These facts one learned, as I experienced at the time, by a laborious comparison of the statements of little-read writers and statistics. To the world at large a different picture was offered. Men were told how, in 1906, a group of affrighted Polish peasants, headed by an abbess, came to St. Petersburg to inquire if it was really true that (as zealous Roman Catholic proselytisers had told them) the Tsar had made his submission to the Pope. They saw a minister, on Easter morn, and to their solemn salutation, “Christ is risen,” he blunderingly replied, “Good Day”; and their hearts sank. But they also saw Nicholas, and to their faltering religious salute he replied cheerfully, “In truth He is risen,” and they fell sobbing at his feet. Or it was the festival of Poltava in 1909, when Nicholas, seeing his carriage surrounded by a dense throng of peasants, alighted and talked familiarly with them for two hours. And there was the story of how at Christmas, 1912, when the members of the Duma were presented to him, he summoned the shrinking peasant-deputies from the last row and honoured them above the others. Nicholas II knew quite well what was happening in Russia. His small mind thought that tasting the food of soldiers and sailors—before a camera—visiting the hospitals, and embracing carefully-selected peasants would save the autocracy in the twentieth century.
The five-year period of the third Duma expired in 1912, and the new election proved a victory for the conservatives. The Octobrists had ventured to resist the demand of the clergy that the elementary schools should be handed over to them, and the popes had fiercely and unscrupulously canvassed the peasant-electors. Still, however, 285 Octobrists and other radicals faced the 155 members of the Right, and small measures of reform had to be passed. They were inadequate, and the year 1913 saw another great wave of disturbance. The number of strikers rose to 460,000. At Kieff a great gathering of representatives of all the towns of the Empire condemned the Government. The Octobrists united with the other radicals of the Duma and, by 146 votes to 113 (many abstaining) condemned the ministers for not proceeding in the path of reform. But I need not run in detail over events which are still fresh in the general memory. These brief notices will suffice to indicate that the spirit of progress lived and grew in spite of every effort of Nicholas II to strangle it.
The conflict entered upon its last stage. That Nicholas II wanted war, however much he may have hoped to profit by the aid of France and England, we have no reason whatever to believe. Nor is it possible as yet to pass a sober opinion upon the charge that he intended, when the war dragged, to make a separate peace with Germany. That his German wife was won by the miserable adventurer Rasputin, and some of his ministers by German bribery, seems clear enough; and, although he had been second only to the Kaiser in the vigorous lead of his nation until the end of 1916, there is grave reason to think that he was then won by the prayers of his family and intrigues of his ministers. But the Russian revolution was not based on this theory as much as is generally believed. The mass of the people were bewildered by the war, and have not since shown any great zeal to prosecute it. The educated malcontents were, as we saw, thoroughly organised and ready to grasp any pretext for a successful revolution. Only a minority of military men and liberal politicians were essentially moved by the failure of the dynasty to arm Russia efficiently and prosecute the war.
The food-supply was the immediate ground of the revolution. On February 8th, when the five-year period of the Duma of 1912 approached its term, the Tsar was urged to extend its life, as was done in other countries. The Tsar refused, and he spoke of elections in the coming fall. The suspicion that he was going to proceed irregularly coincided with a shortage of grain in the large cities, especially Petrograd (as the capital was now named), which was gradually stirring the anger of the people. We may assume that the revolutionary organisation exploited this anger with all their power, and especially undermined the loyalty of the few regiments which were left at Petrograd.
On March 8th the people of Petrograd, especially the women, began to throng the streets, and the workers to quit the factories. Rodzianko, the President of the Duma, summoned a conference on the food-question, and he and Professor Milyukoff, the second hero of the revolution, strongly criticised the incompetence of the ministers. Rodzianko, a former officer of the Guards and husband of a Golitzin princess, was a noble of distinction, but he was an Octobrist and a friend of the people. The crowds were still larger in the streets on March 9th; and on Sunday, the 11th, they turned out in immense numbers and fraternised with the few troops who were visible. The guards, however, were imperfectly won, and on the Sunday afternoon they fired a volley into the crowd and about a hundred were killed or wounded. It is one of the strangest testimonies to the amazing condition of Russia that the crowds remained on the streets and said, sympathetically, to the soldiers: “We are sorry for you, brothers, you had to do your duty.”
On the Monday morning it became known that the Tsar had suspended for two months the sittings of the Duma and the Imperial Council, and the revolution was inaugurated. Troops to the number of about 30,000 marched upon the arsenal, distributed arms to the people, and fought the police and the loyal troops. The Progressives and the Socialists formed a committee of twelve of their ablest representatives, including Rodzianko, Milyukoff, and Kerenski; and Rodzianko telegraphed to the Tsar a peremptory demand for a new government. The fight with the police, who mounted the roofs with rifles and machine-guns, was continued on the following day, but the public buildings fell one by one into the hands of the revolutionaries, and about midnight of the 13-14th the enterprise was crowned by the submission to the Provisional Government of the Preobrajensky Guards. Moscow soon sent its adhesion, and the troops in the field gradually assured the new government of their allegiance.
Nicholas II was with the army, at the headquarters of General Russky, when the alarming news from Petrograd reached him. He would return to the capital, he said; but at Bolgoe station he was quietly persuaded to return to Pskoff. There, in a small, dimly lighted room, the last of the Romanoffs received the delegates of the people—M. Gutchkoff and a conservative member of the Duma. It is said that Nicholas asked calmly what was required of him, and, when he was told that he must abdicate, he at once demanded a piece of paper. He would not, however, resign the crown to his son, as they wished. He would not be parted from his son, he said: and it is probable that he was moved by his deep affection for the boy. He would leave the throne to his brother Michael. The fateful document was there and then composed, and Nicholas II signed away his power: signed, as it proved, the death-warrant of the Romanoff dynasty. He remains ambiguous in his last imperial pronouncement. In words of singular dignity and detachment he answers the call of the Russian people to lay down his autocracy, and he prays for a speedy victory over Germany. But for the ghastly, unforgettable horrors which stain his reign we could find words of admiration for the last weak descendant of Michael Romanoff.
The End