Khodorovich, commander-in-chief of the Kiev Military District, to take 1 in a 1000 local German civilians as hostages, and imprison them for the rest of the war. General Ivanov also prescribed to requisition that all the German hostages could only have a small portion of food of all the supplies they had got, and the hostages were settled in a highly secured residence. And if any hostages didn't follow the orders, they would be met with death penalty. Later at the end of 1915, he conducted a failed operation by the 11th Army against the enemy's forces. And in March 1916, he was replaced by General Aleksei Brusilov as the commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front, he was then appointed a member of the State Council, and was made adjutant to tsar Nicholas II himself. General Brusilov recalled that, when he arrived and accepted the post, General Ivanov burst into tears and said that he couldn't understand why he was to be replaced. General Brusilov assumed that it was due to the fact that General Ivanov was too passive, who believed that the front couldn't succeed. General Ivanov, with his loyalty towards the tsar and surprisingly the tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna and the mystic Rasputin as well, he enjoyed great confidence and reputation from the royal family. After General Mikhail Alekseyev was appointed chief of staff to the supreme commander-in-chief in mid 1915, which was the tsar himself, the tsarina wrote a letter to her husband, advising him not to let Alekseyev the only person in charge of the Stavka and advised him to let Ivanov to assist him, saying that: Further actions showed that it was Ivanov was the mastermind behind Alekseyev, who was not trusted by the tsarina. In return, Ivanov was treated very well by Nicholas. Later on, the tsar wrote to his wife: Since September 1915, the tsarina had sent many letters to her husband, exerting pressure on him in order to summon General Ivanov back from the front to be at the post of Minister of War. The tsar later accepted it in March and summoned the general to the headquarters to be the tsar's secondment person. By the end of 1916, the tsarina launched a series of letters against General Alekseyev, Ivanov joined her by informing the situations of the Stavka and reported it to Alekseyev. February Revolution On 27 February (12 March) 1917, the February