The first month of the State Council's rule was a blur of controlled chaos. Mikhail's office in the General Staff Building, once the domain of a single powerful minister, became the nerve center of the entire Russian Empire. His day began before dawn and ended long after the gaslights on Nevsky Prospect had hissed to life. The scope of the decay he inherited was breathtaking.
He moved with the speed and precision of a trauma surgeon trying to save a patient who was bleeding out from a thousand wounds. Reports from Captain Orlov's growing intelligence network painted a grim picture: peasant revolts flaring across the Black Earth region, naval crews mutinying in the Black Sea port of Odessa, and socialist agitators fanning the flames of revolution in the industrial centers of Moscow and Lodz. The 1905 Revolution was not a single event; it was a nationwide systemic failure.
Countering it required a new kind of statecraft. Mikhail used the vast capital of the Russo-Imperial Bank to flood the cities with grain, stabilizing food prices and quelling the immediate threat of bread riots. He directed General Denisov to use his loyal troops not for bloody crackdowns, but for surgical strikes against the most extreme revolutionary cells, while simultaneously opening channels of communication, through men like Matvei Gromov, to the more moderate labor factions. He was fighting a multi-front war, not just against Japan, but against the internal rot of his own nation.
His first great legislative act was aimed at the very heart of that rot: the land. He convened the State Council to present a decree of breathtaking ambition.
"For centuries, the Russian peasant has dreamed of one thing," he told the assembled council members. "Land. The emancipation of the serfs was a half-measure that left them indebted and tied to unproductive communes. This is the fuel of the revolution. We will extinguish it."
His plan was a dagger aimed at the old aristocracy. He proposed a massive, state-funded buyout of the vast, poorly managed estates held by the traditional nobility. The Russo-Imperial Bank would finance the purchase, offering fair market value. This land would then be broken up and redistributed, not to the communes, but directly to the peasants as private, titled farms, complete with low-interest loans for tools and seed.
The remaining old-guard ministers were aghast. "This is an attack on the foundations of the nobility! On property itself!" one of them protested.
"The foundation of the Empire is not the nobility, it is the peasantry," Mikhail countered coldly. "A peasant who owns his own land is a conservative. He is a capitalist. He has no time for revolutionaries who promise to seize the very thing he now possesses. We are not destroying the old order; we are creating a new one based on loyalty and self-interest."
The decree was passed, backed by the modernizers and the military, who saw it as a necessary step to pacify the countryside. But Mikhail knew he had just made mortal enemies of the entire landed aristocracy.
The next front was the war itself. Witte reported back from the secret peace negotiations. The Japanese, sensing Russia's internal chaos, were demanding harsh terms: the entirety of Sakhalin Island and a crushing financial indemnity. The nationalist generals on the council were enraged.
"Never!" roared Kuropatkin. "We will fight on! We will send the Baltic Fleet around the world to crush them!"
Alistair's memory supplied the chilling historical footnote to that boast: the Baltic Fleet was currently sailing towards its own annihilation at the Battle of Tsushima. To continue the war was to lose Russia's last naval asset and any remaining leverage.
"We do not have the money, the time, or the public will to continue this fight, General," Mikhail stated, his authority absolute. "You will have your honor, but I will have a nation left to govern."
He gave Witte his authorization: cede the southern half of Sakhalin, reject any indemnity, and sign the treaty. He was choosing a humiliating peace to ensure national survival, a decision he knew the hardliners would never forgive.
That evening, Princess Sofia visited his office. She brought with her the scent of the court and a stark warning.
"They are coalescing against you, Mikhail," she said, her voice low. "The old guard, the aristocrats you've dispossessed, the nationalist generals who call your peace treaty a stab in the back. They are gathering around a new figurehead." She named a name that made even Mikhail pause: the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Tsar's uncle, a man of immense influence, iron-willed conviction, and a deep-seated hatred for reformers. "They are not just complaining in their clubs anymore. They are plotting. They call themselves the Patriotic Union, and they believe they are saving Russia from you."
He had expected this. By cutting out the cancer of the old regime, he had inevitably created a powerful, vengeful phantom.
After Sofia left, Mikhail walked to the large map of the Empire that dominated one wall of his office. He had stabilized the capital, launched a revolutionary land reform that could quell the peasant uprisings, and was about to end a catastrophic war. He had acted with a speed and logic that no Tsar had ever displayed. He was saving the Empire.
But the intelligence report from Orlov that lay on his desk told a different story. It detailed the first secret meetings of the Grand Duke's Patriotic Union. Mikhail looked from the report to the map. He had pacified the revolutionaries on the left only to create a far more dangerous threat from the reactionary right. His enemies were no longer just corrupt industrialists or scheming ministers. They were now members of the Imperial Family itself, men who believed they had a divine right to rule and who saw him as the ultimate usurper.
The war for Russia was not over. It had simply entered its final, most dangerous phase.