This was essentially how the Duma remained divided through the following weeks of complex political manæuvring between November and the February Revolution. Miliukov’s Kadets, in the words of the secret police, looked on the prospect of a revolution ‘with feelings of horror and panic’, and ‘if the government offered the slightest concession would run to meet it with joy’. Yet the hope of concessions was fading fast. For the Tsarina was flatly opposed to Trepov (she wanted him hanged like Guchkov), while the threat of the radical left was growing all the time. This increasingly gave the initiative to Kerensky and the other Duma radicals, who would open the doors of the Tauride Palace, if not directly to the crowds on the streets, then at least to their more polite representatives. The language of their speeches became increasingly violent, as they sought to express — and thus capture — the mood on the streets. They openly called on the people to overthrow the regime and ridiculed the moderates’ calls for calm as a pretext, in the words of Kerensky, to stay in their ‘warm armchairs’. Yet they also had cause to worry that the popular mood was passing over their heads too, that the crowds on the streets were becoming contemptuous of the Duma and looking elsewhere for their leaders. For as Vasilii Shulgin, the Nationalist leader, put it, ‘no one believes in words any longer’.60
From now on it was a question of whether the revolution would start from below or above. The idea of a ‘palace coup’ had been circulating for some time. Guchkov was at the centre of one such conspiracy. It aimed to seize the imperial train en route from Stavka to Tsarskoe Selo and to force the Tsar to abdicate in favour of his son, with the Grand Duke Mikhail, Nicholas’s brother, serving as Regent. In this way the conspirators hoped to forestall the social revolution by appointing a new government of confidence. However, with only limited support from the military, the liberals and the imperial family, they put off the plans for their coup until March 1917 — by which time it was too late. A second conspiracy was meanwhile being hatched by Prince Lvov with the help of the Chief of Staff, General Alexeev. They planned to arrest the Tsarina and compel Nicholas to hand over authority to the Grand Duke Nikolai. Lvov would then be appointed as the Premier of a new government of confidence. Several liberal politicians and generals supported the plan, including Brusilov, who told the Grand Duke: ‘If I must choose between the Emperor and Russia, then I march for Russia.’ But this plot was also scotched — by the Grand Duke’s reluctance to become involved. There were various other conspiracies, some of them originating with the Tsar’s distant relatives, to force an abdication in favour of some other Romanov capable of appeasing the Duma. Historians differ widely on these plots, some seeing them as the opening acts of the February Revolution, others as nothing but idle chit-chat. Neither is probably true. For even if the conspirators had been serious in their intentions, and had succeeded in carrying them out, they could hardly have expected to hold on to power for long before they too were swept aside by the revolution on the streets.61
