He was furious with the politicians for plying their trade while the troops were being bled white. Determined not to repeat the mistake he believed he had committed in October 1905, he stood his ground. On August 28; Goremykin came to Mogilev. He was virtually the last holdout in the cabinet to refuse to join in the demands for political reform. When Rodzianko had complained to him that the cabinet was not acting decisively enough to dissuade the Tsar from going to the front, Goremykin had brushed him off, saying that the chairman of the Duma was taking upon himself an “improper” role.95 He was alarmed by the anti-government speeches heard in the Duma, which the press broadcast nationwide. To deprive the opposition of a platform and to calm the situation in the country, he proposed to Nicholas to prorogue the Duma as soon as its six-week session was up. Nicholas assented and instructed Goremykin to adjourn the Duma no later than September 3: all the ministers, himself included, were in the meanwhile to remain at their posts.96 This decision, taken by the two men without consulting the Duma and against the wishes of nearly the entire cabinet, was viewed as a slap in the face of Russian society. Foreign Minister Sazonov expressed a widespread feeling when he said that Goremykin must have taken leave of his senses to make such a recommendation to the Tsar.97 The decision resulted in the isolation of Nicholas from virtually all the political and social circles in the country, except for sycophantic courtiers and politicians of the most extreme right.
Nevertheless, as the days went by the crisis subsided because in September the German offensive ground to a halt, lifting the threat to the Russian homeland. Newspapers favorable to the Progressive Bloc now began to argue that everything possible had been done and there was no point in pressing the government further. At the end of September, the Central Committee of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, the core of the Progressive Bloc, decided to postpone further demands for political reform until the conclusion of the war.98 The conservative Kadet Vasilii Maklakov wrote a widely quoted article which provided the rationale for this course. He compared Russia to an automobile driven along a narrow and steep road by a thoroughly incompetent chauffeur. In it sits one’s mother (read: Russia). The driver’s slightest mistake will send the vehicle plunging down a precipice, killing all passengers. Among the passengers are capable drivers, but the chauffeur refuses to yield the wheel to them, confident that they will not seize it by force for fear of a fatal accident. In these circumstances, Maklakov assured his readers, you will “postpone settling accounts with the driver … until you have reached level ground.”99 As was his habit, once the crisis was over Nicholas punished those who had dared to oppose him. In late September he dismissed the ministers who had been especially vocal in their opposition to his assuming military command: Alexander Samarin, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, who had drafted the Council of Ministers’ letter of August 21; Nicholas Shcherbatov, the Minister of the Interior; and Krivoshein. Shcherbatov’s successor, Alexander N. Khvostov, appointed in November, was widely regarded as a nominee of Rasputin—the first of several.100 So once again—and now for the last time—Nicholas had managed to weather the storm and beat back a challenge to his prerogatives. But it was a Pyrrhic victory that isolated him and his appointees from nearly all of society. At a meeting of the cabinet that followed these events, Sazonov (who would soon lose his post as well) said that the government hung suspended in midair “without support either from above or from below,” while Rodzianko thought the country was a “powder keg.” Nicholas, Alexandra, and Goremykin succeeded in uniting against themselves nearly all of Russia’s political circles, achieving the seemingly impossible feat of forging a consensus between the revolutionary Kerensky and the monarchist Rodzianko.
The decisions which Nicholas took in August 1915 made a revolution virtually unavoidable. Russia could have averted a revolutionary upheaval only on one condition: if the unpopular but experienced bureaucracy, with its administrative and police apparatus, made common cause with the popular but inexperienced liberal and liberal-conservative intelligentsia. In late 1915 neither of these groups was capable of governing Russia on its own. By preventing such an alliance when it was still possible, Nicholas ensured that sooner or later both would be swept away and he along with them, plunging Russia into anarchy.
