1917 Romanovs and Revolution

 371 Lenin Speaking on Uritsky (Palace) Square at the II Congress of the III International. Petrograd, 1924 © 2017 State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

This year marks the centenary of the start of the 1917 Russian Revolution. We all know the consequences, but what exactly led up to it? And how did the tsar and his family fare during those troubled years? This book offers a clear impression of the key events, from the tragedies on the day of Nicholas’ coronation and on Bloody Sunday right through to the First World War and the liquidation of the tsar and his immediate family.

 188 Nicholas II and Tsesarevich Alexey. 1911 Photograph by Boissonnas and Eggler, St Petersburg © GARF, The State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow

A lavishly illustrated book on one of the most turbulent periods in the twentieth century: a time that fundamentally changed not only Russia but the rest of the world as well.

The End of Monarchy

 211 Tatyana, Olga, Alexey, Maria and Anastasia on a Bench in a Park. 1910s © GARF, The State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow

His Majesty King Willem-Alexander was our patron as the Prince of Orange from 2004 until his investiture in 2013.

Hermitage Amsterdam 2017

Contents 6

1917 in 2017 Cathelijne Broers Foreword

Director, Hermitage Amsterdam

9

Foreword Through Palace Eyes Mikhail Piotrovsky Director, State Hermitage Museum

12 14 16

Timeline Romanovs & Revolution Family Tree Russian Tsars and the Succession: the Fate of Potential Heirs to the Throne Map Russia at the End of 1917

18

Russia in the Reign of Nicholas II Irina Zakharova

56

The Russian Imperial Family at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Irina Zakharova

90

‘For the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland.’ The Romanovs in the First World War Dmitry Lyubin

114

1917. The Winter Palace and the Hermitage Elena Solomakha

138

Romanov Family Tensions on the Eve of the First World War and the Revolution Sergey Mironenko

156

Queen Wilhelmina and the Romanovs. An Uneasy Relationship Alexander Münninghoff

168 196 198

Exhibition Object List Bibliography Details

Foreword

Cathelijne Broers Director, Hermitage Amsterdam

 189 Ivan GoryushkinSorokopudov Heir to the Throne Tsesarevich Alexey Nikolaevich. 1907

6

1917 in 2017 The men who searched the woods outside Ekaterinburg for the graves of the last Romanovs in 2007 still get emotional when they talk about it. They are clearly moved as they describe how they discovered the burial place of young Alexey, not yet fourteen years old, and his older sister Maria. They were only amateur historians but they knew perfectly well what they were doing. They realised they were on the track of something extremely important and it was vital not to get it wrong. The bones of the murdered tsar, the tsarina, the three other daughters, two servants and the family doctor had all been found in 1991. But it was only after years of investigation that the remains were officially identified. The matter was finally settled by DNA testing, after many more or less distant members of the Romanov family (including the now 96-year-old Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth and grandson of the last tsarina’s sister) had provided samples. President Yeltsin was there when the five members of the family were publicly reinterred in St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Cathedral eighty years to the day after their murder. On that occasion, he expressed the wish for reconciliation, not only between the various camps, but also with a painful episode in the history of Russia.

The same desire for reconciliation is likely to be expressed this year during the celebrations marking the centenary of the Revolution. Perhaps permission will be given for the remains of Alexey and Maria to join those of their family and Russians will be able to turn another page in their history.

It will be no surprise that the Hermitage Amsterdam is reflecting on the Russian Revolution in 2017. But we have decided on an exhibition that also presents the period prior to the Revolution, when the seeds of the event were sown. The exhibition transports visitors to the St Petersburg of the early twentieth century (or Petrograd, as it was known from 1914).

A scintillating aristocratic city, but also a dangerously revolutionary place.

Historical developments are traced step by step: the Revolution was not a single event; it was a process. Today, historians frequently stress the lack of support for the tsar and tsarina within Russian society. Quite apart from the vast social inequality in their empire, they were to a considerable extent themselves to blame for their downfall. Blunders by the tsar, national politics controlled by a faith healer, an unwinnable war… these are just a few of the explanatory narratives advanced in the exhibition and charted in this book by Sergey Mironenko, former director of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, where many of the Romanovs’ personal possessions are preserved.

The State Archive has been extremely generous in lending items for this unique exhibition (the only one in Western Europe to examine the revolution in this way and to include such objects). Letters from the tsar, portraits of Rasputin, one of the bayonets used to slaughter the imperial family, and police photographs of a youthful Lenin: all are preserved in the Archive for purposes of study and research. The exhibition uses them, together with another large

Tsar Nicholas II and his Family. 1911 Standing from left to right: Maria, Alexandra. Seated from left to right: Olga, Nicholas, Anastasia, Alexey, Tatyana

10

After the emperor’s abdication other rooms in the palace received individuals who became renowned in in Russian history. The great poet Alexander Blok; Academician Sergey Oldenburg, who studied Central Asia; the historian Evgeny Tarle. They were involved in the special commission set up to investigate the work of government ministers under the imperial reign: the first – not particularly terrible – revolutionary tribunal. Lenin, architect of the subsequent destructive events, came to the Hermitage for the first and last time to attend sittings of the commission.

Life filled the palace. Representatives of the new powers-that-be tried to adapt it to their own purposes. Old staff and servants sought to preserve its contents. The Hermitage gave cause for particular concern. Much had been moved to Moscow and what remained was carefully protected by museum employees, led by Count Dmitry Tolstoy. He did his best to separate the museum from the palace, in which he was successful. Even during the ‘storming’ of the palace in October.

But the Provisional Government’s decision to take up residence in the palace presented a nightmare for staff. It proved impossible to maintain even the most basic order. There were so many new inhabitants milling around. The government guard, a multitude of junkers, turned the elegant palace rooms into rough barracks. Ceremonial halls such as the Malachite Hall were used for meetings. Kerensky made himself at home in the royal apartments. Homes were found in the Winter Palace for old revolutionaries such as Catherine Breshkovsky (Breshko Breshkovskaya), known as the ‘grandmother’ of the Russian revolution. And although a special commission was set up under Vereshchagin to record all the valuables in the palace, there was no order.

So tense was the domestic situation, so threatening the situation at the front, that it was necessary to evacuate the objects which had not been taken to Moscow. Two trainloads left.

The third remained behind as the events of October unfolded. The Bolsheviks took decisive steps to seize power. An almost farcical situation played itself out around the Winter Palace.

Troops came and went with great ceremony. Kerensky went off to get help. Individuals of varying status, from downright conmen to parliamentarians, roamed the palace. Living the mythology of the French revolution, the Russian revolution needed to storm something.

Something like the storming of the Tuileries Palace, with vast crowds of participants, strategically advancing columns of revolutionaries, heroism on the part of the Swiss guards.

But actors were lacking on both sides. Even so, it was inside the palace that the Provisional Government was arrested. When the great director Sergey Eisenstein made October he recreated something like the storming of the Tuileries Palace on screen. And when the great Jean Renoir made La Marseillaise he in turn based the storming of the Tuileries on October.

Keepers were still trying to keep track of the damage and losses. The Hermitage administration sought to prevent theft from the wine cellars below. And in the midst of this, on 30 October 1917 the palace was declared a state museum, alongside the Hermitage.

Now a new ‘storming of the Winter Palace’ commenced, to make it part of the Hermitage.

That battle was to last for thirty years.

11

283 Map of Military Action in 1914, the Countries shown as Individuals Lithographic Studio of the Russian Company. Published by the journal New Distorting Mirror, Moscow. 1914

Irina Zakharova

36

By the end of 1916 Russia was in a state of profound socio-economic, political and moral crisis. The war was dragging out, doing untold damage to Russia’s economy, inflation was rife and the standard of living was declining; people’s attitudes were hardening.

The populace was increasingly open to revolutionary propaganda, losing all respect for the emperor and for the autocratic system. Those around the tsar warned him of looming social explosion that might lead to a change of political regime, but Nicholas II put all his hopes in God alone. In court circles some felt that the dynasty could be saved by persuading the emperor to abdicate in favour of his son Alexey. It was hoped that the departure of an unpopular monarch and his German-born wife would bring some calm to

the political climate and avert revolutionary outburst.

But the revolution unfolded relentlessly. A shortage of foodstuffs in Petrograd in February 1917 led to thousands coming out onto the streets in protest.

Some elements in the army expressed support for the workers and the administration of Petrograd lost control of the situation in the capital. Through General Mikhail Alexeev, the head of army headquarters, Nicholas II ordered that reliable troops be withdrawn from the front and sent to Petrograd to put down the revolution. He left the front to be nearer the capital, but was halted by revolutionary troops at Pskov on 1 / 14 March 1917. There he learned that Alexeev had refused to carry out his orders and that the revolution had been victorious in Petrograd.

In an attempt to save the monarchy and the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Rodzyanko, Chairman of the IV State Duma, and the chiefs-of-command of the fronts persuaded Nicholas of the need to abdicate. No small role was played by Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich, who sent a telegram asking that Nicholas cede his throne to the heir, Alexey. 38 After a conversation with the tsesarevich’s doctor, Sergey Fyodorov, who confirmed the incurability of Alexey’s haemophilia, Nicholas decided that his abdication should be in favour of his brother Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Nicholas II signed the abdication manifesto on 2 / 15 March at 23.40, but to prevent any suspicion that pressure had been put on the emperor by representatives of the State Duma who had arrived

that day, the time recorded on the document was 15.00. 39 The abdication put the seal on the victory of the revolution. Setting off for army headquarters on the night of 2 / 15 March the ex-emperor wrote in his diary: ‘left Pskov with a heavy sense of what I have experienced. All around are treachery and cowardice and deception.’40 On 3 / 16 March Mikhail Alexandrovich declined the imperial crown.

Just two members of army high command had supported Nicholas II in those difficult days: Huseyn Khan Nakhchivansky, commander of the Cavalry Guards, and General Count Fyodor Keller, commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps. All the other officers had supported the abdication and some went over to support the revolution. Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich,

288 Aerial Battle between a French Plane Piloted

by Roland Garros and a German Zeppelin Lithographic Studio of the I. D. Sytin Company, Moscow.

1914

Russia in the Reign of Nicolas II

37

203 Nicholas II with his Wife and Children. 1914

 187 Nicholas II with the young Tsesarevich Alexey.

1907 Alexey with his Parents on Board the Yacht Shtandart.

1908–9

 210 Nicholas II, Alexandra Fyodorovna, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia, with Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna on the Steps of the Soldatenkovskaya Hospital in Moscow. 1914

83

‘Victory to Russia and the Slavonic Peoples!’ Patriotic Demonstrations in Russia in Support of the Tsar and the War Effort. St Petersburg/ Petrograd 1914

An Aged Priest of the Greek Catholic Church Comforting Wounded and Dying Russians Lying on a Straw-covered Stone Floor.

May 1915.

 294 Nicholas II and Tsesarevich Alexey Inspecting Barbed Wire Fences. Military Headquarters, Mogilyov, 1915

111

Delegates to the First Hague Peace Conference. Huis Ten Bosch Palace, The Hague.

1899

Arrival at the Second Hague Peace Conference, Ridderzaal, The Hague. 1907

164

 and  The Rally of Loyalty to Queen Wilhelmina.

Malieveld, The Hague.

18 November 1918

165

Catalogue Details Authors Essays

Scholarly Editors

Dmitry Lyubin Sergey Mironenko Alexander Münninghoff Elena Solomakha Irina Zakharova

Georgy Vilinbakhov Vyacheslav Fyodorov

198

Copyright

Bookshop Distribution

© 2017 State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg © 2017 GARF, State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow © 2017 Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps, St Petersburg © 2017 Russian National Museum, Moscow © 2017 Hermitage Amsterdam

Editors-in-Chief

Arnoud Bijl Vincent Boele

Object Descriptions

Ekaterina Abramova EkA Elena Anisimova ElA Maria Anisimova MA Natalia Avetyan NA Alexander Babin AB Julia Balakhanova JB Ekaterina Deriabina ED Lidiya Dobrovolskaya LD Anton Dyachenko AD Maxim Dyakonov MD Ivan Garmanov IG Irina Gogulina IBG Yury Gudimenko YuG Dmitry Gusev DG Natalya Guseva NG Tatyana Ilyina TI Ekaterina Khmelnitskaya EK Olga Kostiuk OK Irina Kuznetsova IK Darya Lazarevskaya DL Nikolay Lomakin NL Marina Lopato ML Galina Mirolyubova GM Natalya Nekrasova NN Sergey Nilov SN Nikita Ovodkov NO Tatyana Pankova TP Tatyana Petrova TVP Julia Plotnikova JP Galina Printseva GP Tatyana Semyonova TS Julia Sharovskaya JS Anna Sidorova AS Alexander Solin AAS Elena Solomakha ES Alexander Solovyov AVS Igor Sychov IS Evelina Tarasova ET Nina Tarasova NT Georgy Vilinbakhov GV Vadim Vilinbakhov VV Galina Yastrebinskaya GY Grigory Yastrebinsky GBY Irina Yefimova IYe Irina Zakharova IZ

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Text Editors English and Dutch

Swetlana Datsenko Dave Laaper Catherine Phillips Correction of Proofs

ISBN Dutch

978-90-78653-66-0 ISBN English

978-90-78653-67-7 NUR 644

Lucy Klaassen Letter fonts Image Editors

Sara van der Linde Annelies ter Brugge

Akzidenz-Grotesk Impact Paper

Photography

Natalia Antonova Pavel Demidov Leonard Kheifets Alexander Koksharov Alexander Lavrentyev Yuri Molodkovets Alexey Pakhomov Inessa Regentova Konstantin Sinyavsky Svetlana Suetova Andrey Terebenin Vladimir Terebenin Translators

Jane Hedley-Prole DU-EN Anna Lawrence DU-EN Catherine Phillips RU-EN Aai Prins RU-DU Trudie Stoppelenburg RU-DU Janey Tucker DU-EN Peter Wezel RU-DU Publisher

Annelies ter Brugge Graphic Design

UNA designers, Amsterdam Printer

Drukkerij Tesink, Zutphen

Arctic Volume White 150 gr.

Edition

2750 Dutch 1000 English Catalogue for the exhibition 1917.

Romanovs & Revolution. The End of Monarchy from 4 February 2017 to 17 September 2017, organised by the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and the Hermitage Amsterdam

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Image Credits © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, with the exception of the images on the following pages: AP | Associated Press / Hollandse Hoogte: 88 b Carnegie-Foundation / Peace Palace: 164 t/b 164 House of Orange-Nassau Collection (National Museum Palace Het Loo): 157 Straatliederen Collection. Meertens Institute: 159 De Agostini Picture Library / Hollandse Hoogte: 142 delpher.nl: 161 Everett Collection, Inc. / Hollandse Hoogte: 53 b, 109 t, 115 © GARF, State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow: 10, 57, 63, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84 t, 85 lb, 86, 87 t/b, 88 t, 94, 98, 110, 139, 145, 148, 151 b, 195 © Memory of the Netherlands / The National Library of the Netherlands, 2016: 166–67 Imagno/Getty Images: 49 t International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam: 160 l, 163 Mary Evans Picture Library Ltd.: 109 b, 111 b National Archives of the Netherlands, Den Haag: 160 r passage.spb.ru: 45 Photo © Tallandier / Bridgeman Images: 84 rb Photo12 / UIG via Getty Images: 89 Private Collection / Bridgeman Images: 144, 150 Private Collection / Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images: 75 Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images: 153 t/b REX features Ltd. / Hollandse Hoogte: 85 rb Ron Cardy / Rex Features Ltd. / Hollandse Hoogte: 84 lb Rue des Archives SAS / Hollandse Hoogte: 85 b, 151 t Russian State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents, Krasnogorsk: 48 m/b Spaarnestad Photo / Hollandse Hoogte: 165 Sputnik / Bridgeman Images: 54 State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents, St Petersburg: 52, 112t Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Hollandse Hoogte: 53 t © SZ Photo / Scherl / Bridgeman Images: 50 b, 133 Universal History Archive / UIG / Bridgeman Images: 50 t Universal History Archive / UIG via Getty Images: 49 b World History Archive / Hollandse Hoogte: 108