The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

The decision to put the former Imperial Family under arrest had been taken on March 20, upon the recommendation of Kerensky as Minister of Justice; originally it was conceived as a temporary measure. Like most acts of the Provisional Government, it was inspired by contradictory motivations. One was a wholely sincere desire to assure the safety of the former sovereigns. Kerensky was determined not “to play the role of a Russian Marat,” as he heatedly told a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet which was clamoring for Nicholas’ head; a counterproposal to hold the ex-Czar pending eventual trial before an “impartial tribune” seemed the best way to undercut extremist agitation for more summary justice. There is some reason, however, for suspecting that the pressure on the Provisional Government from the left, while real enough, was not yet irresistible, and that there was a weightier, quite different reason for signing the order of arrest that was to prove the death warrant of the Romanovs. “While the mass of workers and peasants were indifferent to the foreign policies of the Czar and his government,” Kerensky later testified, “the intellectuals, the bourgeoisie and some of the higher-ranking officer-class thought they detected in the foreign and domestic policies of the Czar, and more particularly in the intrigues of the Czarina, a definite tendency to lead the country to its ruin for the sole purpose of concluding a separate peace and an alliance with Germany.”