also a British consular officer with a better understanding of Russia’s troubles than most. He had been in Russia since 1912 and had learned to be wary of the political judgement of his compatriots. In particular, he wrote in 1932,
…my experiences of the war and of the Russian revolution have left me with a very poor opinion of secret service work. Doubtless it has its uses and its functions, but political work is not its strong point. The buying of information puts a premium on manufactured news. But even manufactured news is less dangerous than the honest reports of men who, however brave and however gifted as linguists, are frequently incapable of forming a reliable political judgement.1
The extreme revolutionary surge in Russia by the end of 1916 was unstoppable, but very few of the British had yet recognised that Russia’s imperial system was too far gone to save. Part of the problem was the company they kept. Bruce Lockhart was pretty well alone among the British in taking the progressive intelligentsia seriously as a political force, and he was stationed in Moscow. He was also a Foreign Office employee. In Petrograd, the capital, the Ambassador and Consul worked for the Foreign Office; the Military Attaché worked for the War Office; and the British Intelligence Mission was ostensibly part of the War Office, paid for out of Foreign Office funds. While the functions of all three were different, all must keep a close eye on their particular spheres of interest.