THE PASSING OF THE ROMANOFFS
I asked Mme. Virubova to tell me what happened at the palace during the revolution and how the royal family received the news of its overthrow.
“I can tell you only what I personally know,” she replied, “and I was very ill in bed when it happened. All the children had measles and, helping the empress nurse them, I was stricken too. The Empress was an angel. She went from one room to another caring for us, waiting on us, while all the time anxiety must have been tearing cruelly at her heartstrings. Once or twice she said something to me about trouble in Petrograd, food riots.
“The scarcity of food had preyed on the Empress’s mind for many months, and one of the last conversations she ever had with Rasputin was on that subject. The winter of 1916 set in early, and the snows were so deep that transportation of all kinds of things, food included, was greatly impeded. I remember that the Empress said to Rasputin that nature itself seemed to be conspiring against poor Russia that year.
“The rioting in Petrograd increased, and even in my bed I could hear echoes of it around the palace. Shots I heard and horrid yells. I tried to get out of bed, but the Empress soothed me. ‘It is bad, of course,’ she said, ‘but it will quiet soon. The poor people are mad with hunger. They will be given food and then all this will be over.’ Soon the palace guards, the regiments on duty in Tsarskoe Selo, began to show signs of demoralization. They were afraid for their own lives, and you cannot wonder that they were. The Empress used to go out in the cold and snow in the dead of night and talk to the men, reassure them, comfort them. ‘Nothing will happen,’ she told them. But for her I believe the last man would have thrown away his gun and fled. Her will and her resolution alone kept them at their posts.”
“Do you think that the Empress really believed that it was a riot and not a revolution?” I asked. It was history this woman was telling me, history that will live in libraries a thousand years after we two, and all of us, are dust. I wanted to know the exact truth.
“I am sure she did,” said Mme. Virubova. “If she had dreamed that it was a revolution she would have sent earlier for the Emperor, who, you know, was at the front with his army. She was alone and she faced the trouble alone, but if she had known the full extent of the trouble she would have wanted the Emperor where he would be safer than out there among that murderous gang. She did not know that Russia was in revolution, nor would she believe it at first when she was told that the army had gone over to the revolutionists. The officers of the guard told her, but she simply shook her head. Finally, Grand Duke Paul came tearing out to Tsarskoe in his highest power motor car. He convinced her that it was true. Even then her steel nerves endured. ‘Send for the Emperor,’ she said calmly and sternly. ‘I am going back to my sick children.’ And she went.”
The iron nerve displayed by the Empress of Russia when she learned that supreme disaster had befallen the house of Romanoff was in contrast to the emotion which overcame the deposed Emperor on his return to Tsarskoe Selo. At the time of his abdication, near the army front, he had behaved with dignity and self-command. He scornfully refused the whispered suggestion of one general that he escape in one of the high-power motor cars which always accompanied the imperial train. If the people wanted him to abdicate, he was ready to do so, and ready also to place himself at their disposal. Nicholas also showed himself to be a good Russian and no tool of the pro-German party, if reports are correct. When the news came that the army had gone over to the revolution some one near the Emperor, it is said, told him that there was one desperate way to avert the catastrophe. He could open up the Dvinsk front, let the enemy in, and thus by the sacrifice of his country save his dynasty. Nicholas refused even to consider such a crime. He committed many sins of cruelty in his time, and many more sins of stupidity. But in the end he showed himself no traitor. His return to Tsarskoe Selo was intended by Kerensky and the other members of the provisional government to be in accordance with his former rank, and orders were given to treat him with all respect and consideration. These orders, if Mme. Virubova is to be believed, were disregarded by the soldiers on guard at the Alexander palace, the home of the royal family.
In my last talk with Mme. Virubova she spoke with deep feeling of the rowdy reception given the returning Nicholas. “They blew tobacco smoke in his face, the brutes!” she said. “A soldier grabbed him by the arm and pulled one way, while others clutched him on the other side and pulled him in an opposite direction. They jeered at him and laughed at his anger and pain. When he was finally alone with his family and intimate friends he could not contain his grief but wept unrestrainedly. We all wept, for that matter: we who loved him.”
It is to the credit of Kerensky and the ministers that they never would consent to any suggestion that Nicholas be thrown into a dungeon or otherwise harshly treated. As long as the family remained at Tsarskoe Selo, which was until the 1st of August, Russian style, and August 13 in the western calendar, it lived in its accustomed manner. The servants, most of them, remained at their posts, and while no member of the family was allowed to leave the palace grounds on any pretext, nor the palace itself except when accompanied by armed guards, they had the freedom of their home and the society of a few friends. They were not allowed to telephone, and all letters reaching them had first to be read by the officer in command of the guards. Mme. Virubova told me that in spite of Kerensky’s good intentions, the deposed royalties were subjected to a number of petty annoyances which must have caused them all the resentment and humiliation their tormentors intended. The electric lights were sometimes turned off early in the evening, leaving the palace in darkness. There were days when the water was turned off and the family was deprived of bathing facilities. The soldiers on guard were not infrequently rude and churlish and openly exultant in the presence of their prisoners.
Kerensky cannot be held responsible for these things, but he was responsible for depriving the former Empress of the society of her most intimate friend, Mme. Virubova. I have already told how she was arrested while still suffering from the effects of measles and thrown into a cell in Peter and Paul. The cell was damp and insanitary, and the sick woman suffered extreme misery all the time she was there. Surrounded constantly by soldiers, who watched her night and day, she was never alone even long enough to dress or to bathe. She is lame, as I have stated, and once she fell on the slippery floor of her cell and was unable for a long time to rise. The soldiers on guard refused to help her, but simply stood and laughed at her efforts to reach her bed. “Twice during the months of my confinement they let my mother visit me,” she told me. “But I was allowed to talk to her only in presence of the guard and across a wide table in the governor’s room.”
A friend of Mme. Virubova told me a still worse story concerning her imprisonment. Several times her father was visited by soldiers from Peter and Paul and made to pay large sums of money in order to insure his daughter from the most horrible indignities at the hands of the men who guarded her. He paid this blackmail. He had to. There was no power in Russia to appeal to, and Kerensky himself could not have prevented the murder or outrage of that lame and helpless woman in the fortress of Peter and Paul. She escaped the last insult men are capable of offering to women, and the government, after vainly trying to fasten the crime of treason on her, set Anna Virubova free under military surveillance. But they would not grant the Empress’s plea to send her friend back to Tsarskoe Selo.
The first shock of dumbfounded amazement over, the royal family, which had never believed that it could be overthrown, regained its composure and accepted its destiny with quiet resignation. The Emperor became his adored son’s tutor, and the Empress her daughters’ constant companion. When spring came the whole family went out and made a garden. The hundreds of soldiers in Tsarskoe and thousands of people from Petrograd made pilgrimages to the palace grounds and watched through the high iron fence the former Czar spading up the ground and the former heir and his sisters planting and hoeing potatoes. The former Empress, in a wheeled chair or low pony carriage, for she was in feeble health, usually looked on smilingly.
Of course, the Tavarishi, or at least the extremists in the Council of Soldiers’ and Workmen’s Delegates, resented the respectful and considerate treatment accorded the captive royalties. They kept up a constant clamor for the removal of the Emperor and Empress to some dungeon in Kronstadt or Peter and Paul. Every once in a while the newspapers published a resolution to that effect passed by a committee of the council in Petrograd or Tsarskoe, or in a city more remote. A dispatch from Helsingfors said that the crews of three warships lying near there had passed fiery resolutions demanding that the Czar be turned over to the tender mercies of the ruffians at Kronstadt. The crew of the cruiser Gangoute went on record as saying: “This is the third time that we have expressed our will in this matter, and we have not been trifling. This is our last resolution. Next we shall employ force.”
The government, however, disregarded all these resolutions and muttered threats. It may very well be, though, that the final decision to send Nicholas and his wife into Siberian exile came as a result of pressure on the part of the soviets. Kerensky may have feared a bloody tragedy at Tsarskoe Selo, and perhaps he had reason to fear it. At all events, the provisional government decided, some time in July, to transfer the family to one of the remotest spots in the empire, Tobolsk, in Eastern Siberia. The government kept this decision an absolute secret, as far as the deposed Emperor as well as the general public were concerned. A few days before the transfer was made one of the soviets, I think at Tsarskoe, held a stormy meeting at which great indignation was expressed over the ease and comfort in which the once royal family lived. “We eat black bread, they eat white,” complained one impassioned orator. “We drink cold water and Nicholas drinks wine. My wife walks while his rides in a carriage. Where’s the justice in that?”
Doesn’t it sound like a deliberate plagiarism of one of the speeches made against allowing the sixteenth Louis to remain in the Tuileries? A lot of things have changed since the French revolution, but some human nature is just as small and mean as ever.
It was not until the Romanoff family was well on its way to Siberia that the transfer was mentioned in the newspapers. Many people knew of it, of course, and the news was passed from excited lip to lip in the capital a few hours after the special train left Tsarskoe Selo. In the newspapers of August 3 (16, old style) the carefully censored story of the departure was published. The full story, as far as I know it, reveals that for three weeks beforehand the garrison at Tsarskoe knew, or suspected, that something was about to happen to the captives. Two days before the event Kerensky went in person to the garrison and asked the soldiers to choose from their ranks a squadron of the most reliable and trustworthy men. They were needed, he explained, for a mission of great importance. Three hundred and eighty-four men were chosen, eight from forty-eight regimental groups. On the 31st of July (August 12) at midnight Kerensky appeared at the barrack, called the picked men together and told them that their mission was to escort the man who had been their emperor and autocrat into exile in far Siberia.
The royal family knew its fate before that time, but just when they were told has not been revealed. Kerensky told them, and I feel sure that he did it gently and courteously. But he refused them all information as to where they were going. On July 30 (August 11) the confessor of the family held a service for those about to go on a long journey. Then they went to work to pack trunks and to choose among clothes, trinkets, furs, personal belongings, books, ikons, rugs and other essential things that would lighten exile and keep them in memory of other days. It is said that neither Nicholas nor Alexandra slept on the night before their departure, but wandered from room to room, hand in hand, mutely and sorrowfully bidding their beloved home good-by. Many others in Tsarskoe Selo refrained from sleep on that night. The garrison was wildly excited, and the streets of the picturesque little town were full of people. At 3 o’clock in the morning motor vans were driven into the palace grounds, and those near enough the gates could see that the vans were being loaded with trunks and boxes. At 6 o’clock a long train slowly backed into the station of Tsarskoe Selo, the station was surrounded by soldiers, and troops with loaded rifles marched out and lined both sides of the road from the palace to the station, each soldier carrying in his belt sixty rounds of cartridges.
Those who saw the departure differ in minor details, of course, because no two people ever see the same event exactly alike. Especially an important event on which we would like to have all the details. But all the observers agree that Nicholas walked out of the palace and entered the waiting motor car with the calm manner of a man about to take a pleasure drive. Alexandra did the same. She walked without assistance, having apparently recovered her shattered health. The former Czarevitch, in a sailor suit and cap, danced ahead of his parents, in pleased anticipation of a journey, and the young grand duchesses also appeared in high spirits. They are extremely handsome girls, all of them, and people rather sympathetically observed that during their illness in February they had all had their luxuriant hair cut short.
Some of the observers say that the former Czar drove to the station alone, others say Kerensky followed him into the car and still others say that the family went together. Some say that Nicholas wore the uniform of a Russian army officer, others particularly noticed his gray suit. To some he looked dejected and tearful, and to others careless and cold. Some saw tears in his eyes when he entered the train, others marveled at the calmness with which he shook hands with members of the provisional government who were on the platform. To this day we do not know whether Louis XVI. laid his head on the block quietly or fought the headsman all over the place, although several thousand Frenchmen witnessed the execution.
It is said that the Emperor left Tsarskoe under the impression that he was being taken to Livadia, the beautiful Crimean estate toward which he yearned at the time of his abdication. He must have been profoundly shocked when he learned that instead he was speeding toward one of the bleakest and dreariest spots in Siberia. Before the train left the Emperor is said to have asked Kerensky, who accompanied him to the last, if the family would ever be allowed to return to Tsarskoe Selo. If he did, Kerensky’s reply must have been evasive, for Nicholas told one of his suite, or is said to have done so, that he expected to return after the war.
The Empress, when told that the family was on its way to Tobolsk, is reputed to have smiled coldly and said: “I am glad we shall see Tobolsk. It is a place that has dear associations.” Tobolsk, or its near neighborhood, it will be remembered, was the early home of Rasputin. Women of the French aristocracy mounted the guillotine with exactly such speeches on their lips, a last defiance of the mob.
“Why are there so many soldiers on this train?” asked one of the young grand duchesses. She was used to being escorted by soldiers, but the great number on this occasion excited her surprise. The children all knew that they were going into exile, and had been given their choice of remaining with relatives or going with their parents. Mme. Virubova’s claim that the family bond is strong was borne out by their unanimous decision to go wherever their father and mother went.
Mme. Narychkine, one of the empress’s faithful ladies in waiting, went with her, since the provisional government would not let her have Mme. Virubova or even allow the two friends to bid each other farewell. Prince Dolgorouki was permitted to go with the Emperor. The children retained a governess and the boy a tutor. Twelve servants accompanied the family.
According to the depths of his nature and understanding, one feels a certain pity for the former autocrat of all the Russias, or rejoices wildly at his present plight. He had to be exiled, and perhaps Siberia was the best place to send him. But Siberia has a large variety of climates and places to choose among, and it seems to many people that the provisional government might have been a little more humane in their choice of a residence for Nicholas and his family. Whatever his shortcomings, however just his punishment, his five children never harmed anybody, and they deserve no punishment. According to accounts, every hour they spend at Tobolsk will be a punishment, and their time there will be short, because all of them will probably die owing to the frightful surroundings.
Tobolsk is a town of about 25,000 inhabitants, situated on the Irtish river, a little sluggish stream that drains, or partially drains one of the great marshes of eastern Siberia. The town is built on a marsh, and the mosquitoes which breed there are said to be of a size and a ferocity unequaled elsewhere. Malaria haunts the miasmas of the marshy forests that stretch for miles around the town and line the river banks. The nearest railroad is 300 versts distant. In winter, which endures eight months of the year, the place is shut off from the world. It is as remote from human association as the moon. The provisional government apologizes for Tobolsk as a choice on the ground of the necessity for remoteness.