While Petrograd sank into chaos and the monarchy teetered on the verge of collapse, Nicholas carried on with the peaceful routines of his life at Stavka. There, in the words of one of his entourage, ‘one day after another passed like two drops of water’. Judging from his letters, he was much more concerned by the fact that two of his daughters had gone down with measles than by the latest reports of rioting in the capital. True, Khabalov had not informed him of the gravity of the situation. But would the truth have made a difference? It is doubtful. On the morning of the 27th a cable arrived from the President of the Duma informing the Tsar of the real situation and pleading with him to ‘take immediate steps’ because ‘tomorrow it will be too late’. Nicholas glanced at the message and, turning to Count Fredericks, exclaimed: ‘That fat fellow Rodzianko has again written to me with all kinds of nonsense, which I shan’t even bother to answer.’43
Since the death of Rasputin, Nicholas had turned his back on the capital and retreated into the quiet daily routines of Stavka and his family life at Tsarskoe Selo. Now more than ever he lived in a world of his own delusions, surrounding himself with lackeys of the court who flattered his fantasies of patrimonial power. During the last weeks of his reign numerous advisers pleaded with him to appoint a new government of confidence responsible to the Duma. But none had been able to penetrate the invisible wall of indifference that Nicholas erected around himself. And yet, beneath this outward appearance of calm, he was clearly in the midst of a deep internal crisis. Kokovtsov, who had not seen the Tsar for a year, found him ‘unrecognizable’ at the beginning of February. He was convinced that he was ‘on the verge of a mental breakdown’. Paléologue was equally shocked by the Tsar’s ‘grave, drawn features and furtive distant gaze, the impenetrability of his thoughts, and the thoroughly vague and enigmatic quality of his personality’. It confirmed the French Ambassador in his long-held ‘notion that Nicholas II feels himself overwhelmed and dominated by events, that he has lost all faith in his mission or his work, and that he has so to speak abdicated inwardly and is now resigned to disaster’.44 It was as if his mental crisis consisted of the realization that the autocratic path he had followed for the past twenty-two years had finally come to an end, bringing his dynasty to the brink of disaster, and that the advice which everyone now gave him, to save his throne by handing over executive power to the Duma, was something he simply could not do. His whole life had been dedicated to the maintenance of autocracy, and now that he realized it could no longer be maintained, he gave up on life altogether. Here was the root of his notorious fatalism during the days leading up to his abdication.
In the evening of the 27th news finally reached the Tsar of the mutiny in Petrograd. He ordered General Ivanov, whom he now appointed to replace Khabalov as chief of the Petrograd Military District, to lead a force of punitive troops to the capital and establish a dictatorship there. Nicholas himself set out that night by train for Tsarskoe Selo, ignoring Alexeev’s objections that this would merely hinder the counter-revolution and could endanger his life. His only concern, it appears, was to be reunited with his wife and children. The imperial train did not go directly northwards because Ivanov’s troops were moving on this line but made a large detour to the east, arriving at Malaya Vishera, some 125 miles south-east of the capital, in the early morning of 1 March. There it could proceed no further because the line ahead had been seized by revolutionaries, so it headed west to Pskov, arriving there at 7 p.m. on 1 March. Because of the hasty arrangements, there was no formal ceremony to welcome the Tsar to the town where he was destined to renounce his throne. General Ruszky, Commander of the Northern Front, arrived late to meet him at the station. He was wearing a pair of rubber boots.45
