“I have changed my mind. Please send this telegram to Petrograd.”
On a small sheet of paper, in a clear hand, the Czar had himself traced his consent to the immediate accession to the throne of his son, Alexis....
Alexeiev took the telegram, and—did not send it. It was too late; both Manifestoes had already been made public to the Army and to the country.
For fear of “unsettling public opinion,” Alexeiev made no mention of the telegram, and kept it in his portfolio until he passed it on to me towards the end of May, when he resigned his post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The document, of vast importance to future biographers of the Czar, was afterwards kept under seal at the Operations Department of General Headquarters.
Meantime, the members of the Cabinet and of the Provisional Committee[12] had assembled at the Palace of the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch about midday on May 3rd. Since the 27th of February, the latter had been cut off from all communication with Headquarters or with the Emperor. But the issue of this Conference was practically predetermined by the spirit prevailing in the Soviet of Workmen’s Delegates, after the gist of the Manifesto became known to them, by the Resolution of Protest passed by their Executive Committee and forwarded to the Government, by Kerensky’s uncompromising attitude, and by the general correlation of forces. Except Miliukov and Gutchkov, all the others, “without the faintest desire of influencing the Grand Duke in any way,” eagerly advised him to abdicate. Miliukov warned them that “the support of a symbol familiar to the masses is necessary, if decided authority is to be maintained, and that the Provisional Government, if left alone, might founder in the sea of popular disturbances, and that it might not survive until the Convocation of the Constituent Assembly....”
After another conference with Rodzianko, President of the Duma, the Grand Duke came to his final decision to abdicate.
The “Declaration” of the Grand Duke was published on the same day:
“A heavy burden has been laid on me by the wish of my Brother, who has transferred the Imperial Throne of All Russia to me at a time of unexampled warfare and popular disturbances.
“Animated, together with the nation, by one thought, that the welfare of our country must prevail over every other consideration, I have decided to accept supreme power only if such be the will of our great people, whose part it is to establish the form of government and new fundamental laws of the Russian State through their representatives in the Constituent Assembly.
“With a prayer to God for His blessing, I appeal to all citizens of the Russian State to obey the Provisional Government, which is constituted and invested with full powers by the will of the State Duma, until a Constituent Assembly, convoked at the earliest possible moment by universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage, can establish a form of government which will embody the will of the people.”
“Michael.”
After his abdication, the Grand Duke resided in the neighbourhood of Gatchino, and stood completely aloof from political life. About the middle of March, 1918, he was arrested by order of the local Bolshevik Committee, taken to Petrograd, and, some time later, exiled to the Government of Perm.