What strikes me is how easily the abdication of Nicholas II was achieved. In less than three days, the words of only three men – Rodzianko, Ruzsky and Alexeev – would suffice to persuade Nicholas that Russia was on the verge of revolution and that he needed to hand over the Government to the Duma, then that the situation was so desperate that the only option was his abdication. As the Emperor didn’t have any political advisor in his entourage – members of the Imperial Suite were military men for the most part and he never discussed politics with them – he had no one to turn to for « independant » advice outside his courtiers - who would never contradict him anyway - and his ministers whom he didn’t trust much, except a few odd ones (like Court Minister Freedericksz who was senile and Protopopov who was more than « odd » and out of reach). The generals would fill in the gap and themselves would be quickly out manoeuvered by a few astute politicians. During his reign, Nicholas had lived « in splendid isolation », and took care of everything himself. He didn’t even have a private secretary who could have helped him with the petty details of government which overwhelmed him. Adding the burden of Supreme Commander of the Army on his shoulders, on top of the responsability of governing a vast Empire, was really too much for one man alone. This, Nicholas II failed to understand it. On the train from Moghilev to Pskov, far from the only person he really trusted but not always listened too – his wife - he must have felt more isolated than ever. He arrived at Pskov a broken man, exhausted by the burden of waging war and trying to govern at the same time. In the last months he had suffered from what is now called a burn out and, only a few days before, while at church, had experienced all the symptoms of what he tought to be a heart attack (although he might have been a panic attack instead). At Pskov he didn’t really give his generals a good fight. Although I’m no psychologist, I think that – deep down - he had already abdicated a while ago. Unknown to them, and to himself even, his generals provided him with a way out he could only have dreamt about and rejected on the basis of his deep faith and high sense of duty. What he couldn’t do on his own, others – his generals – would force him to do. He had known for a while about all kinds of plots, in the Duma, in the Army, even in his own family – and did nothing. To me, his physical and mental exhaustion, and unexpressed desire to end his sufferings, is the only (psycho-)logical explanation to his quick surrender to his generals. By letting himself get « caught like a mouse in a trap » (as the Empress put it), he committed political suicide.
He left back for Moghilev almost immediately (at 01:00 AM, March 3/16). It suddenly occured to him that he hadn’t even asked his brother’s opinion before abdicating on his favor. He wrote a telegram « To His Imperial Majesty Emperor Michael » apologizing for not having informed him beforehand. Oddly enough, it wasn’t sent before 3 :00 PM and Michael was one of the last person to learn that he was Emperor of Russia! He had spent his only night as Emperor not knowing he even was! He learned it in the morning, apparently from Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich. Later that day, members of the Provisional Government – under pressure from the Petrograd Soviet -managed to have him sign a very odd document which took hours for lawyers to write. Although the press reported that Michael had abdicated, he hadn’t : his manifesto didn’t say he was abdicating, nor that he had even accepted the Throne, only that he would accept it, providing a Constituent Assembly would later ask him to. This was quite clever because if Michael had indeed abdicated, the Succession would have gone to Cyril as the Throne couldn’t be vacant according to the Law. To prevent this, the new governement simply said that it had been collectively invested with the Supreme Power. No one bothered to protest, not even Cyril who had previously pledged allegiance to the new government. It took him five years to realize that the Russian Throne was vacant and two more to announce that, according to the Fundamental Law of the Russian Empire, he had automatically become Emperor. By then, of course there was no Throne for him to sit on, although some argued that since the Constituent Assembly never got to make a regime change (the Bolsheviks shut it down it after its first meeting), legally Russia still was a monarchy. Stalin must have had a good laugh!
Nigbil your « legalistic » questions about Nicholas II’s abdication are quite valid when applied to Michael Alexandrovich’s situation. More about that later.
Strom : to which plan of military dictatorship are you thinking about? There seems to have been more than one, some unknown to Nicholas II.
