Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [94]
Subsequently, discussing the activities of Nicholas’s chief of staff, Alexeyev, who oddly was in no hurry to familiarize the tsar with the panicky information from the capital, people have suspected Alexeyev of complicity in a plot. A strange figure, this chief of staff. He had come from simple people, had earned everything for himself, and under Nicholas was the actual commander-in-chief. He was Rasputin’s enemy and forbade him to come to Headquarters—but Nicholas did not give him up to Alix’s fury. They were similar in their temperaments, the chief of staff and the tsar, reserved and taciturn. And they liked each other. They understood. That was why Alexeyev was in no hurry with the alarming telegrams: he had figured Nicholas out, and he was tacitly supporting him.
Nicholas did not manage to carry his decision through to completion. He had expected that the Duma would control the situation, that the coup everyone was so certain of had been readied. He would find out, however, that the mob had gone out into the street. From the telegrams he realized with horror that in fact the Duma’s big talkers were not in control of the situation. That was when he got scared—for Alix and the children. Riots in the city could spread to his beloved Tsarskoe Selo. Nicholas was forced to act.
On Monday, February 27, he wrote in his diary: “Riots began in Petrograd several days ago. To my regret, troops have begun to take part in them. It is a hateful feeling to be so far away and receive such poor, fragmentary news! Was not long at report. In the afternoon took a walk down the road to Orsha. After dinner decided to go to Tsarskoe as soon as possible and at I moved into the train.”
He (telegram): “Am starting to-morrow at 2.30. The Cavalry Guards have received orders to leave Nov[gorod] for town immediately. God grant that the disorders among the troops will soon be stopped.”
Nicholas’s diary:
“28 February. Tuesday. Went to bed at 3.15, having spoken at length with N. I. Ivanov [General Nikolai Iudovich Ivanov], whom I am sending to Petrograd with troops to establish order. Slept until 10. Left Mogilev at 5 in the morning. The weather was frostily sunny. In the afternoon traveled through Vyazma, Rzhev, and Likhoslavl at 9”
But he never did get as far as his beloved Tsarskoe Selo.
A DREADFUL PLAY
Lermontov’s Masquerade is a play with dreadful associations. On the day war was declared in 1941, Masquerade premiered in Moscow. Masquerade also premiered then, at the end of February 1917, during the empire’s fall.
The street lamps were no longer burning. Only a searchlight on the Admiralty side beat down on Nevsky, and in this dead light, people were walking to the theater. There was shooting in the streets. A murdered student lay in the lobby. There were a great many rumors about the readied performance. All theatrical Petrograd had gathered at the Alexandrinsky Theater. Indeed, it was a fantastic spectacle. On the stage, improbable luxury no one had ever seen in a theater: huge mirrors, gilded doors. The stage presented a glittering palace hall. The apotheosis of luxury. A hymn to a palace. It was a theatrical set of the world that was drowning on that February street, moving off into nonbeing. In the Tauride Palace the Duma was in permanent session. Hoarse, ecstatic speakers….
On February 28, the last day of winter, the garrison at Tsarskoe Selo rebelled: 40,000 soldiers with antiaircraft guns.
Rodzianko, as chairman of the Duma the sole authority in the mutinous capital, made a call on the palace. Rodzianko spoke with Benckendorff, marshal of the imperial court, and asked him to tell Alix to flee the Alexander Palace as quickly as possible.
“But the sick children—” said Benckendorff.
“When a house is on fire, sick children are carried