Confessions of the Czarina

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

The Empress implored her husband to listen to her, telling him that if he really felt alarmed about taking any violent measures against the Grand Duke, he ought at least to dismiss the latter’s head of the staff, General Januchevitch, to whose blunders all the disasters that had overpowered the Russian armies were due. She represented to her bewildered spouse that public opinion claimed some one should be punished for all the unsuccesses which had attended the war, and that it would be satisfied to a small degree if the General were removed from his command.

This was a compromise which Nicholas II. seized hold of with alacrity. It had been proposed to him because it was known very well that the Grand Duke would not consent to be parted from his faithful adviser with whom he had shared all the anxieties of the disastrous campaign that had been carried on amid such terrible difficulties, that he would rather resign his own command than give him up. The surmise proved quite correct. When Nicholas Nicholaievitch was informed of the change that had been made in the direction of the staff, without his having been consulted, he telegraphed to the Emperor, asking him to be also relieved as soon as possible from the duties of his responsible position. The Empress, Sturmer, and Raspoutine were jubilant. It was easy to persuade the Czar that his cousin, in thus resisting his orders, had rendered himself guilty of insubordination. It was decided not to accept his resignation, but simply to dismiss him and to appoint him at the same time Viceroy in the Caucasus, a position that had just been rendered vacant by the departure of Count Worontzoff-Daschkoff for reasons of health. This they thought would be a courteous way of getting rid once for all of a personality so strong and so encumbering at the same time as that of the Grand Duke, and of doing it in a manner to which no one could raise any objections.

The Emperor said yes to everything. He had been thoroughly frightened, and was no longer in a condition of mind capable of judging impartially of the events taking place around him. A solemn religious service was celebrated in the private chapel of the Imperial Palace of Tsarskoye Selo, to implore the protection of Heaven on the new Commander-in-chief of the Russian troops, after which Nicholas II. started for the headquarters of the army. He was received with great pomp and ceremony by the Grand Duke, and at once assumed the supreme command over demoralized regiments who were full of regret at the departure of their former leader.

Nicholas Nicholaievitch behaved with immense dignity. In this crisis of his life he only remembered that he was a Romanoff, and he showed an absolute submission to the decisions of the head of his dynasty. In words of incomparable nobility he issued an army order in which he thanked his soldiers for their good services, and expressed the hope that the presence of their Sovereign at their head would inspire them with a new energy in the struggle that lay before them. Then he left for his new post, accompanied to the railway station by the Czar himself, from whom he parted solemnly and respectfully, and whom he was never to see again, at least not as Emperor of All the Russias.

XXI
PEACE, WE MUST HAVE PEACE

THE removal of the Grand-Duke Nicholas from the position of Commander-in-chief of the army did not meet with the general satisfaction that his enemies had hoped it would provoke. The sane elements of the nation understood quite well that, whatever mistakes he had been guilty of, they had proceeded more from the many difficulties which he had found in his way than from his own incapacity. No one liked the thought of his place having been taken by the Czar himself, who had long ago lost his personal prestige, whom no political party in the country trusted. The influence of the Empress was also dreaded, and the fact of her German leanings was openly discussed. The demand for a responsible Cabinet, from whom explanations could be demanded by the nation, was already to be heard everywhere. The Duma, when it had met, had been the scene of furious discussions during which the conduct of the Government had been severely censured. Russia was beginning to get tired of the tyrannous hand which was weighing it down and crushing every attempt at independence on the part of those who were in possession of her confidence.

The Ministry was neither respected nor considered, the Sovereign was despised, and his wife was hated. Dissatisfaction was spreading even in the spheres which out of old traditions and principles had kept it within bounds. The aristocracy had become weary of finding all its good intentions disdained or misconstrued; in all classes of society people were cursing the hidden “dark powers,” as they were called, that disposed of the fate of the nation and that ruled the feeble and weak-minded Monarch who had been converted into a figurehead for whom no one cared except the unscrupulous people who were abusing his credulity and who had contrived to get hold of his confidence.

The Czarina was openly accused of working hand in hand with her cousin, the Kaiser, and of assisting him in his dreams of a world-wide Empire into whose power the Russian one was to be delivered. And when the old, feeble, opinionated, but at any rate honest, Gorémykine had been replaced as Prime Minister by the hated Sturmer, who by this time had risen to the position of leader of the ultra-conservative and reactionary party in the Council of State, the general indignation against the weakness of Nicholas II. could no longer be repressed, and the possibility of a Palace revolution came to be spoken of as the next thing likely to happen.

In the mean while Raspoutine and his friends were daily becoming more powerful. The “Prophet” had by that time completely mastered the details of the intrigue into which he had been drawn by the clever people of whom he had been the tool. These had been at first Count Witte, who in his hatred of the men who had driven him out of power had willingly lent himself to the conspiracy which transformed the Empress into one of the most active agents the Kaiser had ever had at his disposal in Russia. When this much-discussed statesman died at the very moment he might have been called again to play a part in the history of his country, his place had been taken by Sturmer, Manassavitch-Maniuloff, and other adventurers of the same kind, all eager to enrich themselves at the expense of their own Fatherland, all of them men who only looked for their personal financial advantage, who remained perfectly indifferent to the disasters which one after the other were crowding upon unfortunate Russia. Germany was clever enough to see through the game played by these sharks and she did not hesitate an instant in buying their services for all that they were worth.

Raspoutine had very accurately taken stock of the mental caliber of the half-demented Czarina, and while carefully avoiding discussing or even touching upon the subject of politics with her, he had contrived to persuade her to trust those so-called statesmen of whom he was but the instrument. As time went on she became more and more anxious to communicate with these spirits of the other world, in whose existence she had been led to believe as firmly as in that of the Divinity itself. Raspoutine, whenever he prayed in her presence, pretended to get into trances during which he told her things which he assured her he did not remember later on, but which he persuaded her he had been inspired by the celestial powers to tell. She was kept by him and by Anna Wyrubewa in a state of semi-hypnotism, which went so far that sometimes she was herself seized with attacks of convulsions bordering on epilepsy, during the long prayers in which she used to spend half of her days and most of her nights. The superstitious fears which had always haunted her were played upon by these clever adventurers whom she had admitted into the secret of her thoughts. She was finally convinced that her duty as a Russian Empress required of her to sacrifice herself for the welfare of her subjects, and to induce her husband to sign a peace that would put an end to the useless and terrible slaughter that had transformed the whole of Russia into one vast churchyard.