The Death of an Empire
Russian Troops posed for a picture prior to launching the Parsky Offensive
The Parsky Offensive
The Russian Winter Offensive, known to posterity as the Parsky Offensive for its commander, was launched in late January (N.S.) and focused on the Baltic Front. It aimed to smash through the German line on the Daugava River before enacting a wide sickle cut in the hopes of overrunning the supply lines of the understrength German Eighth Army under Günther Graf von Kirbach at Riga. The assault would begin with short and intense artillery bombardments, followed soon after by an overwhelming movement of men, 300,000 in all, with the edge of the drive led by the Czechoslovak Legion - numbering some 40,000. The command of the offensive was given to the fiercely nationalistic Dmitri Parsky who was well known for his willingness to work with even the most left-wing of soldiers councils as long as they were willing to help defend the homeland.
Under Parsky, the Russian Northern Front armies had rebuilt their morale - greatly boosted by the oratory efforts of RSDLP politicians Trotsky, Kamenev, Radek, Martov and Zinoviev, who were able to whip up significant revolutionary ardor amongst the soldiery on the eve of the offensive. When the offensive was launched on the 15th (28 N.S.) of January, the Russian Army tore through the thinly defended German positions like wet paper. They captured Daudewas within five hours of the offensive and were soon rushing forward into the German rear. The first major resistance to the Russian advance occurred just north of Daudewas, at the Battle of Friedrichstadt - where a rush of reinforcements from the 8th Army ran headlong into the Russian frontlines. The intense and bloody fighting that ensued allowed the Germans to slow the Russian advance for the remainder of the day, but with nightfall the Germans were forced to pull back westward towards Riga. The Russians gave chase on the second day, aiming to capture the important town of Mitau which served as a key transport hub to Riga. The Russians would find their forward progress finally halted on the outskirts of Mitau by intense German resistance, as General von Kirbach threw what forces he could amass against the Russian advance.
This draining of forces from north of Riga led the Russians to launch their second assault of the offensive, this time north of Riga, in hopes of locking the Germans in place until the assault on Mitau could cut off the Eighth Army off in Riga. This second assault turned into an absolute bloodbath as fanatic socialist soldiers and rapidly trained Red Guard militias threw themselves forward onto the German positions. The German warships in the Gulf of Riga turned their heavy guns against this advance and were able to turn the assaults closes to the sea, at Neubad and Segewold, into little more than bloody mush - stopping the assault dead in its tracks. However, further to the south-east the Russians experienced more success. Oger Galle fell after an intense morning's fighting while the next defensive line, around Uexküll, was overrun at great cost to the attackers soon after. By the end of the first week of the assault, the Germans had been forced back towards Riga and risked being cut off by land near Mitau. However, reinforcements were already then being rushed forward from across the region to help stem the tide (1).
By the start of the second week of the offensive, in late January (O.S), German reinforcements began exerting a growing influence on the struggle. Parsky launched a second assault from Uexküll, working to surround and cut off Riga, aimed at breaking the flanks of the German positions nearer the coast. This would culminate in the Battle of Rodempois-Kussau which saw almost 15,000 men give their lives to collapse the German outer lines - forcing them to retreat into Riga proper.
The Battle of Riga would be one of the rare instances of outright urban warfare during the Great War, with the streets and alleys of the old city turned into a battleground for over a week. More and more men were fed into the furnace, the Russian forces coming under long-range bombardment by German battleships in a bid to disrupt their lines of assault into the city. At the same time, the fighting around Mitau grew in intensity as both sides sought to drive the other back from the key supply hub. Hoping to break the stalemate, a flanking manoeuvre designed to cut the rail lines into Mitau was launched further to the south by the Russians, centreing on the town of Meiten. Acting with shocking effect, they were successfully able to take Meiten by the end of the second week of the offensive - cutting one of the rail lines into Mitau, and by extension Riga. It was here, in the midst of the Parsky Offensive that the shift to the Gregorian Calendar was put into effect in Russia, troubling countless historians ever since.
With the Russian offensive beginning to flag, the RSDLP decided to draw on the Petrograd garrison for reinforcements - an action which, when attempted in the past by the Provisional Government, had triggered the July Days. Trotsky was forced to put the full weight of his charisma and oratory capabilities to use, but after fierce cajoling he was finally able to convince the Bulwark of the Revolution to move forward by the 19th of February (N.S.). Here they would take the line just as the offensive staying power of the Russian Northern Front petered out. The former Petrograd Garrison troops were thrown into the fierce fighting around Mitau on the 22nd of February, attacking against newly arrived veterans of the Italian Campaign, where they found themselves forced to a shuddering halt by the Germans. These veterans of Italy, of Romania, of Serbia and a dozen other theatres of war were among the toughest and most hardened forces in the German Army in the east and refused to buckle under the strain. The intensity of the fighting from the 22nd to the 25th would mark the climax of the Battle of Mitau and its end would see the Russians forced to withdraw. By the 27th, as further German reinforcements streamed into Riga, Parsky bowed to reality and recommended the suspension of further offensive action to the government, bringing the Parsky Offensive to an end.
The political situation in Petrograd during the month-long Parsky Offensive proved exceedingly volatile and would bring to a head a number of issues, foremost among them the young republic's unfinished business with its former Autocrat. After his abdication in March 1917, Nikolai Romanov, as he was now called, had been kept under house arrest along with his family and their retinue at Tsarskoe Selo outside Petrograd. Apart from the limitations on their movement, they had suffered few privations: the huge costs of feeding and dining all of them were kept from the press for fear of causing public outrage. During this time Nikolai showed no real signs of missing power. Judging from his diaries, these were among the happiest days of his whole life. Liberated from the burdens of office, which he had always unhappily borne, he was free to pursue the private bourgeois lifestyle he had always enjoyed.
This first stage of the Romanovs' captivity came to an end in the middle of August, when the imperial family was evacuated to the Siberian town of Tobolsk. Kerensky was concerned for their personal safety. There had always been the very real danger that an angry crowd might break into the palace and take their vengeance on the former Tsar: there had been one such attempt back in March by a group of soldiers from Petrograd. This danger seemed to be on the increase after the July Days. It had originally been intended to send the Tsar and his family to England, where George V, Nikolai's cousin, had invited him in March, but the Petrograd Soviet was adamantly opposed to the idea, insisting that the former Tsar should be imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Moreover, George V withdrew his invitation for fear of alienating the Labour Party soon after - amongst various other concerns. So it was resolved to send them to Tobolsk instead, a provincial backwater far from the influence of the revolution, where they took up a relatively comfortable residence in the house of the former governor. In addition to the numerous ladies and gentlemen of their suite, the imperial family were accompanied by two valets, six chambermaids, ten footmen, three cooks, four assistant cooks, a butler, a wine steward, a nurse, a clerk, a barber and two pet spaniels.
The situation of the former royals took a turn for the worse in the early months of 1918. They noticed it in the growing rudeness of their guards, increased restrictions on their movements and the disappearance of luxuries, such as butter and coffee, which up until now they had taken for granted. The changes were connected with developments in the nearby industrial city of Ekaterinburg. A Soviet Congress of the Urals Region held there in February had elected a Bolshevik presidium led by Filipp Goloshchyokin, a veteran Bolshevik and close friend of Yakov Sverdlov. The Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks were well known for their militancy. They were hostile to the relative comfort in which the Tsar had so far been held and were determined to get him transferred to their own control - some with a view to his imprisonment, others with a view to his execution. Goloshchyokin pleaded with Sverdlov to let him have the Tsar, claiming that in Tobolsk the danger was greater that he might escape. There were rumours of various monarchist plots - some of them real, some imagined, and some invented - to liberate the imperial family. Sverdlov dithered on the issue, uncertain of how to respond to this suggestion, before telling Goloshchyokin to take the Tsar and his family in hand, in hopes of securing them as an advantage over the government in Petrograd.
Footnotes:
(1) This is a very different series of events than those of the Faustschlagt Operation from OTL. There are several factors that play into this. First of all, the Russian army escaped a whole month of battering warfare in 1917 due to the earlier negotiations and truce. Second, the Germans are not attacking a state in the midst of a bitter civil war under the control of a party that came to power through a coup and was largely seen as illegitimate by large swathes of the army, instead the Germans are being attacked by an army with the full backing of an elected Russian government. Third, the Russians have been actively working to rebuild morale since 1917 and have actually experienced quite a bit of success in that endeavor. Fourth, the socialists have thrown their weight fully behind this military effort - every party besides the Bolsheviks and Anarchists are supporting this effort. The Russian army is by no means resilient, but it is now capable of offensive operations under a relatively capable military commander such as Parsky. All of these factors combine with the immense drawdown in German forces that occurred to enable the defeats of Romania and Italy, as well as to prepare for the coming Spring Offensives make for a good starting point for the Russians.
The Imperial Romanov Family
When Even The Loyal Run
The reason for Sverdlov's anxiety to secure control of the Romanov family stemmed from Bolshevik spies in Petrograd, who had revealed Trotsky's secret plans to put former Tsar Nikolai and his wife the former Tsarina Alexandra on public trial as a way of making up with the Imperial past, and in a bid to rejuvenate the faltering revolutionary republican spirit of Russia. Trotsky was planning a great show trial for the Tsar, in the manner of Louis XVI, with himself in the role of chief prosecutor. Trotsky proposed: an open court that would unfold a picture of the entire reign covering Nikolai's peasant policy, labour policy, nationalities policies, cultural policies, the two wars, and much more. The proceedings would be broadcast to the nation by radio; in the villages accounts of the proceedings would be read and commented upon daily (2). All of this would serve to remind the population of Russia of what the revolutionaries had saved Russia from, while putting some steel into the backs of the men fighting at the front.
In a bid to secure the royal family, Trotsky dispatched his close associate, Vasili Yakolev, to bring the former Tsar, and if possible his family, to Petrograd for trial. While Vasili set out in mid-February, Trotsky dug into a growing political struggle in the Constituent Assembly, where the Kadets were beginning to exploit the worsening situation at the front to attack the ruling coalition for its leadership of the war. In fiery declarations from his seat in the Tauride, Milyukov launched an open assault on the policies of the government - accusing the RSDLP of having bungled the war effort and in the process doomed Russia to ignominy and defeat. With every day, more and more men joined Milyukov's assault until it grew into an overwhelming din. It was at this point that Trotsky, who had until now played an important - but not central - role in the RSDLP's handling of the Assembly, stepped firmly forward and became the single most powerful figure in Petrograd. With stinging sarcasm and bloody-minded intensity, Trotsky mounted what came to seem like a single-handed defense of the RSDLP and its policies, going on the offensive against Milyukov - pointing to Milyukov's letter in 1917 and his previous role as War Minister - and using his charisma and oratory to great effect. In what would come to be considered one of his greatest speeches of all time, in a period where he was giving several, Trotsky was able to turn the weight of suspicion back on the Kadet party on the 3rd of March 1918. Over the course of an hour and a half, Trotsky was able to pin the blame for the failing offensive squarely on the Kadets and their allies in the military leadership, foremost among them the Commander-in-Chief Mikhail Dietrikhs. This assault culminated in a vote to expel the Kadets from the Constituent Assembly on the grounds that they were trying to undermine the state in a bid to start a counter-revolution.
Seemingly spell-bound to Trotsky's every wish, vast numbers of delegates voted in favour of the motion to expel the Kadets in an enraged uproar, swiftly overcoming the threshold needed. While the Kadets rose in protest at this move, there was little they or their Trudovik allies could do to stop the way events were developing, eventually leading the Trudovik's to declare the expulsion of the Kadets illegal and staging a walkout while the more violent of the left-wing delegates hurled abuse and pelted the departing delegates with anything close at hand. A vote to arrest Mikhail Dietrikhs on charges of treason was proposed next, again passing with an overwhelming majority, whereupon orders were dispatched to Mogilev for his arrest. However, Dietrikhs had friends in the Kadet party and was warned of what had happened in the Assembly, allowing him to make his escape from Stavka with minutes to spare, disappearing into the Russian countryside where he would soon join the growing White resistance. In Dietrikh's place, the RSDLP promoted Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich. Bonch-Bruyevich had been serving as Parsky's Chief of Staff for the duration of the offensive and was considered politically reliable due to his brother, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, a prominent former Bolshevik and Mezhraiontsy who headed up one of the RSDLP's propaganda party organs, who took command just as the German preparations for their response to the Parsky Offensive came to an end (3).
By the time the Parsky Offensive came to a halt in late February, the Russian army found itself experiencing turmoil similar to that which characterised the end of the Kerensky Offensive the year before. While the most dedicated and ferociously loyal to the republican regime marched headlong into the furnace of war, the shirkers and suppressed mutineers sought to keep their heads down for the duration. The heaviest casualties during the offensive were experienced by the elite Latvian Rifles regiments and the Czechoslovak Legion who had formed the spearhead of the sickle-cut. By the time these two forces reached Mitau they had ceased to function as coherent units. Their bravery and determination was what had fuelled the offensive during its early success, and their destruction had an outsized impact on morale at the front. The arrival of the Petrograd Garrison troops was initially greeted with great anticipation by the ordinary soldier, but these men had spent the last year and change doing garrison duty and interfering in the political scene - as such they drastically underperformed in the tasks given them and were often among the first units to refuse orders to attack enemy positions. Their morale had plummeted once they were out of Trotsky's reach and took a dive once exposed to combat. These revolutionary soldiers were swift to turn on the officer corps and mutinies soon sprang up wherever men of the former Petrograd Garrison went.
It was in the midst of this crisis, as news began to spread of Trotsky's claims regarding Dietrikhs' culpability in the failure of the offensive, that the Germans launched their counterstroke. The German Eighth and the reinforcing Ninth Armies were the heart of this effort, with the primary impetus residing with Johannes von Eben's fresh Ninth Army. The German counter-offensive, known to posterity as the Battle of the Baltic, was launched on the 5th March 1918. The Ninth Army focused its assault on the wide salient formed by the assault on Mitau, slamming home against dispirited and often mutinying troops, rolling over them with relative ease. Within the first day more than 30,000 men had been captured with some 3,000 killed or wounded in the fighting. The following day the Eighth Army, in Riga, rushed forward into the Russian lines and breached them following an intense land-and-naval bombardment which left many of the defenders disoriented and scattered. The Ninth's assault divisions crossed the Daugava at the same time as the Eighth launched its attack, continuing to drive ever deeper into the Russian positions - leaving the disordered Russian troops to be mopped up by trench divisions as they moved forward. The Russian Northern Front began to collapse under these assaults as soldiers deserted by the thousands, whole units vanishing from the line. This would serve as the starting shot for a general assault across the Eastern Front, as German and Austro-Hungarian divisions threw themselves forward against the ramshackle remnants of the Russian Republic's armies. Within the first week, the Russian armies were in full retreat - but as the Germans outstripped their supply lines their advance began to slow and the Russians were able to begin regrouping (4).
Vasili Yakovlev travelled via Yekaterinburg so as not to arouse the suspicions of the Bolsheviks there, who were themselves preparing to extract the Tsar. Indeed, Zaslavsky, one of the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks, was preparing to kidnap the Tsar from Tobolsk when Yakolev passed through, though he believed that it would be better to simply get rid of the Romanovs quietly. "We should not be wasting our time on the Romanovs," Zaslavsky told Yakovlev on his arrival in Yekatrinburg, "we should just finish them off and move on." The journey from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg was to be full of risks. The spring thaw was just beginning, flooding the roads; and the Tsarevich, whose haemophilia had recently returned, was too sick to be moved. Yakovlev was told by Petrograd to leave the rest of the family behind and set off with the ex-Tsar alone, but Alexandra would not be parted from Nicholas, and in the end all six of them set off together in open carts towards Tiumen, the nearest railway junction, 170 miles away.
Once they had boarded the train at Tiumen, Yakovlev became suspicious of the local Bolsheviks who he feared might have warned Zaslavsky or Goloshchyokin. He had heard that a cavalry detachment was planning to attack the train on its way to Yekaterinburg and kidnap his royal charges — the 'cargo', as he referred to them in his coded messages to Petrograd. So he went on a roundabout route via Omsk to the east. This strengthened the suspicions of the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks that he was planning to save the Tsar, perhaps taking him to Japan. It was here that the relations broke down between the Petrograders and Muscovites, for while Trotsky ordered Yakolev to move with all speed to secure the royals, Sverdlov gave the green light to Goloshchyokin for an assault on the train. While traveling through Tiumen and Omsk, Yakolev had recruited something of a guard force from amongst the local conscripts waiting to be shipped out to the front in the Baltic, and it would be these young men who found themselves quite suddenly under assault by a cavalry squadron under the command of Zaslavsky. In a running battle, as the train rushed ever onward, the two sides exchanged fire - with half a dozen dead on either side. In the chaos, a couple of Bolshevik cavalrymen were able to jump aboard the train and detatched several cars of the train where they believed the Romanov family to be held while Yakolev and his train sped on.
However, Zaslavsky's men had not been completely successful in their aims. What they took to be the car holding all of the Romanovs was instead simply where the Romanov daugthers were being held, Nikolai, Alexandra and Alexei having been moved to the next car over where a portable heater had been set up to improve Alexei's care. With the Bolsheviks closing in on them the Romanov daughters were in a quandry. The eldest, Olga took her youngest sister Anastasia in hand and jumped out of one of the trains' windows opposite the pursuing Bolsheviks. She and her sister would remain hidden in the Siberian snows for the rest of the day before making their escape into the night. The two middle girls, Tatiana and Maria, were not so lucky. When the Bolshevik cavalrymen realized their failure they took their rage out on the two girls. They were brutalized and humiliated, whereupon the men discovered the countless jewels that had been sown into the clothing of the former princesses. The cavalrymen promptly turned on each other, and in the bloody chaos that ensued many of the men were killed - amongst them Zaslavsky. The girls were stripped of their wealth by the survivors before being assaulted and murdered, their bodies found alongside the dozens of other dead at the site two days later, when the next train passed through the area. Anastasia and Olga, also wearing their family jewels sown into their clothing, would make their escape to a nearby peasant village where they were able to recover for a couple of weeks before setting out eastward across the Siberian Steppe in the hopes of discovering Romanov loyalists in Eastern Siberia, or at least some sort of safety in the chaos. Yakolev would arrive in Petrograd unscathed, presenting Trotsky with the grief-stricken Nikolai and Alexandra, as well as the gravely ill Alexei on the 18th of March 1918 (5).
Footnotes:
(2) This is actually what Trotsky had in mind for the Tsar IOTL, though he planned for the event to occur in Moscow where the Bolsheviks had centered their regime at the time. Ever since I heard of this I have wondered what the impact of having Nikolai Romanov stand trial might have had on the world. When you consider the mystery and outrage surrounding the family's execution IOTL and contrast it with the trial and execution of Louis XVI, there are a number of interesting ways events could proceed.
(3) The issue of political reliability is the primary reason why Parsky is not the man tapped to take the top job. While Parsky has proven himself to be a capable commander, the RSDLP does not believe that they can trust him with that kind of power, fearing an imitator of Kornilov.
(4) It bears remarking that this is actually a significantly better performance than the Russians accomplished during the Faustschlagt of OTL and a worse one by the Germans by a large margin. The Russian edifice isn't quite as ramshackle, and by the end of the first week of the German assault the Russians are beginning to regroup as the Germans outrun their lines of supply. Furthermore, the Germans are lacking several of the key figures who planned the Battle of Riga the previous year. We will get into it a great deal more in a later update, but many of the key figures in that offensive have been transferred to other posts in the reshuffle following Hoffmann's ascension as Chief of the General Staff and the new military tactics of the German army aren't really in as widespread use here because of a denuding of the front of assault divisions for other purposes.
(5) The events that play out here are a mix of plans from OTL and adaptations for TTL caused by the fact that all of this is happening a month earlier and the forces fighting for control of the Romanovs aren't allied, but rather view each other as enemies. The fate of Tatiana and Maria are tragic, as are those of Alexei, Nikolai and Alexandra, but there is a bit of hope to be drawn from the fact that Anastasia and Olga are alive and free. However, two princesses, one a teenager and the other in her early twenties, are hardly likely to make the trek safely. I played around with which of the princesses would escape, but I think both Olga and Anastasia are the ones most likely to be able to survive of the four.
German Forces Enter Narva
Who is to Blame?
On the 8th of March 1918 the northern-most branch of the German offensive began. Crossing from Dagoe to the mainland, the German Nordkorps began the invasion of Estonia, aiming to take Reval and eventually Narva. There were few forces present opposing this amphibious landing, and the Nordkorps quickly began making headway. At the same time, having pulled forward their supply lines, the German Ninth Army launched themselves eastward towards the city of Pskov and the German Eighth rushed into the gap between the two German forces - aiming to link up with the Nordkorps before it reached Narva. The Russians were able to put up intense but fleeting resistance in a series of open encounters as the frontline disintegrated under pressure. Instead, the Germans found themselves fighting a thousand smaller and larger skirmishes in a hundred fields, forests and glens of the Baltic east. On the 22nd of March, German forces finally marched into the city of Pskov after a series of bloody skirmishes - capturing the city itself to little resistance. In the north, Nordkorps forces captured Reval with little resistance, being welcomed by celebratory Baltic Germans, but soon found their opposition significantly strengthened. It would take two bloody weeks of fighting, the last week with the aid of the Eighth Army, for the Russian forces to collapse completely, allowing the capture Narva on the 26th of March. Following the capture of Narva and Pskov the Germans dug in, waiting for their supply lines to catch up while diplomatic efforts to force the Russians out of the war began once more.
As the tension in Petrograd rose by the day and news of setback upon setback streamed in, the city began to panic - the Constituent Assembly leading the way in this particular regard, as with so much else. With Trotsky in the driver's seat, the Constituent Assembly soon found itself turned into little more than a baying, bloodthirsty mob as answers for why the revolutionary military effort was collapsing were sought with extremis. The blame, naturally, fell on the burzhooi more than any others: foremost among them the Kadet party politicians and military officers who Trotsky and other RSDLP politicians claimed had sabotaged the war effort and who they claimed were in league with the Germans. However, the RSDLP soon turned on the Mensheviks as well, claiming that they were in league with the Kadets and, ultimately, the Germans, seeking to turn the working class against itself.
On the streets of Petrograd enraged mobs, often directed by Red Guards of Bolshevik, Anarchist or RSDLP affiliation, tore through the districts of central Petrograd with horrific abandon. Not even the worst of the looting, murder and destruction which had characterized the February Revolution, the July Days or the September Rising came close to the scale of the devastation wrecked upon the city by the rabid mobs who engulfed it now. People were murdered across the city, often for the slightest of offenses or clues to their nature as burzhooi, while a pogrom of the city's Jewish population was launched by recently arrived peasant-workers - the irony of the fact they were being incited to action by a Jew seemingly lost on the mobs.
However, it would prove to be the massive numbers of refugees fleeing the Baltic battlefields who became both the greatest targets and participants in the riots and pogroms. The stream of White sympathizers leaving Petrograd grew suddenly to a flood - all of them headed south or east, away from the horrors of Petrograd. Among the refugees were grey-haired bankers and their wives, skillful businessmen who had left behind their faithful deputies in Petrograd; landlords who had secretly left their property in the hands of trusted managers; industrialists, merchants, lawyers, politicians. Journalists, prostitutes and respectable ladies from aristocratic families with their daughters; secretaries of civil service department chiefs; princes and junk-dealers, poets and pawnbrokers, gendarmes and actresses from the Imperial theatres. All sought to escape (6).
It was into this seeming hell on earth that Tsar Nikolai and Tsarina Alexandra arrived on the 18th of March. They were initially hidden away on the outskirts of the city while the RSDLP party faithful rushed about securing everything that would be needed for the coming trial. In the meantime, word began to spread of the Tsar's presence in the city - causing a horrific hunt for him which saw more than a dozen men who shared a slight resemblance with the former Tsar torn to shreds by the baying mob. News of these rumours and their effects, as well as the general hellscape the city was turning into, were transmitted internationally by the various foreign journalists in the city to the awestruck horror of the world. Countless editorials screamed their outrage over rumors of a trial for the Nikolai, while even more made gloomy comparisons to the horrors of the French Revolution which seemed to have come again in Cold, Red Russia.
With the setbacks at the front, Trotsky determined that he would need to push forward the trial of the tsar over the protests of his fellow party leaders - who eventually bowed to Trotsky's harangues. The announcement of the Tsar's trial was made on the 23rd of March 1918, in a bid to drown out news of the fall of Pskov, planned for the 25th. The international community began protesting the moment news arrived and conservative newspapers, regardless of what side of the war they were on, cried out in horror at the course of events in Petrograd. However, news of the trial had a markedly different effect on the far-left, which widely lauded the decision to place Nikolai on trial. The reaction amongst more mainstream socialist and social democratic parties, particularly the German MSPD, was more muted and uncertain - with splits and disagreements over the issue causing significant tension within the party, along with a number of defections to the USDP - who, while also split on the issue, were generally in favour of the trial.
Footnotes:
(6) Petrograd slides into the abyss here as Trotsky tries to use the chaos to strengthen both his own and his party's position of control over the Russian Republic. Particularly the delegates from the SRs, regardless of whether they were of a Left or Right persuasion, have largely been swept up in the drama of the moment. Much of what is described happening in Petrograd ITTL is mirrored on events during the Russian Civil War and the French Revolution, with a bit of mixing and matching. Situations like this are by no means rare, so I don't think this course of events should be too out there. Hysteria has gripped the Russian capital and one of the greatest orators in world history is there to exploit it.
Leon Trotsky Denouncing Tsar Nikolai II at His Trial
The Trial of The Century
The trial of Nikolai Romanov and Alexandra Romanova came under way on the 25th of March 1918 and marked one of the most memorable and controversial events of the Russian Revolution. Held in the famed Mariinsky Theatre, with a seating capacity of 1,625 and a U-shaped Italian-style auditorium, the trial was recorded and broadcast by radio, in one of the first major instances in which the medium was used at scale, while journalists by their hundreds were invited to sit in on the proceedings to record it all. Countless pictures were taken of the trial, and it entered into the lore of the revolution like few other events, becoming a seminal event of the 20th century. To fill the seats for the trial, Trotsky drew primarily from the working classes of Petrograd, who he could be sure hated the Romanovs, as well as numerous party faithful who were placed strategically throughout the crowd to egg them on. By the time Nikolai and Alexandra were heaved onto the stage of the Mariinsky in chains to boos and hisses, the building was filled to the bursting.
Neither Nikolai nor Alexandra were provided with legal representation, and when Trotsky was announced as Prosecutor on behalf of the Peoples of All-Russia the crowd shook the building to its rafters with their roars of approval. The subsequent trial, while clearly a show trial, was a drama at its finest. Trotsky, with his iron voice roared his denunciations and hurled arguments like so many spears to the cheers of the crowd, while Nikolai provided a spirited, if fruitless, defence of his actions since his ascension to the throne - to the hisses of the crowd. Particularly the foreign press, and through their coverage, the White press, would grasp onto Nikolai's performance, quickly elevating him to martyrdom in their writings, while begrudgingly admiring Trotsky's theatricality. One by one, Trotsky tore into the Imperial regime's handling of everything from peasant policy, democracy and labour to culture, military command and, with particular vehemence, the pernicious influence of Rasputin. Every horror-story from the days of the tsarist regime was brought forth against Nikolai, who began to falter by the second day of the trial. By the end of the second day, Nikolai was judged guilty of over a dozen different crimes, foremost among the treason against the Peoples of Russia, and sentenced to death.
Trotsky next turned his attentions on the former Tsarina, who over the course of the third day of the trial was portrayed as little less than the spawn of the devil. Her relationship with Rasputin and half a dozen other mystics and charlatans were dragged through the mud and were soon joined by her handling of the regency during Nikolai's time as Commander-in-Chief during the Great War and a whole host of other revelations - which had been obtained by RSDLP bureaucrats combing through the documents of the former Imperial household for all the dirt they could find. Alexandra, seemingly unbent and unbroken by the tragedy she was living through, refused to answer or even acknowledge Trotsky and the crowd's presence. Throughout the three days of the trial, including the day set aside for her, she remained silent, standing ramrod-straight and gazing haughtily out over the mob. Foreign views on Alexandra were more mixed than their view of Nikolai, some viewing her silence as a victory, comparing it to the stoic performance of Charles I of England almost three centuries prior, while others felt her silence proof of some of the accusations leveled against her. Either way, Alexandra was judged guilty as well and sentenced to death with her husband (7).
A final piece to the tragedy of the imperial couple came two days after they received their death sentence, when they were informed that the former Tsarevich Alexei had passed away in his sleep - succumbing to ill treatment and neglect following his arrival in Petrograd. At dawn, on the 31st of March 1918, Nikolai and Alexandra Romanov were marched before a firing squad, offered a blindfold, which both refused, and shot dead. Nikolai’s last words were reportedly a plea to the heavens to forgive his subjects, to shield them in the hard times to come, and a heartfelt farewell to his beloved wife. Alexandra reportedly spent her last minutes in prayer for the safety of her surviving children. Their bodies were subsequently displayed in central Petrograd, where gawking onlookers crowded together in amazement at the death of the man many of them had once considered nearly divine.
The international reaction was naturally hysterical, with almost every royal house in Europe going into public mourning while further crackdowns on radical leftists were undertaken in the beligerent nations. The drama and tragedy of the whole affair would be immortalized in various artworks far into the future. It would be this event that truly began to solidify Trotsky's Black Legend in the west and ensured the absolutely vitriolic hatred of Trotsky by conservatives in Britain, who would do what they could to blacken the reputation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and all socialists with it, in the years that followed. The echoes of the French Revolution were never far from anyone's mind, and comparisons between the Jacobins and the RSDLP would become one of the primary narratives of the Russian Revolution. The deaths of the Tsar and much of his family shattered any hope of conciliation with the Russian right-wing, who now began hailing Nikolai and his family as martyrs and saints, in some cases even pushing the Orthodox Church leadership to support their proclamations. The disappearance of Olga and Anastasia became an overwhelming fixture in White propaganda, where it was claimed that their disappearance was a clear example that divine favour was with them.
Over the course of the next several weeks numerous Romanov relatives, who had been taken into protective custody following the February Revolution, were executed largely in secret, in a bid to eradicate the Romanov family and to remove another potential source of legitimacy from the increasingly restive right-wing. Perhaps the most horrific of these murders took place at Alapayevsk where five Romanovs and a close retainer were transported to flooded iron mineshaft and dumped in one after the other - though one of them had to be shot beforehand to end his resistance. When the assassins heard voices from down the mineshaft, one of them tossed a hand grenade down the shaft. When he heard the voices again, he tossed in another. After a moment of silence, the assassins began hearing the sound of hymns, the survivors in the mineshaft singing the prayer "Lord Save Your People". The murderers now filled the shaft with wood and set it on fire, listening to the hymns till they fell silent (8).
Mikhail Alexandrovich Romanov, Nikolai II’s brother and presumed heir following the death of the tsarevich, had actually been released from his house arrest during the chaos of the Kornilov Affair alongside his wife and son. They had stayed under surveillance in the following period, but as the situation began to deteriorate in the capital during March, as a result of the German Counter-Offensive, Mikhail and his family decided to make their escape. They set out on the 13th of March, joining the massive stream of refugees departing the capital, to the utter bewilderment of their watchers. Mikhail and his family would make their way southward to begin with, hoping to join his mother in the German-protected Crimea. However, this was not to be (9).
While much of their family was being eradicated, Olga and Anastasia Romanova made their way ever further eastward. They were making their way into an anarchic free-for-all where the rugged stead-holders feuded with each other and where government oversight was next to non-existent. The pair were forced to scrounge and scavenge for sustenance when they couldn't live off the good will of strangers. On several occasions the pair were nearly killed when they encountered more unfriendly inhabitants, but slowly they made their way ever further eastward. In mid-May, having been on the road for nearly a quarter of a year, the two sisters encountered a minor nunnery where they were able to seek refuge for the time being, spending the next long period in the quiet and solitude of the cloister while they awaited news of events in the capital.
Footnotes:
(7) I really hope that I conveyed the sheer spectacle of this event. The lights, the flashes, the roar of the crowd which all combine with the setting at the foremost Opera and Ballet House in all of Petrograd. Nikolai actually gives a pretty good accounting of himself while Alexandra's play at ice queen enters the world of myth. This entire event becomes a central part of White Russia's national myth - setting the stage for all that is to come.
(8) This is based on a description of what actually happened to a collection of Romanovs, chief among them Nikolai's aunt-by-marriage Elizabeth Feodorovna and several of Nikolai's cousins.
(9) The Russian Republican Government don’t have the same security apparatus as the Bolsheviks were able to build, and as a result Mikhail Romanov and his family are able to make their escape. How long they will be able to escape the inexorable pull into the chaotic morass remains a question, but expect them to experience a hectic couple of years. We will get into what happens with Mikhail and his family in a later update.
Summary:
The Parsky Offensive experiences considerable success, but eventually grinds to a halt at Riga and Mitau.
The Romanovs are collected and transported to Petrograd, though an effort at intervention results in the deaths of Tatiana and Maria Romanova as well as the escape of Anastasia and Olga Romanova, while the Germans go on the offensive.
With the Germans making significant headway, Petrograd collapses into hysterical paranoia - marked by countless riots.
The Imperial Romanovs are put on trial and executed, soon followed by much of their family, while Olga and Anastasia make it to safety in a remote Siberian cloister and Mikhail Romanov escapes Petrograd with his wife and son.
End Note:
This update centres on how extreme optimism can blind people to the inevitable, and what happens when that optimism is shattered. My treatment of Trotsky ITTL might not be particularly kind, but I do think that the developments depicted in this update - and those to come - are along the lines of what he might have done had history taken this divergent path. Trotsky is one of the most fascinating figures of the 1900s and I look forward to exploring his role further as we move forward. The Russians actually prove themselves far more capable of military action than they did IOTL due to a series of factors, foremost among them the lack of a clear-cut Bolshevik coup to their rear. This, combined with the joint effort by the left-wing and right-wing in the leadup to the offensive to strengthen and stabilize the front means that the Russians actually have a fair deal of capabilities when they get going. The problem remains the follow-through. As the best units are sacrificed to make the early inroads, the capabilities of the Russian soldiery slowly collapses - however, vitally, they do not experience a complete collapse and are able to mount a fighting resistance throughout March. As those of you looking towards the German Spring Offensives in the West might note, this series of events could scarcely have happened at a worse time - forcing the redirection of serious resources eastward just when Ludendorff had planned to launch his assault. We will explore the consequences of this, and a lot of other events around the world, when we return. We also get into the fate of the Romanovs - which, for the time being, is actually an improvement on OTL. Mikhail and his family, as well as Anastasia and Olga will play a role in events to come.
