The third was from General Aleksei Evert, the commander on the western front: Under the conditions which have been created and not seeing any other answer I implore Your Majesty to make a decision which would be in agreement with the declaration of the President of the State Duma…as the only measure which apparently can stop the revolution and thus save Russia from the horrors of anarchy.5
Ruzsky, armed with these, and backed by two of his generals, went back to the Emperor in his railway carriage. He handed over the text, letting it speak for itself. Nicholas, smoking one cigarette and then lighting another, read it and then put it down on the table before rising and going to the window, staring out unseeingly. He could have contempt for politicians, and ignore his brother, but he could not defy his generals and they had just passed a vote of no confidence in him, both as Tsar and Supreme Commander. He could not sack them, as he could sack politicians, nor could he argue with them.
Suddenly he turned and said calmly: ‘I have decided. I shall renounce the throne’. He made the sign of the Cross and the three generals, realising the enormity of what had just been said, followed suit.6
Two short telegrams were drafted for Nicholas — the first to Rodzyanko.
There is no sacrifice which I would not bear for the sake of the real welfare and for the salvation of our own dear Mother Russia. Therefore I am ready to abdicate the throne in favour of my son, provided that he can remain with me until he comes of age, with the Regency of my brother the Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich.
That was the response that was hoped for by the Duma men — Nicholas gone, a boy Emperor, Michael as Regent. His second telegram, to Alekseev, was in similar terms.7
Ruzsky was just about to send these off when an unexpected cable arrived from Petrograd announcing that two members of the Temporary Committee, Guchkov and Shulgin, were on their way to Pskov to meet the Tsar and were leaving at 3.35 p.m.
Not knowing the significance of this, Ruzsky held up despatch of the abdication cables and went back to Nicholas with the unexpected news of the two deputies.8 Could they be coming with some offer that would make the abdication unnecessary? Was Nicholas II in fact to be reprieved?9
However, fifteen minutes later, reality returned to the imperial carriage. The frontline commanders had spoken and that being so Nicholas could not remain Emperor. His original abdication cables were handed back to Ruzsky, Nicholas telling him to send them out to Rodzyanko and Alekseev. The time was 3.45 p.m.10
At that moment Nicholas ceased to be Tsar, Alexis was the new emperor; and Michael was Regent. Or so it was assumed when his cables were circulated by Alekseev to the military commanders and Rodzyanko spread the word in the Duma. Indeed, his abdication was so generally known that in London his cousin King George V that night wrote in his diary: ‘Heard from Buchanan that the Duma had forced Nicky to sign his abdication and Misha had been appointed Regent…’ The king was in no doubt about the reason: ‘I fear Alicky (the Empress) is the cause of it all and Nicky has been weak’.11
What was not taken into account was that his abdication cable contained a condition in respect of Alexis— ‘provided that he can remain with me until he comes of age’ — which would have been more than three years later, in August 1920.
It was disregarded firstly because no discussion or thought had yet been given to that particular question, but more significantly because it was deemed irrelevant to the fact of his abdication. To say as he did that he was ‘ready to abdicate’ concealed the reality that he had been forced off the throne, after being abandoned on all sides. He was in no position to ‘abdicate conditionally’ or dictate the terms of his going; he was finished. And that being so, his son Alexis automatically succeeded him, for that was the law.
Moreover, the question of his future over the next three years was not the issue in the crisis engulfing the capital and thus the wider nation. The sole imperative was that with an innocent boy on the throne and the constitutionally-minded Michael as Regent, the monarchy could be secured, which is what mattered to all but the socialists in the Soviet.
To say as he did in his cable that There is no sacrifice which I would not bear for the sake of the real welfare and for the salvation of our own dear Mother Russia meant nothing at all if immediately contradicted by his saying except for having to part with my son.
But that, it turned out, was precisely what he was saying. Millions of fathers had lost their sons to the war, and if order was not restored, tens of thousands of others would lose theirs in the resulting chaos. Nicholas hoped to be not among them. Their sacrifice was not to be his.
MICHAEL was keeping closely in touch with developments at the Tauride Palace and on that Thursday, March 2, there were constant comings and goings at Millionnaya Street as Duma emissaries arrived with news. Michael had known the night before that while ‘all the power is now in the hands of the Temporary Committee’, the Duma men ‘are in difficulties because of the strong pressure by the Committee of Deputies of Workers and Soldiers’.12
Early that morning he knew that his brother had, belatedly, offered a responsible ministry under Rodzyanko — disregarding his own advice that it should be under Prince Lvov — but he also knew that this was no longer enough. It was frustrating sitting in Millionnaya Street, unable to do anything to help. Should he go to the Tauride Palace and declare his support for such a new government? Rodzyanko, who knew the mood there among the socialists, thought that potentially dangerous. The arrival of the red-bowed Kirill at the Tauride Palace had created more astonishment than uproar in the Soviet, for it had seemed to them a surrender of the imperial family, though it had also strengthened the standing of the Duma men who appeared now to be able to command even a Grand Duke.
There was less interest when, later that same day, Bimbo turned up and also offered the Duma his support. Bimbo had only just arrived back at his Millionnaya Street palace having taken the revolution as signal that he could end the exile imposed upon him on New Year’s Day by the Tsar. Tall, bald, fat and still a bachelor at 58, Bimbo was a gossip who had never concealed his contempt for Nicholas and Alexandra; as a young man in the Chevalier Gardes he had been known as ‘Phillipe Egalité’ because he insisted on calling his soldiers ‘my friends’.13 At the Tauride Palace his support for the Duma was acknowledged, but not thought of having any political significance. As for the Soviet, they hardly knew he was there.
But Michael was neither an eccentric Grand Duke nor the discredited Kirill. The Soviet might take his appearance as political interference, as an attempt to put his name behind the Duma and forestall the Soviet’s demands for a ‘democratic republic’. While the Duma men might earn credit for having two Grand Dukes signal their support for them, Michael was a different story: if he turned up, the revolutionaries might well be tempted to keep him there, as hostage for their own necks. In the event, by the time Rodzyanko got round to replying to Michael, to dissuade him from going to the Duma, he knew that Nicholas had abdicated, and that Michael was Regent. That being so, it was not his place to go to the Duma; it was for the Duma to come to him.