The crowds outside the Tauride Palace met the announcement that Nicholas would abdicate in favour of the Grand Duke Mikhail with an outburst of angry indignation. The Catherine Hall echoed to shouts from the street of ‘Long Live the Republic!’ and ‘Down with the Dynasty!’ When Guchkov returned from Pskov he went in triumph to a meeting of railway workers to tell them what had happened. Ending his speech with the rallying call ‘Long Live the Emperor Mikhail!’, he was at once arrested and threatened with execution by the workers. Throughout the capital crowds attacked supporters and symbols of the tsarist order. A huge demonstration of soldiers marched to the Tauride Palace demanding the overthrow of the dynasty. Politically, it seemed, the monarchy was doomed. Yet inside the palace Miliukov continued to defend its existence in legal terms. It was essential, the professor argued, to preserve the monarchy as a symbol of the state. For only it could give legitimacy and a historic continuity to the transfer of power. This was the triumph of hope over reality. The mood of the crowd clearly made the survival of the monarchy impossible. The masses would not tolerate a new Tsar, and if one was imposed then further disorders would ensue, perhaps even leading to a civil war. The republican ministers, led by Kerensky and Nekrasov, eventually got their way. The Provisional Government resolved to persuade the Grand Duke to refuse the crown and thus bring the dynasty to an end.55
It would not take much persuading. Mikhail was a shy and modest man, not much interested in politics, and even less intelligent than his older brother. In different circumstances he might have made a good, if rather dim, constitutional monarch, much like his English cousin, George V. But the rioting in the capital, which he had personally witnessed, had not given him much appetite for monarchical power. He was not in the least bit eager to put his own head on the block — either metaphorically or literally — and was understandably both surprised and annoyed when his brother suddenly and unexpectedly decided to burden him with the crown without even consulting him.
He met the leaders of the Provisional Government on 3 March in the residence of Princess Putiatina, not far from the Winter Palace, where the Grand Duke had taken refuge from the revolution. Lvov and Kerensky put forward the majority point of view in the government that if Mikhail accepted the throne there would be a violent uprising, leading to civil war. Miliukov disagreed, claiming that only the monarchy was recognized by the people as a symbol of authority and that it was now required to save the country from chaos. ‘The Provisional Government on its own, without a monarch’, he argued, ‘is an unseaworthy vessel liable to sink in the ocean of popular unrest.’ All this left the Grand Duke rather confused. He asked for an hour to talk in private with Rodzianko. His main concern, according to Rodzianko, was whether the Duma could guarantee his personal safety if he became Tsar. When Rodzianko said that it could not, he finally made up his mind and, returning to the meeting, announced that he had decided to decline the crown. There was a tear in his eye. Kerensky, whose own emotions often got the better of his senses, rushed up to the Grand Duke, shook his hand and congratulated him with these words of astounding self-importance: ‘Your Imperial Highness, you have acted nobly and like a patriot. From now on, I shall assume the obligation of making this known and of defending you.’56
Two jurists, Nabokov and Nolde, were later summoned to the Putiatina residence to draft the abdication manifesto. This historic document, which brought to an end 300 years of Romanov rule, was written out by them at a school desk in the study of Putiatina’s daughter and then copied out in one of her school notebooks. By 6 p.m. the document was ready. Mikhail signed it in the presence of the ministers and Rodzianko. He then turned to embrace Prince Lvov and wished him good fortune as the Prime Minister of the new Russia.57
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The end of the monarchy was marked by scenes of rejoicing throughout the Russian Empire. Rapturous crowds assembled in the streets of Petrograd and Moscow. Red flags were hoisted on to the roofs and hung from the windows of nearly every building. In Helsingfors, Kiev, Tiflis and the other non-Russian capitals, where the downfall of the Tsar was associated with the liberation of the nation, national flags were often displayed alongside them. There was hardly a town, however small, that did not celebrate the revolution with jubilant processions, patriotic speeches and the singing of the Marseillaise. Konstantin Paustovsky recalls the night when his little sleepy town, Yefremov in Tula province, first heard of the revolution.
