48. Ex-Tsar Nicholas at Tsarskoe Selo, March 1917, under house arrest.
In the course of my occasional short interviews with Nicholas II at Tsarskoe Selo, I tried to fathom his character and, I think, on the whole I succeeded. He was an extremely reserved man, who distrusted and utterly despised mankind. He was not well educated, but he had some knowledge of human nature. He did not care for anything or anyone except his son, and perhaps his daughters. This terrible indifference to all external things made him seem like some unnatural automaton. As I studied his face, I seemed to see behind his smile and charming eyes a stiff, frozen mask of utter loneliness and desolation. I think he may have been a mystic, seeking communion with Heaven patiently and passionately, and weary of all earthly things. Perhaps everything on earth had become insignificant and distasteful to him because all his desires had been so easily gratified. When I began to know this living mask I understood why it had been so easy to overthrow his power. He did not wish to fight for it and it simply fell from his hands. Authority, like everything else, he held too cheap. He was altogether weary of it. He threw off authority as formerly he might have thrown off a dress uniform and put on a simpler one. It was a new experience for him to find himself a plain citizen without the duties or robes of state. To retire into private life was not a tragedy for him. Old Madame Naryshkina, the lady-in-waiting, told me that he had said to her: “How glad I am that I need no longer attend to these tiresome interviews and sign those everlasting documents! I shall read, walk and spend my time with the children.” And, she added, this was no pose on his part. Indeed, all those who watched him in his captivity were unanimous in saying that Nicholas II seemed generally to be very good-tempered and appeared to enjoy his new manner of life. He chopped wood and piled up the logs in stacks in the park. He did a little gardening and rowed and played with the children. It seemed as if a heavy burden had fallen from his shoulders and that he was greatly relieved.210
Given the sentiments of the Ispolkom, it was unlikely ever to have approved the government’s plans to allow Nicholas to leave for England. Nevertheless, it came as something of a shock when at the end of March (OS) Britain informed the Provisional Government that she was withdrawing her invitation to the ex-Tsar. It was believed then and for a long time afterward that it was Prime Minister David Lloyd George who had dissuaded George V from following his generous impulses. Lloyd George himself liked to perpetuate this impression.211 But it has since become known that he did so to protect the King, who had vetoed the earlier decision for fear that it would embarrass the Crown and irritate Labor MPs who were “expressing adverse opinions to the proposal.”212 The King’s role in this dishonorable action was kept in strict secrecy: instructions went out “to keep an eye on anything that may be put into the War Cabinet minutes likely to hurt the King’s feelings.”213 It subsequently became Britain’s stated policy not to allow any member of the Russian royal family on her soil while the war was on, with the exception of the Empress Dowager Marie, the Danish-born sister of Edward VII’s widow, Alexandra.*
According to Kerensky, Nicholas was shattered to learn of the British refusal214—not because he wanted to leave Russia, but because it was further proof of the “treason and cowardice and deception” with which he felt surrounded. He spent the next four months in forced idleness—reading, playing games, taking walks, and working in the garden.
The February Revolution had many striking features that distinguish it from other revolutionary upheavals. But the most striking of all was the remarkable rapidity with which the Russian state fell apart. It was as if the greatest empire in the world, covering one-sixth of the earth’s surface, were an artificial construction, without organic unity, held together by wires all of which converged in the person of the monarch. The instant the monarch withdrew, the wires snapped and the whole structure collapsed in a heap. Kerensky says that there were moments when it seemed to him that
the word “revolution” [was] quite inapplicable to what happened in Russia [between February 27 and March 3]. A whole world of national and political relationships sank to the bottom, and at once all existing political and tactical programs, however bold and well conceived, appeared hanging aimlessly and uselessly in space.215
Rozanov described the phenomenon in his own pungent style:
Russia wilted in two days. At the very most, three. Even Novoe vremia could not have been shut down as quickly as Russia shut down. It is amazing how she suddenly fell apart, all of her, down to particles, to pieces. Indeed, such an upheaval had never occurred before, not excluding “the Great Migrations of Peoples” … There was no Empire, no Church, no army, no working class. And what remained? Strange to say, literally nothing. A base people remained.216
By late April, eight weeks after the Revolution had broken out, Russia was foundering. On April 26 the Provisional Government issued a pathetic appeal in which it conceded it was unable to run the country. Kerensky now voiced regrets that he did not die when the Revolution was still young and filled with hope that the nation could manage to govern itself “without whips and cudgels.”217
Russians, having gotten rid of tsarism, on which they used to blame all their ills, stood bewildered in the midst of their newly gained freedom. They were not unlike the lady in a Balzac story who had been sick for so long that when finally cured thought herself struck by a new disease.
*According to E. I. Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia v fevral’skom perevorote (Leningrad, 1927), 85, the troops used machine guns, but this is almost certainly wrong. A noncommissioned officer who took part in the incident claimed that the troops fired into the air and that the killing was done by a drunken officer: Byloe, No. 5–6/27–28 (1917), 8–9.
*In April-June 1917, mutinies broke out among French troops on the Western Front. They were fueled by soldier resentment of the heavy casualties suffered in the Nivelle offensive, but the news of the Russian Revolution, which led to a rebellion of Russian units in France, also played a part. Eventually, fifty-four divisions were affected: in May 1917 the French army was incapable of offensive operations. And yet the mutiny, which the French government managed to keep secret for decades, was eventually contained and at no time threatened to bring down the state—a telling commentary on the national and political cohesion of France as compared with that of Russia. See John Williams, Mutiny 1917 (London, 1962), and Richard M. Watt, Dare Call It Treason (New York, 1963).
*Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 105; KA, No. 2/21 (1927), 11–12. Michael alone signed the message, but it was the result of the joint efforts of himself, Prime Minister Golitsyn, Rodzianko, Beliaev, and Kryzhanovskii: Revoliutsiia, I, 40.