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Episode 10.63: Abdication

Last week, we discussed the events of International Women’s Day, which was Thursday, February 23rd, 1917. When the women of Petrograd refuse to sit back and wait any longer to be heard, they were sick of being ignored while their family starved and froze to death. They refused to take orders from their male counterparts, who urge them to not make any waves, and to be patient and bide their time. But their patience was all gone. The incompetence and corruption and myopic cruelty of the tsarist regime had boiled them right over. And so they marched out into the streets, forcing the men to come out with them to demand bread, peace, and the overthrow of the tsar. And this began one of the most fateful weeks in Russian history.

The mass demonstrations, the women kicked off on February 23rd, continued into the weekend. Crowds and demonstrators paraded through the streets of Petrograd, and by Saturday, February 25th, a defacto general strike had ground nearly all non-protest related activity to a halt. Industries shut down and the transportation networks inside the city — that is, railroads and trolley cars and cabs all stopped running. There were probably at any given time 200 to 250,000 people out there in the streets. Their demands had moved decisively beyond mere economic and social relief. They were now overtly political, overtly rebellious, and overtly revolutionary. The cries and banners were all, down with autocracy, down with the war, and specifically down with the German woman.

Now the German woman herself — and we’re talking here of Empress Alexandra — was as disgusted with the people of Petrograd as they were with her. Describing the protest, she said, "this is a hooligan movement. Young people run and shout that there is no bread simply to create excitement, along with workers who prevent others from working. If the weather was very cold, they would probably all stay home."

Now she probably wasn’t wrong about that last bit. But to believe that all of this was simply the result of unscrupulous agitators making things up, that it was just people running around and shouting "no bread" simply to create excitement as if there wasn’t literally no bread, well, that just speaks to her insanely distorted view from the imperial bubble, a bubble that is just days away from being shattered forever.

Alexandra’s husband was 500 miles away at army headquarters, having departed the night before all hell really started breaking loose. Now, he was not at all concerned about the first reports of the protests, and in his diaries and correspondence during these days, he makes as much mention of playing dominoes as the crisis erupting in the capital. Now, in Nicholas’s teeny tiny defense, ever so teeny tiny defense, he was being aggressively misled about the situation by the people he trusted most. Most especially Minister of the Interior Protopopov, who spent these days reassuring the tsar over and over again that the strikes were nothing to worry about, nothing that couldn’t be handled, and nothing they hadn’t seen before. This really isn’t much of a defense though, because Nicholas had been warned repeatedly that Protopopov was a huge liability, and responsibility for the fact that he was still minister of the interior and in a position to so thoroughly mislead the tsar ultimately rests with the tsar himself. Nicholas was thus somewhat taken aback on the evening of Saturday, February 25th, to receive a telegram signed by all his ministers — except Protopopov, of course — saying, sire, we would be perfectly willing to resign en masse in favor of a government in order to end the crisis in Petrograd. Still blind to the enormity of the events engulfing him, Nicholas was like, what crisis in Petrograd? Nicholas rejected the idea out of hand, and instead sent a directive to General Kolobov, the guy those are had recently elevated to the position of military governor of Petrograd. This order said, suppress the disorders in the capital at once. He wrote somewhat peevishly, "I order that the disorders in the capital, intolerable during these difficult times of war with Germany and Austria, be ended tomorrow."

Now, Nicholas had been warned many times, by many people that the troops in Petrograd were probably not going to follow orders if they had to choose between obeying the tsar and murdering a bunch of people in the streets. But as with Protopopov, Nicholas continued to listen to his heart, rather than all the brains that were surrounding him. And he knew in his heart that the army was with him.

At that moment, the Petrograd garrison who Nicholas believed would surely quell the unrest by tomorrow night, numbered about 160,000. This was more than enough in the tsar’s estimation. But as we discussed a few episodes back, morale and discipline in the Russian army over the winter of 1916-1917 was cracking up, and the Petrograd garrison was cracking harder than anyone. Most of them were deeply unhappy to be in the army at all. They resented their conscription. The majority were in fact raw recruits who were only supposed to be in Petrograd for a few weeks to get basic training before being shipped off to the front in the spring. They were hardly soldiers at all. Mostly they were peasants who had recently been shoved into a uniform and handed a gun. They were quite the motley concoction of inexperience, lack of discipline and seething anger. They were also crammed into barracks that were only meant to hold 20,000 soldiers and which now bulged with an impossibly uncomfortable 160,000 soldiers. To say that they sympathized with the protesters out in the street would be a massive understatement.

General Khabalov, for his part, was aware the men were not exactly reliable, but he followed the tsar’s orders, and on the morning of Sunday, February 20, signs went up all over the city saying that meetings, assemblies, demonstrations, marches, and strikes were strictly forbidden. Violation of this order would result in being shot on sight by soldiers. There was also signs that said the following day, everybody was expected to go back to work, and any worker not found on the job would be conscripted into the army and sent to the front lines at once. Then, army regiment, police squads, and companies of cossacks fanned out to occupy the city. Now, the people of Petrograd just straight up ignored these orders, they were riding high and they felt that momentum was with them. And so, on this Sunday, they came out. And asked the two sides met out in the streets, there were skirmishes and gunshots, a few lobbed grenades, and people wounded and killed on both sides. The most dramatic incident was when an angry officer became enraged when his raw recruits refused to fire into a crowd, and he started personally blasting away indiscriminately with a rifle until his men followed his lead, and they all killed about 50 people. Word of this incident outraged public opinion, including many soldiers, who started resolving individually and then collectively to prevent any further use of violence against the people of Petrograd.

Back at army headquarters, the tsar received a few updates on what was happening in the city, including an urgent telegram from chairman of the Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko. His telegram read: "Serious situation. In the capital, anarchy. Government paralyzed. Transport of food and fuel completely disorganized. Public disaffection growing. On the streets, chaotic shooting. Army units fired on each other. It is essential at once to entrust a person enjoying the country’s confidence with the formation of a new government. There should be no delay. All delay is death."

Nicholas read this telegram with disbelief, and became convinced the political opposition was exaggerating to manipulate him into making concessions he didn’t really have to make. And he remarked to the army chief of staff, "that fat Rodzianko has sent me some nonsense, which I shall not even bother to answer."

But that wasn’t really true. He did answer the telegram. He sent an order back to Petrograd dissolving the Duma until April. This was an order the leaders of the Duma would wake up to on the morning of Monday, February 27th, 1917.

Monday, February 27th, 1917 is the second capital B capital D big Day of the February Revolution. Now, the first was obviously International women’s Day, when the women broke open the flood gates of popular unrest. Well, today, events hinge on the soldiers in Petrograd. And those soldiers will turn the tide of Russian history by not only refusing to suppress the disorder in the capital, but by going into mutiny, and by marching out into the streets to join the revolution already in progress. Many of the soldiers stayed up all night in their barracks after the events of Sunday, and by morning, at least one regiment had decided that come the dawn, they were quitting the garrison and marching out into the streets. And when they did this, after killing one of their officers, about a half dozen other regiments, quickly caught mutiny fever and joined them. They all headed first for the working class districts, where they linked up with the already rebellious population. And they started erecting barricades and making plans to seize key points in the city, and also gather as many guns and rifles as they could find and as much ammunition as they could carry.

By noon, large crowds were moving towards the center of the city, aided and protected by the soldiers. And there are now about 25,000 or so in active, mutinous rebellion. They looted and ransacked various government buildings, including the ministry of the interior, and the headquarters of the Okhrana. They forced their way into the Peter and Paul Fortress, taking possession of the cache of weapons and the artillery batteries inside the fortress, and freeing any prisoners they found. Many of those prisoners were the detainees who had been rounded up back in January, the leaders of the Workers Group, who Protopopov had arrested thinking he was going to prevent the linkage between the Duma opposition and the agitators in the streets. Those guys immediately returned to the working class districts and started getting ready to form the Petrograd Soviet.

At about 1:30 in the afternoon, a large crowd of people and soldiers arrived at the Tauride Palace, where the Duma was meeting, singing La Marseillaise. Their general message to the Duma was, we support you. We’re just here to ask her instructions about what to do. Without anyone able to stop them, they all just kind of went into the palace and suddenly everything was chaos: people were just wandering the halls going in and out of rooms, yelling and shouting, it was pretty chaotic in there. It kind of made it difficult for the leaders of the Duma to do their job, but they didn’t even know what their job was. They had been in a bind all morning. The tsar had handed down this order for them to disperse, and whether they liked it or not, it was perfectly within the tsar’s rights to order them to disperse. But with the city entering its fifth day of non-stop unrest, and now the army going over to the people, they not only had the means to defy the tsar’s authority, but maybe a responsibility. If they dissolved themselves now in the middle of all this, there would be no leadership in Petrograd to speak of. What would happen then?

Rodzianko. Milyukov, and the other Duma leaders never wanted to lead a popular revolution against the tsar. They didn’t want to go into revolt against Nicholas. And even at this late hour, they hesitated. Should they take control? Should they lead a revolution?

But a conservative delegate named Vasili Shulgin told Rodzianko he had no choice. Shulgin said, "take the power. If you don’t, others will." And by that, he meant socialists and anarchists and SRs. This was almost as horrible a thought as Nicholas remaining on the throne in perpetuity.

So around 3:00 PM, the Duma self-selected an executive committee tasked first and foremost with restoring order in Petrograd, and imposing discipline on the army. Still clinging to the formalities of the law, they did not technically organize themselves as an executive committee of the Duma, but were merely an unofficial committee of Duma members acting in a quasi-private capacity. They dubbed themselves, the Provisional Committee of Duma Members for the Restoration of Order in the Capital and the Establishment of Relations with Individuals and Institutions. Rodzianko was the chairman of this committee, but the two guys who are going to emerge as the most forcefully energetic and important members will be Pavel Milyukov and Alexander Kerensky.

And next week, we will come back to focus in more detail on what’s going on at the Tauride Palace on this same day, at this same moment, because this is when the Petrograd Soviet gets going. And the relationship between the Soviet and the provisional government is massively important, but we’re going to stick a pin in that until next week, because we do have to get rid of the tsar, it’s time for him to go, and there’s no time to lose.

So by sunset on this second big day of the February Revolution, Petrograd has broken free of all heretofor existing political order, and passed into the hands of a spontaneous union of opposition political leaders, mutinous soldiers, who I should now mention are numbering more than 60,000, and the people of Petrograd. 500 miles away at army headquarters, Nicholas finally started getting snippets of reality from people he trusted, people he could not simply hand wave away. General Khabalov reported he had lost control of the city, and now personally commanded no more than 1500 men inside the Winter Palace.

Then came the telegram that truly snapped the tsar to attention. From the palace at Tsarskoye Selo, Alexandra wrote her husband, "concessions inevitable. Street fighting continues. Many units gone over to the enemy. Alex."

Nicholas read this, and ordered his train to be prepared to leave as soon as possible.

At about five o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, February 28th, the tsar’s train got rolling. But they took a long and circuitous route back to the capital, so as not to disrupt the trains running on the direct line from Petrograd to the front. While en route, they received nothing but more bad news. The naval base at Kronstadt had mutinied and joined the rebellion. The soldiers who had taken possession of the artillery at the Peter and Paul Fortress had pointed it at the Winter Palace, and told General Khabalov and his men they had twenty minutes to vacate the premises or they would open fire. The last remnant of tsarist control then simply dissolved out into the street. A red flag was soon waving over the Winter Palace.

Now it’s not clear how differently things would have gone had Nicholas been there in person. What would have happened had he not departed on February 22nd? What would have happened if he had rushed straight back to Petrograd? It’s entirely possible his personal presence would have changed things. It’s also possible that being there in person would not have amounted to a hill of beans. But we’ll never know, because even now, with his presence so desperately called for, he’s taking this long route home.

And he never did make it home.

At about one o’clock in the morning on what was now technically Wednesday, March the first, the Imperial train came to a halt about 150 miles southeast of Petrograd. An officer climbed on board the train to save that up ahead mutinous soldiers had set up a battery of artillery and fortified machine gun positions, and they were not going to allow the train to pass. So the tsar ordered the train to back up and go instead to Pskov, one of the major regional headquarters of the northern armies of Russia. As it turns out, Nicolas had already set foot in Petrograd as the tsar of Russia for the last time.

While the imperial train retreated towards Pskov, events in the capital continued to seal the tsar’s fate. All through Wednesday, March the first, formerly loyal military units gave up on Nicholas. And we’re talking here not about the rank and file of the Petrograd garrison, but inner circle imperial guard units, regiments that had protected the Romanov family for centuries. They made demonstrative pilgrimages down to the Tauride Palace to pledge their loyalty to the executive committee of the Duma, the most significant of these being the unit of marines who served on and guarded the imperial yacht, where the imperial family had spent so much of their time. And for these Marines, this was not an abstract question. They knew Nicholas and Alexandra and their children personally. And they were led by a member of the Romanov family, Grand Duke Kirill, who came down and pledged his support for the Duma’s provisional government. None of these people were radicals or democrats or socialists, but like many conservative members of the aristocracy and in the progressive block, they believed that the monarchy had to be saved from the monarchs.

So all these reports were waiting for the emperor when his train finally pulled into Pskov around seven or eight in the evening on March the first. But even now he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making even the slightest concession. And given all that we’ve talked about over the past few episodes about the disastrously unqualified and incompetent people he and his wife had been appointing to key positions in the government, just listen to the reason Nicholas gives for not wanting to hand power over to a government picked by the Duma. And I am quoting now from an eye witness who was there.

"The tsar with remarkable lucidity ran through the opinions of all those who could in the near future administer Russia in the capacity of ministers responsible to the legislative chambers, and expressed the conviction that the civic activists who would undoubtedly form the first cabinet had no administrative experience, and having been entrusted with the burdens of authority would prove unable to cope with their task."

Now, this is absolutely, gobsmackingly insane stuff to be coming out of the tsar’s mouth, at least given all that we know about everything him and his wife have been up to for the last couple of years. Like, literally saying, oh, we can’t have the Duma appointing the government. They might pick people who can’t do the job. What do you think has been going on for the last like three years? Why do you think you’re in this mess!? All you do is appoint people who can’t do the job! That’s why the job didn’t get done!

I’m so ready to be done with this guy.

Now, Nicholas did start to get turned around a little bit, because he listened to that great font of wisdom, Alexandra. Now, she told Nicholas the time had probably come to make concessions, but to not feel bound by them in any way. That just as had happened with the October Manifesto, Nicholas should make promises, get the situation under control, and then feel absolutely free to wind everything back at a later date and just ignore everything in the future. She told her husband, "if you are compelled to make concessions, then you are under no condition obliged to fulfill them because they have been extracted in an unworthy manner."

So even here, they’re not actually going to concede anything, they’re just going to play act at concessions so they don’t get overthrown. I mean, can you imagine these two being worried that if the government passes into somebody else’s hands, that things won’t be as well run anymore?

So, on the evening of March 1st, Nicholas finally gave in and transmitted a message to Petrograd saying he was ready to accept a government appointed by the Duma. But as we have seen, oh, about a hundred times on the Revolutions podcast, concessions that might have worked a few months ago, a few weeks ago, hell, in this case, a few days ago, were not now enough. The capital wasn’t going to be satisfied by news that there would be a new government. Nicholas had already allowed events to move well beyond that. Rodzianko immediately sent back a telegram:

"His majesty is unable to realize what is happening in the capital. A terrible revolution has broken out. Hatred of the empress has reached a fever pitch. To prevent bloodshed I have been forced to arrest all the ministers. Don’t send any more troops, I am hanging by a thread myself. Power slipping from my hands. The measures you propose are too late. The time for them is gone. There is no return."

The minimum program of appointing a responsible government was no longer enough.

The tsar went to bed, but he did not get much sleep. And overnight, Rodzianko exchanged a series of telegrams with a general who was sitting at Nicholas’s right hand who happened to be sympathetic to the opposition. Rodzianko made it plain that the only option on the table right now was the tsar abdicating, and anything less would mean the complete collapse of the empire into chaos, which meant the industry would shut down, military discipline would snap completely, and they would probably lose the war in a matter of months, Rodzianko expressed that the expectation was now for Nicholas to abdicate in favor of his son, with the tsar’s younger brother Mikael serving as regent. These exchanges were then typed up and forwarded to the army chief of staff, who read them with horror, but also, with the realization that it was all probably true.

And so, just as the rank and file had stepped into the revolution on Monday with their giant mutiny, and really helped transform it into a revolution, the senior officers now decided it was their turn to step up. And the best way to prevent this from falling into a full blown social revolution and creating upheavals that would destroy the army and probably lose the war, that they needed to sacrifice Nicholas. Lose the monarch to save the monarchy, lose the emperor to save the empire. So the chief of staff canvassed for notes to this effect from all senior generals and admirals in the Russian military, who dutifully sent back, telegram signed under their name, addressed to the tsar, saying sire, we need you to abdicate in favor of your son. It’s the only option left.

So after breakfast on Thursday, March the second 1917, the tsar was presented with all these telegrams in his imperial rail car. After reading them, he went white faced and silent, as the reality of his situation finally, truly dawned on him. And even if all the carping and complaining and manipulations of ambitious and greedy and disingenuous and murderous and traitorous politics would never persuade the tsar to give up his divinely appointed throne, this pile of telegrams from his generals and his admirals, their unanimous agreement that he had to abdicate, and if he didn’t, it would mean losing the war and the destruction of the Russian empire, that convinced him. He got up and he went to the window, and he stood silently for a moment. And then he turned around and said, "I have decided that I shall give up the throne in favor of my son, Alexei."

At three o’clock in the afternoon on March the second, an abdication declaration to this effect was drawn up and Nicholas signed it. But then they were told that two representatives of the Duma were on their way. One was Alexander Guchkov, one of the main organizers of the progressive bloc, and the other was that conservative monarchist I just mentioned, Vasili Shulgin. Both were coming to personally witness the abdication and then carry it back to Petrograd, so that there would be no disputing its legitimacy, especially as Shulgin would be able to vouch for its authenticity as a well-known conservative monarchist, not some frothing democratic radical. But as these two would not arrive for several hours, the tsar and his aides sat around and waited. As they did, Nicholas began to reconsider what he was doing. Not the abdication, but whether or not he could, or should, pass the throne to twelve-year-old Alexei. His poor hemophiliac son was constantly one accident away from painful death. He was so young, and so fragile. And now Nicolas considered what it meant to place the almost intolerably complicated burden of ruling the Russian empire on his shoulders, a burden which had just crushed Nicholas himself.

The family doctor was on board the train and Nicholas chatted with him about the prospects of his son’s health, and the doctor said, there’s no cure for hemophilia and your son will always be in mortal danger. Then the doctor said, please also consider that your abdication will almost certainly mean you and Alexandra will have to go into exile, and there’s absolutely no way that anybody is going to let you take young Alexei with you. He will be tsar. He will remain in Russia. Now, sure, he’ll be left in the care of Mikhail and other minders, but also by people who will not love him and care for him the way you do. The family had, after all kept the hemophilia well-hidden; most people didn’t even know the tsarevitch was sick. Nicholas considered all this and decided he could not bear this as a parent. Leaving his poor son behind to probably die miserably without being able to be there to comfort him? It was intolerable. So by the time Guchkov and Shulgin arrived at the train station at Pskov around 9 or 10 o’clock that night, they walked into the Imperial train car and Nicholas said, "I have decided to abdicate, but I’ve changed my mind a little bit. I’m not going to abdicate in favor of my son, I am going to remove him from the line of succession and instead hand power directly to my brother Mikhail. Neither Guchkov nor Shulgin liked this idea. Both of them had been kind of hopeful that an innocent and angelic looking twelve-year-old tsar would help calm temperatures, maybe turn the people of Russia back into loving and supporting their tsar, rather than hating and despising him. But Nicholas would not be moved.

So they redrafted the order of abdication. Nicholas would now hand power directly to Grand Duke Mikhail. They set the timestamp on this application to 3:00 PM, so that it did not look like Nicholas was only signing this after the arrival of the two Duma delegates, that he had done everything of his own free will before they arrived. He then signed two further orders, one appointing Prince Lvov the leader of the Zemstvo Congress as the premiere of a new ministry to be chosen by the Duma, and another appointing Grand Duke Nicholas commander in chief of all the armed forces of Russia. Both of these orders were dated 2:00 PM, because technically by the time he signed them, Nicholas Romanov was no longer the tsar of Russia.

His final letter of abdication was addressed not to the Duma or to the people of Russia, but to the chief of staff of the Imperial army. It said, "in these decisive days in the life of Russia, we have thought it a duty of conscience to facilitate for our people close union and consolidation of all national forces for the speedy attainment of victory. And, in agreement with the Imperial Duma, we have thought it good to abdicate from the throne of the Russian state, and to lay down the supreme power. In the name of our dearly loved country, we call on all faithful sons of the fatherland to fulfill their sacred duty to him by obedience to the tsar, at a heavy moment of national trials. To help him, together with the representatives of the people, to bring the Russian state on the road of victory, prosperity, and glory. May the Lord God help Russia."

And with that, Nicholas Romanov cease to be tsar.

This abdication has been a long time coming for dear Nikki. It didn’t have to be this way. Uh, it’s about a million miles from inevitable. And I’m reminded of the old parable of the devout Christian who was caught in a flood. The news report recommended evacuation, but he said, God will save me. As the waters rose, a neighbor offered to drive him to safety. The man said, no, God will save me. When the flood drove the man to his roof, a helicopter came by and dropped a ladder, but the man shouted, God will save me. And then he drowned. When he got to heaven, he asked God,w? And an exasperated, God said, what are you talking about, I sent an evacuation order, a driver and a helicopter. That is the fate of Nicholas in a nutshell. He had been told a hundred different ways from a hundred different angles the simple things he needed to do to keep his crown, to keep his family intact, to keep the empire going, to win the war. And he chose to do none of them. He lacked imagination, he lacked vision, and he had ultimately led his empire to the brink of destruction. It was time for him to go.

In his personal diary that night he recorded an entry that was far less magnanimous and patriotic than what he wrote in his abdication letter. He wrote, "For the sake of Russia and to keep the armies in the field, I decided to take this step. Left Pskov at one in the morning. All around me, I see treason, cowardice, and defeat." And one can only say to Nicholas: yes. And it’s mostly your fault.

So that’s it for Nicholas. That’s it for dear Nikki, we are now going to leave him behind. Russia is going to move on without him. But before we go this week, I want to say that we are three weeks away from the publication of Hero of Two Worlds, and I want to tell everybody that seats are going fast for the four pub events that I will be doing: August 20 with Jamelle Bouie, August 23rd with Ben Rhodes, August 24th with Alexis Coe, and August 31st with Patrick Wyman. I’m looking forward to each of those, each for their own reason, and so I hope to see you there, and I hope everyone has a good time when you come. So again, three weeks left until Hero of Two Worlds publishes, if you haven’t, pre-ordered the book, please pre-order the book, if you have pre-ordered the book, thank you very much for pre-ordering the book. Uh, go out to your local independent bookseller and get it, and if you don’t, pre-order it by all means, just go on August 24th and buy it in person, that’ll be cool too. So, until then, I’ll see you next week for the beginning of the power struggle between the Petrograd Soviet and the provisional government.