Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [512]
And so the month of July passed peacefully, and that of August. During that month the doctor allowed him, twice, to be taken by cart to the monastery. How delightful it was, he thought, to be back amongst such familiar sights.
Except for one thing: the village.
‘It’s extraordinary,’ he remarked to Vladimir. ‘What happened? I never saw the place so prosperous.’
It was true. For while, by the summer of 1915, the great cities were suffering from the war, in the huge Russian countryside, the First World War ushered in a time of plenty. How could this be?
‘Actually,’ Vladimir explained, ‘it’s quite simple. Like most administrations in wartime, the government’s paying for things by printing money. Consequently there’s inflation. And the one thing everyone needs, which the peasants have, is grain. Grain prices are high, we’ve just had a bumper harvest, and the villagers have all got excess income.’ He grinned. ‘Do you know, that rogue Boris Romanov’s even bought himself a phonograph. He even plays Tchaikovsky on it, I believe.’
A week later, visiting Boris Romanov’s comfortable house, Alexander saw this marvel for himself. And he wondered to himself: Could it be, after all, that this war would be the saving of Russia, and that his optimistic father was right?
The blow fell in late August. The Tsar dismissed the Duma. At the same time, he decided to take over, personally, as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies. He would go to the front himself.
In the first week of September, Alexander received a long letter from his father. It was no longer optimistic. And its ending was filled with foreboding.
Everyone pleaded with him, from Rodzianko down; but the Tsar is an obstinate fellow who believes it is his duty to be an autocrat. So democracy under tsardom is dead, I’m sure of it. As for his attempts to revive the army, they are bound to be unlucky. I can foresee only chaos.
Rasputin has reappeared here. I hear he saw the Tsar himself. God save us.
1917, 2 March
Yet even now, it was hard to believe.
The rule of the Tsar was over. Russia was free.
Nicolai Bobrov stood at the window and looked out eagerly. A head cold had kept him indoors that day. It was three hours now since his son Alexander had gone over to the Taurida Palace where the Duma met to see if the news had come. Any moment he would be back.
Surely the news must have come. Surely by now the Tsar must have signed the abdication. ‘For God knows,’ he murmured, ‘the Tsar can’t possibly go on.’ Not now that Bobrov and his friends had taken power.
For in the end, it was the Duma who had deposed the Tsar.
What a strange business it had been; yet not really so surprising. The fears he had expressed back in that fateful summer of 1915 had been justified.
The Tsar had been frequently away at the front. True the army had not done so badly. The great Brusilov offensive of 1916, mounted while the British were making their mass attack on the Somme, though it had failed to break the enemy, had made some gains on the western front. Down in the Caucasus, Russian troops had advanced into Turkey. But in the south, Germany and Austria had pushed to the western shore of the Black Sea through Rumania and the British had been forced to pull out of Gallipoli, leaving Russia still blockaded at the entrance of the Black Sea and unable to export her grain.
The war on the Russian front, as on the western front, was a grim stalemate.
But at the centre – Bobrov could only shake his head. It had been a nightmare. The Empress, that foolish and ignorant German woman, had been left holding the reigns of government. It seemed she had got it into her head that she was another Catherine the Great – so she once told a startled official. And beside the Empress – seen or unseen – had been the terrible Rasputin.
It had been bewildering to watch. It sometimes seemed to Bobrov that anyone who had an ounce of talent was dismissed. Only blind loyalty to the Tsar was rewarded.