Tsarskoye Selo

“ The latter had removed from her own house to the Palace of Tsarskoye Selo, so as to be able to remain in constant attendance on the miserable Empress. Seeing her so forlorn and desolate, she bethought herself of rousing her faculties, and tried to persuade her that, though she had lost her advisers and counselors, she had yet a duty to perform,{244} which consisted in going on with the work they had suggested to her to start. Peace was more than ever necessary to Russia, as well as to the dynasty, against which such fierce attacks were being launched. ”

“ After a cruel fight the troops of the Pulkovo detachment completely routed the counter-revolutionary forces, who retreated from their positions in disorder, and under cover of Tsarskoye Selo fell back toward Pavlovsk II and Gatchina. ”

“ Tsarskoye Selo-station was quiet, but knots of soldiers stood here and there talking in low tones and looking uneasily down the empty track in the direction of Gatchina. I asked some of them which side they were on. "Well," said one, "we don't exactly know the rights of the matter.... There is no doubt that Kerensky is a provocator, but we do not consider it right for Russian men to be shooting Russian men." ”

“ The Minister-President had taken Tsarskoye Selo, we were told, and was already in the Petrograd campagna, five miles away. He would enter the city to-morrow-in a few hours. The Soviet troops in contact with his Cossacks were said to be going over to the Provisional Government. Tchernov was somewhere in between, trying to organise the "neutral" troops into a force to halt the civil war.
In the city the garrison regiments were leaving the Bolsheviki, they said. Smolny was already abandoned.... All the Governmental machinery had stopped functioning. ”

“ Kerensky’s staff, fearing that they would be surrounded, gave the order to retreat, which retreat speedily assumed a disorderly character. By 11-12 P.M., Tsarkoye Selo, including the wireless station, was entirely occupied by the troops of the Soviets. The Cossacks retreated towards Gatchina and Colpinno.
The morale of the troops is beyond all praise. The order has been given to pursue the retreating Cossacks. From the Tsarskoye Selo station a radio-telegram was sent immediately to the Front and to all local Soviets throughout Russia. ”

“ TSARSKOYE SELO, a district town of Russia, in the government of St Petersburg, and an imperial residence, 18 miles to the south of the capital, is situated on the Duderhof Hills and consists of the town proper, surrounded by several villages and a German colony, which are summer resorts for the inhabitants of St Petersburg, and the imperial parks and palaces. The town is built according-to a regular plan, and its houses, a great number of which have been erected by the crown, are nearly all surrounded by gardens. ”

“ In July he visited the emperor Nicholas I. at Tsarskoye Selo, receiving permission to proceed and instructions as to the policy he should adopt, and he next made a tour of the courts of Europe in search of moral and material support. ”

“ The Allies had begun to get some inkling as to the intrigue which was going on under the Czar’s own roof, an intrigue in which his wife held the foremost rôle. They contrived to put obstacles in the way of Mr. Protopopoff and of his friends, and to stop for a while the active correspondence which he was carrying on with the German Government via Stockholm. At the same time they arranged matters in such a way that the liberal leaders in the Duma became apprised of the negotiations pending between the Kaiser and his kinswoman at Tsarskoye Selo. ”

“ At that time she was going out a great deal, which was not the case later on, when her whole position changed and when she became the Empress’s principal confidante, and had perforce{118} to live in retirement. But twelve or fifteen years ago her house in Tsarskoye Selo was the meeting-place of a select circle, and especially of the officers of the regiments constituting the garrison of the Imperial Residence, who liked to drop in of an evening, and find a pleasant hostess, together with an excellent supper which was always waiting for them. Mr. ”

“ WHILE the illness of Alexis Nicolaïevitch threw such a gloom over the Imperial family, and the influence of Rasputin, a product of their very distress, continued to grow, life at Tsarskoïe-Selo seemed to flow along as smoothly as ever, at any rate to outward appearance. ”

“ If he does not fall by them, then he will go naturally, for he is not a puppet hypnotised by the wishes of Tsarskoe-Selo, as are so many of our Ministers. The Tsar, who so quickly takes offence nowadays, prefers flunkeys to Ministers whose personality is too marked. ”

“ The usual question of any privileged arrival at Tsarkoe Selo was: “Well, how is Uncle Willie to-day?” And the invariable answer was: “No—no—he’s not our Uncle Willie—we don’t want to hear his name.”
Russia has been described as a country of tears and misery during the war, but this is incorrect. The peasants were never so rich as at this time, and there was no discontent in the country districts; the wives received big allowances, and they earned extra money for themselves without any difficulty. Every boy indulged in high patent-leather boots, every girl spent money on dress. ”

“ I learned of the rapid disintegration of the army under the weak and ineffectual Provisional Government, the tottering state of Kerensky’s régime, and the threatening domination of the Soviets. What was in store for Russia no one knew, happily for Russians. Of the fall of the Soviets and the rise of Bolshevism no one yet had any premonition. The radical element was already in control, and there was a great deal of threatening talk of shooting the Emperor. However, the Imperial Family was still alive and in Tsarskoe Selo, which was as much as I had dared to hope. ”

“ Not by any outside help but by our own efforts, by loyal Russians coming together, not as political groups but as compatriots, can great Russia rise again out of her shame and desolation and become once more a nation among the nations of the earth.{196}
CHAPTER XIV FOR two months after the assassination of Rasputine the Emperor remained at Tsarskoe Selo, but he was by no means idle. In fact his whole heart and mind were occupied, not so much with the scandal that had reached its tragic climax in the Yusupoff Palace, but with the War which at that moment seemed to favor Russian arms. ”

“ But during the last months which preceded the removal of this sinister figure from the horizon of Tsarskoie Selo, no one in Russia would believe in such a version, seeing that this Jester could dispose according to his pleasure of all the high places in the State, that he had created ministers, functionaries of paramount importance, church dignitaries, and that whoever addressed himself to him generally got what he wanted, whilst it was his friends who were controlling the government of the vast empire of the Czars. ”

“ It has been said that the Tsar did not know what was going on in Petrograd, that the messages which were sent to him by Rodzianko and other members of the Duma were intercepted by the Palace Commandant, and so forth. But as a matter of fact the Tsar played a most active part in the Revolution. He knew all that was going on in Petrograd. He was in constant communication by special wire with the Empress at Tsarskoe Selo; and the Empress in turn was connected by special wire with Protopopov. The Tsar knew that a revolt was going to be provoked, and he was getting ready. ”

“ For the Tsar is not only the executive and the law-making power of the state, head of the Church, fountain of justice, commander-in-chief of the army and navy, but, more than all these, he is father to his people. His subjects owe him, in theory, a filial respect and obedience; and, with the exception of the Nihilists, they are dutiful children. The relation is an Oriental one, which we of the West can not understand. But it is powerfully operative in Russia. It has not been really weakened by anything that the Nihilists have done, but, on the contrary, strengthened. ”

“ Would it then be true that the Slav people, so powerful in their literature and in their imaginative art, so original in their temperament, as soon as they apply themselves to political action are only capable of fitful impulses, and unable to strike out a path of their own? Would it be true that 180,000,000 of Russia people are only to be like puppets in the hands of a few thousand bureaucrats or a few hundred agitators, who pull the wires, think out the plot and apportion the parts? ”

“ Why ride you so sorrowfully, my lord? Have you received an unkind word from the Tsar?" Prince Lasar answered: "My dear child Yaroslav, I have indeed received a cruel order from the Tsar. Other children are a joy to their father from their youth up, a support in his old age, and the guardian of his memory when dead. Not so, alas! with you, my son. You go to the Tsar's Court and play mischievous tricks with the children of the princes and boyars, and they have complained to the Tsar Kartaus, and he has banished you from the kingdom." ”

“ Can any one have sympathy with the once-Imperial, afterwards exiled to Siberia—that same zone of that illimitable tundra to which the Tsar of all the Russias had exiled so many of his innocent and patriotic subjects, men and women who fought for Russia’s right to live, to expand, and to prosper? Let us remember that in Siberia to-day lie the bones of a hundred thousand Russian patriots, persecuted under the evil régimes of Alexander and of Nicholas. In the days of the ex-Tsar’s father I went to Siberia, and I visited the convict prisons there. ”

“ When the Government gives up its stupid methods of compulsion, when its alliance with the great liberal Powers of the West will be spiritual as well as political, it is probable that the process of Russification will proceed at a very rapid pace. For let us not be deceived by superficial appearances. The Russian race possess many of the characteristics of a superior and imperial people. They have survived a struggle for life of ruthless severity. ”

“ It is only too true that wherever one goes in Russia one is "shadowed" by the police, and Her Majesty knew full [12] well that the bureau of "personal police" at Tsarskoe-Selo would know that she had left the palace and would keep an eye upon her, because just about that period the air was full of plots against the dynasty.
The Empress and her bosom friend Mademoiselle Zéneide Kamensky—whom I afterwards knew her to be—finished their meal unrecognised by the servants, or any of those in the restaurant, and then returned to their rooms. ”

“ The patriotic army was not taken in by this propaganda, because they had seen Father’s devotion to the cause of Russia. But General Ludendorff and the Kaiser intensified this propaganda because they knew it was impossible to defeat the brave Russian army without the connivance of a revolution behind the lines. The idea was to divide, conquer, poison the mind of the Russian people and weaken loyalty to the Emperor. Mutiny was feared at the front since Father was away in Tsarskoe Selo, not because our troops were inadequately fed, clothed and supplied with arms. ”

“ For generations Russia had been advancing slowly but surely towards the ultimate goal of what she considers her "historic mission." Like a weary traveller, exhausted by a long march, and who, arriving near the end, wanting to make one supreme effort to hasten on the desirable consummation—falls down prostrate, in view of the promised land—even so the Russians, on the eve of achieving their dreams, after patiently waiting for centuries, were suddenly seized with a feverish impatience and tried to precipitate events. ”

“ They are not down-trodden; and, out of their 100,000,000 free souls, there is a proportion of Nihilists no larger, probably, than that of Socialists in Germany, Communists in France, “Dynamiters” in London, or Anarchists in Chicago. The Tsar enjoys the confidence and love of the vast majority of his people. Russia may safely challenge the rest of Europe to exhibit a parallel to the comparative progress, social and political, which she has made in the past thirty years. ”

“ Only on a small scale is agriculture or market gardening to be seen. Nevertheless two country palaces that the founder erected in the vicinity are centres of some population, Tsarske Selo among the woods on the way to Moscow and Peterhof on the southern shore of the gulf. The new Tatar-Byzantine church of the latter is a conspicuous landmark from the decks of vessels steaming along the Morskoi canal through the shallow waters between the heavily fortified island of Cronstadt and the timber port of the city itself. ”

“ In the year 1912 it was estimated that there were more than 171 millions of people under the sway of the Tsar—that is, more than one in ten of all the people on earth. I have already told you of the extraordinary variety of races which dwell beneath the Union Jack; there is almost as great a variety of peoples in the Russian Empire. There are, for example, thirty different races in the Caucasus alone. The bulk of the inhabitants, however, are of Slav race, and are descended from a people who, ages ago, entered Europe from Asia, and gradually conquered the land and settled in it. ”

“ Throughout the length and breadth of the Tsar's dominions there is not another group of men who, for genuine, wise patriotism, thorough grasp of the burning questions of the day, cordial sympathy with all that is noblest in the character of their countrymen, and exemplary political discipline, can compare with these liberals. The select band of thinkers and writers who rally round the Russian Gazette of Moscow and the review called Russian Thought, is not only an ornament to a nation still emerging from barbarism, but would do credit to an old constitutional country like our own. ”