Are you sure that just because you've not read it in anyone's diaries or books that Nicholas II didn't have a heart attack?
And, it seems just lately I recall reading that a swarm of doctors were around Nicholas II just about that time period. I've gotta run. Be gone for a few days. Maybe, by the time I get back, I'll have remembered where I read it.
AGRBear
Bear, you're probably thinking of Nicholas's diary entry for March 11, 1917, quoted in Massie's
Nicholas and Alexandra:
"A vivid warning signal on the state of his health flashed on Sunday morning, March 11. As he stood in church, Nicholas suffered 'an excruciating pain in the chest' which lasted for fifteen minutes. 'I could hardly stand the service out,' he wrote, 'and my forehead was covered with drops of perspiration. I cannot understand what it could have been because I had no palpitation of the heart.... If this occurs again, I shall tell Fedorov [the doctor].' The symptoms are those of a coronary occlusion" (Massie, p. 390).
I don't know on what basis Massie concludes that Nicholas II had had a coronary occlusion (I assume he consulted with a doctor or two). But certainly, from the description Nicholas gives, it doesn't sound like any panic or anxiety attack I've ever heard of (I thought these were characterized by a pounding or racing heartbeat, whereas Nicholas states quite specifically that he felt no "palpitation of the heart").
Whatever this was, a coronary occlusion or something else, it occurred four days before Nicholas's abdication, and, it would seem, only hours before he learned that the rioting in Petrograd had reached alarming proportions (according to Massie, he was informed of the seriousness of the situation only on the evening of March 11).
It's also obvious from at least one of his ministers' remembrances that Nicholas had been approaching a state of nervous collapse for some time before the March Revolution. Kokovstov recorded his impressions of the tsar during an interview on February 1: "During the year that I had not seen him, he had become almost unrecognizable. His face had become very thin and hollow and covered with small wrinkles. His eyes...had become quite faded and wandered aimlessly from object to object.... The face of the Tsar bore an expression of helplessness.... the Tsar listened to me with the same sickly smile, glancing nervously about him....[asked] a question which to me seemed perfectly simple...the Tsar became reduced to a perfectly incomprehensible state of helplessness. The strange, almost vacant smile remained fixed on his face; he looked at me as if to seek support and to ask me to remind him of a matter that had absolutely slipped his memory.... For a long time, he looked at me in silence as if trying to collect his thoughts or to recall what had escaped his memory" (Kokovstov, quoted in Massie, pp. 365-366).
Massie notes of this interview that Kokovstov left it "in tears. Outside, he found Dr. Botkin and Count Paul Benckendorff... 'Do you not see the state of the tsar?' he asked. 'He is on the verge of some mental disturbance if not already in its power.' Botkin and Benckendorff both said that Nicholas was not ill, merely tired. Nevertheless, Kokovstov returned to Petrograd with the strong impression 'that the Tsar was seriously ill and that his illness was of a nervous character'" (Massie, p. 366).
To me it seems quite clear that once the initial horror of deciding to abdicate was over, and all the burdens of office and a disastrous war had been lifted off his shoulders once and for all, Nicholas experienced his abdication as a relief. If we are to believe the memoirs of Gibbes, this sense of relief appears to have lasted until news of the Bolshevik takeover reached the former emperor in exile in Tobolsk less than a year later.
