The Romanov Sisters

by Helen Rappaport

75. Ibid., pp. 254, 266.

  76. Paul Grabbe, Windows on the River Neva (New York: Pomerica Press, 1977), p. 123.

  77. Letter to Nicholas, 3 March, accessible @: http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/mdiaries.html

  78. Ibid.; Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 164; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 251.

  79. Dnevniki I, p. 258.

  80. Fall, p. 138.

  81. Dnevniki I, p. 259; P. Savchenko, Gosudarynya imperatritsa Aleksandra Feodorovna (Belgrade: Nobel Press, 1939), p. 91.

  82. WC, p. 701.

  83. Dnevniki I, p. 290.

  84. Ibid., p. 293.

  85. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 262.

  86. Galushkin, Sobstvennyi ego … konvoy, p. 274.

  87. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 166.

  88. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 338.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Markov, quoted in Dnevniki I, p. 309.

  91. Markov, Pokinutaya Tsarskaya Semya, pp. 93, 95–7; see also Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 170; Dnevniki I, pp. 309–10.

  92. Galushkin, Sobstvennyi ego … konvoy, p. 276.

  93. Ibid.

  94. Ibid.

  95. Penny Wilson, ‘The Memoirs of Princess Helena of Serbia’, Atlantis Magazine 1. no. 3, 1999, p. 84.

  96. NZ 182, p. 215.

  97. Ktorova, Minuvshee, p. 96. Lili’s husband Charles, a lieutenant in the Guards Equipage, was on a military mission to England when the revolution broke out.

  98. Naryshkina diary, quoted in Dnevniki I, p. 333.

  99. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 174. Alexandra mentions the destruction of her papers in her diary entries from 8 March, although Lili recalled the process beginning on 7 March. See Dnevniki I, pp. 340, 366, 378, 382, etc.

  100. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, pp. 173–4, 176. Some 1,700 letters and telegrams between Nicholas and Alexandra during the war years therefore survived and are preserved in GARF, Moscow. See Fuhrmann’s introduction to WC, pp. 8–11.

  101. Dehn, Real Tsaristsa, p. 178.

  102. Ibid., pp. 174, 184.

  103. Fall, p. 42.

  104. Benkendorf, Last Days, p. 8; Fall, p. 114.

  105. Fall, p. 114.

  106. Naryshkina diary, quoted in Dnevniki I, p. 352.

  107. Botkin, Real Romanovs, pp. 141, 142. One of those who appeared to desert the family at this time was their former close friend Nikolay Sablin, who spent much of his life in exile in the USA trying to justify why he did not go with the family to Tobolsk. In conversation with Roman Gul in Paris shortly before his death in 1937, Sablin insisted several times that ‘the emperor, through [Admiral] Nilov, had sent word that I had acted correctly in not going with them’. Nevertheless, Sablin appeared to be haunted by the fact, as Gul noticed, and was chastised by many in émigré monarchist circles who told him that ‘your place was with the imperial family to the very end’. General Count Ilya Tatishchev, who voluntarily went to Tobolsk in Sablin’s stead, was murdered with the imperial family in Ekaterinburg in 1918. See Roman Gul, ‘S Tsarskoy semi na “Shtandarte”’, TS, Amherst Center for Russian Culture. See also Radzinsky, Last Tsar, p. 189.

  108. Ibid.

  109. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 183.

  110. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 270.

  111. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 183.

  112. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 215.

  113. Galushkin, Sobstvennyi ego … konvoy, pp. 279, 280.

  114. Ibid., p. 279.

  115. Ibid., p. 280.

  116. Benkendorf, Last Days, p. 17; Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 165.

  117. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 185.

  Eighteen – Goodbye. Don’t Forget Me

  1. Dnevniki I, p. 367.

  2. Botkina, Vospominaniya, p. 63; Dnevniki I, p. 370.

  3. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 189.

  4. Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 220.

  5. Long, Russian Revolution Aspects, p. 13.

  6. Dorr, Inside the Russian Revolution, p. 132.

  7. Dnevniki I, p. 378; see also The Times, 22 March 1917 (NS).

  8. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 1297; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, pp. 262–3.

  9. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 274.

  10. A tantalizing story survives which suggests that thoughts of getting her children to safety had occurred to Alexandra even before then, perhaps at the end of 1916. A letter in the archives of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport describes how an English businessman, Frank Best, who had a large timber company in the Baltic at Riga and Libau and who exported wood via Archangel during the First World War, was called to a secret meeting at the British Embassy some time late in 1916. Here he was met by the tsaritsa and others who discussed the possibility of his making his sawmill available to house the Romanov children in secret until they could be collected by a ship of the Royal Navy and taken to England. Best willingly agreed and as a symbol of her gratitude the tsaritsa gave him an icon of St Nicholas, the patron saint of children. Sadly no written evidence has been found to support this story other than a letter written retrospectively in 1978 describing the plan in brief. The icon, however, does survive; it was donated by Best’s widow to the chapel of HMS Dolphin in 1962. See letter of Rev. G. V. Vaughan-James, 13 March 1978, Royal Navy Submarine Museum, A 1917/16/002.

  11. Botkin, Real Romanovs, p. 140.

  12. Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, p. 195.

  13. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 276.

  14. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 211.

  15. LP, p. 567.

  16. See Pipes, Russian Revolution, p. 332.

  17. Quoted in Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, From Liberty to Brest-Litovsk (London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 60.

  18. Quoted in Dnevniki I, pp. 384–5.

  19. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 198. Many years of debate and recrimination followed with regard to the failure to evacuate the family in time, with accusations variously made – against Kerensky and his government, the British ambassador Buchanan, the prime minister Lloyd George and George V himself. Buchanan’s daughter Meriel later concluded that Lloyd George had advised against it because of fear of losing British public support for Russia as a wartime ally. But historian Bernard Pares, a great authority on Russia at the time, thought that the Romanov asylum ‘could have made no possible difference to the Russian Army, already then in the process of disintegration’ and that Kerensky had done ‘everything he could to save the Imperial Family’. Appraising the situation with hindsight, a hundred years on, and taking into account the extremely volatile situation in revolutionary Petrograd in the spring of 1917, it seems clear that the logistical problems of getting the family out of such a huge country, by the only viable means – rail – to Murmansk or any other exit point by sea from Russia were well nigh impossible. In the end the failure to do so was the result of circumstance rather than an absence of will. Later, before the renewed upheavals of the July days, it became possible once more to evacuate the family, and the subject would once more be discussed. For a fuller discussion of the Romanov asylum issue see Rappaport, Ekaterinburg: Last Days of the Romanovs, ch. 11.

  20. Long, Russian Revolution Aspects, pp. 5, 7.

  21. Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 222.

  22. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 211.

  23. Kleinmikhel, Shipwrecked World, p. 245.

  24. Ibid., p. 246; Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 183; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 284.

  25. Long, Russian Revolution Aspects, p. 14.

  26. Naryshkina diary, quoted in Dnevniki I, pp. 434, 436, 438, 439.

  27. Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, p. 305.

  28. Long, Russian Revolution Aspects, p. 13.

  29. Dnevniki I, p. 383.

  30. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 262.

  31. See Dnevniki I, pp. 398, 399; Naryshkin, Under Three Tsars, p. 221.

  32. Quoted in Dnevniki I, pp. 400–1.

  33. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 221; Anon. [Stopford], Russian Diary, p. 144. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, pp. 2
66–7.

  34. Dnevniki I, p. 405.

  35. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 211; Benkendorf, Last Days, p. 29.

  36. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, pp. 213–14; Vyrubova, Memories, p. 225.

  37. Ibid. Lili was later given permission to travel south and left Russia with Titi via Odessa. She managed to get her letters and papers to England, where she was reunited with her husband. They had two more daughters and lived in England for seven years. Widowed in 1932, she inherited an estate in Poland but in 1939 was forced to flee again. In 1947 she emigrated to Venezuela with Titi, and eventually joined her daughter Maria. She died in Rome in 1963. After her release from prison Anna Vyrubova was confined to house arrest at her aunt’s house on Znamenskaya ulitsa in Petrograd. From there she was deported to Finland, where she died in 1964.

  38. Dnevniki I, p. 424.

  39. The Zborovsky family had a strong tradition of imperial service. Viktor’s and Katya’s father, Erast Grigorevich, had been a highly decorated long-serving officer under Alexander III and one-time deputy commander of the Escort. Alexander III stood as godfather to Xenia Zborovskaya.

  40. Galushkin, Sobstvennyi ego … konvoy, p. 329: ‘Two nurses from the Feodorovsky Hospital of the grand duchesses were given passes to see the empress. One of them was the sister of Sotnik Zborovsky. Every time she returned from the palace she brought greetings from the empress and the grand duchesses.’

  41. Ibid., p. 362.

  42. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, pp. 209–10; see also Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 288.

  43. Benkendorf, Last Days, pp. 65–6.

  44. Ibid., p. 65; Dnevniki I, pp. 430, 433.

  45. Ibid., pp. 429, 434.

  46. Ibid., pp. 429, 452.

  47. See Belyaev’s description of the Easter services in Fall, pp. 140–6.

  48. Bokhanov, Aleksandra Feodorovna, p. 145.

  49. Belyaev, quoted in Dnevniki I, p. 447; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 296.

  50. Dnevniki I, p. 449.

  51. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 226.

  52. NZ 182, p. 220.

  53. Dnevniki I, p. 451.

  54. NZ 182, p. 217; Dnevniki I, p. 473.

  55. NZ 182, p. 218; Dnevniki I, p. 472.

  56. NZ 182, p. 218.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Anon. [Stopford], Russian Diary, p. 145.

  59. Dnevniki I, p. 460.

  60. Ibid., p. 465.

  61. NZ 182, p. 222.

  62. SA, p. 584.

  63. NZ 182, p. 224.

  64. Letter to Katya, 12 April 1917, EEZ.

  65. M. K. Diterikhs, ‘V svoem krugu’, in Bonetskaya, Tsarskie deti, p. 366; Melnik-Botkina, Vospominaniya, pp. 57–8. See also letter in Dnevniki I, p. 492.

  66. Dnevniki I, p. 478.

  67. Ibid., p. 484.

  68. Fall, p. 148; original Russian in Dnevniki I, p. 486.

  69. Letter to Katya, 30 April 1917, EEZ.

  70. Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 227.

  71. Maria to Katya, 8–9 June 1917, EEZ; See also Anastasia to Katya, 29 June 1917, EEZ.

  72. Dnevniki I, p. 503.

  73. Ibid., p. 548.

  74. Ibid., p. 518. See also Anastasia to Katya, letter no. 4, 30 May, EEZ.

  75. Anastasia to Katya, unnumbered letter, 20 May 1917, EEZ.

  76. Quoted in Dnevniki I, p. 598.

  77. Letter to Katya, no. 8, 4 July 1917, EEZ.

  78. Letter to Katya, no. 11, 12 July 1917, EEZ; Benkendorf, Last Days, p. 97.

  79. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 233.

  80. NZ 182, p. 233.

  81. Letter to Alexander Syroboyarsky, 28 May 1917, Bokhanov, Aleksandra Feodorovna, p. 277. This letter is a typical example of the heavily religious overtones of many of Alexandra’s letters at this time.

  82. Anastasia to Katya, letter, 11 June 1917, EEZ.

  83. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 232. See also Dnevniki I, pp. 576–7 and Tatiana’s letter to Grand Duchess Xenia, 20 July, in ibid., p. 599.

  84. Fall, p. 154.

  85. Naryshkina diary, quoted in Dnevniki I, p. 578.

  86. Dnevniki I, p. 587; Kerensky, Catastrophe, p. 271.

  87. Benkendorf, Last Days, p. 49; Dnevniki I, pp. 588–9.

  88. Ibid., p. 613; see also Dnevniki II, p. 11.

  89. Bulygin, Murder of the Romanovs, pp. 119–20.

  90. Dnevniki I, p. 591.

  91. Ibid., pp. 592, 593; Long, Russian Revolution Aspects, p. 240.

  92. Melnik-Botkina, Vospominaniya, pp. 62–3.

  93. Letter of 17 July, quoted in Dnevniki I, pp. 596–7.

  94. Ibid., p. 606.

  95. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 95; Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 228.

  96. Girardin, Précepteur, p. 119.

  97. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 306.

  98. Dnevniki I, p. 611.

  99. NZ 182, p. 235.

  100. ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’, in Kovalevskaya, S Tsarem, p. 57, entry for 2 August.

  101. Ibid.

  102. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, pp. 305–6; NZ 182, p. 236.

  103. Kerensky, Catastrophe, p. 275; Bulygin, Murder of the Romanovs, p. 129.

  104. Dnevniki II, p. 8.

  105. Dorr, Inside the Russian Revolution, p. 137.

  106. NZ 182, p. 237.

  107. ‘Vospominaniya o Marii Fedorovne Geringere’, ff. 38, 39.

  108. Galitzine, Spirit to Survive, p. 60.

  109. Richard Abraham, Alexander Kerensky (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987), p. 157; Kerensky, Catastrophe, p. 275.

  110. ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’ in Kovalevskaya S Tsarem p. 57, entry for 2 August.

  111. Bykov, Last Days of Tsardom, p. 40; Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 229.

  112. Melnik-Botkina, Vospominaniya, p. 63; Dnevniki II, p.80.

  113. Trewin, Tutor to the Tsarevich, p. 75.

  114. Dnevniki II, p. 8.

  115. NZ 182, p. 237.

  Nineteen – On Freedom Street

  1. Dorr, Inside the Russian Revolution, p. 139.

  2. Long, Russian Revolution Aspects, p. 241.

  3. Archive documents show that there was concern even in August among the authorities in the Urals that the train was headed all the way to Harbin, the secret plan thought to be to evacuate the family to Japan. See TsAGOR CCCP f. 1235 (VTsIK op.53.D.19.L.91, quoted in Ioffe, Revolyutsiya I semya Romanovykh, p. 197.

  4. ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’, in Kovalevskaya, S Tsarem, p. 57, entry for 2 August.

  5. Ibid., p. 58.

  6. Ibid., p. 59.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Dnevniki II, p. 17.

  9. ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’, in Kovalevskaya, S Tsarem, p. 60, entry for 4 August.

  10. Botkin, Real Romanovs, p. 155.

  11. Dorr, Inside the Russian Revolution, p. 140.

  12. Sergeant Major Petr Matveev, ‘Notes and Reminiscences about Nicholas Romanov’, in Sverdlovsk Archives; quoted in Radzinsky, Last Tsar, p. 192.

  13. Dnevniki II, p. 21.

  14. Durland, Red Reign, p. 373; De Windt, Russia as I Know It, p. 121.

  15. Durland, Red Reign, pp. 373–4; De Windt, Russia as I Know It, pp. 121–2.

  16. Dorr, Inside the Russian Revolution, p. 140. See also Kerensky, quoted in Dnevniki I, pp. 589–90.

  17. Letter to Zinaida Tolstaya, Nepein, Pered Rasstrelom, p. 136.

  18. Vasili Dolgorukov, letter to his brother, 14 August; quoted in LP, p. 583.

  19. ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’, in Kovalevskaya, S Tsarem, p. 65; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, pp. 310–11; ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’, in Kovalevskaya, S Tsarem, pp. 62–3.

  20. Melnik-Botkina, Vospominaniya, p. 69.

  21. LP, p. 583.

  22. Dnevniki II, pp. 29–30.

  23. The jury is still out on Derevenko’s behaviour after the revolution. Having been extremely well paid and well treated by the Imperial Family, who extended their generosity to his children and even his sick relatives, D
erevenko appears to have been sent away having been discovered pilfering from Alexey’s belongings. From Petrograd he sent numerous requests to rejoin the family in Tobolsk (which suggests he still had a degree of loyalty to the family), but was never allowed to travel there, leading to accusations that he had betrayed them. He is thought to have died of typhus in Petrograd in 1921. See Zimin, Detskii Mir, pp. 86–8.

  24. Dnevniki II, p. 50; see Maria’s letter of 17 May, in Nepein, Pered Rasstrelom, p. 166.

  25. This description has been drawn from photographs of the girls’ room, of which three, taken from different angles, have survived. See e.g. Trewin, Tutor to the Tsarevich, pp. 84–5. A very damaged photograph sent to Katya Zborovskaya can be found at EEZ.

  26. ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’, in Kovalevskaya, S Tsarem, p. 68.

  27. Dnevniki II, p. 30.

  28. Anastasia, letter to Katya, no. 13, 15 August, EEZ.

  29. Bulygin, Murder of the Romanovs, p. 195; Elizabeth Zinovieff, A Princess Remembers (New York: Galitzine, 1997), p. 119.

  30. Chernova, Vernye, p. 449; NZ 2, pp. 246, 248. ‘Iz Dnevnika A. S. Demidovoi’, in Kovalevskaya, S Tsarem, p. 65; Wilton and Telberg, Last Days of the Romanovs, p. 183. Khitrovo later wrote her own account under her married name: M. Erdeli, ‘Razyasnenie o moei poezdke v Tobolsk’, Dvuglavyi orel, no. 30, 1922, pp. 6–11. For a detailed discussion of the incident see Ioffe, Revolyutsiya i semya Romanovykh, pp. 201–7 and Chernova, Vernye, pp 447–53. See also Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, pp. 314–15.

  31. Radzinsky, Last Tsar, p. 199.

  32. Dnevniki II, p. 64.

  33. See Olga’s letter to PVP: 23 November, in Dnevniki II, p. 175.

  34. Letter to Maria Feodorovna, 27 October, quoted in Dnevniki II, p. 138.

  35. Pankratov memoirs, quoted in Dnevniki II, p. 75.

  36. Schneider, letter to PVP, 9 October 1917, quoted in Dnevniki II, p. 114.

  37. Brewster, Anastasia’s Album, p. 53.

  38. See e.g. Dnevniki II, pp. 45, 46, 52, 54, 55. For Nicholas see ibid., e.g. pp. 54–5.

  39. Ibid., p. 47.

  40. Radzinsky, Last Tsar, p. 195.

  41. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 313.

  42. Dnevniki II, p. 72. See also Tatiana’s description in a letter to Xenia, Nepein, Pered Rasstrelom, pp. 147–8.

  43. Pankratov, quoted in Dnevniki II, p. 73.

  44. Pankratov, quoted in Fall, p. 265.