The Provisional Government rushed a slim, anonymous biography of Nicholas into print to counteract any public tendency to remember him in a warm light. There was a long charge sheet. Nicholas was depicted as poorly educated and arrogant. It was said that his professional training had been restricted to the armed forces but that his active military service had consisted only in the effort of putting on a uniform. Accordingly, Russia had been turned into ‘an armed camp’ in 1905, and Nicholas had granted political reforms only to overturn them in 1907 through his unilateral revision of electoral law. The case against him continued with the accusation that he appointed scoundrels as ministers and raised up ‘the drunken, filthy, ignorant adventurer Grishka Rasputin’. The booklet also questioned whether he allowed Rasputin and Empress Alexandra to become lovers. It described how Milyukov, Kerensky and Chkheidze had spoken out in the Duma against Nicholas. Nicholas, it was stated, had trained up ‘a whole generation of hangmen’ and was ‘the tyrant of tyrants’. The only surprise was that when he fell from the throne, he failed to put a bullet in his own head. Instead he spent his time planting flowers and walking round the garden while his former subjects eyed him with contempt.1
Cabinet ministers and soviet leaders competed to remove the statues and plaques to the Romanov dynasty from public places.2 Even so, the Bolsheviks and others maintained a polemic against the cabinet’s alleged indulgence of Nicholas the Bloody, and dozens of articles and booklets appeared which represented the former emperor as having connived at opening Russia to conquest by Germany.3 Kerensky was alert to the potential for trouble. He suffered for his pains, being accused of counter-revolutionary objectives. Bolsheviks infiltrated the troops on duty at Tsarskoe Selo and encouraged a paranoid atmosphere. Even small incidents could ratchet up the tension. When a motor vehicle accidentally overran the edge of the park, there was panic that it might be an attempt to transport the former emperor out of his place of confinement. The Tsarskoe Selo garrison had been supportive of the Provisional Government, and the thought was that ministers could be planning to use it in place of the unruly soldiers of Petrograd.4
Kerensky had been the rising star of the Provisional Government even before the April crisis when foreign affairs minister Pavel Milyukov was exposed as having sent telegrams to the other Allied governments reaffirming Russia’s commitments to the war aims agreed with London and Paris in the secret treaties of 1915. This would have involved Russian acquisition of the Dardanelles. The Petrograd Soviet, led by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, had given support to the cabinet – which had been formed solely because soviets in the capital and elsewhere gave their consent – on condition that ministers maintained a full range of democratic freedoms and confined themselves to a defensive military strategy. Milyukov’s initiative shattered the mutual understanding between the cabinet and the Petrograd Soviet, and street demonstrations were organized against him. Since Lenin’s return from Switzerland earlier in the same month, the Bolshevik Central Committee had been committed to overthrowing the Provisional Government. Lenin accused the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries of a political sell-out to capitalism by agreeing to the existence of the Lvov cabinet, and he adduced the Milyukov telegrams were used as proof that ministers were engaged in an imperialist conspiracy with the Western Allies that was in conflict with the basic interests of working people in Russia and abroad.
The political emergency ended with the resignations of Milyukov and Guchkov and the establishment of a fresh governing coalition that included both Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders from the Petrograd Soviet, and the lesson was learned that Russia would be subject to ‘dual power’ exercised by the Provisional Government and the Soviet. While Lvov remained Chairman, it was Kerensky, promoted to the Ministry of War, who supplied much of the dynamism in decisions about international relations and military operations. The Socialist-Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov, as Minister of Agriculture, directed agrarian policy increasingly against the interests of the landed gentry; influential Mensheviks Irakli Tsereteli and Matvei Skobelev eased the remaining restraints on the activities of the labour movement. Kerensky pushed for a fresh offensive on the Austro-Hungarian section of the Eastern Front in Ukraine.
Milyukov’s successor as Minister of Foreign Affairs was Mikhail Tereshchenko, a Progressive Party member and wealthy financier, who continued with the plan to send the Romanovs into exile. The original idea of a sea voyage from Murmansk had fallen foul of the probability that the Petrograd Soviet would prevent the Romanovs from using the northern railway to the White Sea. Tereshchenko wondered whether it might be better to move them through Finland in the first instance and get them across the North Sea from a Scandinavian port. He and Ambassador Buchanan held discussions along these lines.5 Exactly how the Romanovs would cross into Finnish territory was not clear. Although the Duchy of Finland was only thirty miles from Petrograd, the journey would still require use of parts of the Russian rail network subject to scrutiny and control by soviet politicians. If Murmansk was impractical, it is difficult to see why the Russo-Finnish border town of Terijoki would have been easier. But Tereshchenko tried to be positive; he had inherited a tricky legacy from Milyukov and was hoping to dredge something out of the morass.
The British willingness to welcome the Romanovs began to cool after King George V had had time to reflect on the possible implications for himself and the House of Windsor. Initially he had thought of putting his Balmoral residence at his cousin Nicholas’s disposal, but second thoughts prevailed. In early June Buchanan came to Tereshchenko in an emotional state. With tears in his eyes, he asked him to read a letter he had received from the Foreign Office’s permanent under-secretary, Sir Charles Harding. Essentially, Harding was withdrawing the offer of asylum. He asked how George V could be expected to welcome the former tsar when the Provisional Government itself was casting doubt on his commitment to fighting the Germans.6 This snuffed out all planning for foreign exile except for when the Danish government made an offer to the dowager empress and her daughters. Maria Fëdorovna turned it down in the light of Grand Duchess Olga’s pregnancy. Like most people, the Romanovs had little idea of the growing threat to their physical survival.7
Tereshchenko passed the asylum news to Lvov and Kerensky. The Provisional Government put the matter on its agenda but the question was thought so sensitive that the discussion was held without a minute-taker. The gist of it was the ministers believed that if the Romanovs could not go to the United Kingdom, they should be at least moved out of Tsarskoe Selo. Kerensky was put in charge of resolving the question, and at first he contemplated transferring Nicholas and his family to one of the estates of their relatives Mikhail Alexandrovich and Nikolai Mikhailovich. On further thought, he dropped the idea. He recognized the dangers in transporting the family through territory where workers and peasants detested them. It would have been equally perilous to try to move them to Crimea, where the dowager empress had taken up residence.8
The Russian armies achieved success on the Eastern Front until the Germans rushed reinforcements from the north and the Central Powers occupied more Ukrainian territory than ever – and the Bolsheviks organized a demonstration against both the Provisional Government, including its Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary ministers. Aiming to prevent the growth of Bolshevik influence, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries took part in the demonstration and tried to turn it into one of support of their policies. As news of the failure of the June military offensive percolated from the Eastern Front, the Bolsheviks organized a further anti-governmental demonstration. The cabinet could see that this might be a cover for an attempted coup d’état and banned activities on the capital’s streets. Its own internal unity disintegrated after Kadet ministers walked out in protest against projected concessions to Ukrainian demands for self-rule. Petrograd by mid-July was in turmoil, and loyal troops were introduced to disperse the Bolshevik-led demonstration. Files were released that indicated that the Bolsheviks had been in receipt of a financial subsidy from the Germans. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.
Nicholas learned with horror about the emergency in nearby Petrograd, confiding to his diary on 18 July:
It rained all morning but brightened up before 2 p.m.; it got cooler towards evening. Spent the day as usual. In Petrograd there have been days of disorder including shootings. A lot of sailors and soldiers arrived from Kronstadt yesterday to move against the Provisional Gov[ernment]. Complete confusion! But where are the people who could take a hold over this movement and stop the nonsense and bloodshed? The seed of all the evil lies in Petrograd and not everywhere in Russia.9
He continued in his belief that leadership and repressive measures could always countervail against protests on the streets. He also assumed that Petrograd was the source of all the country’s woes: it never occurred to him that the grievances that the demonstrators had expressed were shared by a growing number of people in the provinces. In fact, the revolutionary crisis was an all-Russia one.
The Provisional Government survived only at the expense of Lvov’s resignation and the promotion of Kerensky to minister-chairman. Kerensky continued the previous coalition’s economic and social policies but his cabinet had to operate without the participation of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who gave priority to enhancing their position in the soviets. Though he too was a Socialist-Revolutionary, Kerensky aimed to impose the Provisional Government’s authority on all socialist parties; he also reintroduced the death penalty in the armed forces and liaised with General Kornilov, whom he appointed supreme commander-in-chief, about how to use troops to bring political order to the capital.
Alongside his many huge problems, Kerensky could not afford to ignore the Romanov question because the brush-off from London about the foreign exile project did not absolve the Provisional Government from a duty of care. The British remained Russia’s allies, and the fact that many people in the United Kingdom hated Nicholas as a bloody tyrant did not diminish the clamour of others about the fate of the Romanovs. Newspapers kept up a barrage of reports and rumours about their conditions of confinement. Kerensky, who was desperately in need of Western financial credits and strategic collaboration, had to demonstrate that Russia was capable of maintaining lawful procedures while it fought for victory on the Eastern Front. He had become Nicholas’s involuntary keeper and knew that he and the cabinet would pay heavily if anything dreadful happened to the family. The recent turmoil in Petrograd showed that he could no longer guarantee the imperial family’s safety at the Alexander Palace. If there was a recurrence of trouble on the streets, the bloodshed could spread to nearby Tsarskoe Selo. Hostility to Nicholas remained widespread and intense, and it was clear to Kerensky that it could prove all too easy for an unruly military detachment to storm the Alexander Palace.
Kerensky decided that he had to find a new place of confinement for them. The extended Romanov family was living quietly in various parts of the country. Nicholas’s brother Mikhail had retired to his nearby Gatchina residence after renouncing the throne, and the Provisional Government left him in peace in the belief that he was politically harmless.
Their mother, Dowager Empress Maria Fëdorovna, hoped to stay in Kiev, but the cabinet disliked the idea of any Romanov becoming a focus for agitation in a big city, and it was thought best for her to go south to Ai-Todor in Crimea, where she had a residence. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich went to live in the vicinity after losing his military post in the February Revolution.10 The Crimean peninsula was turning into a Romanov depository and Grand Duke Mikhail dreamed of moving there after Easter. The thought of this cheered his spirits, as he told his mother: ‘I think that in Ai-Todor you’ll find it easier to cope with everything that has happened.’ But at the same time he urged her to give serious consideration to going into exile and recommended Denmark as a desirable destination.11 Meanwhile, Crimea became a base for the self-styled Party of 33 and other active monarchist groups who had access to the telegraph office in Chaira. If Nicholas were to move there, his presence would inevitably give further animation to them. The potential for trouble induced the Sevastopol administration to dispatch an armed investigative commission to Yalta. As a result, it was decided to cut the Romanovs from all phone and telegraph lines. Tsarist agitation nonetheless continued under the auspices of the self-styled Central Committee of the ‘Forward for the Tsar and Holy Russia’ Society, and Crimea remained an area of official concern.12
The ultimate decision would lie with the Provisional Government – the time was long past when the Romanovs could do as they pleased. Kerensky himself had to act with caution and had no intention of letting Nicholas and his family make their way abroad, even in the unlikely contingency that loyal military units and railway personnel could be found to transport them to Murmansk and a British naval vessel. He had his hands full dealing with Bolshevik accusations that he was the Russian Napoleon who was betraying the revolutionary cause, and they would have exploited every opportunity to castigate him for any indulgence shown towards the former ruling dynasty. At the same time Kerensky could not afford to let Nicholas, Alexandra and their children move to Crimea. The Provisional Government had to remain their custodian, and Ai-Todor was much too far away from Petrograd at a time when communications, transport and administrative control were falling apart. But where to send them?