His abdication had led both Nicholas and the Provisional Government to consider resolving the Romanov question by putting the family into some kind of exile. The Russian exilic tradition had two basic variants. Most people who fled the empire in the reigns of Nicholas and his father moved to escape either the grinding conditions of poverty or the attentions of the security police, the Okhrana. Their favoured destinations were Switzerland, France, Germany, the United States and England. Émigré ‘colonies’ were vigorous in all these countries and only started to shrink in size after the February 1917 Revolution. The Provisional Government might have chosen this option – and for a while England was under intense consideration – but it also had an alternative possibility. If ministers wanted, the authorities could send people to distant parts of the empire. This system of ‘administrative exile’ had existed for centuries as a way of stopping miscreants from interfering in public affairs and was frequently used to sideline individuals whose offences did not merit outright imprisonment.
On 15 March 1917 the Provisional Government at its first meeting was already looking at the possibility of exiling the Romanovs. Foreign affairs minister Pavel Milyukov led the discussion. He advocated residence abroad on the grounds that the family’s safety would be difficult to guarantee in Russia. It did not take long for ministers to decide there was no necessity to dispatch absolutely every member of the large Romanov clan. Instead, they focused on Nicholas and Mikhail and their families, who could become a source of trouble if they stayed in or near Petrograd. Without coming to a hard and fast conclusion, the cabinet endorsed the idea of evicting them from Tsarskoe Selo. Milyukov’s proposal that the Romanovs be definitely sent abroad was rejected, although it was left open as a possibility alongside internal exile. Ministers planned to ascertain whether Nicholas would agree to move to somewhere in Russia designated by the Provisional Government; they also expected to impose conditions on his freedom of movement.1
Nicholas was having thoughts along the same lines as Milyukov. He had lost the throne and wanted to depart from the Russian political scene. No sooner had he arrived back in Mogilëv after abdicating in Pskov than he pencilled out a note stating his wish to settle in a foreign country. He asked that the family be allowed to stay at Tsarskoe Selo until such time as his children recovered from the measles, after which he and his party were to travel unhindered to the Murman peninsula and take a ship from Russian shores. At the same time he sought an assurance that he could return to Russia at the end of the Great War to live at his Livadia palace in Crimea.2
On 17 March General Alexeev forwarded Nicholas’s ideas – except for the Livadia stipulation – to Minister-Chairman Lvov and Minister Milyukov. Two days later he received a telegram of approval from Petrograd. The Provisional Government agreed to let him stay at Tsarskoe Selo until such time as he could travel to the White Sea coast and take a ship abroad. Using the Hughes apparatus (which allowed users to have live written exchanges by means of the telegraph), Lvov and Guchkov contacted GHQ to ascertain the emperor’s intentions in greater detail. They wanted to know where he wanted to go. Alexeev could not give them an answer since Nicholas was still consulting his mother and his first cousins once removed Sergei Mikhailovich and Alexander Mikhailovich about the same question. His thinking was made clear later that evening when he asked to discuss the possible journey with Hanbury-Williams. Nicholas entertained the idea only on condition that the British government gave its consent and was willing to offer the Royal Navy’s assistance. Hanbury-Williams immediately wired London endorsing the emperor’s request.3
Milyukov was pleased to learn that the deposed monarch agreed with him. The perils still facing the Romanovs in Russia had not faded, and the Provisional Government did not yet have satisfactory control over the situation in the capital. On the same day he talked to the British, French and Italian ambassadors and indicated the likelihood of a decision to expel the Romanovs. French Ambassador Maurice Paléologue spoke again with Milyukov next day, emphasizing the need for this to become one of the Provisional Government’s priorities. Both Paléologue and Milyukov had the bloody precedent of Louis XVI in mind. Later that afternoon Paléologue went over the options with Sir George Buchanan at the British embassy. While taking tea with them, Lady Buchanan expressed her own worries about the danger for the Romanovs if they were forced to stay at Tsarskoe Selo, a mere fifteen miles from Petrograd. The two ambassadors concurred that the best option was to arrange for a Royal Navy cruiser to pick them up in Murmansk.4
Milyukov took the initiative with Buchanan on 21 March 1917 and asked him to hasten the process of decision in London. He asked for the British to promise that Nicholas would abstain from interfering in Russian politics from exile, although he did not make this a requirement of the deal: his urgent wish was to secure the departure as soon as possible.5 Buchanan returned with the British reply on 23 March. Both the king and the cabinet were glad to provide asylum until the end of the war. Their main query was about where the financial support for the Romanovs would come from. Milyukov gave an undertaking that the Provisional Government would make a liberal allowance but asked for this to be kept confidential.6 Money would be a sensitive matter in both countries. In Russia, few of his former subjects were likely to approve of subsidizing Nicholas; in Britain, millions of people regarded him as a tyrant whose downfall had been long overdue.
Nothing in any case could occur at the apex of Russian politics without the Petrograd Soviet’s approval. When its Executive Committee held a debate on 22 March, there was fury at the possibility that Nicholas might be permitted to leave the country. The Soviet leadership had already given instructions for army units to seize control at all railway stations through which the train might pass, and when Colonel Mstislavski had paid his visit to Tsarskoe Selo two days earlier, he had been carrying orders to arrest Nicholas if there were signs of any attempt to move him. The Executive Committee continued to make clear its willingness to break with the Provisional Government. The pressure achieved its desired effect when Minister of Justice Kerensky promised Chkheidze that the cabinet had agreed to drop the idea of sending Nicholas into English exile.7 The Petrograd Soviet passed a resolution arguing that if Nicholas went to England, he would gain access to funds enabling him to conspire against the revolution. A committee was created to maintain the pressure on Lvov and his cabinet. On no account were the Romanovs to leave Russia. The Soviet’s military section cabled to army units at all border points and on all the railways to this effect. Nicholas, having returned to Tsarskoe Selo, was to be kept there for the foreseeable future – and the military section sent commissars of its own to ensure compliance.8
Milyukov was depressed by the turn of events, and at his next meeting with Paléologue, after expressing satisfaction about the British official attitude, he informed him: ‘Alas, I fear it is too late.’9 Kerensky had convinced the Provisional Government that the Petrograd Soviet would take every step to prevent the Romanovs’ departure.10 On 24 March 1917, Milyukov repeated this verdict at the formal ceremony at the Marinski Palace which ratified international recognition of the Provisional Government.11
London politicians and the British royal family were in the dark about the latest political events in Petrograd. On 25 March 1917 Buchanan handed over a personal telegram from King George to Nicholas. Next day Milyukov told the ambassador that such communications were no longer acceptable. Russia had gone through a revolution and Nicholas had been forced from the throne. Direct contact between the royal cousins was undesirable at a moment when the Provisional Government had difficulty in keeping the Petrograd Soviet on its side, and anyway, the imperial family could not move until the daughters recovered from the measles.12 Milyukov had already explained that the Soviet leaders would never grant its consent to the plan. Minister of Justice Kerensky acted as the Petrograd Soviet’s watchman inside the cabinet so that Milyukov as foreign affairs minister had to steer a delicate course if he hoped to advance his cause of foreign exile.13 Milyukov explained his frustrations to Nikolai Bazili, who was liaising with the Provisional Government on General Alexeev’s behalf. Guchkov felt less inhibited and made the proposal to pause for a while and then organize a rail journey for the Romanovs without consultation.14
But the fact remained that the Petrograd Soviet was implacably opposed to the family’s departure abroad and had the necessary support in the garrisons and among railway workers to enforce its wishes. George V’s readiness to offer asylum was a side issue. The Provisional Government did not dare to antagonize the Soviet leadership as it strove to impose its authority over the country. Until ministers had adequate control, it mattered little what King George or Prime Minister David Lloyd George proposed.
Kerensky came to the Petrograd Soviet soldiers’ section on 26 March 1917 to take the heat out of the question. He asked his listeners to believe in him as someone who had fought long and hard against the monarchy. He declared that no one in custody at Tsarskoe Selo could gain freedom without his consent. With a rhetorical flourish he asked the soldiers either to exclude him from their midst or else to give him their trust. Rumours about his indulgent attitude to Nicholas II caused him some annoyance. He admitted that Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich remained at liberty, but he defended this situation by citing Dmitri Pavlovich’s active role in the assassination of Rasputin. For Kerensky, indeed, there was no doubt that this particular member of the extended Romanov family deserved recognition as an enemy of tsarism – and he saw no reason why he should not continue to serve in the Russian Army in distant Persia. Kerensky was equally firm about permitting General Ivanov to live merely under house arrest. Ivanov was a sick man whom the doctors diagnosed as being at death’s door.15
But the Provisional Government continued to support the idea of foreign exile. Consequently, it is unsurprising that Nicholas and Alexandra were confused about their future. Cut off from the previous channels of information, they relied on what Kerensky told them in the Alexander Palace and on what they read in the daily newspapers. As the shock of what had happened to them diminished, they were beginning to have mixed thoughts of their own which they shared with people near to them. The idea of living in London as deposed monarchs was unappealing to them, and Alexandra told Pierre Gilliard that if indeed they moved into exile, they would prefer to live in one of the British colonies or in Norway.16 Sydney Gibbes wrote to his Aunt Hattie: ‘Our fortunes are completely broken and it is more than possible that I shall leave Russia & return to England with my “pupil”.’17 Evidently Nicholas and Alexandra had not entirely abandoned the idea of finding asylum in the United Kingdom. Permission to travel, however, was not in their hands. Not even the Provisional Government could guarantee their safety on the way north from Tsarskoe Selo.