Background
Rodzianko, Mikhail was born on February 21, 1859 in into a rich Ukrainian family.
Rodzianko, Mikhail was born on February 21, 1859 in into a rich Ukrainian family.
Mikhail Rodzianko was educated at the Corps des Pages. From 1877 until 1882 he served in the Her Majesty's Regiment of the Cavalry of the Guard.
In 1907, after two decades of activity as a leader in local government, Rodzianko took his seat as an Octobrist deputy in the Third Duma. In 1911 he was elected president of the Duma, and he held this position in the Fourth (and final) Duma chosen in 1912. As spokesman for the Duma, Russia's newly hatched parliamentary body, Rodzianko had direct access to Tsar Nicholas II. He was willing, although scarcely anxious, to criticize the crown. In February 1912, for example, the Octobrist nobleman informed the tsar of the disastrous effects of the imperial family's connection with the disreputable religious practitioner Grigory Rasputin. When the Octobrist party split in November 1913 on the issue of joining a bloc in opposition to the tsar's ministers, however, Rodzianko led the deputies who voted to remain loyal to the government.
The outbreak of World War I made Rodzianko a leading figure in Russia's version of the union sacree. He accepted without complaint government efforts to limit the Duma to brief, infrequent sessions. In August 1914, for example, the legislative body met for a single day, then adjourned until early 1915. He also did not strongly protest the unconstitutional arrest (November 1914) of the Duma's five-man Bolshevik delegation.
By the spring of 1915 Rodzianko's meetings with the monarch, along with pressure from industrial leaders and the daily evidence of the nation's inability to supply the army properly, brought results. Nicholas accepted Rodzianko's call for the formation of war industry committees; these united representatives of the Duma and industry to cooperate with the Ministry of War in meeting the country's military needs. But Rodzianko's efforts at reforming the government through personal diplomacy had few other achievements. He opposed, to no avail, the monarch's decision to take direct command of the armies in the fall of 1915. As the Duma convened in February 1916, Rodzianko made a dramatic plea to the tsar to grant a "responsible ministry." The tsar ignored him.
In July 1916, Nicholas considered meeting the nation's multisided domestic crisisfuel shortages, inflation, the collapse of the rail system by installing a civil dictator, possibly Premier Boris Sturmer. Rodzianko played his accustomed role of spokesman for the moderate opposition; he drew the caustic comment from Nicholas that "Rodzianko has talked a lot of nonsense."
By early 1917 even a Rodzianko was being pushed outside his comfortable middle ground. He kept silent about news that civilian leaders like Aleksandr Guchkov were seeking military support for a palace coup. He made a final effort in January to warn the tsar about the misrule Empress Alexandra and her circle were visiting on Russia in the tsar's absence. Nicholas simply turned away.
When street riots and military mutinies signaled the collapse of the old order in March 1917, Rodzianko played, for the last time, the thankless role of Russian political moderate. He tried and failed to get both the Octobrists and the more liberal Kadets to rally to the government. He tried and failed to keep military authorities from ordering their troops to fire on street crowds. He tried and failed to get the tsar to recall the newly prorogued Duma and to establish a government led by "some person who enjoys the confidence of the country." Nicholas replied to this last plea with the famous statement (March 12, 1917): "Rodzianko has sent me some nonsense which I won't even bother to answer."
Within a few days, the monarchy Rodzianko had hoped to save was gone. The old nobleman himself was elbowed aside by less reluctant representatives of the new order like Paul Miliukov and Aleksandr Kerensky. After the November Revolution, he fled to the Don, where the anti-Bolshevik White movement was forming. In 1920 he emigrated to Yugoslavia where he occupied his final years writing his memoirs. Rodzianko died in his new Balkan home, in dire poverty, on January 19, 1924.