CHAPTER 11
1916 - 1918 THE END OF A DYNASTY
Because of the First World War, the Count could not live in his voluntary exile in Britain, France of Belgium. Instead he chose the neutral country of Switzerland to reside, and decided on Lucerne as being a place where he could keep himself well informed and also to live in the way to which he wished to be accustomed. He was, in effect, retiring from active service of his ailing country, certain in the knowledge of the holocaust that was about to occur there.
Back at Tsarskoe Selo, Nicholas and Alexandra were so bereft at the loss of their 'Friend', Rasputin, and the lifeline he had provided for Tsarevich Alexei, that they did not, for a while, notice the absence of Count Max Maltzev. It was not until the beginning of the New Year 1917 that the Tsar requested the presence of the Count to make his monthly report of his activities that Count Paul Benckendorff, who was Grand Marshall of the Imperial Court and a dedicated Royalist, was forced to present his monarch with the fact that the Tsar's assassin had absconded. Shocked, the Tsar looked at Count Benckendorff in incomprehension. "Why? Why would Count Maltzev do this?"
"I believe, Sire," replied Benckendorff smoothly, "that he was implicated in the Rasputin affair."
"Him, too? That is most difficult to accept, Count. And where is he now?"
"My informants lead me to believe he is in Switzerland, possibly Lucerne, Sire. Do you wish me to - ah - arrange for his return?" The Tsar thought for a moment. "No, no, that will not be necessary. He has served both my father and I loyally for a great many years. He is due a - holiday.
So it was that Count Max Maltzev viewed from afar the tragic events of the Russian Revolution - watched in pity as he read of the March Revolution, when freezing, starving people waiting in bread lines to receive their daily ration decided to wait no longer, and then, with the total defection of all the military regiments to the side of the revolution, the loss of all ruling power by the Tsar. The Duma, or Parliament, took over the responsibility, led reluctantly by Michael Rodzianko, President of the Duma. The Revolutionaries set many Government buildings alight, including the headquarters of the Ochrana and many police stations. The prisons were opened and prisoners freed to join in the Revolution. Alexander Kerensky was elected Vice-Chairman of the Soviet and Minister of Justice of the new Provisional Government and later became Prime Minister after all the members of the Imperial Duma had resigned. By 14 March 1917 even the small pocket of Imperial resistance in the Winter Palace had gone over to the Revolutionaries. While the rest of his family was residing at Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsar was at his military headquarters in Mogilev, five hundred miles from St Petersburg, dependent for information on the telegraphs of loyal followers in or near St Petersburg, but St Petersburg, now called Petrograd, had fallen.
On 15 March 1917, in the Imperial train which was resting at Pskov, the Tsar abdicated in favour of his son, and then, after taking advice about the consequences of a young ruler disabled by haemophilia, he altered his successor to his younger brother Michael.
All the Tsar wanted was to retire in peace with his family to the Livadia Palace in the Crimea. However, this was not to be. The Revolutionaries wanted a Republic. Michael held a lengthy discussion with the men who would be his ministers if he accepted the monarchy. When they told him they could not vouch for his safety, Tsar Michael II decided to abdicate. The Romanov dynasty had ended.
The war with Germany still continued, and malicious rumours circulated throughout Petrograd about the supposed relationship the Tsarina had had with Rasputin together with suggestions that the Tsar was going to 'let the Germans in'. For their own protection, therefore, on 20 March the Provisional Government announced that they were going to hold the Tsar and his family under arrest at Tsarskoe Selo.
During their months of captivity, the newly appointed socialist Prime Minister, Alexander Kerensky, frequently visited the deposed Tsar, and a friendly working relationship built up between them, each being impressed by the other's courteousness and love for his country.
The Royal Family spent their time together by playing indoor games when the weather was bad, and, as spring came, by walking in the grounds of the Palace and tending to gardening chores They was ever hopeful that the Tsar's cousin, King George V of England, would offer them sanctuary, but the British Government, led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, was against offering the deposed Romanovs a safe haven, and the expected permission to travel to Britain never occurred, despite the Provisional Government's constant wish to send the Royals to safety. With that went the Romanovs' last chance of ultimate survival. In August, Kerensky chose to send them secretly by train and riverboat to a garrison in Tobolsk in Siberia. En route they passed Rasputin's home village of Pokrovskoe, thus fulfilling a prediction the starets had made many years previously. The Tsar and his entourage were to stay in the governor's house in Tobolsk for the next eight months and endure a Siberian winter. Colonel Eugene Kobylinski, who had been the officer in charge of the royal party at Tsarskoe Selo, accompanied them to Tobolsk and initially allowed them considerable freedom about the house, but this was eventually curtailed by the arrival of two fanatical Bolshevik revolutionaries, Pankratov and Nikolsky, sent to Tobolsk by the Party.
Back in Petrograd the Provisional Government started to crumble with the formation by Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders of the Red Guard, which culminated in the Bolshevik November Revolution which finally ousted the remnants of the Provisional Government located in the Winter Palace at Petrograd.
Back at Tobolsk, the guards in the Governor's house became more hostile towards their captives, forbidding the Tsar to wear his Colonel's epaulets and Cossack dagger. Colonel Kobylinsky saw his command slipping from between his fingers and he was helpless to stop it, but he stayed in command when the Soldier's Committee at Tobolsk made Pankratov and Nikolsky resign. New guards who arrived from Tsarskoe Selo were much more deeply influenced by Bolshevism, and commenced a campaign of insults against all members of the Royal Family.
However, a number of monarchist organisations existed throughout Russia, and they were gathering their financial resources to mount a rescue for the beleaguered Romanovs. The possibility of escape increased with the introduction of the new guards, who were quarrelsome, insolent and lazy, and the passing of information into the governor's house was, for a time, easy, but the guards soon discovered the intentions of visitors to the house, and ceased the free passage.
In March 1918 the War with Germany ended disastrously for the Russians by the signing away by Lenin, now in full charge of the Bolsheviks, of the Crimea, Finland, Poland, the Caucasus, the Ukraine and the Baltic States. The Bolshevik leaders, realising that the imprisoned Tsar and his family were political pawns against the Germans, decided to place them under stricter guard, and it was decided that they should be transferred to a town in the Urals called Ekaterinberg, under guard of a highly militant group of Bolsheviks run by the Ekaterinburg Soviet, which had already nationalised their local factories and mines. First the Tsar, Alexandra and their third daughter, Maria, were sent, soon to be followed by the ailing Tsarevich, Tatiana, Olga and Anastasia.
---oo0oo---