In the long hours when Nicholas and his brother Mikhail were coming to their momentous decisions, Empress Alexandra was stranded in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. She was waiting frantically to hear what was going on. As the news worsened for the Romanovs, Rodzyanko phoned Major-General Alexei Resin, the Composite Infantry Regiment commander, advising the empress to leave the Alexander Palace and to take her family with her. When Resin replied that the children were ill, Rodzyanko remained unmoved, saying: ‘When a house is in flames, one carries out the children.’ According to her maid, Anna Demidova, when this message was conveyed to Alexandra she at first consented but then dug in her heels because the palace at Tsarskoe Selo was her home, which she refused to abandon.1 Alexandra was later to blame Rodzyanko for Nicholas’s decision to abdicate. By implication, Nicholas had not really needed to step down.2 For a woman who was used to offering political advice to her husband, it was a time of acute frustration. Russia was entering a revolutionary emergency and the imperial couple for the first moment in their marriage were unable to confide in each other. Nicholas had relinquished the throne and his sole thought was to get back to her with all speed.
Tsarskoe Selo, as its name (‘Tsar’s Village’) implies, had started as a rural retreat for the ruling family. At its heart was the Alexander Palace, which Nicholas and Alexandra had made their home. After 1905 it was their permanent place of refuge from the hurly-burly of the capital. The building was more like the country house of a British aristocrat than the other great Romanov residences and it was where the imperial family felt most comfortable. In peacetime they could stay there and reach the capital within an hour if the situation demanded, and its parks and lakes provided them with the restful landscape they appreciated. Nicholas, a keen hunter, had mounted his sporting trophies in the entrance hall. In her rooms, Alexandra surrounded herself with signed photographs of current and deceased monarchs, including the late Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. Nicholas’s study was always strewn with the maps that he used when scrutinizing military plans. The palace also contained a life-sized painting of Queen Victoria as well as portraits of Nicholas’s forebears as tsar: Nicholas I, Alexander II and Alexander III.3
Over the centuries the surroundings acquired many mansions and barracks. Indeed, it became a great military centre. A railway station was constructed to enable the Romanovs to travel out easily from the Winter Palace in the capital. Beyond the inhabited area there were swamps and bogs where the mosquitoes made life a misery in the summer months, but the Romanovs stayed safely inside the palace curtilage.4 The barracks held over 40,000 troops.5
Most of Tsarskoe Selo’s population were thus not permanent residents but conscripts who served to guarantee the family’s security, and their behaviour in regard to the Romanov family changed when revolution came to nearby Petrograd. Immediately there were reports of political celebration fuelled by copious draughts of vodka. In some regiments the ‘Marseillaise’, marching song of the French Revolution, was played. For a while there was talk of a plot to fire cannonades at the Alexander Palace. The guard unit received orders to take precautions against such aggression.6 Outbursts of rifle fire, however, continued, and everyone knew that the situation was volatile.7 Alexandra bore all this with fortitude. While she waited for her husband’s return, she wrote sympathetically to him – emotion getting the better of grammar: ‘You, my love, my Angel dear, cannot think of what you have gone and are going through – makes me mad. Oh God: of course we will recompense 100-fold for all your suffering.’8 As she listened to the noise outside, she drew on her reserves of courage. The family’s fate was no longer in Romanov hands.
The Provisional Government’s measures regarding the Romanovs were kept under scrutiny by the Petrograd Soviet, whose pressure was heavy and continuous. Meeting on 16 March, the soviet’s Executive Committee had demanded the arrest of ‘the Romanov dynasty’ and contemplated its own independent action if the Provisional Government refused. At the same time the Executive Committee recognized that Mikhail Romanov was no genuine danger and could be spared imprisonment but held under supervision by ‘the revolutionary army’. As to Grand Duke Nikolai, he should be recalled from the Caucasus and kept under strict surveillance en route to Petrograd. There was a reluctance to arrest Alexandra and the other female Romanovs, and it was resolved to implement a gradual process in accordance with how each individual woman had behaved under the old order.9 The Soviet leadership remained determined to prevent Nicholas from going into foreign exile, and Nikolai Chkheidze, one of the Menshevik leaders in the Soviet, reported with satisfaction to its Executive Committee that a minister had warned the cabinet that the soviet might arrest Nicholas if such a concession were made.10
Ministers aimed to settle the matter on 20 March by decreeing that Nicholas and Alexandra should remain confined to Tsarskoe Selo for the foreseeable future, and the hope was that the question of monarchy would fade from the public agenda.11 But when Kerensky appeared at the Moscow Soviet on the same day, he still had to listen to calls for Nicholas’s execution. Kerensky replied that the Provisional Government would not endorse any such thing and he himself was not going to become the Marat of the Russian Revolution.12
The cabinet meanwhile ordered General Alexeev to assemble a unit to guard the emperor on his journey from Mogilëv. A group of Duma deputies would be sent to Mogilëv to oversee the process.13 Alexeev distributed a message to the railway stations on the route repeating the governmental guarantee of Nicholas’s safety in travelling to the Alexander Palace.14 Four Duma deputies – Alexander Bublikov, Vasili Vershinin, Semën Gribunin and Saveli Kalinin – left Tsarskoe Selo for Mogilëv on the government’s behalf at 11 p.m. on 20 March, arriving at Vitebsk before going on to Orsha. Bublikov and Vershinin dealt with questions from the public at the stations that they passed through. They reached Mogilëv in the middle of the afternoon of 21 March, being cheered as they made their way by car to GHQ, where Bublikov spelled out the terms of his mission to Alexeev. After a brief discussion of practicalities, Alexeev accompanied the emissaries to the imperial train to convey the requirements to Nicholas himself. At that moment Nicholas was talking to his mother in the adjacent train.15 He came out after making the final arrangements for departure. His most difficult task came in bidding farewell to the staff at GHQ. After his speech, there were tears.16 It was as if none of the officers could believe what was happening.17 He had also signed a leaving statement to the armed forces wishing them well in the struggle with the external foe, but the Provisional Government refused permission for its publication.18
Only one officer in his personal bodyguard was allowed to accompany him to Tsarskoe Selo because anxiety remained about a possible violent attempt to reverse the act of abdication.19 Nicholas had become a private citizen, and his security was now a matter for the Provisional Government. The engine built up steam and left Mogilëv at 4.50 p.m.20 The train consisted of ten carriages. The Duma people travelled in the one at the rear. A whole carriage was reserved for the retinue, where sat the aristocrats Vasili Dolgorukov, Kirill Naryshkin and others along with Professor Fëdorov. Once men of influence, they huddled together and discussed an uncertain political and personal future. Authority was exclusively in the hands of Bublikov and his Duma colleagues, who alone could change the route or send and receive telegrams. They stopped first in Orsha, then in Vitebsk. The Duma members took turns to be on duty. As they started on the last leg of the journey, they telegrammed instructions for a reception party to stand ready at Tsarskoe Selo station.21
General Lavr Kornilov had already visited Tsarskoe Selo on 21 March accompanied by Colonel Evgeni Kobylinski.22 With a red bow pinned to his chest, he left no room for doubt that he approved of the revolution. As he entered the Alexander Palace, the servants told him that the empress was still in bed, to which Kornilov replied: ‘Pass on to her that now is not the time to be sleeping!’ Only then did he disclose who he was.23 She kept them waiting another ten minutes before receiving them in the nursery. Kornilov addressed her as ‘Your Highness’ and talked of his ‘heavy task’ in announcing the government’s decision to put her and the imperial family under arrest. From then onwards, she was to contact Kobylinski with any requests. The Romanovs could keep their retinue but those who chose to stay with them would have to accept the same conditions of confinement in the palace. Kornilov removed the entire current guard, replacing it with a riflemen’s regiment that he felt he could trust.24
He appointed Kobylinski to take charge of the Tsarskoe Selo garrison with Pavel Kotsebu as his subordinate and the Alexander Palace commandant.25 Kobylinski had been wounded early in the war and was still suffering from an inflamed kidney.26 He had recuperated briefly in one of the Tsarskoe Selo convalescent homes, where he was transferred to a reserve battalion (and recovered enough to begin an affair with the nurse and teacher Klavdia Bitner).27 Fellow officers respected him as ‘tranquil, calm and balanced’.28 But whereas Kobylinski could act with political discretion, Kotsebu behaved as if the revolution had not happened. Guards noticed his intense conversations with Anna Vyrubova, whom everyone knew to be Alexandra’s confidante. Kornilov soon replaced him with Col. Pavel Korovichenko, a specialist in military law who was one of Kerenski’s associates; and as for Vyrubova, she was removed soon afterwards in the course of a visit by Kerensky himself. After a tearful farewell with the empress, witnessed by Kobylinski and Korovichenko, she was taken to prison in Petrograd.29
The Romanovs were allowed total privacy inside the Alexander Palace and no soldier would patrol their rooms.30 But there were rules about how the family were to behave outside its walls, and they could go out into the park only by prior arrangement.31 Everyone staying at Tsarskoe Selo was automatically agreeing to house arrest for the foreseeable future. Those who were unwilling to submit to this were required to leave immediately. Few, in fact, departed, for loyalty to the emperor and his family was strong. Soon the implications were made manifest. Residents of the palace could walk around the park but only at specified times and always under constant surveillance. Correspondence with the outside world would occur only with permission from the new palace commandant, Korovichenko.32
The train reached Tsarskoe Selo station at 11.30 a.m. on 22 March 1917. Nicholas and Dolgorukov still thought they could count on the public respect that had been part of their earlier life. They were in for a surprise.33 The usual military contingent had been completely replaced four hours earlier – some of the officers had been planning to raise a hurrah for the emperor in the traditional fashion, something that the new revolutionary authorities were determined to prevent.34 As far as Nicholas could judge, no general but only NCOs were in charge of the troops waiting on the platform.35 Somehow he overlooked the part played by Kobylinski.36 When the limousine drew up to the gate at the Alexander Palace, the guard unit was strangely slow to open it to them. This was no accident. Both the troops and their officers wanted to indicate the change of times. The pattern was maintained inside the palace. Nicholas involuntarily tipped the peak of his hat to the guards. For the first time in his life, no one responded with any kind of salute.37
Citizen Romanov was having to learn rules that others were setting for him. Russia had become a republic through his abdication, and he had lost the high status that had been his since birth. His wider family underwent the same transformation. It was also on 22 March 1917 that the Provisional Government revoked Nicholas’s appointment of his cousin Nikolai Nikolaevich as military commander on the Caucasus front. This was done in a decorous fashion. A message was dispatched to him before he arrived in Mogilëv that asked him to resign the post. Lvov did not like to fire him. Instead, he applied moral pressure by stating that the Provisional Government could not be indifferent to the voice of the people, which was wholly against employing anyone from the house of Romanov in an official position.38 Grand Duke Nikolai reached GHQ on 23 March before receiving the message. On 24 March 1917 he complied with Lvov’s request and devolved his responsibilities to Chief of the General Staff Alexeev.39 As a result no relative of the former emperor had an official post of any importance. The February Revolution had spread its effects to Romanov kith and kin.
Everything seemed topsy-turvy; the world had changed and was still changing. The guard detachment around the Alexander Palace for the first time had failed to welcome his arrival. Instead, Nicholas had to wait for the duty officer to appear. The embarrassment was deliberate. The authorities in Tsarskoe Selo were giving a signal about the transformed situation: tsarism had fallen and a new era in Russian history had begun. Not that Nicholas was going to be prevented from joining his wife and children. On the contrary, ministers aimed to have him confined within the palace curtilage, and as soon as the duty officer appeared, he shouted in a full, clear voice: ‘Open the gates to the former sovereign!’40 (The verbal formality served to confirm that things had been turned upside down.) Nicholas maintained his dignity and none of the troops said or did anything untoward as he made his way into the residence. Alexandra was the first to greet him in the first room of their children’s quarters. They smiled, kissed and embraced. Then they left the room to be with their son and daughters.41
The palace was closed to outsiders and the Romanov family were subjected to house arrest. Nicholas, his wife and their offspring were the sole Romanovs in residence, and none of his other relatives gained permission to visit them. His mother, Dowager Empress Maria, left Mogilëv at the same time as he did but made straight for Kiev. On arrival there, she announced her desire to proceed southwards to Crimea. She left with a reduced military escort on 5 April 1917. She gave signed photographs to the bodyguard unit before it dispersed.42
Nicholas and his immediate family adjusted themselves to their new circumstances, but one small episode disturbed them. They had had Rasputin buried quietly in the church inside the palace grounds. When the new troops found out about this, they dug up the coffin and tore off the lid to examine the corpse. They found, next to his right cheek, an icon signed by ‘Alexandra, Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia and Anya [sic] [Vyrubova]’. The order was given to move the coffin to Srednyaya Rogatka railway station for secret reburial nearby.43 Minister-Chairman Lvov himself countermanded this plan and instructed Kobylinski to give up the coffin and its contents to Commissar Kupchinski, who went out to meet him. Despite Kupchinski’s attempt to disguise what he was doing, word quickly got round and Kupchinski was stopped by a crowd before he reached Petrograd. After a tussle broke out over the corpse, Kupchinski thought it prudent to have it cremated rather than risk its theft.44
A nearby group of college students and troops carried out the task by transporting the corpse to a wood and arranging to incinerate it in a pyre. Old women who venerated Rasputin’s memory were shooed away. But insufficient accelerant was used. Almost as soon as the fire was lit, the petrol was exhausted and the flames failed to do the job. By then there were bystanders, some of whom convinced themselves that this was proof the dead man had been a saint. The students rebuilt the pyre and this time it burned successfully, leaving only his skeleton behind. The little group decided to scatter the bones in the clearing, but this only encouraged the old women to pick them up with a view to setting them in icon frames. As a commotion grew, the tired students gathered the remaining bones, returned to the college and threw them into a large furnace.45 Rasputin had proved almost as indestructible in death as he had been in life. Even so, the news was withheld from the imperial family. Since they were no longer active players on the political scene, they were being told nothing except what was strictly their family business. They were prisoners in all but name.