The Abdication of 1917

The February Revolution and the fall: the collapse of order in Petrograd, the abdication of Nicholas II on 2/15 March 1917 in the imperial train at Pskov, his decision to abdicate for the Tsarevich Alexei as well as for himself, Grand Duke Michael’s refusal of the throne the next day, and the family’s arrest at the Alexander Palace, Tsarskoe Selo. This is the hinge on which the emperor becomes a prisoner and, sixteen months later, a passion-bearer.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox / ROCOR

The February Revolution

By the winter of 1916–1917 the monarchy had exhausted its credit. Food shortages, war-weariness, inflation, and the discrediting of the crown through the Rasputin affair (Rasputin had been murdered in December 1916; see Alexandra, Alexei, and Rasputin) converged in late February 1917 (Old Style) in strikes and bread riots in the capital, Petrograd. On 23–27 February / 8–12 March, demonstrations became a revolution when the garrison mutinied and refused to fire on the crowds (Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 1996; Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1990). Nicholas was at army headquarters (Stavka) at Mogilev, hundreds of miles from the capital, and his orders to suppress the disorder went unheeded as authority dissolved.

Two centers of power emerged in Petrograd: the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The Duma leaders, seeking to save a constitutional monarchy from revolution, concluded that Nicholas himself had to go (Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 1996). His army commanders agreed: on 2/15 March, canvassed by telegram, the front commanders and the Chief of Staff, General Alekseev, advised the Emperor almost unanimously that abdication was necessary to save the front and the country (Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967; Figes, 1996).

The Abdication at Pskov, 2/15 March 1917

Nicholas’s train, unable to reach Tsarskoe Selo, was diverted to Pskov, headquarters of the Northern Front. There, on 2/15 March 1917, having received the generals’ telegrams, Nicholas decided to abdicate. His diary entry for that day ends with the often-quoted words: “All around is betrayal, cowardice, and deceit” (“Кругом измена, и трусость, и обман”) (Nicholas II, diary, 2 March 1917, O.S.; quoted in Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967, and in Steinberg and Khrustalëv, The Fall of the Romanovs, 1995).

His first intention was to abdicate in favor of his son Alexei, with his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich as regent. But after consulting the court physician about the boy’s hemophilia and confronting the certainty that abdication would mean separation from a son whose life was precarious, Nicholas changed the manifesto: he abdicated for himself and for Alexei, in favor of his brother Michael (Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967; Service, The Last of the Tsars, 2017). The decision was that of a father as much as a sovereign, and it removed the boy from the succession — a fact later noted in the discussion of what the family’s status was at the time of the killing.

[Disputed: the legality and even the historicity of the abdication have been debated in some monarchist and tsarebozhie circles, which argue that an autocrat could not lawfully abdicate for his heir, or that the manifesto was procedurally void, so that Nicholas “remained tsar” to his death. Mainstream historiography treats the abdication as a real, if extraordinary, act; the legal-technical objection is chiefly deployed today to support maximalist veneration claims (see The Tsar-Redeemer Heresy). Cf. Service, The Last of the Tsars, 2017. This collection reports the act as it happened and flags the legalist objection as a marker of the later ideological dispute, not a live historical doubt.]

Michael’s Refusal

The next day, 3/16 March 1917, Grand Duke Michael, confronted with the Provisional Government’s warning that it could not guarantee his safety and that the throne no longer commanded support, declined to accept the crown unless a future Constituent Assembly should offer it — which in the event never happened (Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 1996; Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1990). With Michael’s deferral, the three-century Romanov dynasty and the Russian monarchy itself came to an end. Michael was himself murdered by the Bolsheviks near Perm in June 1918, weeks before Ekaterinburg (King and Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 2003).

Arrest at Tsarskoe Selo

Nicholas — now referred to by the revolutionary authorities as “citizen Romanov” — returned to his family at the Alexander Palace, Tsarskoe Selo. On 7/20–8/21 March 1917 the Provisional Government placed the former Emperor and Empress under arrest, and the family entered the captivity that would last until their deaths (Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967; Service, The Last of the Tsars, 2017). The initial confinement was relatively mild — house arrest in their own palace, with a reduced household, guards, and restrictions on movement and correspondence. It was Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional Government, not yet the Bolsheviks, that first held them; the transfer to Siberia in August 1917 and thence to Ekaterinburg under the Bolsheviks belongs to the next stage (see From Tsarskoe Selo to Ekaterinburg).

What the Abdication Means for This Collection

The abdication matters to the collection’s central argument in two ways. First, it is the point at which Nicholas ceased to be a ruler and became a captive — the beginning of the sixteen months of confinement whose conduct, not his reign, is what the Church weighed (see What the Church Canonized). Second, the manner of the abdication — the sense of betrayal, the refusal of any violent counter-stroke, the turn toward family and faith — is read by proponents of the passion-bearer glorification as the beginning of the Christ-like acceptance of dispossession that the страстотерпец category honors (see The Theology of the Passion-Bearer). Whether that reading is right is part of the open question of the glorification; what is not in doubt is that after 2/15 March 1917 Nicholas Romanov was no longer emperor but prisoner.

See Also

• Nicholas II as Ruler — the reign that ends here
• From Tsarskoe Selo to Ekaterinburg — the captivity that begins here
• What the Church Canonized — why it is captivity, not reign, that the glorification weighs
• The Tsar-Redeemer Heresy — where the “he never really abdicated” legalism belongs

References

• Figes, Orlando. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924. London: Jonathan Cape, 1996. (The February Revolution, the generals’ telegrams, Michael’s refusal.)
• Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. (The dual power; the end of the monarchy.)
• Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra. New York: Atheneum, 1967. (The abdication scene; the change of the manifesto in Alexei’s favor; the arrest.)
• Service, Robert. The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution. London: Macmillan, 2017. (The abdication and its aftermath; assessment of the legalist objection.)
• Steinberg, Mark D., and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv. The Fall of the Romanovs. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. (The diary entry “betrayal, cowardice, and deceit”; documents of the abdication.)
• King, Greg, and Penny Wilson. The Fate of the Romanovs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. (Grand Duke Michael’s murder near Perm.)