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By Root 2213 0

Russian parliament,” but the Bolsheviks had no intention of ceding power. The Bolshevik government prepared for the opening of the parliament as if for battle. They created a special military headquarters and divided Petrograd into districts; patrols of sailors and soldiers controlled the streets. At the Tauride Palace, where the Constituent Assembly was to convene, the Bolshevik Moisei Uritsky was named commandant. When the Constituent Assembly did convene, sailors from the battleship Republic were led into the hall under the command of Zheleznyakov the younger. To them fell the honor of cutting short the history of Russian parliamentarism. At the opening of the first day of sessions, Zheleznyakov the younger approached the chair, banged his fist on the table, and uttered these historic words: “The guard is tired, we cannot protect you anymore. Close down the meeting.”

Thus Lenin rid his government of that extra “provisional.” The power of Bolshevik rule combined in a surprising way with impotence, though. When Uritsky appeared to disperse the Constituent Assembly, he looked very unhappy and very cold. Out on the street, which the Bolshevik sailors were patrolling, the terrible commandant had his fur coat stolen by bandits! And when Lenin, the head of the Sovnarkom, bitterly quit the Constituent Assembly, having prescribed its closing, he discovered that the pockets of his coat had been cleaned out and his automatic pistol stolen! The fact of which the robbed Lenin indignantly informed the robbed Uritsky. This split between the authorities and the brigandage of the streets did not end in 1917 by any means. In March 1918, when Lenin’s government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, it was still going on. In December 1919, in Sokolniki, Lenin’s wife was waiting for her husband for the children’s New Year’s party, but the leader of the country arrived very confused. En route robbers had stopped his automobile. The evildoers had taken away weapons and papers—from him, the guard, and the driver. They also took the automobile. When the leader of the world proletariat announced to his attackers, “I am Lenin. Here are my documents,” the reply was unexpected: “We don’t care who you are!”

Echoes of these horrors, these lawless anecdotes of this Time of Troubles, reached Nicholas accurately from papers and letters (despite the destruction and chaos, the mails were working). The parliament’s disbanding might still elicit a sarcastic chuckle from the man who had fought with the Duma for so many years, but the actions of the new authorities in February and March 1918 truly shook the former commander-in-chief.

In March the Bolsheviks concluded the Treaty of Brest with the Germans. Russia admitted defeat in war.

Nicholas’s diary (now he kept his diary with double dates, as putting the new style in parentheses):

“12 (25) February. Monday. Today telegrams arrived informing us that the Bolsheviks, or the Sovnarkom, as they call themselves, must agree to a peace on the German government’s humiliating terms in view of the fact that enemy forces are advancing and there is no way to stop them! It is a nightmare!”

This was indeed a nightmare for him, a hallucination. The Baltics, Poland, part of Belorussia, part of the Caucasus—all this was lost to Russia. The empire he had received from his father no longer existed.

Nicholas was a typical Taurus, with all the qualities of that astrological sign. Sluggish, stubborn, and secretive, taciturn, adoring of his children and family. He had been deprived of one Taurean quality, however: force—the ability to fall into a frenzy. “Would you please finally get angry, Your Excellency!” one of his ministers pleaded in vain.

Yes, he was a special Taurus, a golden calf, a calf born for sacrifice, Job the Long-Suffering.

That day, though, as he read the report on the Treaty of Brest, he felt the fury of a Taurus.

She would echo him in a letter to Anya: “March 3rd [16th] 1918.… God save Russia & help her.… one great humiliation & horror.… I cant reconcile myself, cant think about this without a terrible pain