Just when everything seemed to be going along smoothly an incident occurred in remote Siberia at the Lena gold fields.  The miners had gone on strike for better conditions.  Two hundred people were massacred when a police officer ordered his men to fire.  The officer was drunk.  The Duma and the press quickly dubbed the slaughter “a second Bloody Sunday.”

Alexander Kerensky headed the Commission of Inquiry into the event.  Kerensky’s report catapulted his career and he was elected to the Fourth Duma.  From that forum he launched a hostile anti-government campaign.  By 1914 strikers numbered one and a half million across Russia, smashing windows and running amok.  More fuel for revolution.  Strikes and assassinations seemed to be the order of the day, not only in Russia.

Unrest had been brewing in the Austro-Hungarian Empire for some time.  The assassination of Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarejavo in 1914 brought the whole situation to a head.  “Willie” was a staunch ally of Austria.  He tried his best to finesse Nicholas into staying neutral, but Russia had a long history of sympathy for the Slav people in the Balkans.  World War I was on with Russia siding with England and France against Austria and Germany.  The public sentiments did an about face from revolution to fervent patriotism for the Czar and Holy Russia.

The Industrial Revolution in Russia had not caught up with Western Europe.  England and France could not help Russia with armaments. Germany quickly blockaded the only easy access in the Baltic in the north as well as the Dardanelles in the south.  All that Russia had were waves and waves of soldiers.

In the three years of war, fifteen million, five hundred thousand men were mobilized.  Cavalry with lances were sent out against Prussian artillery and machine guns; bayonets against rifles.  One fourth of the Russian Army was killed or wounded after only five months of war.  The strength of the army’s religious belief and devotion to the czar accounted for much of their bravery and resilience.

Throughout the war, Nicholas spent much of his time at the Stavka, the supreme command headquarters camp.  Initially it was situated at Baranovichi in Poland near the German and Austrian fronts.  As the war progressed, the camp moved to Mogilev.  Nicholas was painfully aware of how ill prepared he had been for his role as czar.  He was determined that he would train Alexis for his future responsibilities.  Much to the dismay of Alexandra, Nicholas took the eleven-year-old czarevich with him to the camp.

Alexis enjoyed much more freedom at the Stavka than he was allowed at Tsarskoe Selo. At home, he was surrounded by women fussing over his health.  He loved the masculine camaraderie of the troops and men of the general staff, including foreign military attaches.  Nicholas and Alexis shared a barren room at the camp.  Alexis had several minor bumps that involved bleeding.  Nicholas II, Czar of the Russian Empire and Commander-in-Chief of the largest army in the world, spent his nights alone caring for his stricken son.

He took care not to reveal any details of Alexis’ health.  However, Alexis caught a cold and as a result of fierce sneezing began hemorrhaging from a small burst blood vessel in his nose.  He was taken back to Tsarskoe Selo as soon as possible.  As it had been at Spala, the little boy’s life hung in the balance and his distraught mother once again called on Rasputin.

The “Holy Man” came, blessed the child and told the anxious parents not to worry, that Alexis would be all right.  Rasputin promptly left the palace.  The bleeding stopped.  Even the doctors had no explanation for the remarkable recovery.  Six months later, Alexis was allowed to return to the Stavka.  By then he was something of a favorite mascot in the camp.  He was promoted from private to corporal and wore his uniform and strips with great pride.

At the beginning of the war, Russia made formidable strides in Galicia, very nearly taking and defeating Austria.  Germany had not succeeded in subduing France in 1914 so she turned her attention to knocking Russia out of the war with an enormous artillery offensive in southern Poland.  Often Russian soldiers had to wait until some of their comrades fell in order to retrieve weapons and ammunition for themselves.  The Russian army was decimated and had to retreat, ultimately to Russian soil.

The heady initial optimism of the Russian people turned to bitter hatred toward everything German.  This of course, included “Nemka, that German Woman”.  The war effort had caused serious shortages of food and fuel throughout the nation since more than fifteen million men had left the fields for the fighting front.

Russia’s lumbering old railroads, that were not serving the vast country well before the war, grew even more slow and clumsy.  Trying to get food and supplies to the army at the front overtaxed the railroads to say nothing of necessities for the general population.  St. Petersburg was especially hard hit since that city was the most distant from the sources of food and fuel.  The winter of 1916 found Russian women standing in bread lines for hours in 35 degrees below zero.  Generalized unrest spread rapidly.

Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, a distant cousin of the Czar, had been a capable Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army.  The Grand Duke hated Rasputin with a passion, so naturally Alexandra grew to distrust the commander.  At Rasputin’s and thus the empress’ insistence, Nicholas made the fateful decision to dismiss the Grand Duke and assume personal command of the military operations.  The czar took on the impossible dual responsibilities of both civil and military supreme authority.

Nicholas spent most of his time at the Stavka, hundreds of miles from the seat of government, informally turning over domestic decisions to Alexandra.  She had no real knowledge or experience in internal affairs.  Rasputin seized his opportunities to “advise” Alexandra with his dire predictions, and over time effectively weeded out ministers who did not like him.  His choices for successors were generally incompetents whose sole qualifications were that they did like him or at least curried his favor.

By 1915, the Russian army was nearly defeated, however they rallied to launch a major offensive in 1916, still suffering horrible losses.  By the end of the war the appalling toll of Russian casualties, killed, wounded or taken prisoner, stood at 7,900,000, over half of the mobilization.  Almost thirty years later in World War II they did it all over again!

Alexandra had thrown herself and their two oldest daughters, Olga and Tatiana, into personally nursing the wounded at the huge Alexander Palace that had been turned into a hospital.  She wrote Nicholas heart-wrenching letters about their days spent attending amputations, bandaging pitifully wounded men and sitting with the dying.

Rasputin continued to convince Alexandra of his indispensability as a pure messenger from God.  He conveyed his prophecies revealed in dreams, sounding very much like religious astrology.  Alexandra duly related “Our Friend” Rasputin’s opinions and predictions to Nicholas.  Rasputin, of course, kept up his nightly carousing and boasting of what a favorite of the Imperial Family he was to anyone who would listen.

When Rasputin’s “appointees” to cabinet positions had been completed, he began to intrude on military matters in order to give his “blessings” on major decisions.  Nicholas began to resent Rasputin’s incessant trespassing into military affairs especially.  He cautioned Alexandra against discussing too much with Rasputin.  But Alexandra was adamant in her blind belief in the ‘”Holy Man”.  If he could save her son, he could save the nation also.

Rasputin’s magnetic persona that initially attracted ultimately repelled.  Kerensky railed against the czar and the Imperial Government continually.  Others went so far as to accuse Alexandra of being pro-German and calling for her to be sent to a convent, the traditional way of removing an undesirable empress.

Vladimir Purishkevich, a member of the Duma, denounced Rasputin on the floor of that body for two hours as an evil that was destroying the dynasty and with it, the fate of the Russian people.  The huge extended Romanov family was alarmed and each in turn beseeched both Nicholas and Alexandra to be rid of that unhealthy influence.  In Alexandra’s case, to no avail.

Prince Felix Yussoupov was a young man about town in St. Petersburg.  He had a beautiful young wife, Irina, the niece of the czar.  He was the only heir to one of Russia’s largest fortune.  At one time Felix had been a carousing companion of Rasputin.

Yussoupov as well as others heard Purishkevich’s speech in the Duma and determined to kill Rasputin.  He entered into a conspiracy with four other men, including Purishkevich and a doctor.  Felix would entice Rasputin to his palace for a late-night rendezvous with Princess Irina.  Rasputin had never met Felix’ wife.  Unbeknownst to Rasputin, Irina was in the Crimea.

Rasputin of course knew of the Duma speech and stories that had been continually circulating about him.  He wrote the following letter typical of him:

Written with the heading “The Spirit of Gregory Elfimovich Rasputin-Novykh of the village of Pokrovskoe”:

‘I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg.  I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. [1917] I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, [Nicholas] to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand.  If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Czar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Czar, have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia.  But if I am murdered by boyars, [nobles], and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia.  Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country.  Czar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Gregory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years.  They will be killed by the Russian people. . .I shall be killed.  I am no longer among the living.  Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.

Gregory’ ”₂₁

True to the plan, Felix took Rasputin to the cellar of his Moika Palace. There, a samovar for tea, various bottles of wine and favorite cakes of Rasputin’s were arrayed.  All were heavily laced with potassium cyanide, enough to instantly kill a dozen men.  Two glasses of Madiera and several cakes later, Rasputin was still very much alive, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Irina.  Several hours later the amateur assassins could wait no longer.

Felix shot the starets in the back and the doctor pronounced him dead.  Rasputin roused himself and ran out into the courtyard.  Purishkevich followed, fired four times, missed twice but hit him once in the shoulder and once in the head.  Felix ran up and repeatedly hit the fallen man with a rubber club.  When finally the body was still, they wrapped it, tied it, and pushed it through a hole in the ice of the frozen Neva River.

Three days later when the body was recovered it was determined that Rasputin had died of drowning.

Rasputin was buried in a small chapel on the Imperial Park grounds at Tsarskoe Selo. There is little doubt that this unwashed rogue of a self-proclaimed starets from a remote corner of Siberia hastened the downfall of the ancient dynasty of Romanov.

The people of St. Petersburg were overjoyed.  The peasants in the villages throughout the vast nation mourned him as a martyr.  Nicholas was most concerned with the effect of Rasputin's death on Alexandra but appalled that members of the royal family had stained their hands with murder.  Prince Felix was exiled to one of his remote estates but later he and Irina left Russia with a large portion of their wealth.  Purishkevich, as a member of the Duma with immunity, was not charged and was hailed as a hero.

Rasputin had often warned Alexandra that Alexis would die and the dynasty would fall if she lost faith in him or if he died.  From then on the Empress accepted whatever happened with sorrowful stoicism.

For two months the Imperial Government was disintegrating but Nicholas either ignored or rejected the warnings that came to him from all quarters.  He decided to wait until after the war to institute reforms.  On Wednesday, March 7, Nicholas left for the Stavka.

In one day, Monday March 12, the revolution began and the Government crumbled.  Riots raged in the streets.  The police and the familiar Cossacks refused to stop them, even joining in.  Soldiers in the garrisons of St. Petersburg turned on their officers, in some cases killing them.  With red flags on their bayonets, they joined the crowds of people carrying red banners, and marched together as they sang the Marseillaise.  Fires blazed as government buildings and police stations were put to the torch.  An angry mob trashed the house of the ballerina, Mathilde Kschessinska.  Anarchy reigned.

By nightfall, the Duma assumed power, with the thirty-six-year-old Kerensky very much in charge.  He averted the massacre of the ministers by forming a Provisional Government consisting of two assemblies, a coalition of the Soviet arm with representatives of the Soldiers and Workers’ Deputies as well as those of the Russian ruling class.  St. Petersburg was in the hands of the revolution, but Russia was an immense country at war and Nicholas was still Czar.

Five hundred miles away at the Stavka, Nicholas was ill informed by his (Rasputin’s?) ministers as to what was going on at the capital.  He probably would not have believed them even if the reports he received had been accurate.  Telegrams flew back and forth between the ministers and officials.  It took an urgent wire from Alexandra to force Nicholas to start his train trip back to Tsarskoe Selo.  Aboard the train, Nicholas learned that the personal guards at Tsarskoe Selo had gone over to the revolutionary side.

The new government insisted that there was only one way to save the Romanov Dynasty.  Nicholas must abdicate in favor of Alexis, with the Czar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael as Regent.  Nicholas stubbornly refused until he received a barrage of telegrams from the military officers who concurred: Nicholas must abdicate.  The agreement of Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, the former Commander-in-Chief, tipped the scales.

Nicholas agreed to step down.  He did not want to see civil war in his beloved country, especially at a time when they were engaged in a desperate foreign war.  His sense of patriotism outweighed his personal convictions or even concerns for his family.  Nothing mattered more to Nicholas than beating Germany.

These dramatic events transpired aboard the monarch’s train.  On March 15, 1917 Nicholas II, Czar of all the Russias, signed the first form of abdication.  He felt an almost sense of relief and throughout the whole ordeal he conducted himself with grace and dignity.  He presumed that he and his family would be exiled or perhaps sent to retire at Livadia.  He discussed the fragile health of his twelve-year-old son with a trusted doctor.

Alexis most probably would not be allowed to be educated outside of Russia.  Nicholas could not bear the thought of being separated from his son, turned over to strangers who had no knowledge of the constant care required to preserve the life of the boy.

A second draft of the abdication paper in favor of Michael alone was prepared and Nicholas signed it, changing the course of not only his family’s history but that of Russia.  Three hundred and four years of the Romanov Dynasty ended.

Neither Nicholas nor Alexandra had any way of knowing what the monumental consequences of their two exceptional disasters would have on the entire world – the hemophilia of their son and heir coupled with the Russian Empire’s disintegration.

In France and England the news of the abdication was greeted with various responses.  Socialist Parties were overjoyed of course.  The United States, about to enter the war, however, was the first to formally recognize the new government.  Woodrow Wilson hailed the collapse of the autocracy and welcomed the Russian people into ranks of democratic nations.

Some ten years later, a young Winston Churchill, said:

“It is the shallow fashion of these times to dismiss the Tsarist regime as a purblind, corrupt, incompetent tyranny.   But a survey of its thirty month’ war with Germany and Austria should correct these loose impressions and expose the dominant facts.  We may measure the strength of the Russian Empire by the battering it had endured, by the disasters it had survived, by the inexhaustible forces it had developed, and by the recovery it had made.  In the governments of states, when great events are afoot, the leader of the nation, whoever he [may] be, is held accountable for failure and vindicated by success.  No matter who wrought the toil, who planned the struggle, to the supreme responsible authority, belongs the blame or credit.

“Why should this stern test be denied to Nicholas II?  He had made many mistakes, what ruler has not?  He was neither a great captain nor a great prince.  He was only a true, simple man of average ability, of merciful disposition, upheld in all his daily life by his faith in God.  But the brunt of supreme decisions centered upon him.  At the summit where all problems are reduced to Yea or Nay, where events transcend the faculties of man and where all is inscrutable, he had to give the answers.  His was the function of the compass needle.  War or no war?  Advance or retreat?  Right or left?  Democratise or hold firm?  Quit or persevere?  These were the battlefields of Nicholas II.  Why should he reap no honor from them?  The devoted onset of the Russian armies which saved Paris in 1914; the mastered agony of the munitionless retreat; the slowly re-gathered forces; the victories of Brusilov’; the Russian entry upon the campaign of 1917, unconquered, stronger than ever; has he no share in these?  In spite of errors vast and terrible, the regime he personified, over which he presided, to which his personal character gave the vital spark, had at this moment won the war for Russia.

“He is about to be struck down.  A dark hand, gloved at first in folly, now intervenes.  Exit Tsar.  Deliver him and all he loved to wounds and death.  Belittle his efforts, asperse his conduct, insult his memory; but pause then to tell us who else was found capable.  Who or what could guide the Russian State?  Men gifted and daring; men ambitious and fierce, spirits audacious and commanding – of these there were no lack.  But none could answer the few plain questions on which the life and fame of Russia turned.”₂₂

In St. Petersburg a controversy arose over Michael’s ascendancy to the throne.  It was reasoned that the monarchy was the single force that could unify the nation.  Kerensky argued that the Soviets would never hear of it and that he, Kerensky, could not insure the life of the new czar.  It took Michael only a few minutes to make up his mind to abdicate also.

Nicholas asked for and was granted permission to say goodbye to his army and the foreign military attaches.  He spent five days in Mogilev during which time the Dowager Empress Marie arrived aboard her private train from Kiev.  Marie was beside herself at once with rage, blaming everything on Alexandra; then descending into misery at this greatest humiliation Nicholas’ abdication had caused her.  Nicholas spent three days trying to console her through her tearful outbursts.  Throughout the ordeal, Nicholas retained his demeanor of calm composure.

The rumor mill in St. Petersburg went wild with tales of Nicholas going back to the Stavka to surrender to the Germans and marshal the army against the revolution along with revivals of depraved sexual stories about Alexandra and Rasputin.  The word “treason” began to circulate.  The Provisional Government ordered the former sovereign and his wife to be detained under house arrest for their personal safety.  A delegation of envoys came to take the “prisoner” back to his family at Tsarskoe Selo.  Nicholas’ train left at the same time Marie's did to take her back to Kiev.

The Dowager Empress escaped from the Crimea to Denmark in 1919 on a British battleship, taking her beloved jewels with her.  She lived in a wing of the palace of her nephew, King Christian X.   In response to Christian’s request to conserve electricity, Marie ordered her servants to turn on all the lights in the palace from top to bottom.  Christian then asked her to sell some of her jewels to help pay for some of her expenses.  She indignantly refused.  Ultimately, King George V of England, another nephew, granted her a substantial subsidy to support her extravagance.  She died in Copenhagen at age eighty-one.

From the time Nicholas left for the Stavka on March 7 until he returned, Alexandra was dealing with little or no reliable information on the crisis.  And of all things, Olga, Titiana and Alexis had come down with particularly virulent cases of measles.  Alexandra spent all her time personally nursing them.

On Tuesday, March 13 an angry mob of mutinous soldiers decided to march to Tsarskoe Selo and capture “Nemka, that German Woman”.  Most of them wound up getting drunk and looting in the village, but there were occasional sounds of gunfire outside as the garrison of about 1,500 men prepared to defend the palace.

The next day to the astonishment of the palace entourage, the loyal soldiers began to melt away, joining the revolution.  Many of the palace staff also defected.  Water and electricity were cut off.  Only a handful of devoted friends and faithful attendants remained.  To make matters worse, Marie and Anastasia came down with measles.  Now all five of the royal children were sick.

On March 17 at seven in the evening, Grand Duke Paul, the czar’s uncle, arrived to tell Alexandra of the abdication.  She was devastated and frantic.  She could not believe it! She didn’t even know where Nicholas was.

As it turned out, the abdication ended the siege of the palace.  The Provisional Government took charge of security surrounding the palace.  Alexandra was even permitted to receive a brief telephone call from Nicholas.

March 21 General Kornilov, commander of the St. Petersburg garrison, came to inform Alexandra of her arrest.  Any others who chose to stay would not be allowed to leave.  But he assured her that as soon as the former czar arrived and the children were well enough to travel, the family would be taken to Murmansk to board a British cruiser for England.  It was time to tell the children of the events that would turn their young lives upside down.

Finally, in the morning of March 22, Citizen Romanov returned to Tsarsekoe Selo.  When his train arrived all members of his entourage scurried away except one attendant.  The car was stopped at the locked gate of the palace and a sentry challenged entry.  When he was allowed to pass, Alexandra dashed to greet her husband.  Upstairs, alone, they fell weeping into each other’s arms.