The Provisional Government drew up detailed regulations for the Romanovs at the Alexander Palace. They were compelled to stay indoors most of the time and were allowed on to the balcony and into a section of the park only between the hours of eight in the morning and six at night. Two entrances alone were to be kept in use and the pre-revolutionary police were removed. (In fact they had already vanished from every station in Petrograd and elsewhere.) All telephones were cut off except for the one used by the palace commandant; the telegraph facility was put out of action. The family’s correspondence was subjected to regular inspection. Those members of the imperial retinue who wished to continue in service could stay on the sole condition that they never left the palace. When a doctor was called, a military officer was required to be in attendance.1
Sydney Gibbes happened to be on a trip to the capital on the day the regime was introduced. Troops barred his way when he returned to Tsarskoe Selo. Gibbes appealed to the British ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, to intercede with the Provisional Government. After much delay, a letter of refusal arrived which was signed by five ministers – and Gibbes remained barred from the palace.2 Probably the cabinet feared that Gibbes might operate as an intermediary between Nicholas and the British authorities at a time when the Provisional Government aimed at total control of communications with London. Not everyone in the retinue of Nicholas behaved as loyally as Gibbes had done. Several imperial officials trickled out of court after the abdication. Within days, Nicholas found himself abandoned by Count Pëtr Apraxin, Count Kirill Naryshkin, Count Alexander Grabbe, aide-de-camp Alexander Mordvinov and aide-de-camp Duke Nikolai Lichtenberg.3 The Romanovs grew accustomed to the routines of isolation and inspection. When people wrote to them, they had to append their names so that the authorities could trace them if the need arose.4 The regulations were copied to the Petrograd Soviet with a view to assuring the revolutionary parties that the former dynasty remained under proper control.5
Although the palace was cordoned off from the rest of Tsarskoe Selo, the noise in the barracks was often audible. Throughout March and April there were political processions accompanied by military bands. The family disliked the commotion, and Nicholas deplored the endless rendition of the ‘Marseillaise’ and Chopin’s Funeral March. His nerves were strained to the utmost on the day the new authorities dug a mass grave inside the palace park in which to bury and commemorate the people who had perished in the struggle to overthrow the monarchy in the February Revolution. The Chopin melody embedded itself so deeply in the Romanovs’ heads that they could not stop whistling it.6 To that extent, and to that extent alone, the Romanovs absorbed the spirit of revolution. In every other respect they shunned and abhorred it as they always had done.
For their information about politics and the war, they followed the press. Kobylinski witnessed the daily delivery of a package of newspapers which included Russkoe slovo, Russkaya volya, Rech, Novoe vremya, Petrogradskii listok and Petrogradskaya gazeta. There was also a delivery of British and French newspapers. Rech was the official organ of the main liberal party, the Constitutional Democrats (or Kadets) and was the most left-wing of them – and, of course, it was a publication that had been anathema to the imperial couple before 1917. The Kadets themselves had moved somewhat to the political right after the revolution and perhaps Nicholas found them less displeasing than he once had done. He felt no need, however, to ask for the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary dailies, far less the Bolshevik ones. Evidently he thought that he already knew enough about them. He sealed himself inside a wrapping of ideas that had served him since his accession, reserving his curiosity for things that he regarded as seemly and appropriate. His intellectual rigidity was total.
Nevertheless, he and the family recognized that they had to get used to the fact that they no longer occupied the summit of power and prestige, and a regular daily routine was one of their comforts. All except for Alexandra rose early from their beds, and Nicholas took a morning constitutional walk with Dolgorukov to discuss the latest situation. He liked to do some physical work before going back indoors – sawing or chopping firewood was a favourite chore. Alexandra, herself ailing and no longer allowed to nurse troops in the Tsarskoe Selo sanatoriums, concentrated on needlework. Seated in her chair all day long, she found relief by working with her hands – some of the gifts that she handed to people had lines of prayers sewn on to them.7
The whole family took a meal together at one o’clock. Afterwards the younger Romanovs went outside for some exercise in the garden before returning to their studies. Tea followed at four, after which they sometimes went outside again for a breath of air. Dinner was served at seven.8 There was no material hardship and culinary standards were maintained; the family also retained a substantial retinue of courtiers and servants. Although they complied with the imposed regime, they seldom lost an opportunity to complain about anything they found objectionable – Alexandra was predictably vociferous. The Romanov detainees were left to themselves inside their palace chambers. Self-isolated from high society before the February Revolution, they were now deprived of contact with the hospital wards where Alexandra and her daughters had nursed wounded soldiers. Nicholas and Alexandra had guarded their children from what they regarded as undesirable influences, and no discussions had taken place with other European royal families before 1914 to find suitors for any of the girls. Now the war had made it impossible to arrange a match. The youngsters were contained within an emotional enclosure. Olga, the eldest, was already twenty-one but she, like her sisters, was less mature than other young women of her age. They and their brother knew of no other conditions of existence and were also predictably immature.
The whole family reciprocated the respect that they received from Colonel Kobylinski, who got on well with Nicholas but desisted from calling him ‘Your Majesty’, addressing him simply as Nikolai Alexandrovich.9 The troops under his command were not so polite, and there was often an edgy atmosphere out in the park. The garrison’s diet suffered from the general deterioration in food supplies to northern Russia. The troops were irritated at having to eat lentils rather than bread. This had been a cause of discontent in the February Revolution and still annoyed them under the Provisional Government, their ire taking expression in the form of anger shown towards the imperial family.10
One day a soldier shot one of the two small goats that were kept in the palace park. Anna Vyrubova reckoned that he had been aiming at her and made a complaint. Neither the troops nor their officers took any notice: the days were gone when the imperial retinue could click its fingers and secure obedience. Next day another soldier shot the second goat.11 Sometimes, moreover, the troops hurled abuse at the Romanovs. One soldier, catching a glimpse of Nicholas, shouted to his comrades: ‘Here’s where our money’s gone! Look at how they live!’ Nicholas himself never ceased to try to get on good terms with people whom he continued to regard as ‘his’ troops. He greeted them individually with a friendly ‘hello’ (zdravstvuyte). Volkov was witness to an encounter when the soldier failed to return the salutation. Nicholas assumed that he was merely somewhat hard of hearing and repeated the greeting in a louder voice. But the soldier still declined to respond. From that moment, Volkov believed that everyone in the garrison was in favour of the revolution that had overthrown the monarchy.12
General Kornilov periodically changed the guard to maintain distance between the family and their captors. At the departure of one regiment, Nicholas bade them farewell and stretched out his hand to their commander. A pitiful scene ensued. The officer took a pace back rather than be touched by Nicholas, who left his hand dangling in the air. Nicholas was so distraught that he stepped forward and with tears in his eyes held the officer by the shoulders as he asked him: ‘My dear fellow, what’s all this about?’ The answer was blunt: ‘I come from the people. When the people stretched out its hand to you, you wouldn’t accept it. Now I’m not going to give you my hand.’13
Even so, the valet Alexei Volkov detected a softening of comportment as the soldiers got used to seeing Nicholas at work with axe and saw. Some of their officers asked for signed photographs of the Romanovs. Volkov passed on such requests, which the family was only too pleased to satisfy. Other officers were more hostile and declined to shake hands with Nicholas when they came on duty.14 The old Russia was being turned on its head. For instance, there was an army tradition at Easter of presenting half a bottle of table wine to each regimental commander. Troops in the 2nd Regiment objected to being left out of any such largesse; they created a noisy fuss until Kobylinski relented and gave out fifty bottles of wine. Discipline, already undermined, fell ever further apart – and the same regiment rebuked one of its own ensigns for kissing the emperor’s hand. It was bewildering and painful for Nicholas.15
He was not the only Romanov who suffered from the behaviour of the garrison soldiers. On 10 June 1917 his son Alexei was playing outdoors with his toy rifle – his proudest possession – when the troops on guard took fright. Alexei was not wielding an instrument of war but a miniature object made for him by a Russian factory, and although it could be fired if loaded, Alexei no longer had any bullets. He had been brought up to feel part of the country’s military tradition and just liked to wave his gun around like a soldier. The troops thought otherwise; they claimed that he was brandishing a dangerous weapon. When told to put it down, Alexei burst into tears. The incident was reported to Kobylinski, who discussed it with Gilliard and the children’s nanny Alexandra Teglëva. Kobylinski sympathized with the tsarevich but saw the prudence of impounding the little rifle.16
Incidents of this kind fanned the flame of Nicholas’s horror about the revolutionary situation. All his worst fears were being realized. Usually he avoided political comment even inside his own entourage. He was even more cautious in his correspondence, knowing that everything he wrote could be read by the authorities. But in one of his letters to his mother, Maria Fëdorovna, he could contain himself no longer and told her: ‘Words cannot express what a terrible crime is being committed by those who are corrupting the army!’17 Alexandra refused to bridle herself. On 10 June she wrote to her former patient and war hero General Alexander Syroboyarski about ‘the Sodom and Gomorrah in the capital’.18 With all the confidence of an ex-empress she added:
The psychology of the mass[es] is a terrible thing. Our people is lacking in culture – this is why, like a flock of sheep, they go with the flow. But if only they can be helped to understand that they’ve been deceived, everything can move in a different direction. They are an able people but very grey and don’t understand anything. While the bad are everywhere bent on destruction, please let the good try and save the country.19