My Life in Russia’s Service:

Chapter Eight

War and Revolution

During the first few days of the War all private motor cars were requisitioned for ambulance purposes. My wife was one of those who undertook the organization of this service.[i] It saved the lives of thousands. The task which she undertook required hard work and great thoroughness to make it function smoothly in the changing and difficult circumstances of the War. She helped in making her motorized ambulance work one of the best run auxiliary services in Russia. It worked with great regularity and was absolutely reliable, at a time when these characteristics, owing to our total unpreparedness, were, alas, conspicuously lacking in many of the various branches of our armies.[1]

I was appointed to the Naval Department of Admiral Russin[2] on the staff of Grand Duke Nicholas, who was our Commander-in-Chief at the beginning of the War.

His headquarters were at Baranovichi in Poland. It was a desolate and God-forsaken place not far from the famous primaeval forests of Bieloveshch[3], where the last European bisons led a State-protected existence. These forests were an Imperial preserve and are now, I believe, a National Park of Poland. At the end of the War only a very few of the bison remained; they have, however, been saved from total extinction.

The first few weeks of the War we slept in railway cars, and worked in barracks which had previously been occupied by some railway battalions and had then been turned into offices.

The place was very lonely and distant from civilization and even war—we were about sixty-five miles from the front—and there was little I could do in making myself useful in my capacity of naval officer, so I was more than pleased when after about a year of this inactivity I was transferred to our new headquarters at Mogilev.

In the very first weeks of the outbreak of hostilities we had lost the flower of our armies at Tannenberg. It was more than a defeat, it was a calamity of the very worst kind.

The men who fell at Tannenberg could not be replaced, they were of the best in the land. Tannenberg!—a curious coincidence, perhaps, and possibly more. In 1431, I believe, the Teutonic order was annihilated near that very place by an allied Lithuanian and Polish army, and, so I am told, for the first time in history Germans and Russians faced each other in battle on that occasion, as the Principality of Pskov had dispatched some auxiliary forces to help the Lithuanian cause. Four hundred and eighty- three years later Slavs and Germans met again at the very same place and this time with exactly opposite results.[4]

Why, it may be asked, did we send our armies, unprepared as they were and at break-neck speed across the sandy wastes of Lithuania into East Prussia?—It was to save the hard-pressed French on the Marne, and at their urgent request. This caused the Germans to detach two army corps from their armies in France and rush them through Germany to their eastern boundaries. Our sudden advance into Germany saved our Allies in the West. Our movement had been so rapid that when the armies engaged the enemy most of the supplies were miles behind, as they could not keep up with the troops. All the death-defying courage for which the Russian soldier is famous did not suffice in the absence of thorough organization and leadership for which the other side was well known. Hindenburg knew every inch of that region.

Great gloom settled over us. Things became worse when this disaster was followed by the one of the Mazurian lakes. Thereafter a desperate struggle began as the War shifted onto Russian ground.

We had more men than we needed and little enough in arms and munition. The supplies system worked badly. Train loads of food, arms, and other equipment were sent off, and disappeared completely, others arrived with stuff that no one wanted. There was much disorder in the rear and lack of cohesion. Yet on our front the men fought desperately and well, and scored great successes on the Austrian section. They had set their faces against adversity with the baffling endurance of hardship that is typical of our soldiers. In mud and swamps and among the forests and mountains they did their duty loyally and admirably in circumstances which would have made many others throw up the game. Some had no rifles, others no shells, and in the rear among the idle reservists and the factories, among the many little and hidden places, coming more and more to the fore out of its hiding, first cautiously, later ever bolder, the lurking hydra of revolution began to raise its head. It whispered, inspired, and suggested, it burrowed its way into the machinery of the State.

Late in 1914 and during 1915 I paid a number of visits to the front near Warsaw, when I met Ducky, whose work was progressing well. Unlike many others who were playing at Red Cross nurses, she had chosen hard and practical work, and on several occasions had carried out her duties under the enemy’s fire.

There were desperate battles in progress in the region of Grodno, where we forced the Germans to raise the siege of Ossovetz. On another occasion—at Lodz—we had almost completely surrounded one of their armies, but had left a gap in our ring which was rapidly closing around them. In the last moment they succeeded in withdrawing through this gap. There was a fearful muddle on that occasion. Germans and Russians were so completely mixed with one another that at times it was impossible to tell which side was fighting the other. During this appalling slaughter the fleet of ambulance cars was plying to and fro from the front to the rear full of wounded.

Apart from Ducky’s activity on our western front, she paid a number of official visits to Roumania with medical supplies to their army[5]. Things were going badly with our allies.

In 1916 I was promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral and received the command of a naval detachment which did some useful work on our lakes and rivers as sappers. 

While we were working among the lakes and swamps in the neighbourhood of Pinsk, a Polish gentleman provided a welcome diversion from the duties of war by inviting me to shoot elk on his estates. It was an endless trip among a primeval wilderness, and, although no elk were shot, it was an interesting experience, because it gave me an impression of the untouched wilderness of unknown Europe. 

Later on during that year I went to Lake Peipus, a huge inland expanse of water between Esthonia and Russia, and if the War had shifted as far inland as this lake it would have provided a very vulnerable spot. For that reason we mined it carefully.

Here I wish to say a few words about the work of our navy during the World War. Little is known abroad of our activity at sea. There were no spectacular major engagements between our large ships and those of the enemy, they were kept at their base at Helsingfors and rarely went to sea. Their crews were forced into demoralizing inactivity, and having nothing to do, like our reserve troops of the army became contaminated with revolutionary propaganda. The Baltic Fleet later played an important part in the drama of the Revolution, and it was mainly due to the sailors that the Bolshevik Party was able to seize power on the fall of the Democratic Provisionary Government of Kerensky.

Not so our destroyers, light cruisers, submarines, and smaller vessels. They were constantly active in enemy waters, where they laid their mines very successfully and caused great damage to German shipping. Germany imported all its iron ore from Sweden. Our ships greatly impeded this traffic.

In the tactics of mine-laying we had become experts, and a considerable number of ships of the German Navy were lost that way, both in their own waters as well as in ours.

We had the very welcome and efficient collaboration of a number of British submarines, which succeeded in destroying some large enemy men-of-war.

Being constantly busy, except in the winter when ice prevented any activity, the crews of our destroyer, submarine, and trawler flotillas remained loyal to the end.

Although we had first-class modern battleships, some of which were among the first to carry triple gun turrets, the superiority of the German Navy was such that it would have been extremely unwise to have met them in a major encounter.

Meanwhile the fighting on our fronts had become one of trench warfare.

Pessimism could be felt and seen everywhere. The country, too, was getting tired of the effort and strain of war. The machine of State was beginning to show the first signs of a break-down. Trains were late, theft and criminal violence increased. There were strikes in the industrial areas, discontent among all classes of the population, and the revolutionary forces were hard at work to make the best of their opportunities, for which they had prepared themselves ever since the failure of the Revolution of 1905. The Emperor, meanwhile, had taken the supreme command of his armies. This concentration of all command in one person made a considerable difference to our fortunes of war.

The demoralizing and constant retreat from one fortified position to another was checked. Hitherto we had been in need of equipment and munitions. All this, however, was now arriving in plenty by way of Archangel from America and our allies, and when Archangel became icebound in the winter navigation was deflected to the port of Murmansk. It is quite near the frontier of Norway, and remains open during the winter months in spite of its northerly position beyond the Polar Circle. A railway linking it to the rest of Russia was in the last stages of completion.

Our armies now had all they needed, even hope of final victory for the first time since the beginning of the War. At various places of the German front we began to take the initiative, as we had done throughout the War on the other sectors of our far-stretched battle line. There had been a complete reorganization, re-equipment, and a re-grouping of troops in every part of our armed forces. There was optimism now and self-reliance. The enemy was hard pressed. An offensive along the whole front had been decreed for April of 1917, and had not the Revolution intervened our armies might have broken through the German lines as, in fact, they were beginning to do in places, and nothing would have stopped their progress. There was great enthusiasm now among them and certainty of winning. This sudden change of the situation in our favour was not felt in the rear, where things were going from bad to worse with our administration. Among the soldiers the assumption of the supreme command by the Emperor was a welcome move. At the front there was renewed hope—behind it increasing disorder.[6]

I often had occasion to meet the Emperor[7] at his headquarters at Mogilev during this time, as I was attached to his staff. He rarely spoke of the War to me and was visibly tired and overworked.

Those who were appointed to responsible positions by him were, with few exceptions, alas, badly selected for their tasks. He felt that he could trust very few of those who were around him. Ministers changed every five minutes, so to speak, and this led to lack of stability, certainty, and cohesion.

The whole situation gave one the feeling of being poised on the brink of a precipice or of standing on the uncertain surface of a swamp. The country was like a gradually sinking ship with a mutinous crew.

The Emperor gave orders which were at times not carried out promptly or even at all by the civil authorities, or else they were interrupted before they reached their destination. The tragedy of it all was that while our soldiers were giving of their best, the men in the arm-chairs in the rear seemed to be doing little to check the growing disorder and to prevent a collapse, while the agents of the Revolution increased their efforts in spreading discontent by all means.

Meanwhile our Roumanian allies had suffered a very serious reverse which had left a gap in that part of the front. We dispatched a number of army corps to their aid, which succeeded in stemming the enemy advance and in saving that country from being completely overrun. Late in 1916 my wife went to Roumania for the last time with provisions and medical supplies for their armies. She remained there until early in 1917.[8]

I had much opportunity of judging the situation at the fronts as the Emperor used to send me to distribute decorations among the troops. Among the soldiers on active service I found nothing but stoical and fatalistic courage, great loyalty in the cause of their country and Imperial master, and confidence in victory. Not so, alas, among the reserves; they were contaminated with revolutionary ideas, which these simple sons of the peasantry did not even understand.

The whole country was exhausted and in that state was like an ailing body at the mercy of any germ. It was a relief to be occasionally at the front.

Early in 1917 I went to Murmansk where three men-of- war, which we had bought from the Japanese Government, had just arrived. They had belonged to us and had been captured by the Japanese when they captured Port Arthur. They had been modernized, and when I arrived I found them in excellent condition.

When I went to ‘Romanovsk’ the new railway had just been completed. The workmen employed on its construction were German and Austrian prisoners of war. I found that they were well looked after, but owing to the rigorous climatic conditions of these wild northern regions the mortality among them had been great.

My train took me through seemingly endless virgin forests until it reached the ‘tundra.’ These vast bogs of Northern Europe, almost uninhabited swampy regions of a peculiarly savage and desolate aspect, in spite of the utter loneliness have yet their fascination of a kind which the vastness and grandeur of nature bestows upon some desert regions of the earth. The endlessness and the sadness of these sub-polar regions have their peculiar charm, and as my train drew nearer to the frontiers of Norway the savage beauty of the scenery increased. What struck me most was the grimness of this wild scenery which unfolded itself around me the nearer we drew to Norway and the sea. Murmansk was in a pioneering stage at that time. The coast is rocky and wild and the sea, which stretches from there to the utmost North, storm-ridden and gloomy.

The inhabitants of these northern wilds are the Laps, Europe’s most primitive people who live by their reindeer herds, which are their only wealth. Further to the east there are a whole collection of primitive races which live the life of nomad trappers, and are about the nearest kin to Eskimos and Red Indians, with whom they have much in common.

The Port of Murmansk is splendidly situated, as are several places along that coast which provides excellent natural harbours. 

At that time Ducky was still at Yassy in Roumania. She returned to St. Petersburg via Kiev and early in February 1917 we met in the capital.[9]

I had received the command of the Naval Guards from the Emperor, and as these were quartered in the capital my duties held me there.

Meanwhile the disorder in the rear of the front increased. There was a noticeable shortage of food in the capital, especially of bread, but the situation was not yet critical in that particular respect. The railway system was disorganized owing to the war. Crime and violence increased daily and the police were frequently attacked by gangs of hooligans. The Government did little to check the growing disorder in St. Petersburg.

There were strikes in the industrial areas and in the factory towns and demonstrations of workers. Among the million surplus soldiers discipline was badly shaken. There were reports of mutinies in barracks and of violence against officers.

One could not help feeling that the whole edifice of the exhausted Empire had begun to totter badly and that the collapse was imminent. If energetic measures had been taken to check the growing storm at that time all might yet have been saved. Nothing was done and everything, as if on purpose, was left to chance.

In the end, during the later part of February, the mob got out of hand and a mass murder of the police began. In the barracks reserve contingents of soldiers either arrested or massacred their officers. There was shooting in the streets by rival gangs. Gangsterdom and hooliganism took the upper hand.

My Naval Guards had hitherto remained loyal to me, my officers, and our armies at the front, and had not been infected by the happenings in the rear. Nor, indeed, could it be said that even the mob and the revolutionary soldiers in the capital were particularly antagonistic to the Emperor. From their talk and manifestations it could be gathered that they wanted bread, peace, and distribution of land and wealth. Much of what they shouted and of what was told them by the agents of the revolution they did not even understand. They had picked up slogans and repeated them like parrots. The people as such were not disloyal to the Emperor, as were those in the Ministries and in his entourage. As for the troops in the capital, they had enough of everything and far too little to do.

The Emperor who was at Mogilev gave orders, but sometimes they never reached their destination. He wanted, for example, a regiment of the Guards to be dispatched to the capital to re-establish order there. The message which he sent to the commander of the Cavalry Guards, for example, was intercepted on the way and never reached him.

The ones who paved the way to the revolution were those who owed their high positions to the Emperor. No blame attaches to the Russian people. These were deceived. It has been rightly said that ‘Revolutions are hatched under top hats,’ by the educated classes, by the ‘intelligentsia’ of professors and social theorists.

No one save these desired the revolution. Theirs is the guilt for the death of their Imperial Master and for the twenty-one years of Russia’s martyrdom.

Those who were in command of the troops in the capital had lost their heads completely.

Next the report of the mutiny of the Baltic Fleet at Helsingfors was received. Things went from bad to worse and people lived in fear of their lives.

Some suggested to the Emperor that the only thing to do to save Russia now was to conclude a separate peace with Germany. The Germans made tentative offers to that effect. Constantinople, our historic ambition, and the Dardanelles would be ours. The Emperor’s reply to this was that he would remain loyal to the cause of the War and his Allies to the end, and this he did until his death.

Later, when the news of the Revolution was received by the countries for whom we had sacrificed so much and who were our Allies, the ‘glorious Russian Revolution’ was hailed by liberal opinion with joy. After all it was a war to make Democracy safe in the world! If that was the reason for which millions had fought and died in the greatest massacre that the world has ever known, and which will ever remain a stain on Western civilization, then this war was fought in vain.

One of my Naval Guard battalions was protecting the Imperial Family at Tsarskoe Selo, but the situation had become so dangerous in the capital that I ordered them to rejoin the rest of the Guards because these were almost the only loyal troops still left which could be relied on to keep order if things became still worse. The Empress agreed to this measure of emergency and other troops who carried out their duties well were dispatched to Tsarskoe.[10]

The military authorities in the capital gave contradictory orders. One day they were to the effect that certain streets were to be occupied, on other occasions some equally useless measures were to be taken, when the only really effective step would have been to hand over all power to the military. This alone would have saved the situation. One or two regiments from the front would have sufficed to re-establish order within a few hours. 

Mob rule, hooliganism, and chaos ruled supreme. There was continuous shooting at night and during the day-time, and it was hard to tell who waged war against whom. St. Petersburg was in the hands of rival gangs, which went about looting shops and stores. At night they encamped round bonfires at street corners where they had planted their machine-guns, and passed their time yelling and singing and shooting at anyone who ventured abroad along the deserted streets of the doomed city. Having plundered the wine cellars of private houses and hotels, anything could be expected from these armed gangs. Seeing that no measures were taken against the mutineers they became even bolder, as they realized that the real power was in their hands.

One day an armed rabble broke into the courtyard of my house. Their leaders demanded to see me. I went out to them expecting the worst, and was not a little surprised when I was asked fairly politely to lend them my car as they wanted to go to the Douma. I told them that they could take it provided they did not smash it, whereupon they all burst into cheers and shouted to me to lead them.

I think there was something in that demand which the masses felt very strongly. They felt the absence of leadership, they wanted guidance of some kind and were then still harmless enough.

No one knew at the time what had become of the Emperor, or where he was. The absence of stability, of someone at the helm, of at least some semblance of direction was felt by all. If leadership could have been found at that moment, and if this drifting ship of State could have been steered on some definite course, even the mutinous soldiers and the rabble would have followed, no matter where. They were more like sheep without a shepherd than a pack of dangerous wolves.

It is precisely this lack of guidance which was used by the Bolshevik Party later. They provided leadership and a course, although both led the country to a tyranny and bloodshed without historical precedent.

One day an officer of the Naval Guards came to me in a sad state of alarm. Apparently my sailors had locked up their officers and trouble of a serious kind was brewing in their barracks. I hurried off at once and spoke to my  men. They were in an ugly temper. I succeeded in re-establishing order, but it was an unpleasant experience.[11] I found, however, that in spite of revolution and anarchy my men were still very loyal to me. They had volunteered to provide me and my family with a guard, and in spite of the chaotic state of affairs we were not molested. Every night friends would drop in to inquire how we were and to discuss the situation. They did so risking their lives, for anyone who went into the streets of the city at night was shot at indiscriminately.

It was a time of extravagant rumours and there was a complete lack of reliable news.

During the last days of February the anarchy in the metropolis had become such that the Government issued an appeal to all troops and their commanders to show their allegiance to the Government by marching to the Douma and declaring their loyalty.

This measure had been decreed to re-establish some kind of order amid this intolerable chaos. The Government hoped that if the troops could be got to carry out its emergency measures in the capital, normal conditions might yet be established and the rule of gangsterdom checked for good and all.[12]

Meanwhile there was no news from Mogilev, only wild rumours. No one knew of the actual whereabouts of the Emperor beyond that he was trying to come to Tsarskoe backed by loyal troops which would help the Imperial train to break through the cordons of disloyal revolutionary contingents.[13]

I was put in a very awkward position by the decree of the Government. I was the Commander of the Naval Guards, which constituted one of the military contingents of the capital. The order of the Government, which was the last vestige, even though a sorry one, of authority in St. Petersburg, applied to my men as it did to all other troops, and, further, it applied to me as their commander.

I had to decide, therefore, whether I should obey that order and take my men to the Douma, or else whether to leave my men leaderless in this dangerous situation by resigning, and thus to let them drift on to the rocks of revolution with the rest. Hitherto I had succeeded in preserving loyalty and good discipline among them. They were the only loyal and reliable troops left in the capital. It had not been an easy task to preserve them from the contamination of the revolutionary disease. To deprive them of leadership at this time would simply have added to the disaster. My main concern was to do my utmost to re-establish order in the capital by every means available, even with the sacrifice of my personal pride, so that the Emperor might safely return.

The Government was not yet a manifestly or officially revolutionary one, although it was tending that way. It was, however, as I have said, the last certain thing among the wreckage, and if the Emperor only returned backed by loyal troops and order could be re-established then all might yet be saved. There was some hope left.

Accordingly I went to the barracks of the Naval Guards, still hoping that it would not be necessary to drink this bitter cup. When I arrived, however, I saw that I had no course left to me other than take them to the Douma. They wanted to be led.

Accordingly, I marched to the Douma at the head of a battalion of Naval Guards. On the way there we were shot at by some infantry soldiers. I continued by car.[14]

Arrived at the Douma I found the place in absolute pandemonium. It was like a bear-garden. Soldiers with unbuttoned tunics and their caps pushed to the back of their heads were shouting themselves hoarse. Deputies were yelling at the top of their voices. The place was in a state of chaos and confusion. Cigarette smoke filled the air, the place was in a filthy mess, and torn paper littered the floor. Meanwhile officers were driven up the stairs by their soldiers with the butts of rifles. They were being insulted and bullied mercilessly. Among them were many whom I knew well. That was what I found in the seat of the Liberal Government. Liberalism and Socialism expressed themselves in complete anarchy.

I spent the whole of the afternoon and evening in this painful atmosphere guarded by my men. In the end a mining student came to my room and said that a car was waiting to take me away. 

On the way back we were held up by an armed gang which demanded to know who we were. The student shouted at them: “Students, comrades!’’ Whereupon they let us pass. There were buildings on fire which lit up the night with their ghastly glare. An armed and shouting rabble went through the streets. Machine-gun and rifle firing could be heard quite near.

The trouble and disorder, because it had not been checked in time, had spread meanwhile to Moscow and other towns. Russia was collapsing and sinking before our eyes.

When I reached home I found my wife in a state of great anxiety owing to my long absence. She thought that all was over with me.

Soon after this tragical day order was re-established and normal life resumed its course. The capital woke up from this fearful nightmare.

After this sad and dangerous farce in which I had witnessed the triumph of the forces of disorder and of ill- placed Utopian idealism, I realized that it was the end and that the time for strong action had been missed, and that henceforth the country was being plunged headlong into anarchy, bloodshed, and complete dilapidation in the name of all the various human virtues. 

On 3 March 1917, old style, the consummation of this ghastly tragedy came with all the crushing weight of an overwhelming and sudden catastrophe. It was the end. 

On the night of 2 March the Emperor had abdicated for himself and his son the Czarevitch Alexis.[ii] Grand Duke Michael had refused to assume leadership. All power and authority had been handed over to the Government.

It was the saddest moment in my life. Thereafter all seemed futile and hopeless. Hitherto there had been hope. Now the whole reality had revealed itself mercilessly and like a lifeless vacuum before one. It was as though the very ground had given way beneath one’s feet. All that one had worked, fought, and suffered for had been in vain.

When the troops at the front heard of the disaster, they at first refused to believe it. They had been confident of victory. The offensive had been fixed for April, and that might have led them to the long-expected triumph for which they had suffered much during these dismal years of war.

They suspected treason. Many hardened fighters wept. They bore no ill will to the Emperor. They knew that he had been betrayed and abandoned. The regiments awaited the order to march on the capital to make short work of the traitors. They waited in vain. The order never came.

As soon as I heard what had happened I handed in my resignation[15], and with a heavy heart went to address my men.

I told them that in my position I could not continue to lead them. I exhorted them to remain loyal to their country, to keep good discipline, and to obey their superiors; that for twenty years I had been with them and that this was the hardest day in my life.

Like many of the seasoned fighters at the front, when they heard the news that the Emperor had abdicated there were tears in their eyes. Then they rushed up to me, seized me in their arms, and lifted me up on their shoulders shouting: “Where you are, sir, we will be.” 

Darkness and bitter sorrow settled over all things. The curtain had fallen. Henceforth there was nothing left but to face the game of life to the end, in the hope of a resurrection after this bitter calvary which had now begun. 

Some came to look me up, they continued guarding me until I and my family left the capital.[16] One of my sailors used to come to us when we were in exile in Finland, bringing us provisions, wine, cakes, and delicacies of all kinds. He looked upon this revolution with the common sense of a man of the people. It was a farce, he said, which would end sadly.

These were some of the fruits of the doctrine of progress and enlightenment, of liberty and ‘understanding,’ but they were at most innocently farcical when compared with some others—for example, that the ‘Social Experiment’ of the Revolution cost Russia the lives of about fifty million human beings. If this sacrifice had at least produced a Marxian paradise on earth and happiness for all, it might have been a dear price to pay, but it produced nothing but continuous starvation for more than twenty years, tyranny of the worst kind, and an absolute negation of all natural rights of the individual. This Utopian doctrine has expressed itself in more suffering, bloodshed, and privation than the most merciless campaign of extinction by the world’s cruellest conquerors.

On Easter Saturday a delegation of my sailors came to my house and insisted on my coming with them to our chapel in the barracks to attend the Liturgy of Easter night with them. I was rushed away by them. They showed me where to stand in the Church.

That was my last Easter on Russian soil.

We did not leave our house until May 1917. Meanwhile some kind of order had been re-established; it was merely an uncanny calm before the great storm which was gathering over the country.

It is an interesting fact worth mentioning that during the troubles of March, the electric light, gas, and the water supply had never failed in the capital.

Quiet had settled down. I did not trust this calm any more than I would have trusted one in Asiatic seas when the sky is ominously threatening before a typhoon. It was not a natural calm.

After considerable difficulties I obtained permission from the ‘Government’ to leave for Finland with my family. Our departure was very well and quietly arranged by a commissionaire.

In June of the year 1917 I left St. Petersburg by train with my two daughters; Ducky followed me alone.[17]

Crossing the Finnish frontier I left Russia behind me for an exile that has now lasted for twenty-one years.

Before me lay the unknown, behind me the gathering shadows of the night. But amid the utter darkness there was the light of hope, but that hope is with me still, and it will never leave me.

Footnotes

(2024)

[1] The Grand Duke does not overstate the importance of his wife’s efforts.  Victoria Melita’s motorized ambulance unit was known for its efficiency, and she spent a great part of the war visiting the front near Warsaw, where Grand Duke Kirill was posted with General Rusyn; she occasionally carried out her duties under enemy fire, and was awarded the St. George’s Cross by Nicholas II in 1916, the only female member of the Imperial Family to be so awarded.

[2] “Admiral Russin” Admiral Alexander Ivanovich Rusin (Russian, b. 1861-1956) was born into an ecclesiastical family in Tver.  He graduated from the Naval College (1881), the Hydrographic department of the Nikolaev Naval Academy (1888). After a distinguished naval career, he was appointed Chief of the Naval Staff of the Supreme Commander Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, where he remained until the summer of 1917. He headed the operational and strategic management of the combat activities of the Russian Imperial Fleet, and led the development of naval operations during the First World War. An ardent monarchist, he refused attempts to coerce him to sign a letter asking for Nicholas II’s abdication, and fled Russia in 1919, ultimately settling in Casablanca where he died in 1959,

[3] “Bieloveshch” Today, Białowieża on the Polish-Belorussian border.  Site of a Romanov hunting palace built by Tadeusz Maria Rostworowski and Nicolas de Rochefort in 1894 at the behest of Tsar Alexander III. The palace burned in 1944 during the Second World War, and the remains were demolished in 1961. Only the palace gates, and, as Grand Duke Kirill noted, the Aurocs have survived.

[4] The Battle of Grunwald, or the First Battle of Tannenberg, to which the Grand Duke refers, was fought in July 1410.  The battle at Tannenberg, was fought from the 23 to 30 August 1914, during the first month of World War I. The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army and its commanding general, Alexander Samsonov, committed suicide. The ensuing battles destroyed most of the First Army as well and kept the Russians struggling until Spring of 1915.

[5] Victoria Feodorovna, her mother-in-law Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Elder, and Duck’s sister, Marie of Romania worked together through emissaries to arrange for supplies to be sent from Russia to war-weakened Romania. Marie later wrote her sister: “We could not have survived those early days without your help and the aid of dear Aunt Miechen and we knew our friends had not forgotten us…”

[6] This is a rare, but apparently accurate point of view, as confirmed by Lieven, d’Encasusse, and others.

[7] Grand Duke Kirill is noted in Nicholas’ diaries as having met with the Emperor more than 50 times between 1914-1917.

[8] Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna was in Romania until Christmas, which she spent in Kiev with the Dowager Empress.  She returned to St. Petersburg in January, where she discovered she was pregnant.  She remained in the capital throughout the February days, and went to Finland in July, expecting to return for her “accouchement” in August.  She never returned to Russia.

[9] The war brought out the best in Ducky, but also caused latent tensions within the imperial family to rise. “The Grand Duchess Cyril had her own ambulance-train during the war: She travelled continually backwards and forwards to the Front, returning sometimes looking worn and harassed, her eyes heavy with lack of sleep and overpowering weariness. She was acutely aware of the lack of organization in the conduct of the war; she had seen the appalling shortage of ammunition, the scarcity of supplies and Red Cross material. When the Emperor took command at Headquarters, and Sturmer and Protopopoff were given posts in the Government, she became more than ever opposed to the Empress, blaming her for the mismanagement in the administration in the country. There had never been any sympathy between them, but now her dislike flared into open hostility, and when she went to see her former sister-in-law, begging her to influence the Emperor into granting concessions, and was told that she was interfering in matters which were not her concern, she returned seething with exasperation, saying that she had been treated like an ignorant schoolgirl.” (Buchanan, M. Victorian , p. )

[10] The Empress appears, in fact, not to have been consulted in this matter, and was outraged that “her” Guards Equipage were being sent to Petrograd, and wrote to Nicholas II condemning the action.  She was not left unguarded, however, and more than 15,000 loyal troops were at Tsarskoe Selo to protect the Imperial family, including the Konvoy.  (cf. Hasegawa, Y., The February Revolution, Petrograd 1917, Chicago: 2017)

[11] Ducky writes that Kirill was surprised when instead, the Garde Equipage arrived in full revolt at his palace in Glinka Street late in the day on the 1st of March, wearing red ribbons and carrying banners.  Kirill did his best to try to persuade the mob to follow the orders to go to restore order in the capital.  Ducky wrote to Marie of Romania: “If you could have seen his marble-like features & his intense calm facing and talking to the mob & his mutinous équipage de la garde you would also never forget it” Victoria Melita, letter to Marie of Romania, 10 March, 1917, copy from the Royal Archives Bucharest, John Wimbles Papers, Archivio Orleans-Borbón, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain.

[12] On the morning of the first, Kirill received an order instructing all available forces to come to the Duma at the Tavrichesky Palace to preserve order in the capital, prompting his earlier recall if the guards (cf note 170).  The Duma Committee and Military Commission had issued an order for all Officers to arrive on the 1st and 2nd of March. (Hasegawa, Y., The February Revolution, Petrograd 1917, Chicago: 2017, p. 404.)

[13] In point of fact, the Duma Committee was deliberately manipulating the Emperor’s train in order to wrest power from the Romanovs. (cf Hasegawa, p. 479-480.)

[14] For primary source accounts of this event, see Polovtsov, Engelgardt, and Varun-Sekret, Appendix XX, XX, and XX)

[15] The Grand Duke resigned from his posts on the 9th of March, immediately after the order to arrest the Imperial Family.  This was noted in the Senate and in newspapers as early as the 10th of March (cf. Priazovskii Krai, 10 March, 1917)

[16] It is often reported that Grand Duke Kirill ordered a red flag hoisted over his palace, but in a rediscovered 10 March letter to her sister, Queen Marie of Romania, Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna (“Ducky”) wrote that she had found herself barricaded inside her home with her daughters under the self-appointed “protection” of a mob who had placed a red banner on the façade of the palace. Ducky wrote to her sister “of our feelings, what is the use of talking, what it meant to have a red flag placed on our house, to hear ourselves tattled of as “les Romanoffs”--  the thousand and one misères [miseries] of daily life I will not even mention.  They seem as nothing compared to the hugeness of the upheaval.”  (Victoria Melita, letter to Marie of Romania, 10 March, 1917, copy from the Royal Archives Bucharest, John Wimbles Papers, Archivio Orleans-Borbón, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain.) This barricading was corroborated by Albert Stopford in his diaries, published in 1919, and he also mentions that red flags had been placed on other Imperial buildings including the Winter Palace.  On March 30, he noted “The large coat of arms over the main entrance to the Winter Palace is still uncovered, but the big crown on the top of the palace is covered with red. (Stopford, p. 131) On the 23rd, he noted that all the eagles and crowns had been removed from the building itself (ibid., p. 132).  Finally, at the end of the month, he wrote in a letter to a friend of Grand Duchess Vladimir: “The Kyrills are in a great state.  Poor Things!  [ … } Their front door is still barricaded and has a red flag.” (ibid, p. 140).

[17] Grand Duke Kirill and his daughters Maria and Kira arrived in Finland on June 9th.  Grand Duchess Victoria joined them shortly after, but before July 16th.

Original Footnotes

(1939)

[i] Russian Imperial organizations, such as Red Cross, schools, hospitals, etc., were either financed by members of the Imperial Family, or associations such as the Association of Nobility, Provincial Councils, Towns, or Merchants.

[ii] Nicholas II abdicated the throne of Russia in his own name and in that of his son and heir, the Czarevitch Alexis, and appointed his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch, as his successor.