IN one of her letters addressed to her daughter Marie Antoinette, the Empress Marie Therese wrote: “I am glad to hear that you have decided to re-establish the old etiquette and representation of Versailles. However tiresome it may be, its inconveniences are still far less than those which arise out of its absence. A Court must learn to know well its sovereigns.” These words of a woman who knew better than any other queen had ever known how to uphold the prestige of her crown, ought to have been remembered by the Czar Nicholas II., because it is an undoubted fact that the custom which was established during his reign to keep the Emperor and his family isolated from the nation over which he ruled, had a good deal to do with the change that established itself gradually in the ideas of the people, as well as in the minds of the aristocracy, in regard to the reigning house. One forgot that there existed in Russia an Emperor, and one only remembered the manifold abuses which were the consequence of the detestable government to which the nation was subjected. All the personal ties that might have bound the monarch with those who could in an emergency have defended him against danger, had been snapped asunder by that monarch himself. St. Petersburg, which formerly (I have now in mind only the upper classes) had converged towards the sun represented by the Imperial Palace and its inhabitants, learned how to do without it, and it was no longer considered to be an honour to have relations, no matter of what nature, with any member of the House of Romanoff. The Imperial Family, in imitation of the conduct pursued by its Chief, seemed as if it wished to efface itself and to lead the existence of common mortals, which it did not succeed in doing, because it had been brought up too far from the world in general, represented by that portion of humanity which suffers and which works in silence, to be able to enter into its interests, and to make them its own. On the other hand that same family gave the first signal of rebellion against the system represented by the masters of the Palace of Tsarskoie Selo, whom it applied itself to discredit with an energy which was the more tenacious that it would have liked to be in their place. The Grand Duchess Vladimir, especially, together with her two sons, who had never cared for the Head of their dynasty, were the first ones to greet in their house all the discontented people who abounded in the Russian capital, and to deplore in their presence the scandal occasioned by the strange conduct of the Empress. The Revolution which was to come later on was prepared silently in the palaces of the very persons who ought to have fought against it, as well as in the homes of those old servants of the monarchy, who would have wished to save it from the disaster, which they saw but too well, was fast overtaking it, but who had to own themselves powerless to do so, and had to acknowledge with sorrow and with shame that it was discrediting itself a little more with each day that was passing. The nation, on its side, was preparing itself for the impending struggle. The systematic manner in which the labour party in Russia organised itself in view of the approaching Revolution, has never been sufficiently known or appreciated abroad. It has constituted for those who have followed the slow evolution which was the consequence of the premature revolutionary movement that had failed in 1905, one of the most interesting political problems of the twentieth century. I have lived in Russia during the years which have immediately preceded the war, and I have been in personal relations with some of the leaders of this party. I can therefore write about it from the point of view of a witness eager to watch the slow transformation, which out of a party essentially violent in its view and aspirations had produced a political faction, sufficiently ripened and saddened by the unsuccesses of its first fight not to seek elsewhere than in a too rapid solution the end of the difficulties under which it had been condemned to develop itself. It was quite sufficient to have witnessed the manifestations that used to take place each first of May, to come to the conclusion that the workman who was walking the streets, singing and carrying revolutionary flags, in 1906, was quite a different man from the one who indulged in manifestations of the like kind in 1913 and 1914. The general strike which preceded the war by a few weeks upon which the Germans founded so many useless hopes was, notwithstanding its revolutionary character, rather an expression of opinion on the part of a powerful and perfectly well organised party than a rebellion against authority. The workman had at last realised that he had got the future for him, provided he did not allow his natural impatience to carry him too far, and that he could resist the temptation to proceed too quickly with the plans which he had formed. He had also realised another thing, and that was that neither the liberals nor the octobrists, nor the party called that of the cadets, nor even the revolutionary socialists, were strong enough to constitute a government, and that all the plans they were continually talking about, would only end in speeches more or less empty and devoid of practical common sense. The workman applied himself to avoid mistakes, which perhaps he had noticed before he had quite grasped their importance. He understood on the other hand perfectly well the fact that the immense industrial movement, which had developed itself during the years that had followed immediately upon the war with Japan, was bound to increase still further in importance, and that the future belonged to those who would be able to profit by it, to guide it, and to direct it in the sense of a great and general reform of the different abuses which had corrupted all the higher classes of the nation. The number of factories which suddenly arose everywhere, the speculation that followed upon the rise in the value of all kinds of industrial securities, and the knowledge that the workman very quickly acquired as to the different means thanks to which the fortunes of so many people come, no one knew from whence, had been edified, gave him a strength which became the more formidable that he was compelled to remain silent in presence of so many spectacles that revolted his sense of integrity. In regard to this particular point, the impossibility to hold public meetings proved a blessing in disguise for the development of the activity of the labour party, because it allowed it to proceed in secret to a propaganda that became the more dangerous for the security of the government in that there existed no one able to point out to those among whom it flourished its perilous, and even to a certain extent, its disastrous sides. Under the very eyes of the police, the mass of the workmen employed in the different factories scattered all over Petrograd, prepared itself for the mission which it felt but too well was bound sooner or later to devolve upon it; so that whenever it allowed its voice to be heard, it was always with prudence, and even with a certain amount of cautious wisdom that prevented the general public and the authorities noticing how strong and powerful it was getting, and what a wonderful instrument it would prove later on, in the hands of those who in the meanwhile were leading it in secret, until the day when, thanks to their help, it would be able in its turn to lead others.
It must here be remarked that the Russian government of that time never understood the wants of the labour party. It is sufficient to recall the terrible drama which was enacted in the Lena gold fields of Siberia, when the troops, called to the help of the owners of the works, fired on the mass of workmen who were simply asking for some legitimate improvements in their conditions of existence, to come to the conclusion that, according to the words of Hamlet, “there was something rotten in that state of Denmark.” Only, neither the government nor the upper classes of society, who were all of them, or nearly all, in the dependence of a few lucky speculators in stocks and shares, nor these speculators themselves, whose number was getting larger and larger every day in St. Petersburg, cared to remember that such was the fact.
During the years which immediately preceded the great war, the whole of Russia had become one vast Stock Exchange, the securities of which were quoted at every street corner, where the only things that had any value, were those which could be turned into a shareholder’s company. The Emperor Alexander III. had tried, during the whole time of his reign, to improve agriculture in his land, and he had tried to bind together the different social classes of the nation, by a common love for their native soil. It had been told at that time that he had been wrong in looking upon Russia exclusively from the agricultural point of view, but in presence of the things which have happened recently, one may wonder whether after all he had not been right, because it is quite certain that the change of system that had followed upon his death, and the exclusive protection which to the detriment of everything else, industry was awarded, during the twenty-two years of Nicholas II.’s administration, and especially during the time that Mr. Kokovtsoff remained at the Treasury, darkened the judgment of the people who under different circumstances, and if they had made less money, would have probably noticed the progress made by socialism, and the growing influence of the labour party over its adherents, who from the outset had been determined to break this might of capital which was of no good to the country, and simply added to the importance of lucky speculators.
Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
SOLDIER AND SAILOR CITIZENS’ DUMA
As for the Emperor, he had ceased to count for anything in Russia, after the failure of the so-called Constitutional government, which he had inaugurated rather out of caprice than because he had become convinced that it was indispensable to the welfare of Russia to see it ruled by a responsible Cabinet. At the time I am referring to, it was an acknowledged fact in the whole of Russia that it was governed by some mysterious and dark powers which in secret were proceeding to any amount of malversations, most harmful for the prosperity of the nation, as well as for its prestige in Europe. The one general feeling which prevailed everywhere was one of immense lassitude at a state of things one knew but too well could not last, but which no one yet felt strong enough to try to ameliorate, change, or overturn. If the war had not broken out, it is likely that this condition, which hovered between a dream and a nightmare, might have gone on for a long time, because though the public realised perfectly well that the Throne, as well as the man who occupied it, represented only a dead thing, yet it appeared still so immense that no one dared to touch it, but continued looking upon it, with the same eyes one would have done had it remained the great one it had been formerly.
The war broke out and awakened the nation out of the state of marasm into which it had fallen. During the first weeks which followed upon its declaration there took place in Russia an explosion of enthusiasm such as had never been witnessed before. It did not, however, last any appreciable length of time, and collapsed together with the news of the reverses that attended the Polish campaign. Nowhere were these reverses felt more than amidst the ranks of the labour party, which, as a direct consequence of them, acquired all at once an importance it had hardly dared to hope it could win so soon. Factories became the principal organ of the national defence, and the word “ammunition” was transformed into the flag under which all those who were dissatisfied with the government then in power enrolled themselves as well as the people who longed for the end of an order of things the faults and mistakes of which were known in Russia long before they came to be recognised abroad. The workman suddenly became the individual to whom was awarded the greatest importance, there where the question of the salvation of the Fatherland came to be raised. He was the one to whom everybody said aloud what he had been himself aware of long before, that it was from him, and from his efforts, that depended victory over the enemy who had audaciously invaded Russian territory. This workman (this must never be lost sight of) was intimately connected with the army in which he had served, with the army that had far more confidence in him, and in his knowledge and efforts, than in the incapable government that had sent it to be slaughtered without providing it with any means to fight its foes. The workman became thus conscious of his extreme importance, and he aspired to be awarded the place in society which he imagined that he had the right to pretend to. He raised his voice, and insisted upon its being listened to. Perhaps Nicholas II. would still be in possession of his throne had he had sufficient common sense to do so. There were at this juncture people who tried to make the Sovereign understand that it was not enough for him to have assumed the supreme command over his troops in order to win back the popularity he had so completely lost, and that he would do well, in the interest of his dynasty as well as in his own, to show himself more frequently to the population of Petrograd, and to try to get into direct touch with it otherwise than through his official visits to the factories where ammunition was prepared for the army; visits during which he was escorted with great pomp and ceremony by his usual cortège of attendants and in the course of which he had never found one single word of encouragement to say to those who were toiling for the welfare of the Fatherland. The Emperor failed to grasp the wisdom of this piece of advice, nor did he realise the importance of another one, which proceeded from the few friends he had still left to him, the advice to call together a national and responsible Ministry, composed of men chosen among the representatives of the country in the Duma, and in possession of the confidence of the latter. He understood even less the necessity, recognised everywhere outside the gates of his Palace, to try and raise the prestige of the Crown, by getting rid of the compromising personalities, whose presence at his side dishonoured him as a man, and discredited him as a sovereign. He did not see, and perhaps no one dared to point out to him, the shameless money speculations which were taking place everywhere in Russia, and even under his own roof; the bargaining of everything that there was to sell or to buy in the country; honours, dignities, distinctions, places, and the Fatherland itself, by a gang of shameless adventurers, who had found the protection which they needed to carry on their plunder within the walls of the Imperial residence. He believed what his wife kept repeating to him, that once he had declared such was not the case, no one would dare to think that he consulted Rasputin or the metropolitan Pitirim in regard to State affairs, and he simply laughed at those who pretended that he was doing so. He was blind until the end. He is perhaps blind still, and it is quite possible that he will persist in remaining so until the day when his revolted subjects will come and claim his life, after having compelled him to surrender his throne. Unconscious creature, unable to notice the dangers amidst which he had been living, or the abyss that was already swallowing him up.
It is when considering this point that one feels tempted to ask what would have become of Nicholas II. had he had beside him one of these intelligent women, endowed with a strong character, and understanding the nature of her duties as a wife, as a mother and a sovereign. It is likely that if he had found such a help he might have prevented or at least have contrived to give a different shape to the crisis through which Russia had to pass. The war was an unavoidable misfortune, owing to the firm determination of Germany to provoke it, no matter in what way, or under what pretext, but it would have been possible to conduct it differently than was the case. One could also have been prepared for it, and one ought to have realised that the old and superannuated system of government so utterly rotten, where everything was left in the hands of corrupt functionaries, who had never learned anything out of the book of history, for whom the intellectual development of nations meant nothing at all, and who did not look beyond their personal advantages in all the great crises which might come to shake the equanimity of the country, that this system had served its time, and was bound to collapse under the weight of the universal contempt. But Nicholas II. called together a Duma which he had determined beforehand to deprive of every initiative, and of the liberty to say what it wished concerning the needs of the country that had entrusted it with the defence of its interests. He made many fine promises which he never intended to keep, and when he spoke about the necessity of bringing about a close union between the Czar and the representatives of his people, he never wished to give to the latter the possibility to approach him, or to lay their grievances at his feet. Had there been in Russia an Empress worthy of the name, and competent to fill the position she occupied, she would have told her husband that the duty of them both consisted in remaining loyal towards their subjects. She would have exposed her person, and risked her life if necessary, in the accomplishment of the task which had been allotted to her by Providence. She would have spent her time otherwise than in the practices of a piety that was nothing else but superstition mingled with erotic tendencies.
What did Alexandra Feodorovna do during those solemn hours of a supreme crisis? I do not wish to be hard on her now that misfortune has overtaken her, but the truth must be told, and it is necessary to point out that her principal preoccupation during the months which preceded the Revolution consisted in defending Rasputin against the attacks directed against him from all sides, and in isolating the Emperor from all the people capable of enlightening him in regard to the conduct and the character of the sinister personage whom her imagination had transformed into a Saint, and to whose presence at her side she attributed a miraculous power, capable of protecting her and her family, against every kind of danger. Under his influence and thanks to the impulse which he gave to her activity, she applied herself to persuade the Czar to conclude a separate peace with Germany, working upon the humanitarian feelings of Nicholas II., and repeating constantly to him that he owed it to his subjects to put an end to a useless effusion of blood, and not to go on with a perfectly hopeless struggle. If the Revolution had not taken place it is most probable that a separate peace would have been signed between Russia and Germany during the course of the next few months, and it is also likely that if this intention of the Empress had not transpired outside the gates of her Palace the Revolution would not have broken out when it did, because all the different political parties in the Duma were agreed as to the advisability of putting it off so long as the enemy was in occupation of a part of the country. But Alexandra Feodorovna poured the last drops into a glass which was ready to overflow, and the hatred which the Russian nation bore her found at last its justification in the general opinion which suddenly exploded like a barrel of powder in the whole of the country, that she also was a traitor, who had been won over to the German cause, and who was ready to give up into the hands of the adversary against whom one had been fighting for so many long and anxious months of a struggle during which so much blood had flown, this Russia that had offered her the Imperial diadem, which she had found nothing better to do than to sully with the mud of the dirty roads whither her steps had taken her.
Here I must make a pause, and try to analyse the real part played in the drama by the unfortunate Sovereign on the head of whom so many curses have been showered. I do not believe that it was in order to hand over to her own native country, the one which had become hers by marriage, that Alexandra Feodorovna lent herself to the intrigue in which it is unfortunately an uncontested fact that she took an active share. It seems to me, so far as I can judge of things which did not take place in my presence, that her intentions were sincere according to her lights. She was not an intelligent woman by any means, and what she possessed in the way of intellect had disappeared in a vanity and haughtiness of which it is hardly possible to form an adequate idea. She cared only for her crown, and for autocratic power over her subjects, and under the influence of those who represented to her that the least concession to the spirit of the times was bound to further the cause of a revolution which she abhorred, she had awarded her protection to this reactionary party represented by men like Sturmer, Protopopoff, and others of the same kind. She had preached to her husband whenever she had had the opportunity for doing so, the necessity to stand firm, and never to sacrifice one fraction of the principle of absolute power over his subjects. She had pointed out to him on every possible occasion the example of Louis XVI., who had been beheaded, because he had not had sufficient courage to resist to the pressure exercised over him by the revolutionary elements in the French monarchy. She did not grasp in the very least that times were different, that ideas as well as men had changed, and that a sovereign who in a moment of danger does not seek help from his people, or try together with them to find a solution to the difficulties of a threatening situation, courts an inevitable ruin. The Empress has, without any doubt being allowed as to this point, been the direct cause of the misfortunes as well as of the fall of her husband, and probably when history will be called upon to judge her, it will show itself even more severe in regard to her and to her conduct than her contemporaries have been, because she has certainly done more to destroy the respect of Russia for the throne to which she had been raised than the most violent revolutionary attacks that were ever directed against it. Instead of trying to bring her consort nearer to the nation at whose head he stood, she only inspired him with suspicions and even with dislike for this nation, or at least for the best among its representatives.
There happened circumstances when the Empress interfered directly in the affairs of the State, and persuaded the Czar to do what she required of him; as, for instance, the exile in Siberia, this Siberia whither she was to be sent herself, and the arbitrary arrest of several leaders of the labour party, whom, under some futile pretext or other, the government threw into prison a few weeks before the outbreak of the Revolution, in spite of the indignant protestations made by the Duma on the subject. It was also Alexandra Feodorovna, who, on the advice of the metropolitan Pitirim, a creature of Rasputin, who had caused him to be appointed to the See of Petrograd, the most important one in the Empire, persuaded the Emperor to follow the advice of the minister Protopopoff to prorogue the Duma, and to arm the police with machine guns, in view of a possible revolt of the inhabitants of the capital against the government, a fatal and most imprudent measure, if there ever was one, which decided the fate of the Romanoff dynasty.
In this last occurrence, it was less out of fear of the debates that might take place in the Duma, than because he wanted to have his hands untied in regard to the conclusion of peace for which he had been working ever since he had been called to the ministry of the interior, that Protopopoff induced his Sovereign to resort to a measure absolutely devoid of common sense, and the only effect of which could be to add fuel to a fire that had been smouldering for months, if not years. It proved fatal for everybody, and it is still a question whether it was not to be more fatal for Russia than anything else which Nicholas II. had ever done, because it has thrown her into an era of revolution and of trouble, for which she was neither prepared nor ripe.
At that time I am writing about, the members of the Imperial family together with the aristocracy were beginning to get more and more alarmed at the manner in which events were unfolding themselves, and were wondering as to what could be done to put an end to the influence of the Empress and of her favourites. One of the oldest, and the only surviving personal friend of the late Czar Alexander III., Count Vorontzoff Dachkoff, when he visited the Emperor to take leave of him, on his resignation of the functions of Viceroy of the Caucasus, had tried to remonstrate with him on the subject, and to point out to him the necessity of getting rid of Rasputin and of the followers of the latter. He had known Nicholas II. as a child, and he could therefore talk with him more familiarly than any one else in Russia: “I must tell you the truth,” he said. “Do you know that, thanks to your Rasputin, you are going to your ruin and endangering the throne of your son?” The old soldier, who had served under four sovereigns, became quite eloquent in his speech. The Czar listened to him in silence, and at last exclaimed almost with a sob: “Why did God lay upon me such a heavy burden?”
After Count Vorontzoff, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna tried to do something to save her son. She had left Petrograd months before, not caring to live in the vicinity of her daughter-in-law, whom she disliked as much as did the other members of the Imperial family. When Nicholas II. visited Kieff in October, 1916, where his mother was residing, the latter had a long conversation with him, in which she pointed out to him the peril which threatened him and the dynasty, unless he decided upon an energetic step, and removed from her side the favourites of his wife. But even Marie Feodorovna was powerless in presence of the dark and occult powers that held her son in their trammels, and nothing followed upon her remonstrances or her adjurations that he might consider the dangers with which he was surrounded, and try at least to conjure them.
After this interference of the widow of Alexander III., some of the members of the Cabinet who were not of the same opinions as Messrs. Sturmer and Protopopoff, attempted to reason with their Sovereign, among others Count Ignatieff and Mr. Bark, but they were also not listened to, and the former at last handed in his resignation which was accepted with alacrity, Alexandra Feodorovna not trying even to hide the extreme satisfaction she felt at its having taken place.
Count Ignatieff had been the most popular minister of public instruction Russia had ever known, and his departure was looked upon in the light of a national misfortune, adding to the dislike with which the Empress was viewed everywhere. Mr. Bark did not feel himself at liberty to abandon the department of finances of which he had the charge at the very moment when a new loan was being floated, but he avoided seeing the consort of his Sovereign, and only appeared at Tsarskoie Selo, when he could not help doing so.
Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
FOREIGN MINISTER LEON TROTZKY
On the 1st of November, 1916, one of the cousins of the Czar, the Grand Duke Nicholas Michaylovitsch, who was perhaps the cleverest member of the Imperial family, a man wonderfully well learned, and who had acquired the reputation of an excellent historian, thanks to the remarkable studies which he had published on the life and times of Alexander I., and the Napoleonic wars, made another effort to shake the influence of Rasputin, Protopopoff and the Empress. He asked the Czar to receive him, and during a long and heated conversation which he had with the latter, he read to him a letter which he had prepared beforehand, in which were exposed not only the political, but also the private reasons, which made it an imperative necessity to remove Rasputin from Tsarskoie Selo. As the Grand Duke told his friends later on, there were in this letter some passages that might have wounded Nicholas II. in his feelings as a husband, not only as a sovereign. But the Czar did not reply one single word, only went to fetch the Empress, and in his turn read to her the incriminating epistle. When he reached the passage in which remarks were made concerning her, Alexandra Feodorovna rose up in a passion, and snatching the document out of her husband’s hands, she tore it up into a thousand small pieces. In the course of this memorable conversation, the Grand Duke asked the Emperor whether he knew that the appointment of Protopopoff was the work of Rasputin, with whom the former had become acquainted at the house of one of their common friends, a certain Badmaieff.
“Yes,” replied the Czar, “I know it.”
“And you find this a matter of course,” exclaimed his cousin.
Nicholas II. replied nothing.
In spite of the angry tone which the discussion had assumed, the Emperor remained perfectly civil to the Grand Duke. The latter afterwards remarked that he had been more than surprised to meet with such utter indifference, and at the same time such kindness, in appearance at least, from his cousin. It seemed as if nothing that he could say could move the Czar, who, during the most heated moments of this interview, handed the matches to his kinsman, when he noticed that the cigarette of the latter had gone out. At last the Grand Duke exclaimed: “You have got Cossacks here, and a great deal of room in your gardens. You can have me killed and buried without any one being the wiser for it. But I must tell you the truth, and say to you that you are going to your ruin.”
The Czar continued to be silent, and his cousin had to take his leave, without having been able to obtain one single word from him by which he might have guessed whether he had been believed or not.
The confessor of the Imperial family, Father Schabelsky, was induced to interfere in his turn, and to warn the Emperor of the ever increasing unpopularity of his consort, advising him at the same time to send her somewhere for the benefit of her health, until the storm had abated which everybody except the few people who surrounded the Sovereign saw was on its way. His advice also was disregarded. A lady belonging to the highest social circles, whose family had always been upon terms of intimacy with that of Nicholas II., the Princess Vassiltschikoff, bethought herself to write to the Empress, and to entreat her to save the country and the dynasty, and to induce her husband to call together a responsible ministry, in possession of the confidence of the Duma and of the nation. The only reply which she received was an order commanding her to leave the capital immediately for her country seat, with a prohibition to return to it again. Alexandra Feodorovna remained the only person the Czar would listen to, and Alexandra Feodorovna was b