Confessions of the Czarina

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

Nothing seemed to make any impression on her blurred mind—not even the angry crowd when it appeared in the courtyard of the Palace where she was still staying, carrying before it great banners upon which were written the ominous words:

“Give us the head of Alexandra Feodorowna! We want the head of that German woman, Alexandra Feodorowna!”

When asked to leave the window and not to appear before this multitude clamoring for her blood, she merely shrugged her shoulders and remained where she was. She certainly was not courageous, but she did not lack bravery—the bravery born of fatalism or of indifference, which renders those who are endowed with it impassible before danger, because they fail to realize its importance or its imminence. This woman is a historical riddle which only history will be able to unravel, but not so soon as one imagines, because it is likely that she has not yet come to the end of her sinister and mischievous career.

While the life of his wife was threatened, while his Ministers were imprisoned, and while the nation was preparing to claim his abdication, Nicholas II., at Mohilew, where headquarters were stationed, remained just as indifferent to the convulsions which were shaking his country as the Empress watching by the bedside of her sick children. He also did not understand; he also failed to realize that what was taking place in Petrograd was the first act of a big game the stakes of which might easily come to be his own head and those of his family. The thought of Louis XVI. never once crossed his mind. At least it is allowed one to suppose so, because, when some officers of his suite remarked to him that the rebellion (the news of which had by that time reached him) bore many traits of resemblance to the premonitory riots that had heralded the introduction of the Terror in France, he simply replied:

“Oh, it is not at all the same thing. Russians are not Frenchmen—and the Romanoffs are not the Bourbons.”

The Czar might at this early stage of the Revolution have returned to Tsarskoye Selo if he had only energetically insisted upon doing so. But he spent three days in complete indecision, and when at last he made up his mind to go home it was too late. By that time General Aléxieieff had been won over to the cause of the Duma, which was supposed to represent the only responsible authority in Russia; he put every possible obstacle in his way, going so far as to interfere with the arrangements made by General Woyeikoff for the departure of the Imperial train. It seems also that he sent telegrams asking for this train to be either stopped or at least delayed on its way.

No one at this stage wished Nicholas II. to go back to Petrograd, where it was feared his presence would prevent, if not stop, the establishment of the new Government; a useless fear, because, even if he had reached his former capital, he would never have found sufficient courage or energy to fight against an adverse fate or to do aught else but submit to the will of the multitude eager for his fall. The man who signed without one word of protest an abdication against which his whole soul ought to have protested, such a man was not to be feared, he could only be despised.

This was also the feeling which the whole nation began to entertain for him. People had pitied him in the beginning, but as the details of his conduct at Pskow became known, contempt took the place of any commiseration which the tragedy of his fate might have provoked. This opinion was so general that a friend of mine happening to discuss with one of the Deputies of the Workmen in those Soviets which were being organized just then the conduct of the former Czar, asked if he thought it likely the life of the deposed ruler was in danger. He received this characteristic reply:

“In danger? No. He is not worth a shot.”

It is likely that the Empress, if she had been asked her opinion, would have agreed with this judgment. Though she had also thrown up her hands and renounced the game, she would not have given up her rights to the Crown that had been put upon her brow with such pomp and ceremony at Moscow twenty-one years before. She would have fought against the insolence of those who had come to demand it from her. Here I must say that, according to the words of one of the two Deputies sent by the Duma to interview Nicholas II. at Pskow, the prestige of the latter’s personality as the anointed Czar of All the Russias was still so great that if he had mustered sufficient energy to throw out of the railway carriage the men audacious enough to claim his abdication, this gesture of Imperial rage would have brought back to him the allegiance of the troops. He was living through a terrible drama, and he was accepting it like a comedy. After having disgraced himself, he was dishonoring by his attitude the misfortunes which had fallen on his country, on his dynasty, and on his race.