As a consequence, in late 1916 the food and fuel situation in the major cities became critical. By then, Petrograd and Moscow were getting only one-third of their food requirements and faced hunger: the reserves covered at best a few days’ consumption.41 Fuel shortages compounded the difficulties: Petrograd could obtain only half of the fuel it needed, which meant that even when bakeries got flour they could not bake. The Petrograd Municipal Council petitioned the government for authority to organize the distribution of foodstuffs, only to be once again turned down.42 To prevent an explosion of popular fury, Stürmer drafted plans to evacuate from Petrograd 60,000–80,000 soldiers, as well as 20,000 refugees, but as with all the other good intentions of the Imperial Government in its last days, this proposal came to naught.
Petrograd, which by virtue of its remoteness from the food-producing areas suffered the most, entered the winter of 1916–17 in desperate straits. Factories had to be repeatedly shut either for lack of fuel or in order to enable their workers to scour the countryside for food.
These developments alarmed also liberal and conservative circles, because they threatened revolution, which they were desperately anxious to prevent. They blamed Nicholas and Alexandra, especially the latter. For the first time ever, liberals and monarchists made common cause in opposition to the Crown. In late 1916, the oppositional mood spread to the generals, the upper bureaucracy, and even some Grand Dukes who went over in order, as it was said, “to save the monarchy from the monarch.” Russia had never known such unity and the Crown such isolation. The 1917 Revolution became inevitable once the uppermost layers of Russian society, which had the most to lose, began to act in a revolutionary manner.
They were inspired by diverse motives. The conservatives, including right-wing politicians, Grand Dukes, bureaucrats, and generals, rallied against the Crown from fear that it was dragging Russia either to defeat or to a disgraceful separate peace. The liberals worried about riots, which would enable the socialists to stir the masses. The Progressive Bloc, which revived in the fall of 1916, kept on expanding to the right and left, until it came to embrace virtually the entire political spectrum, including much of the official establishment. In early February 1917, in a memorandum prepared for a visiting English delegation, Struve wrote: “The old cry ‘struggle with the bureaucracy’ has lost meaning. In the present conflict, all the best elements of the bureaucracy are on the side of the people.”43
Persistent rumors that the monarchy was secretly negotiating a separate peace added to the unhappiness of upper society. They were not entirely groundless, for the Germans and Austrians did, indeed, put out feelers to Petrograd. One such approach was made through Alexandra’s brother, Prince Ernst Ludwig of Hesse.44 Protopopov, while traveling in Sweden, was contacted by a German businessman. These and similar approaches met with no response from the Russian side. Researches in Russian and Western archives after the Revolution have failed to reveal any evidence that the Imperial Government desired or even contemplated a separate peace.45 Nicholas and Alexandra were determined to wage war to the bitter end regardless of the domestic consequences. But the rumors caused the monarchy untold harm, alienating its natural supporters among the conservatives and nationalists who were ferociously anti-German.
Even more harmful was gossip about the alleged treasonous activities of the Empress and Rasputin. This also lacked any substance. Whatever sins Alexandra had on her conscience, she deeply cared for her adopted homeland, as she would prove later, after the Revolution, when her life was at stake. But she was a German and hence regarded as an enemy alien. Her reputation was further sullied by Rasputin’s contacts with suspicious individuals from the Petrograd demimonde, some of whom were rumored to have German connections. The root of the problem was that even if Alexandra and Rasputin did not actually engage in demonstrable treason, in the eyes of many patriotic Russians they could not have worked more effectively for the enemy if they were full-fledged enemy agents.
