Alexandra (44 page)

Under the presidency of Prince Lvov, who also took on the duties of Interior Minister, the new council established itself, with the liberal deputy Alexander Guchkov (Alix’s bête
noire) becoming Minister of War, Paul Miliukov, leader of the moderate Cadet (Constitutional Democratic) party becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. I. Tereshchenko Minister of Finance and the
fiery young lawyer Alexander Kerensky Minister of Justice. These specific titles and responsibilities were due to prove fluid, changing suddenly and often in the coming months, and the Provisional
Government was to prove fragile.

Not so the other leading political body formed in the immediate aftermath of the tsar’s abdication: the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. The Soviet, composed of union
leaders, leading figures from the leftist parties and intellectuals who had long been opposed to imperial rule, met in the Tauride Palace where the Duma also sat, and were led by an Executive
Committee which had no official role.

The Soviet functioned as a second governing body, its views much more radical than those of the various Duma delegates, its influence strong yet its precise relationship to the Duma ill-defined
– and evolving. But since everyone expected that the current political arrangements were only temporary, to be in force only until elections
to a Constituent
Assembly could be held, the imprecise nature of the Soviet’s position was tolerated.

Everywhere committees sprang up, township committees, factory committees, committees of soldiers and workers. The thirst for democratization, for abandonment of all hierarchies of authority,
spread quickly, and with it came a thirst for revenge against the rulers, the owners, the bosses, anyone who had held authority in the past. The rights of each individual, and of the people
collectively, were exalted above all; any title or office or institution that appeared to diminish those rights was challenged, and threatened with destruction.

Such was the mood in the capital where, in response to news of the tsar’s abdication, another wave of violent upheaval had begun to build up. Police were shot and ambushed, police stations
burned, along with the law courts with all their records. Mansions were looted and set on fire. Prisoners had been liberated from the jails, and they roved through the city, taking vengeance, along
with throngs of soldiers who had thrown off their allegiance to their officers and milled about in a disorderly way, answerable to no one and spoiling for a fight. It was unclear whether the
Provisional Government would be able to restore order.

Nearly all of the telephones at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo had been cut off, but the private line to the Winter Palace in Petrograd still functioned and, by means of this private
line, word came that the capital was in chaos, and that the chaos was spreading.

Meanwhile at Tsarskoe Selo the members of the Palace Guard, dejected after hearing that the tsar had abdicated, obeyed the orders they received to return to Petrograd.
¹
The palace was defenceless, and Petrograd, with its tens of thousands of striking labourers, roaming soldiers and liberated convicts, was only a few miles away.

No one in the palace slept, Sophie Buxhoeveden wrote, remembering the first days following the abdication. Meals were forgotten, routines abandoned. The temperature was well below freezing, and
the soldiers had used up nearly all the firewood. Supplies of food were very low as well. Alix continued to watch over her daughters
and son, wearing her white
nurse’s uniform over her black gown, staying occupied.

On March 18, late at night, a cordon of trucks pulled up in front of the locked gates of the palace, and a large contingent of men spilled out. Alexander Guchkov, the new Minister of War, along
with General Kornilov had arrived with his escort. ‘His thugs were everywhere,’ Sophie wrote, ‘abusing the servants for working for the oppressors and reviling the
“bloodsuckers” who were members of the imperial suite.’

Alix sent a hasty message to Grand Duke Paul, asking him to come to the palace to be with her when she met the envoys of the Provisional Government. With Paul beside her she received the
minister and the general, not knowing what they might want of her, or indeed whether they had come to take her away. She had, finally, after days of uncertainty, received a phone call from Nicky;
she knew that he was still alive. But she could not be sure that he was safe.

It was nearly midnight when Guchkov and Kornilov were ushered into a room where Alix waited. They asked her whether she had everything she wanted. She said that, as far as she and the children
were concerned, she needed nothing more for the moment, but asked that her military hospitals be maintained and supplied. Guchkov put a contingent of soldiers in place as guards, with an officer
who was to serve as a go-between to keep him informed of conditions at the palace. It was to be a temporary arrangement, he said. Nothing permanent had yet been decided.

The discussion was brief. Guchkov and Kornilov left, without arresting Alix or mentioning anything about her future or Nicky’s. But the rough, foul-mouthed revolutionary soldiers stayed
behind, keeping up their shower of abuse and acting, Sophie thought, less like guards and protectors than jailers.

All the palace doors were locked and sealed up. Apart from representatives of the new government, no one was allowed in or out except through a door in the kitchen, where a soldier stood guard.
A very limited number of deliveries were allowed. Only one phone, in the orderly room, was kept operational, and when anyone spoke
on that line, they had to speak in
Russian – no English or French – and with an officer and soldier listening in.

Kornilov told Alix and Marshal Benckendorff that these measures were essential, for the time being, but that soon the former tsar would arrive and the entire family would be sent by special
train to Murmansk, where they would board a ship for England.

The Provisional Government was in fact negotiating with the British government to allow the tsar and his family to emigrate. Foreign Minister Miliukov had sent a message to the British Prime
Minister Lloyd George asking for asylum on behalf of the Romanovs and, despite the prime minister’s initial reluctance, they had come to an agreement.

It was with this expectation in her mind that Alix met with General Kornilov again on March 21.
²
She was waiting for him in the green drawing
room, wearing her white apron with its red cross, the starkness of her simple uniform incongruous against the backdrop of the enormous, elegantly appointed room with its gilded walls and ornate
carved chairs and sofas, costly pictures and objets d’art.

The general delivered his message. He had come, he said, to put her, Alexandra Romanov, officially under arrest, by order of the Provisional Government. The former tsar had also been arrested,
at Mogilev, having returned there following his abdication.

Alix, calm and gracious, told the general that she was glad he had been the one to arrest her, since he knew what it felt like to be a prisoner, having himself been a prisoner of war in Austria.
She knew he could empathize with her situation.

Her manner was no longer grand or distant, but she had acquired, Count Benckendorff thought, a wonderful dignity. The count watched as she carried on her dialogue with Kornilov, asking nothing
for herself, only that her hospitals and ambulance trains be maintained, so that no matter what happened to her the wounded would continue to be looked after. She asked that the servants in the
nursery might be permitted to stay on, for the girls and Alexei were still recovering.

She asked for leniency. ‘I am only a mother looking after my sick children,’ she told Kornilov.

He responded that the servants and staff would be allowed to remain, but those who did would be arrested; all who wanted to avoid arrest would have to leave the palace.
Among those who made the decision to stay were Marshal Benckendorff and his wife, the wardrobe mistress Madame Narishkin, Alix’s reader and companion Mademoiselle Schneider, who had been with
her since the early days of her engagement, Alexei’s tutor Pierre Gilliard, and the two ladies-in-waiting Sophie Buxhoeveden and Anastasia Henrikov.

Kornilov stressed that the arrests were only ‘a precautionary measure’, and that soon the family would be in Murmansk, on their way to a new life in England. And, as Alix knew, there
was plenty of money to fund that new life. Her husband had nearly half a million roubles in cash, plus nearly two million roubles in securities, not counting the value of all his estates and
palaces with their valuable furnishings. Alix herself owned a priceless jewellery collection. In exile, their every need would be supplied.

Benckendorff advised Alix to begin packing, and the servants began filling trunks and suitcases. But Alix was very reluctant to leave, not only because the children were still recuperating but
because, as she told Sophie Buxhoeveden, ‘it was such a nightmare to her that she prayed daily against it’. If they had to be ‘dragged’ out of Russia, she said, she
preferred not to go to England, but to Norway, which had a climate that would suit Alexei, and where the family could live quietly and not be subjected to the stares of the curious.
³
Nicky could be a farmer – his lifelong dream – and she could live the retired life she had always craved.
⁴

There were other possibilities. Grand Duke Paul offered his house at Boulogne. Minnie’s relatives in Denmark would probably take the family in. After the war was over, Alix’s brother
Ernie would be certain to make the Romanovs welcome, or her sister Irene. There were also relatives in Greece.

But she did not want to go, not even when Madame Narishkin came to her with a very practical plan. Alix and Nicky should go on ahead to England, as quickly as possible, the wardrobe mistress
advised. She and Count Benckendorff would look after the children.
When they were completely well, the count and Sophie would bring them to England, or to wherever the
parents had gone.

Preparations for departure were being made, but in actuality the door to emigration was rapidly closing. Unknown to Alix or Nicky, the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies was determined not
to let the former tsar leave Russia. In their view, his tyranny, his years of heartless exploitation of the poor, his harsh economic policies and personal greed all deserved punishment. Memories of
the Khodynka massacre, of the millions of Russian deaths from famine and disease for which the policies of the tsar’s ministers were blamed, of the tens of millions of war dead were evoked to
justify bringing the man now known simply as Nicholas Romanov to justice. Besides, if he were allowed to go into exile, he would be certain to raise a foreign army and return to crush the
revolution. He was very rich, after all, and had powerful relatives. Once he was allowed outside Russia, he would pose an immense threat.

The Soviet sent a large group of soldiers armed with machine guns to the Alexander Palace on March 22 to take the former emperor prisoner and bring him back to Petrograd to be confined in the
Peter and Paul Fortress until his inevitable execution. They came up against the guardsmen supplied by the Provisional Government, who had orders to keep watch over the Romanov prisoners in the
palace, and had not been told to release any of them. To prevent a clash, the Soviet contingent agreed not to take the former tsar away, but they became belligerent, waving their guns and bullying
the other company of guards.
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They refused to leave until they were shown the security arrangements within the palace, and shown Nicky himself,
who was forced to walk past them all, a prisoner on parade.

To make certain there were no dangerous emigrations within the Romanov family, the soviet ordered the railroad workers to prevent any train from reaching Murmansk. It was a needless gesture for,
despite General Kornilov’s assurances to Alix, no British cruiser was waiting at Murmansk to provide a way of escape. The British government had changed its position, on orders from George V.
The Romanovs were not to be allowed to enter England, lest their
presence trigger a leftist rising there.
⁶
The goodwill
of Nicky’s and Alix’s cousin King George did not extend to granting them asylum. ‘It would not be reasonable,’ he told Foreign Minister Miliukov, ‘for the imperial
family to be settled in our country.’

Neither Alix nor Nicky knew of this decision, nor were they told of the similar conclusion reached by the government of Denmark. They continued to believe that, before long, arrangements would
be made under which they would leave Russia – or that they would be sent to Livadia for a long stay.
⁷

In the meantime, they were prisoners, their every move watched, their every conversation overheard. Their lives had ceased to be their own.

Slowly a routine evolved. Alix and Nicky took their meals with their children, and spent most of the day in their rooms, except for the daily walk Nicky was allowed to take for half an hour with
his aide-de-camp Prince Dolgorukov. While the soldiers stood by, rifles at the ready and with fixed bayonets, he and the prince shovelled snow. Alix too went out, but in her wheelchair. She had not
been able to take walks in a long time, though she could still move very quickly if she had to; her elderly page Wolkov told Sophie Buxhoeveden that when Nicky’s first phone call came through
following the abdication, Alix ‘ran down the stairs like a girl’ to answer it.
⁸
She spent time with the children, worked at her
sewing or knitting, said her prayers, and read the many letters that came to the palace – each one having already been opened and read by an officer.

In the evening Alix and Nicky went to sit by Anna Vyrubov’s bedside. Relations between Anna and Alix had been strained for several years, but long habit and an underlying affection still
bound them together, and Alix still felt loyal to Anna and responsible for her, all the more so since her crippling accident. Alix had moved her friend out of her house in Tsarskoe Selo and into
the palace after the soldiers, who hated Anna for her years of association with Rasputin, had threatened her life.