The Romanov Sisters
Page 59
* As next in line Mikhail was offered the throne the following day but he declined to take it.
* Alexandra took her current diary with her to Tobolsk and continued writing it until the night before her death in July 1918. These diaries were recovered after the family were murdered and are now in the Russian State Archives, GARF.
* The dog has often been named elsewhere as Jem or Jemmy but the Katya letters confirm its name as above. There has also been discussion – based perhaps on the faulty recall of Anna Vyrubova – that Jim belonged to Tatiana, but again Anastasia’s letters to Katya make abundantly clear that the dog was hers.
* On 12 April this ruling was overturned and they were allowed to share a bedroom again.
* ‘Little Nicholas the fool’.
* Sources vary on precisely which national flag the train was travelling under. Some say Japanese, others, including Anna Demidova in her diary, say American. She clearly talks of Chinese cooks working in the restaurant car and a railway worker eyewitness confirms that the cars were provided by the Chinese-Eastern Railway – a line that operated effectively as an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway into Manchuria, via Harbin, and out to the Pacific coast at Vladivostok.
* It has been suggested that Kerensky had considered Tobolsk as a stopgap and that from there he did indeed hope to evacuate the family out to the safety of Japan on the Trans-Siberian Railway via Manchuria.
* Alexey’s other dyadka, Derevenko, did not travel with them to Tobolsk; his behaviour towards the boy had changed since the revolution. He had become harsh and churlish in his manner towards Alexey and was no longer perceived as the kind and trustworthy carer he had once been.
* No doubt to prevent the guards understanding what they were talking about.
* The Feodorovsky Sobor at Tsarskoe Selo.
* There is an echo in Olga’s words of Romans xii: 19 and 21: ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.’… ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’
* On 31 January the Bolshevik government switched to the Gregorian calendar, immediately jumping forward fourteen days to 14 February. Nicholas however persisted in writing his diary with old style dates, while Alexandra noted both. The girls dated their letters variously OS and NS, often making it difficult to distinguish which they were using. For the sake of clarity, all dates from 14 February 1918 are New Style.
* Alexandra and Maria were allowed the luxury of a hooded tarantas, but Nicholas and the others travelled in a local Siberian form of transport, a kosheva – a low-slung wheel-less carriage suspended on long poles – the interiors without seats spread with straw.
* This prayer is normally only sung (rather than recited) at Russian Orthodox funerals.