Nicholas and Alexandra (78 page)

On April 15, even Buchanan began to withdraw his support for asylum, explaining to London that the Tsar's presence in England might easily be used by the extreme Left in Russia "as an excuse for rousing public opinion against us." He suggested that perhaps Nicholas might be received in France. Hearing this, Lord Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador in Paris, wrote a scathing personal letter to the Foreign Secretary, brimming with vicious misinformation about the Empress Alexandra. "I do not think that the ex-Emperor and his family would be welcome in France," wrote Bertie. "The Empress is not only a Boche by birth but in sentiment. She did all she could to bring about an understanding with Germany. She is regarded as a criminal or a criminal lunatic and the ex-Emperor as a criminal from his weakness and submission to her promptings. Yours ever, Bertie."

From April until June, the plan remained suspended. Kerensky admitted later that, during this period, the suspension had nothing to do with the views of English Liberals and Laborites but was determined by the internal political situation in Russia. By early summer, however, conditions in Russia had changed and the moment seemed ripe for a discreet transfer of the Imperial family to Murmansk. Once again, the Russian government approached England on the matter of asylum.

"[We] inquired of Sir George Buchanan as to when a cruiser could be sent to take on board the deposed ruler and his family," said Kerensky. "Simultaneously, a promise was obtained from the German Government through the medium of the Danish minister, Skavenius,

that German submarines would not attack the particular warship which carried the Royal exiles. Sir George Buchanan and ourselves were impatiently awaiting a reply from London. I do not remember exactly whether it was late in June or early in July when the British ambassador called, greatly distressed. . . . With tears in his eyes, scarcely able to control his emotions, Sir George informed . . . [us] of the British Government's final refusal to give refuge to the former Emperor of Russia. I cannot quote the exact text of the letter. . . . But I can say definitely that this refusal was due exclusively to considerations of internal British politics." Apparently, Bertie's letter from Paris had done its poisonous work, for Kerensky remembers the letter explaining that "the Prime Minister was unable to offer hospitality to people whose pro-German sympathies were well-known."

Subsequently, confusion, accusations and a sense of guilt appeared to permeate the recollections of all those involved in this inglorious episode. Both Sir George Buchanan and Lloyd George flatly contradicted Kerensky, insisting that Britain's offer of asylum was never withdrawn and that the failure of the project was solely due to the fact that the Provisional Government—in Buchanan's words—"were not masters in their house." Meriel Buchanan, the Ambassador's daughter, later overrode her father's account, explaining that he had offered it in order to protect Lloyd George, who was responsible for the refusal. She recalled that a telegram refusing to let the Tsar come to England did arrive in Petrograd on April 10; she remembered the words her father used and the anguished expression on his face as he described the telegram. Lloyd George did not respond formally to her charge, but she noted that the former Prime Minister "is reported to have said in an interview that he does not remember refusing the late Emperor admission to England, but that, if the matter had been considered, he probably would have given such advice." In his memoirs, Lloyd George left no doubt of his lack of sympathy for Imperial Russia or its Tsar. The Russian Empire, he said, was "an unseaworthy Ark. The timbers were rotten and most of the crew not much better. The captain was suited for a pleasure yacht in still waters, and his sailing master had been chosen by his wife, reclining in the cabin below." Nicholas he dismissed as "only a crown without a head . . . the end was tragedy . . . but for that tragedy this country cannot be in any way held responsible."

King George's attitude on the matter vacillated. At first, he wanted to help his relatives, but by March 30, his private secretary was writing to the Foreign Secretary, "His Majesty cannot help doubting not only on account of the dangers of the voyage, but on general

grounds of expediency, whether it is advisable that the Imperial family should take up their residence in this country." By April 10, the King was concerned about the widespread indignation felt in England against the Tsar. He realized that if Nicholas came to England he would be obliged to receive his cousin, an act which would bring considerable unpopularity down on him. Accordingly, he suggested to Lloyd George that, because of the outburst of public opinion, the Russian government should perhaps be informed that Britain was obliged to withdraw its offer.

Later, of course, when the murder of the Imperial family had outraged the King, memories tended to blur. "The Russian Revolution of 1917 with the murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family had shaken my father's confidence in the innate decency of mankind," recalled the Duke of Windsor. "There was a very real bond between him and his first cousin, Nicky. . . . Both wore beards of a distinctive character and as young men, they had looked much alike. ... It has long been my impression that, just before the Bolsheviks seized the Tsar, my father had personally planned to rescue him with a British cruiser, but in some way the plan was blocked. In any case, it hurt my father that Britain had not raised a hand to save his cousin Nicky. 'Those politicians,' he used to say. 'If it had been one of their kind, they would have acted fast enough. But merely because the poor man was an emperor—' "

In Switzerland, Lenin's first reaction to the revolution in Russia was skepticism. Only seven weeks had passed since his statement on January 22, 1917, that "we older men may not live to see the decisive battles of the approaching revolution." Even the news of the Tsar's abdication and the establishment of a Provisional Government left him with reservations. In his view, the replacement of an autocracy by a bourgeois republic was not a genuine proletarian revolution; it was simply the substitution of one capitalist system for another. The fact that Miliukov and the Provisional Government intended to continue the war confirmed in his mind that they were no more than tools of Britain and France, which were capitalist, imperialist powers. On March 25, Lenin telegraphed instructions to the Bolsheviks in Petro-grad, "Our tactics: absolute distrust, no support of the new government, Kerensky especially suspect, no rapprochement with the other parties."

Lenin became desperate to reach Russia himself. "From the moment the news of the revolution came, Ilyich did not sleep and at night all

sorts of incredible plans were made," Krupskaya recalled. "We could travel by airplane. But such things could be thought of only in the semi-delirium of the night." He considered donning a wig and traveling via France, England and the North Sea, but there was the chance of arrest or of being torpedoed by a U-boat. Suddenly, through the German minister in Berne, it was arranged that he should travel through Germany itself to Sweden, Finland and then to Russia. The German motive in this bizarre arrangement was sheer military necessity. Germany had gained little from the fall of tsarism, as the Provisional Government meant to continue the war. Germany needed a regime which would make peace. This Lenin promised to do. Even if he failed, the Germans knew that his presence inside Russia would create turmoil. Accordingly, on April 9, Lenin, Krupskaya and seventeen other Bolshevik exiles left Zurich to cross Germany in a "sealed" train. "The German leaders," said Winston Churchill, "turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia."

On the night of April 16, after ten years away from Russia, Lenin arrived in Petrograd at the Finland Station. He stepped from his train into a vast crowd and a sea of red banners. In an armored car, he drove to Mathilde Kschessinska's mansion, which had been commandeered as Bolshevik headquarters. From the dancer's balcony, he addressed a cheering crowd, shouting to them that the war was "shameful imperialist slaughter."

Although Lenin had been welcomed with the blaring triumph due a returning prophet, neither the Petrograd Soviet as a whole nor the Bolshevik minority within the Soviet were by any means ready to accept all of his dogma. In the early days of the revolution, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who dominated the Soviet believed that some degree of cooperation should be shown the Provisional Government, if only to prevent the restoration of the monarchy. Besides, Marxist theory called for a transitional period between the overthrow of absolutism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet might argue whether Nicholas belonged in his palace or in a cell, but its over-all policy was to support the policies of the Provisional Government "insofar as they correspond to the interests of the proletariat and of the broad masses of the people." Even some Bolsheviks supported this program.

Lenin would have none of this. Speaking to the All-Russian Conference of Soviets on the morning after his return, he issued his famous April Theses, demanding overthrow of the Provisional Government, the abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.

Most important, he demanded an end to the war and urged the troops at the front to begin fraternizing with the enemy. Amazement and consternation greeted Lenin's words; he was interrupted in the middle of his speech by shouts, laughter and cries of "That is raving! That is the raving of a lunatic!" Even Molotov, who had remained one of the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd, and Stalin, who returned on March 26 from three years' exile in Siberia, were caught off guard.
Pravda,
the Bolshevik newspaper which they had been editing, had been agreeing that a protracted period of bourgeois government was necessary before proceeding to the final stage of the socialist revolution. Lenin's enemies hastened to gibe. He had been away too long, they said, living comfortably in exile; he had taken no part in the overthrow of tsarism; he had been transported back to Russia under the protection of the most autocratic and imperialistic regime remaining in Europe. As word got around that the Soviet had disowned him, the Provisional Government was vastly relieved. "Lenin was a hopeless failure with the Soviet yesterday," said Miliukov gleefully on April 18. "He was compelled to leave the room amidst a storm of booing. He will never survive it."

Yet Lenin scarcely noticed his defeat. A brilliant dialectician, prepared to argue all night, he gained ascendancy over his Bolshevik colleagues by sheer force of intellect and physical stamina. On May 17, Trotsky, who had been living on East 162nd Street in New York City and writing for
Novy Mir,
an émigré Russian newspaper, while studying the American economy in the New York Public Library, returned to Petrograd. Nominally a Menshevik, within weeks of his return he and Lenin were working together. Of the two, Lenin was leader.

Through the spring and summer, Lenin hammered away at the Provisional Government. The Marxian subtleties of the April Theses were laid aside; for the masses, the Bolsheviks coined an irresistible slogan combining the two deepest desires of the Russian people: "Peace, Land, All Power to the Soviet." In May, when Miliukov once again proclaimed that Russia would honor its obligations and continue to fight, a massive public outcry forced him from office. Guchkov also resigned and, early in July, Prince Lvov decided that he could no longer continue as Prime Minister. Kerensky became simultaneously Prime Minister and Minister of War.

In constantly urging that Russia continue to fight, Russia's allies played directly into Lenin's hands. Terrified that Russia's withdrawal from the war would release dozens of enemy divisions for use in the west, Britain, France and the newly belligerent United States exerted

heavy pressure on the shaky Provisional Government. Beginning m June, the U.S. government extended loans of $325 million to the Provisional Government. But Elihu Root, who led President Wilson's mission to Russia, made clear that the terms were: "No war, no loan."

Pressed by the Allies, the Provisional Government began to prepare another offensive. Kerensky made a personal tour of the front to exhort the soldiers. In early July, Russian artillery opened a heavy bombardment along forty miles of the Galician front. For the first time, supplies and munitions were plentiful, and the thirty-one Russian divisions attacking the Austrians quickly broke through. For two weeks, they advanced while Kerensky exulted and Nicholas, at Tsar-skoe Selo, radiated happiness and ordered
Te Deums
to celebrate the victories. Then, on July 14, the news darkened. German reserves arrived and checked the advance. On the Russian side, Soldiers' Committees debated the wisdom of further attacks and whole divisions refused to move. When the enemy counterattacked, there was no resistance. The Russian retreat became a rout.

In Petrograd, news of the debacle provided the spark for an atmosphere already electrically charged. On July 16, half a million people marched through the streets carrying huge scarlet banners proclaiming "Down with the War!" "Down with the Provisional Government!" Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not prepared for the rising, and the Provisional Government crushed it, mainly by circulating among the loyal regiments a document purporting to prove that Lenin was a German agent and that the uprising was intended to betray Russia from the rear while the Germans advanced at the front. The disclosure was temporarily effective. The Bolshevik strongholds—Kschessinka's house, the offices of
Pravda,
the Fortress of Peter and Paul—were stormed and occupied. Trotsky gave himself up to the police, and Lenin, after spending the night hidden in a haystack, escaped over the border into Finland disguised as a fireman on a locomotive. The first Bolshevik uprising, later known as "the July uprising," was over. Admitting that it had been halfhearted, Lenin was to describe it later as "something considerably more than a demonstration but less than a revolution."

Despite his narrow victory, the rising made plain to Kerensky the danger of any further delay in moving the Imperial family away from Petrograd. Even before the rising, the new Prime Minister had come to warn Nicholas, "The Bolsheviks are after me and then will be after you." He suggested that the family would be safer in some distant