Part 26 – Coup and Counter-coup (1926-7)
Michael II surveyed the telegrams of condolence laid out before him on the vast, ornate desk in the emperor’s study at the Alexander Palace. Wishes of support and sympathy both to him and his people had been sent from across the world: from his cousin George V and George’s prime minister, Austen Chamberlain, in Britain; from his cousin Wilhelm II and Wilhelm’s chancellor, Otto Gessler, in Germany; from King Otto via his mother, the regent in Austria; from President Cox in America; from President Briand in France, and from innumerable other monarchs, presidents and prime ministers. The content of many suggested more than the routine dispatch of a diplomatic expectation.
What were noticeable by their absence were the messages from within Russia. Even by the standards of the Romanovs, Michael II was singularly unpopular. It wasn’t so much the intensity of hatred that was the problem - his brother and, even more, his sister-in-law had been far more despised – but the fact that he had virtually no natural supporters. No sooner had he ascended the throne than the whispering started that he shouldn’t even be there. And his critics had a point. Michael had chosen to forego any right to succession when he married his mistress, Natalie Wulfert, against the strict orders of his outraged brother. But by 1920, Nicholas was dead and Alexei both ill and in his minority, and Michael took the opportunity to restore himself as heir. Although Michael’s co-regent, his own mother the Dowager Empress Marie, had consented to that move, it remained highly controversial within the Romanov family, within Petrograd society and among the country at large. For the moment, that didn’t matter. Russia’s financial system remained perilously close to collapse and the country had no choice to put its trust in whoever ran it.
Alexei’s funeral came and went and as the country settled back into some kind of normality, it began to realise the scale of the economic devastation that the Crash had wrought. No group escaped. Virtually the entire middle class saw their savings and investments wiped out, whether directly from investment losses or from the collapse of so many of the banks. Those who’d borrowed to invest and couldn’t get out in time were simply bankrupt; proud families reduced to living off friends and relatives or to leaving everything behind and heading off to make a new life elsewhere. But many who’d never been involved in the investment frenzy were little better off: job losses weren’t restricted to manual and agricultural workers and losses from the bank collapses hit savers as well as borrowers. Further up the social scale, aristocrats and landowners saw the value of their land, and the value of what it produced, plummet. They too had borrowed to invest and to speculate and they too now suffered the consequences. But it was those at the bottom which the Crash hit hardest with workers laid off in their millions as estates, factories, shipyards, mines and other manners of employment tried to make ends meet. The number of men, women and children employed in domestic service fell by three million in a year. Furthermore, those who did keep their jobs saw pay cut drastically.
The protests which sprung up during the initial phase of the crisis took on a more serious form as it deepened. Strikes over pay frequently turned violent and in rural areas dozens of manor houses were looted and burned by impoverished and starving peasants. In at least four known cases as early as 1926, peasants seized their now-deceased master’s entire estate and tried to run it as a collective before being driven out by troops and executed for their efforts.
Two days and nights of particularly bad rioting during October in Moscow prompted Michael to seize the initiative. For the past two months, as the crisis steadily worsened, he’d been caught between the advice of two opposing groups of courtiers, officials and generals, and after much soul-searching had finally come off the fence. His wartime experiences had given him a sympathy for the troops under his command and a contempt for many of those in positions of privilege. He’d been notorious (again) among his family for wearing only plain uniforms while in the field, as a conscious snub to them and symbol of solidarity with the men under his command. Unlike many in power, he refused to see the rioting solely as an unlawful uprising against authority. “What else can they do? What would you do in their position?”, he demanded of his interior minister in one meeting.
And so against the advice of most of his ministers and many of his family, who argued for much tighter security laws passed and put into effect, Michael adopted precisely the opposite solution: the people would be given their voice. A new Duma would be called, to be popularly elected across the country the following February. Furthermore, Michael agreed to have regard to it in appointing his ministers. To guarantee that those elections would be fair, free speech would be guaranteed and advisors invited from Britain, France and America. All political parties, including communists and regionalists (or nationalists as they described themselves in their native areas), would be allowed to stand, organise and campaign. Not for the first time, the emperor had scandalized and outraged many at his own Court.
That declaration came as a thunderbolt almost as much to those opposed to Michael’s regime from the left as from the right but the left was far quicker to organise. As one wag in the Okhrana noted, “now they’re all out in the open, we can find out how accurate our intelligence was”. But it wasn’t a laughing matter for conservatives, who had no grass-roots organisation and couldn’t be at all confident about having the numbers to counter their opponents at the ballot box. Nor did they feel that once the non-Russian regions – Poland, Finland, the Ukraine and the Caucasus in particular - had been allowed to vent their nationalisms could those feelings be easily again contained.
What was worse, the election campaign actually worsened the economic and political crisis. Massed opposing rallies frequently ended in riots while strikes and protests took on a deliberately political edge, trapping innocent bystanders as much as activists and agitators. Meanwhile, the economy continued to worsen as the ripples from the banking collapse spread wider and wider. Many previously profitable businesses struggled and went to the wall as banks called in loans to shore up their own accounts even while their borrowers were making good on their payments. And as more people lost jobs or saw pay cut, so there was less money to go round.
It couldn’t go on and it didn’t go on. Deep in the freezing night of January 26, two weeks before the election was due to take place, two full brigades of soldiers surrounded the Winter Palace, where Michael II was sleeping. The first he knew that something was amiss was being woken by the sound of the exchange of gunfire. Within a minute, his private secretary burst in to inform him that the army had mutinied, that the Palace was under attack and that he should prepare to leave. His first instinct was that it couldn’t be possible and that the noise must be another protest but an inner voice told him something was indeed very wrong. Protests didn’t just happen and certainly didn’t start firing on the Guards. Michael instructed his secretary to rouse his wife and son to be readied to leave as well before attempting to phone first his ministers and then his family. Neither could be reached: the lines had been cut.
Across the city, a second, more dignified and higher-ranking delegation approached another royal residence and demanded entry. The elderly figure of Nicholas Nikolaevich shouted to his servants to tell them to go but his servants made the mistake of opening the door to do so. Two minutes later, fifteen men – ministers, generals, an admiral and several Romanovs – were crowded into Nicholas’ bedroom.
“Your Royal Highness,” General Kaledin began, “revolution is breaking out. As I speak, the emperor is being taken under guard for his protection.” Kaledin paused so that Nicholas could take in the import of what he was saying, before adding “and for Russia’s,” to avoid any doubt.
“How dare you act against the throne like this! This is treason!”, Nicholas thundered, though even as he did so, he knew that there was no point. It was too late to change what had already been set in motion. Yes, he thought, you were right not to tell me beforehand. Damn you for putting me in this position!
“Why me?”, he asked, understanding what they were asking. “I am an old man: a soldier, not a tsar.”
The Interior Minister answered. “The army will follow you like no other man. The country also has faith in you. Russia needs strong leadership and only you can give it right now. Were there another way ...” his voice trailed off, not wishing to imply that Nicholas was their second preference to some other plan.
“And if I refuse?”
“You have always served your country in its need before, sir.”
“This is different. I have always served my emperor before. You wish that I dethrone him.”
“Many said he had no right to be emperor in the first place, sir. More still say that now. Nor has he been crowned. He is a usurper every bit as much as ...”
Almost every man in the room winced at the minister’s gaffe.
“Go on, say it.” Nicholas said. “Every bit as much as me.”
“As much as Catherine the Great”, one of the lesser Grand Dukes suggested, trying to rescue the situation.
“And what happened to Peter III in that instance? Should I connive in Michael’s death? I won’t do it, you know, crowned or not.”
Kaledin responded for the committee: “as I said, it is our intention to place Michael under guard and request his abdication.”
Nicholas’ cousin, Grand Duke George Michaelovich, previously watching quietly from the side decided enough was enough. “Nicholasha. We can’t be too squeamish about this. Michael was taking this country into disaster. Civil war perhaps. Revolution maybe. Who knows what. We cannot simply stand by and let everything Russia stands for be washed away – we have a duty to act. You have a duty to act. It’s too late now to do anything else, I’m afraid: if Michael is still on the throne tomorrow, we are all dead men. Besides, orders have already been given to proclaim your reign tomorrow.”
Nicholas had worked most of that out for himself and guessed the rest long before George said it but he was grateful that someone had finally had the guts to give voice to the reality. Finally, he relented. “Hmph. Do what you must. God knows what I have done to deserve such a fate.”
News of the coup had come too late for the morning newspapers but additional editions of those papers the new regime trusted were rushed out under close supervision, announcing not only the abdication of Michael II and the accession of Nicholas III but also cancellation of the elections, the imposition of much stricter censorship, freedom of association, of organisation and of speech, and the banning of a long list of organisations.
Despite what the papers said, Michael had not in fact abdicated. He, his wife and son were, however, on a train to Tallinn disguised as domestic servants to Michael’s former secretary. That technicality was beside the point for now, though: what mattered was that the coup had succeeded in gaining control of Petrograd, the army, the secret police and the majority of the country, while Michael was offering no resistance.
The former tsar wasn’t the only one to suffer a serious reversal of fortune that night. Alexander Kerensky had been planning for assuming the reins of the government he expected to lead within a month. Now, he was locked in a police cell, charged with inciting riot. Kerensky’s fate was at least better than that of the Communist leader, Leon Trotsky, who after being arrested had accidently fallen backwards onto an ice-pick embedded in the frozen street, according to the police report.