The Germans achieved what they wanted with the Brest-Litovsk treaty: the Eastern Front was closed down and German army divisions could be transferred to fight the British and French before they could be reinforced by the Americans. Ukrainian foodstuffs could be secured for German troops and civilians. Germany at last had control over those vast territories to the west of Russia which were so enticing for German entrepreneurs. Russia itself could soon become an economic vassal.
But did Lenin and Trotsky deserve prolonged confidence? It would have been imprudent for Ludendorff and Hindenburg, the real masters in Germany, to take Sovnarkom for granted. Lenin had won the vote for a separate peace in the teeth of opposition from inside the ruling coalition. The Left Socialist-Revolutionary People’s Commissars laid down their offices (even though Left Socialist-Revolutionaries continued to serve at lower levels of the administration). Bolshevik opponents of the treaty maintained their objections. Trotsky in particular was suspect because he had accepted the peace only with intense reluctance and did not stop courting the favour of Allied diplomats – he and the British diplomatic emissary Robert Bruce Lockhart spent a lot of time together, and nobody could be sure that Trotsky would not revert towards his preference for war. Many Bolsheviks, indeed, would have applauded him for such a move. Soviet rule itself was facing huge difficulties and it was entirely imaginable that the government would collapse as discontent grew among industrial workers and peasants. For all these reasons, German diplomacy pursued a dual-track policy of collaborating with the Bolshevik leadership while seeking out possibilities for an alliance with pro-German Russians.
This second track was daily becoming more realistic as Russia’s anti-Bolshevik groups looked for ways to topple Sovnarkom and became willing to consider enlisting German financial or military assistance. Their reasoning was practical. Having concluded that Russian forces were no longer capable of challenging German power, they predicted defeat for the Allies in the Great War. If Germany was going to rule over Eastern Europe, many Russian patriots considered accommodating themselves to the new reality in hope of obtaining the means to overthrow Bolshevism. They aimed to persuade Berlin that an alternative government in Moscow was infinitely preferable to communism and its anti-monarchical, anti-business and anti-clerical threat to every country in Europe, including Germany itself.
Count von Mirbach took until 26 April 1918 to set up and open the German embassy at 5 Denezhny Pereulok (Money Lane). This was the same street in which the French military mission was ensconced, and the two sets of diplomats sought to get the better of each other. Their official limousines frequently came close to colliding as Denezhny Pereulok was turned into a race track.1 Mirbach set the tone for his colleagues; he acted as if the Bolsheviks were mere temporary custodians of Russian statehood, and he left little doubt where his basic sympathies lay by paying visits to leading monarchists; he even gained an audience with Nicholas II’s sister-in-law Natalya.2 Nicholas would have been appalled to hear about this since he continued to regard Germany as his country’s main enemy. But Mirbach was giving thought to a future Russia where the Germans would remain dominant and the Bolsheviks would be no more. A victorious Kaiser Wilhelm would predictably want to restore the monarchy in some form to Russia. Meanwhile, Mirbach issued a demand for the German businesses confiscated in the years since 1914 to be given back to their owners. Sovnarkom was forced to comply, and made an exception in its drive towards state industrial ownership: all property belonging to Germans was to remain sacrosanct.3
Russian monarchists saw their chance to turn to the German embassy and plead for its assistance in getting the Soviet leadership to improve the conditions of detention for the Romanovs.4 Although Mirbach received requests from former senator Dmitri Neidgart on three occasions, he merely expressed his personal sympathy without offering any prospect of action.5 Neidgart was understandably dispirited by the experience. Alexander Trepov, who had served briefly as Nicholas’s prime minister in late 1916, joined other monarchist activists in trying a different approach. Their idea involved going to Ober-Gofmarshal Count Pavel Benkendorf and persuading him to intercede with Mirbach on the grounds that, after the Brest-Litovsk peace, only the Germans had the authority to guarantee the safety of the Romanov family. Trepov wanted to issue an implicit warning to the Germans that if anything untoward happened to the Romanovs, he and his friends would tell the world that Germany was to blame.6 Mirbach, an aristocrat as well as a professional diplomat, received Benkendorf with courtesy but was not much more encouraging than he had been to Neidgart. He argued that Nicholas II’s fate should be left in the hands of the Russian people. He would only agree to consider what Germany might be able to do for ‘the German princesses’.7
There were a few signs that the Germans followed this with some exploratory moves. Sometime in April 1918, Mirbach approached Sverdlov at the behest of the German imperial family and the Spanish queen with a view to getting the Romanovs transferred to Petrograd. Apparently, Sverdlov told him that he would do what he could while emphasizing that the local soviet authorities were hard to handle; he did not want to be held responsible for any unpleasantness in the Urals.8 Not every embassy official judged that the German side, if it had truly wanted, could not have insisted on securing Nicholas’s release from detention as part of the Brest-Litovsk peace settlement. But such diplomats also recognized that the Berlin authorities might stir up opposition from socialists in the Reichstag if any such initiative had been undertaken – and, anyway, Nicholas would be in danger of assassination were he to secure his liberty.9 Nonetheless, around 15 May 1918, Gilliard’s suspicions were aroused when he heard that a Red Cross mission from Germany had recently been in Ekaterinburg, and while he was sitting in a restaurant with Buxhoeveden and Alexandra Teglëva, they spotted some German nurses talking openly in their own language.10
There is little sign that the imperial family did anything other than comply with the demands of their captors. But things might have been happening in the shadows. By June, Sergei Markov, the irrepressible would-be rescuer of the family, had decided that salvation for the Romanovs could happen only with Germany’s help.11 He also believed that his own leader, Markov-II, was already collaborating with ‘the Germans’, which seemed to explain why so few volunteers had arrived in Tyumen earlier in the year – and Markov-II could not afford to annoy the German government by enabling Nicholas to head a movement dedicated to ripping up the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The Germans, they thought, would only endorse an action that was aimed at spiriting the Romanovs abroad.12 Major-General Vladimir Kislitsyn was to testify in 1919 that he met Sergei Markov in Berlin in December 1918. Markov showed him a letter that he was carrying, purportedly from Alexandra in Tobolsk to her brother Prince Ernst of Hesse. Though the letter remained sealed, Kislitsyn felt confident that he recognized Alexandra’s handwriting on the outside.13 Like other former Russian Army officers, Markov was being well treated by the Germans. Talking expansively, he claimed that the Kaiser – who by then had fallen from power – had earlier offered to spirit Alexandra and her daughters off to Berlin but that Alexandra had point-blank refused.14
Markov never revealed what he thought was in the letter, and the saga has gone to his grave with him. A still more extraordinary story was told by Vasili Golitsyn, the young aristocratic son of a general in the old Russian Army. Golitsyn told of meeting in Ekaterinburg Ensign Praslov, who had spoken to a commissar who had heard from a Red commissar that a German general had made his way to Ekaterinburg and made contact with Nicholas himself in the Ipatev house. Supposedly, when asked to endorse the peace treaty, Nicholas had rebuffed the suggestion. At this, it was claimed, the general warned that he would end up being killed – and Nicholas replied that he was ready to give his life for the Motherland.15 Whether any such exchange really took place is open to doubt, but it would have been strange if the German intelligence agencies had made no attempt to discover what was happening in the Urals. In such a situation it was hardly surprising that rumours flourished.
Meanwhile, the Germans and Austrians behaved imperiously in those large territories of the former Russian Empire that they occupied. Whenever they took a major city there was a big parade. Troops were lined up on both sides of the central boulevards to keep back the crowds. Every soldier wore a sprig of evergreen in his helmet. Cavalry was given pride of place. Military bands accompanied the marching regiments and movie reels were made of the events. The local residents watched in befuddled silence as the German and Austrian high commands celebrated victory. In following days the shops would be reopened and something like normal life resumed. Puppet administrations were established with willing Ukrainian and Russian collaborators, but little further attempt was made to disguise the reality of German supremacy – even the Austrians walked in their shadow.16 Ukraine became a place of refuge for people fleeing Soviet rule. German policy had no interest in disturbing the old social order and Russian aristocratic and wealthy families could appear in public without the kind of molestation that had frequently beset them in 1917. Some of them began to judge that if Russia had lost the war on the Eastern Front, imperial Germany might offer a useful instrument to bring down the Bolsheviks.
So whereas Nicholas II remained hostile to any reconciliation with imperial Germany, monarchist officers from the old Russian Army were willing to consider getting German help in mounting a thrust into the Urals and rescuing the Romanovs. Some German military commanders in Kiev favoured this option, but their diplomatic colleagues were less than eager. General A. I. Mosolov, who once had served at the imperial court, asked Ambassador Mumm in the Ukrainian capital for clarity about Berlin’s intentions. Mumm bluntly replied that he disagreed ‘that the question of saving the Tsar was important for Germany’.17
Kadet leader Pavel Milyukov, the passionate advocate of Allied military victory in 1917, was among the first of Russia’s public figures to perform a political volte-face and seek German armed assistance. In late May 1918 he travelled secretly across the new Russo-Ukrainian border under the pseudonym Professor Ivanov. Claiming to speak on behalf of the recently formed secret anti-Soviet Right Centre, he made contact with the German occupation authorities. He appealed for Germany’s consent to help Russian officers from Alexeev’s Volunteer Army to organize a military coup against Sovnarkom in Moscow. German military force would be crucial in sealing off access to the capital and threatening to make a move against the Bolsheviks. Germany, Milyukov hoped, would supply the Volunteer Army with weapons and ammunition.18
Milyukov had to be very discreet. If word got out about him going cap in hand to the Germans, the Bolsheviks would create a scandal in Russia and ruin his reputation. In Kiev Milyukov asked N. P. Vasilenko, a Kadet colleague who held ministerial office in the Ukrainian government led by German protégé Pavlo Skoropadskyi, to act as his intermediary with the Germans. It was a delicate business because Milyukov had until recently been a fierce proponent of the case for a crushing victory over Germany, and he excoriated the Brest-Litovsk treaty that the Bolshevik leadership had signed. There was a curious dynastic aspect to Milyukov’s Ukrainian trip. Vasilenko’s contact in the German military administration was Major Haase, who had important responsibility for foreign and security affairs under General Herman von Eichhorn. Haase was the professional alias of Prince Ernst of Hesse, who was the brother of none other than former Empress Alexandra. Haase was understandably cautious. The Brest-Litovsk treaty had brought benefit to the German cause in the Great War by enabling the transfer of troops from the Eastern Front to northern France. If Milyukov were to come to power, Haase wanted assurance that Germany’s war effort would not suffer.19
Meeting Haase on 21 June, Milyukov claimed that General Alexeev and the Volunteer Army were no longer averse to recognizing the objective facts of the military situation and were open to the idea of collaborating with Germany. (This was pure fantasy on Milyukov’s part, and perhaps he was hoping it could be true.) Prince Ernst pressed him to describe his ideas for Russia’s future. Milyukov urged the Germans to moderate their pretensions, and he explained that, although he wanted to see Russia reunited with Ukraine, he envisaged a loose linkage – and he expected Germany to be satisfied by this. Having always desired a constitutional monarchy, he indicated a wish for Grand Duke Mikhail to take the throne. He liked Mikhail’s gentle nature and foresaw no difficulty in manipulating him. The obvious snag was that the Bolsheviks were holding him in custody, but Milyukov remained optimistic. For him, the succession was only ‘a technical question’. If Mikhail proved unavailable or unamenable, he suggested, the authorities could marry off Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich to Nicholas’s eldest daughter Olga.20
It does not seem to have worried Milyukov that he displayed such extravagant cynicism while parleying about the Prince’s own close relatives. Grand Duke Dmitri had been involved in the plot that killed Rasputin, for which Nicholas had punished him by exile to the Persian front. After the February Revolution, like all other Romanovs, he had to leave military service and chose to seek refuge with the British mission in Tehran. This was hardly likely to endear him to the Germans. Moreover, Milyukov’s sketch of a future Russian administration excluded the possibility of a return to the throne by Nicholas. This would have untoward consequences for Ernst’s own sister, Alexandra. Perhaps Milyukov simply assumed that Ernst recognized that Nicholas had been an unmitigated disaster as a ruler. In any case, a marriage between two first cousins – Dmitri and Olga – was hardly a project that geneticists would have approved. Milyukov was engaged in wild speculation. In despair about the prospects for his country, he was grabbing at straws. In his tactless way he was beseeching the German authorities to identify their interests as lying in dealing with him, a Russian patriot, rather than with fanatical communist internationalists.
Milyukov had failed to appreciate that the Volunteer Army under Alexeev recruited its officer corps from men trained to regard the Germans as the enemy. It would take a lot to turn them in the direction of favouring Berlin. On 4 July he received a message from Alexeev making it clear that he had no intention of adopting a German ‘orientation’.21 The Western Allies, furthermore, were beginning to offer financial aid to those organizations which were committed to the anti-German struggle.
Milyukov, however, refused to give up. Staying on in Kiev, he met Prince Ernst again on 10 July to press the case for cooperation between Germany and anti-Bolshevik Russians like himself. He argued that the Brest-Litovsk treaty, far from consolidating German supremacy, was a step too far for the Germans if they looked seriously to their national interest – but he did not explain why he thought this. He repeated his commitment to the monarchical principle and insisted that peasants, if not workers, would welcome a new tsar.22 But without Alexeev’s support, his hope to overturn the Bolsheviks in Moscow was a distinctly forlorn one. When leaving Kiev, he had anyway failed to win agreement with the Germans. What made things worse was the decision by his fellow Kadets to walk out of the Right Centre: this was bound to make it more difficult to resume productive links with the Western Allies.23 Even so, the Bolsheviks would have been shedding their usual concern about possible dangers in international relations if they had not worried that their Russian enemies might strive to do a deal with imperial Germany. The Germans were more than capable of tearing up the Brest-Litovsk treaty and seeking partners in Moscow more malleable than Lenin and Trotsky.