The Race to Save the Romanovs

by Helen Rappaport

  Predictably, Solovev’s promised rescue never materialised. Many in the White Russian émigré community, particularly supporters of Little Markov, subsequently blamed him for the failure of a mission to free the Romanovs. But was there actually ever any concrete mission at all? The whole Solovev escapade is still viewed as something of a ‘pseudo-conspiracy’, and Solovev himself is frequently condemned as an adventurer and opportunist intent on siphoning off money from the rescue fund. Much of the money collected in Petrograd had been forwarded to Tobolsk by the naïve and trusting Dehn and Vyrubova, some of which Solovev may have pocketed. Other monies and goods passed by him to Father Vasiliev also disappeared, and it is even claimed that the two men quarrelled over their share-out. The later inquiry into the Romanov murders by investigator Nikolay Sokolov suggested that of the 175,000 rubles he had received from Yaroshinsky, Solovev had passed on only 35,000 to the Romanovs.34

  Solovev has also been labelled a covert Bolshevik and double agent, who ‘headed off’ Markov’s emissaries and ‘even handed over at least two of them to the Bolshevik authorities’.35 There are even unfounded claims that he was a German spy. Whatever his true motives were, he remains an enigma in this story. Nevertheless, accounts of a more credible rescue plot by Russian monarchists, in existence at around the same time, are to be found buried in obscure émigré literature produced in the 1920s, which have never before been discussed.

  At the end of 1917 another monarchist group entirely independent of Solovev’s Rasputin circle centred itself around Prince Vladimir Trubetskoy, his cousins Princes Alexander and Sergey Trubetskoy and officers of the Sumsky Hussars. The Sumskys were an elite Cossack regiment from Sumy in southern Russia. One of the oldest Imperial Russian Hussar regiments, founded in 1651, its officers were drawn from the nobility and very wealthy families. In December a member of the group, Captain Viktor Sokolov, joined forces with two fellow officers – the Raevsky brothers – who adopted the absurd, giveaway pseudonyms of Kirillov and Mefodiev* when sent on a recce of Tobolsk. They reported back that there was considerable monarchist sympathy in the area, which even extended to some of the Tsar’s captors. It was suggested that the best time for a rescue would be on a Sunday when the Imperial Family were allowed out to church, with a guard detachment of only twenty men. The group planned to secrete themselves in the church, behind the iconostasis, and then attack the guards when the Romanovs arrived for the service. Much like Little Markov’s rescue plot from the Alexander Palace, the idea seemed absurdly fanciful; it had ‘the smell of a Dumas novel’, as Sokolov himself admitted, and it was not long before he and the Raevsky brothers were arrested by the militia and interrogated by the local Soviet.36

  Nevertheless, as Sokolov later described, several officers from the Sumy regiment travelled to Tobolsk to check out the guard situation at the Governor’s House and to make contact with local monarchists. They were, however, deeply disappointed to discover that these supposed ‘monarchists’ turned out to be about thirty inexperienced teenage ‘boy scouts’, and although the local population was largely indifferent, the garrison guarding the Romanovs was huge. Nevertheless, through Father Vasiliev they sent word to Nicholas, who agreed to an escape, but only if the family took their loyal servants as well – a demand that immediately hamstrung any hope of an efficient rescue.37

  The whole plan was, in any event, scuppered when on 19 December a deacon at the Church of the Ascension inadvertently read the old prayers for the Imperial Family and the ‘Mnogoletie’ (Many Years) – the traditional salute to the Tsar – was sung.38 In retribution for this prayer for the prolongation of the Emperor’s life, the soldiers guarding the family had a meeting and imposed an immediate clampdown on the family’s attendance at church.39 The only option left, as Sokolov recalled, was to try and spring Nicholas at night from the Governor’s House, when half the guards would be asleep – something that Nicholas of course would never have agreed to.

  The plan had to be revised: a new version was devised by a monarchist named Polyansky, a Moscow-based barrister who apparently had the moral and material support of several eminent state officials as well as, so he claimed, the French ambassador Noulens. His plan was that a detachment of lower-ranking midshipmen (gardemariny) would go to Tobolsk brandishing bogus orders instructing them to take over the guard of the family at the Governor’s House.40 If the resident guards objected, they would take the house by force. Alexandra and the girls would be sent out by rail to the coast and then across the Pacific to Japan. Nicholas, who they knew adamantly refused to leave Russia and part with Alexey, would be hidden somewhere in the country with his son. Together they would be taken incognito on horseback to the Troitsk monastery in the Orenberg region that was controlled by loyal Cossacks – the Tsar with his beard shaved off, posing as French tutor to Alexey as a boy from a rich family.

  At this point, any historian would be prompted to ask immediately the obvious question: had the group actually stopped to think whether Nicholas and Alexandra would agree to being separated in this dramatic way? Had they managed to sound them out about their hare-brained plan? If they had done so, and had entered into any kind of serious forward planning of the details, they could have spared themselves a lot of wasted effort.

  Nevertheless a circle of ten conspirators fixed on a departure date of 10 January 1918, travelling to Tobolsk in two separate groups in disguise and under false names, and by different routes. One group, led by Prince Alexander Trubetskoy, travelled via Vyatka (now Kirov), Ekaterinburg, Perm and Chelyabinsk; the other, headed by Captain Mikhail Lopukhin, via Orenburg and Ufa.41 During their seven exhausting days on the train from Moscow to Chelyabinsk the first group discovered, to their dismay, that the railroads were in a state of utter chaos; the stations along the route were policed by Red Guards and any trains heading east were frequently attacked. When they arrived at Chelyabinsk they learned that the monastery at Troitsk, eighty-seven miles away, held by the White general Dutov, where they had been hoping to hide Nicholas and Alexey, had been taken by the Bolsheviks on 25 December. They had no option but to send a coded telegram to Moscow: ‘The prices have changed; the deal cannot take place.’42

  Undaunted, the conspirators fell back on the idea of making a sudden attack on the Governor’s House, if they could first disable the telegraph and post offices. In preparation they sought out a network of safe places – Old Believer monasteries deep in Siberia – where the family could be hidden, should the opportunity to free them arise. This time they planned to take the Romanovs out to Yalutorovsk (in Tyumen district), then on horseback sixty-eight miles south-west to the town of Kurgan, using bridlepaths on the southern branch of the Siberian road. It would take two days to cover the distance, travelling in secret by night, and would need twenty-three changes of horse – not to mention considerable logistical organisation.43 Such a difficult and complicated mission, further endangered by the presence of marauding Bolsheviks in the area, was simply beyond anyone’s capabilities, let alone a group of poorly organised monarchists. As things turned out, some of the officers involved were rounded up and arrested, leaving those hiding in Tobolsk in serious danger. Then a message came from Moscow that the ‘task of freeing the Imperial Family was unrealizable and their mission was considered to be at an end’.44 Looking back on it many years later in exile, Trubetskoy was still of the opinion that, given more favourable circumstances, it would have been perfectly feasible to rescue the Imperial Family:

  Liberating them and getting them out of Tobolsk was not the most difficult part of the mission. The main difficulty was in how to hide and protect them once rescued. A much more solid organization was needed in order to do this, greater preparatory work, better intelligence, and – the main thing – money, money, and more money. Nothing else was lacking in those ready to carry out the plan.45

  Another ill-conceived plan to save the Romanovs had ended in abject failure, yet the dogged Little Markov remained determined to help the ‘tsar’s abandoned family’,
this time via a group to which Markov II and Count Benckendorff were affiliated, known as the Pravyi Tsentr (Right Centre), which was plotting to restore the monarchy.46 One of the group, Captain Nikolay Sedov, had been sent on alone to Tyumen in September the previous year to keep an eye on the situation, there being insufficient funds at the time to send anyone else, but they had lost touch with him.47 Little Markov was dismayed by Markov II’s inefficiency. There simply wasn’t enough money to ‘take any serious measures for the liberation of the Imperial Family’, yet here was Markov II with high-flown plans about a major insurrection and the overthrow of the Bolsheviks, and bragging that he had ‘more than a hundred officers at his disposal, all supplied with the necessary papers and ready to start at any moment’.48

  On 10 March 1918, Little Markov arrived with letters, books and other gifts for the Romanovs, under instructions from Markov II, who told him he was convinced ‘that we shall be able to establish ourselves in Tobol’sk’.49 ‘Do not forget that you won’t be long alone,’ he confided; ‘other officers will follow you, one after another.’50 When Little Markov handed the parcel of gifts to Father Vasiliev, he was told that the family’s position was ‘growing worse every day’, as the Bolsheviks in the area were ‘devoting increasing attention’ to them and a new detachment of much tougher guards had been sent out from Petrograd to guard them.51 At his lodgings, Little Markov wrote a letter to the Tsaritsa assuring her that ‘Tante Ivette’ [Markov II’s code name] ‘was working feverishly, everything was going like clockwork and the day of their release would soon be here’. A day later he received a small icon to wear around his neck and a prayer book inscribed by Alexandra, ‘To little M. with my blessing’. She signed it ‘Chief’, as head of his regiment.52 Yet, worried for Little Markov’s safety, Alexandra begged him to go to Pokrovskoe and join Solovev, who was staying at Rasputin’s house there.53

  Before he left, Little Markov was grateful to be able to catch sight of the Imperial Family standing at the windows of their rooms on the second floor of the Governor’s House. He dared to stop and linger long enough on the street below for them to recognise him and smile; Alexandra noted in her diary that she had seen him.54 Little Markov was overjoyed: ‘I had seen the Imperial Family again, and kept my oath. But, at the same time, I was desperately anxious about Their Majesties’ hopeless position.’ At dawn the following morning, as his sledge drove through the forest towards Pokrovskoe, he encountered two troikas full of swarthy men in leather, armed to the teeth with rifles and machine guns. It was an ominous sign: ‘The Bolsheviks were reaching out their bloodstained hands to Tobolsk.’55 Little Markov hurried to send word to Vyrubova, Dehn and other supporters in Petrograd that ‘help must be sent to Their Majesties with all speed’.56

  * * *

  Making sense of the extremely fragmentary, often conflicting, and poorly written accounts of monarchist attempts to free the Romanovs is an uphill struggle in any study of the last days of the Imperial Family, and it was one of the greatest bugbears in my research. Frustrated by a lack of reliable, concrete information, in April 2017, while in New York, I visited the Bakhmeteff Archive in the hope that an obscure typescript I had located in its online catalogue might prove useful. It was worth the effort. Alexander Ievreinov’s till now overlooked ‘Poezdka v Tobolsk’ (Journey to Tobolsk) has brought to light not just a valuable account of the situation in Tobolsk in the spring of 1918, but a considerably more coherent account of some of the rescue plans.

  * * *

  During the time Little Markov was out in Siberia on his fruitless quest, he does not seem to have been aware that another member of Markov II’s Petrograd group – the economist and former senator Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky – had sent out his own emissaries to Tobolsk. One of them, Alexander Ievreinov, was a Colonel of the Lifeguard Jaeger regiment and came from a Kursk family with distinguished military service to the tsars. In disguise and using false names and passports, Ievreinov and his fellow officer Tunoshensky set off, posing as brother merchants on business, to try and make contact with the Tsar and pass on messages of support. Count Benckendorff was also privy to the plan, but had reservations that Ievreinov’s mission might easily be uncovered and might expose the Romanovs to more harm for little gain.57

  Arriving in Tobolsk in March 1918, Ievreinov quickly discovered through the local clergy that the best way he could hope to make contact was via one or other of the family’s physicians – Dr Botkin or Dr Derevenko, who lived in the Kornilov House across the road from the Governor’s House – as they had been allowed greater freedom of movement in order to continue in medical practice and offer help to the sick in Tobolsk. Importantly, they were the only members of the entourage who were not searched when going in and out of the Governor’s House.58 Feigning a serious throat infection, Ievreinov went to see Botkin at his daily surgery, but it was difficult to talk as the room was full of people. He made an excuse to return later in private, when he revealed his true identity and the reason for his mission. Reassured, Botkin took him into his confidence. Ievreinov managed to maintain the phoney illness cover so well that Botkin was able to make several visits to him in his rooms, where they discussed the Imperial Family’s difficult situation.59

  During their conversations Botkin revealed how the family was living inside the Governor’s House. Mindful of their money difficulties, the Tsar was extremely economical, to the point where, with matches now being so hard to get hold of and very expensive, if someone else in the room was smoking he would light his cigarette from theirs rather than waste a match. The local people were constantly asking Botkin to smuggle in gifts of sugar, pies and jam, which he did inside his large English overcoat, though he worried that the jam might leak out of the pockets and give him away. Botkin also made clear, during his visits to Ievreinov, something that would be a significant factor in the latter part of this story: while Nicholas and Alexandra supported an internal Russian rescue of some kind, ‘their Majesties utterly refused to be the subject of any political moves to help them – in particular any discussions on their behalf with the Germans’.60

  ‘Unfortunately, people such as you are very rare of late,’ a weary Botkin told Ievreinov. It was so difficult to trust anyone, and Nicholas and Alexandra would be grateful to hear any news from Ievreinov of their friends in the capital and to know there were a few experienced and loyal people looking out for them here in Tobolsk.61 The leader of the monarchists – presumably Markov II – with whom they had had contact, Botkin told him, had seemed to ‘lack any authority’, despite his energy and devotion. Ievreinov too had come to the conclusion that Romanov supporters in Petrograd were hopelessly disorganised and had no effective overall leader to unite them in their efforts. They concentrated too much on the political and not the practical side of things, such as cultivating the key support of Kobylinsky, whom Dr Botkin assured Ievreinov was ‘heart and soul devoted to the Imperial Family, to the last drop of his blood’. Ievreinov concluded that, with Kobylinsky’s cooperation, it would be relatively easy to get the Romanovs away from the Governor’s House on a day when the men of his guard were in a good mood.62

  But where could they take them? Ievreinov pondered the options for many days. It was 132 miles to the nearest railway station: that was too far and would expose the family to too much danger; they had to be taken somewhere inland, the Semipalatinsk region, for example – an area of remote steppe on the border with Kazakhstan – or perhaps eastwards.* To take them west into European Russia was out of the question.63 Either way, it had to be done on horseback: Ievreinov found himself encountering precisely the same logistical problems as those that had defeated the Trubetskoy/Sokolov group. Such a journey would require the help of Kirghiz tribesmen and would need a great deal of time and resources, a knowledge of local dialects and bridlepaths and a whole chain of stopping-off points. To make matters even more difficult, this route could not be undertaken in March, for this was just as the heavy spring rains began, making the roads impassable with deep m
ud. A rescue on horseback could only be carried out in the autumn.64 But could a sickly tsarevich and his equally sick mother endure such a journey? No one seems to have asked the question. Whichever way you looked at it, every possible factor conspired to defeat this latest rescue plan.

  Dr Botkin’s son Gleb, who was living with his father at the Kornilov House in Tobolsk, later wrote that he was convinced Kobylinsky had been hoping to get the family away to safety not long after their arrival in Tobolsk. Looking at the options, he had thought the only viable escape route to be north, on the road through Berezov (Berezovo) to Obdorsk (now Salekhard) and then ‘on one of the Norwegian schooners which come to Obdorsk’ to the Arctic Ocean beyond. He had held out hopes to flee with the family before Pankratov arrived, taking with them a protective convoy of thirty loyal men from the guard. By the time the Bolsheviks were able to respond, the convoy would be too far ahead for anyone to catch them; and if they did, their firearms would be virtually unusable in the freezing conditions. Once the thaw came, the dirt roads beyond Berezov would be impassable. But like all other would-be rescuers, Kobylinsky had needed funds to set this plan in train; and the monarchists, whom Botkin thought ‘incapable of sensible action’, had refused to help him, mistrusting his motives. They were, Botkin concluded, ‘utterly futile chatterboxes’ and had missed a golden opportunity offered by Kobylinsky, who in his view was utterly loyal to the Romanovs.65