There was really only one viable option, as far as Alexander Ievreinov was concerned: a route by water out of Tobolsk, as soon as the ice-bound rivers were navigable again. In a quiet backwater of the Irtysh not far from Tobolsk, out of the water for the winter, stood a screw-driven schooner, suitable – according to those in the know – for sea and even ocean sailing.66* This schooner was much faster than the ordinary paddle-driven steamships that plied the River Irtysh. To take possession of it would be easy; one of the members of the organisation could navigate – perhaps a former merchant sailor who was familiar with the northern river routes. The plan would also involve disabling telegraph stations along the Ob and at the coast, which might have sent out a warning. When the waterways were free of ice, the Romanovs could be taken north by river to the Arctic Ocean and from there across to Archangel. But to pass through the upper reaches of the Irtysh and Ob was only possible from the beginning of June, when the ice had melted. With this suggestion in mind, Ievreinov sent his fellow officer Tunoshensky urgently back to Petrograd to consult with their monarchist leaders.67
* * *
At last we have the first serious discussion in Russian – by someone directly involved in the monarchist campaign to free the Romanovs – of a mooted rescue by river from Tobolsk. Alexander Ievreinov was not in fact alone in considering this option. For it is one that has long circulated, in the usual frustratingly fragmented form, in sources on the fate of the Romanovs. Evidence suggests that a plan for a river rescue was indeed discussed even earlier in 1918. It did not, however, come from Russian monarchists, but from a Norwegian shipper named Jonas Lied – and with the unofficial involvement of the British.
Chapter 8
‘Please Don’t Mention My Name!’
During the winter of 1917–18 the safety of the Romanovs, to all intents and purposes, appeared to have been taken care of by the Provisional Government. Being shut away in Western Siberia, with the snow encircling the town and the rivers leading in and out of it frozen solid, ensured the family’s remoteness. It seemed they could come to no harm – for the present at least. A last brief blip of interest in his cousins’ welfare had been expressed by King George on 5 August 1917, when he had asked Stamfordham to send a note to the Cabinet enquiring whether the ‘removal of the Emperor and Empress from Tsarskoe Selo … as having been decided upon by the Provisional Government, has been carried into effect’. Sir George Buchanan was not sure; ‘the matter has been kept such a profound secret,’ he responded, ‘that even [the] Minister for Foreign Affairs whom I questioned on the subject a week ago could not give me a positive answer’.1 He did not in fact receive official confirmation that the family had left for Tobolsk until the actual day of their departure – 14 August.2
* * *
From here on, the FO file Russia and Siberia 800/205, as well as the Royal Archives, is silent on the Imperial Family until a brief flurry of interest the following May. The British Crown and government would appear to have totally disengaged from the problem, turning their occasional attention instead to the plight of Dagmar in Crimea (as did King Christian of Denmark), but only because the Queen Mother continued to be constantly at the Foreign Office’s back, demanding news of her.
If the British government had had its way at this juncture, the whole sorry plight of the Romanovs in Russia would have been left in abeyance. The record appears to fall silent. What can we infer from that?
In their 1976 book The File on the Tsar, Summers and Mangold argued that this ‘gap in the files’ for the period ‘right up till July 1918’ was ‘extraordinary, and highly improbable’ – their conclusion being that official documents relating to the Romanovs had been weeded out or destroyed.3 Contrary to what they say, there was in fact a revival of British interest in early May 1918, as we shall see, but nevertheless this claim is something I pondered long and hard as I sifted through the evidence. While we have no way ever of knowing what documents (if any) might have passed via the back-channels of the Secret Intelligence Service, there is perhaps an obvious and logical explanation. Might it not have been a simple case of official complacency – of ‘out of sight, out of mind’? The war was still raging and, now that the Bolsheviks had seized power, the Allies were far more preoccupied with preserving the Eastern Front and keeping Russia in the fight against Germany. Worries about the Imperial Family came a very poor second to this. For now, at least, the Romanovs seemed to be well out of trouble in the relatively quiet backwaters of Western Siberia.
* * *
The Imperial Family may for now have been removed well away from the hotbed of trouble in Petrograd, but far away in Tobolsk the Romanovs were longing for word that they had not been forgotten. By the end of 1917 they were clearly feeling cut off from their loved ones. As Olga explained to a friend, Zinaida Tolstaya: ‘Tobolsk is a corner lost when the river freezes, the only communication with the rest of the world is the road to Tyumen: over 200 versts [132 miles]. News reaches us with a great delay.’4
For months, in their often innocent-sounding letters and postcards sent from the Governor’s House to friends and relatives outside, the family had been sending a paper trail of intelligence about the house in which they were held, its grounds, the location of their rooms and even the disposition of their guards. The four Romanov sisters had described how often they were outside in the yard or sunning themselves on the balcony or on the roof of the greenhouse; how they could see the public passing by and thus how visible, if not accessible, the family actually were, given the restrictions placed upon them.
Anastasia in particular had been quite open to her friend Katya Zborovskaya when sending photographs: ‘Here is the space where we walk. We often sit on this balcony; it is very nice. One of the windows that looks to this side is of Papa’s office. Our windows look to the other side; there is a street there.’ And again: ‘I am sending you the view of the Governor’s House. This is the balcony where we sit often and for a long time. Our windows face the street, which is in the corner behind the trees. The windows on the balcony that are the closest to the street are the windows of our big living room.’5 These were clearly covert messages that Anastasia knew Katya would pass on to her brother Viktor, a close friend of the Imperial Family and an officer of the former Cossack Escort that had loyally protected them at Tsarskoe Selo. Many of the Escort, including Viktor, had now gone over to the Whites and were holding out with monarchist groups in the south.
Such feelings were no doubt the impetus behind a letter from Alexandra to Margaret Jackson, her English governess from her childhood days in Hesse. She had kept in touch with ‘Madgie’, now living in retirement at a Home for Governesses in London’s Regent’s Park, but had not heard from her for some time. In the letter, written to Alexandra’s dictation by Sydney Gibbes – in the hope that, coming from an innocuous tutor, it would avoid suspicion – she sent details of the location of the rooms inside the house, and of the family’s daily routine. On the surface this might have seemed like idle chit-chat, but it was clearly designed as useful intelligence for any possible rescue attempt:
Our House or rather Houses, for there are two, one on one side of the street and one on the other, are the best in town; that in which the Household proper lives is entirely isolated and possesses a small garden besides a piece of the roadway which has been railed in to make a recreation ground. The other house which is almost exactly opposite, is occupied by Government officials and contains quarters for the Suite.6
Even more emphatic was the question that followed, in barely disguised code, which Madgie would surely immediately recognise: ‘I hear that David is back from France, how are his mother and father?’7 This reference to David, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) and his parents, King George and Queen Mary, very pointedly indicated that the contents of this letter were intended for the royal family. It was a faint but plaintive cry for help.
Gibbes kept a draft of the letter, which was sent from Tobolsk to the British embassy on 15 December, an
d then from Petrograd by diplomatic bag via the Foreign Office to England. But did it ever arrive? No reply or acknowledgement was received in Tobolsk, nor does the original letter itself survive. Did Madgie pass it on to the royal family? If so, there is no record of it in the Royal Archives. As it turns out, this is highly unlikely. For Miss Margaret Hardcastle Jackson died on 28 January 1918. Even if she did receive the letter, she was almost certainly too old and frail to deal with it, for one of the causes of her death recorded on the certificate was ‘senility’.8
* * *
While the letter to Miss Jackson sadly never served its intended purpose, word on the Romanovs does, however, briefly resurface in a document that I found during research for this book. The allusion in itself contradicts the assertion by Summers and Mangold that there was no reference to the Romanovs in the official record at this time. The circumstances in which they are mentioned are significant, but perhaps not for the right or hoped-for reasons.
* * *
In December 1917, at the invitation of the British Foreign Office, the experienced journalist Robert Wilton, who after serving as Russia correspondent of The Times since 1903 had returned to London in September, submitted a confidential report to the government. Headed ‘Russia Still the Greatest Factor in the War. German Plans – The Need of Urgent Measures’, much of the report was taken up with economic issues. The British were by now greatly preoccupied with the threat that Allied military stores might be confiscated by the Bolsheviks as the revolution spread north, but also that the German advance in south-western Russia would lead to them seizing control of the crucial grain-growing areas and the route to Crimea through the oil-rich Caucasus to the Black Sea. Wilton warned that if the Germans ‘took forcible possession of the country’, they might restore the Romanovs to a puppet monarchy – ‘a possibility that is by no means excluded even under Bolshevik auspices’.9
By now there was widespread rumour that the Bolsheviks were intriguing with the Germans for a separate peace deal. In a five-point list of recommendations, Wilton urged that an Allied intervention force be prepared to go into Russia via the Far East to offer support to anti-Bolshevik groups of Cossacks, Siberians and Ukrainians, as well as into Archangel in the north to protect British military supplies there. His fifth and final point, however, was perhaps the most significant in terms of this story and he emphasised its importance by underlining it:
5. Secret and expeditious measures should be taken to prevent the Bolsheviks from capturing the ex-Tsar and his family or any of the Romanovs.10
‘Will the Allies realize the importance of the issues at stake,’ asked Wilton in conclusion, ‘and proceed without loss of time to take the necessary action?’11 But the Imperial Family were already captives, surely? Yes, but up till now of a fairly benign Provisional Government that had wished, however ineptly, to protect them. With the recent usurpation of power by Lenin and his hardliners, the British had been following their peace negotiations with Germany through intercepted telegrams from Russian military and naval advisers at the talks, forwarded by British attachés in Petrograd. A different kind of concern had taken over: that the Bolsheviks, now gaining a foothold in Siberia, would seize control of the prisoners at Tobolsk and use them as political pawns in a game of power play with the Germans over a separate peace deal.
There is no follow-through in official Foreign Office documents to shed light on how, and if, Wilton’s recommendation for ‘secret measures’ was actively pursued with regard to the Romanovs. But during the winter of 1917–18 evidence suggests that there were tentative plans to shelter the family at Murmansk.12 Under the protection of the Allies already established there, the Romanovs would, once liberated from Tobolsk, wait at the port till an opportune time came to get them out by sea to either Britain or Scandinavia. The project to construct a house to accommodate them is confirmed in a telegram from the British consul at Archangel to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) offices at Bishopsgate on 9 October. The house was to be assembled first in Archangel, as the telegram explicitly states, the consul confirming that he had ‘placed order for immediate construction of house which we intend shipping to Murmansk with last steamer for erection in ground allotted to us by Government’. But time was against them and the consul explained that he had had ‘to act promptly as otherwise no possibility of getting house ready in time and now only under great pressure’.13 Telegrams from London followed, confirming that furniture and supplies would be sent by the Admiralty to equip the house, but there is no mention of the Romanovs.14 At this stage, because of a chronic shortage of accommodation at Murmansk for British officials, it seems that the eight-roomed house was to be temporarily made over to the use of HBC staff and British military there. But on 2 November a telegram came from Archangel saying that the furniture and stores for the house would not be needed: ‘unlikely that under existing conditions will erect house this season [my italics]’. A telegram went back saying that the supplies had already been ordered and urging that ‘every effort should be made to complete house before end of November’. A sum of 50,000 rubles had been set aside for the purpose.15
Here the record breaks off. But there is one crucial piece of surviving evidence. On 10 August 1918 – note the date – the house’s original purpose was confirmed, albeit retrospectively, in a Royal Navy telegram found in Admiralty records. Addressed to the senior naval officer at Murmansk and sent by Francis Cromie, the British naval attaché in Petrograd, it states:
Following received via Christiania [now Oslo] from Naval Attaché Petrograd for SNO Murmansk begins:
I have received from Mr Browd on behalf of the Murmansk Scientific Industrial Co[mpan]y the offer of the building to be erected on the Dived Company’s land near the British Consulate Murmansk formerly intended for the late Czar and now offered for occupation by General Poole or Admiral Kemp. Buildings complete with heating Light [sic] utensils etc. and now in charge of Kambulin Engineer erecting them. [my italics]16
According to an account submitted to the HBC by the Russian contractor P. S. Kuznetsov, it would appear that around mid-November 1917 work had indeed begun on the wooden house, which was cut and prefabricated at Solombala sawmill outside Archangel, after which it was dismantled, shipped in sections across the Dvina estuary to Khabarka Island opposite and stacked in storage there.17 This was done under the supervision of Henry Armitstead,* the Hudson’s Bay Company agent based at Archangel, and from there the sections were to be shipped to Murmansk.18
The location chosen for the house was the best Murmansk had to offer; the British consulate next to it, although wooden and single-storey, had been built to look as ‘imposing’ as a construction of squared logs could. The house for the Romanovs would be ‘in close proximity to branch offices of several Petrograd banks, and close also, to Government buildings and to the Cathedral’, according to a description of the town at the time, and would be of even better quality.19 But it was never built in time for the Romanovs – should they have been spirited away from Siberia – to to use it. The telegram of 10 August 1918 clearly shows that the sections were yet to be sent over and assembled.
This does not, however, take away from the fact that there might have been a tentative British plan to get the Romanovs out of Tobolsk and on to the safety of Murmansk that winter. And there was one man who was best placed to help effect it. Norwegian businessman and adventurer Jonas Marius Lied had an unrivalled knowledge of the White and Kara Seas and the Siberian river systems that were crucial to the undertaking of such a mission. Born in Solsnes in 1881, ‘a tall, lean redoubtable figure with a high brow and firm lips and chin’, Lied was, according to a friend, the kind of man ‘who could break his way through social ice, in fact a human ice-breaker, but also the most remarkable businessman that Scandinavia has produced’.20 As a young man, Lied had gained wide experience working for engineering companies in Europe. In 1910 he turned his sights on the business potential of Russia, spending the next two years travelling there and learning the language
, before founding the Siberian Steamship, Manufacturing & Trading Company in Christiania in 1912, with branches in Krasnoyarsk, St Petersburg and Archangel.21 Such became his long association with Russia that Lied was ‘mentally even more devoted to Russia than to his native land’.22
His objective was to bring to fruition centuries of ambition by navigators to exploit the commercial potential of the Kara Sea passage and develop a trade route in minerals and timber between Western Europe and Siberia. His venture would make use of the Yenisey and Ob, two of the great rivers that intersect the Siberian land mass, flowing from the southern Russo-Chinese border down to the Kara Sea and from there into the Arctic Ocean. At that time there were no routes via rail or road that covered these vast distances, and the river routes could only be exploited during the short, ice-free season between July and September.23
In order to better acquaint himself with the geography of Siberia, in 1913 Lied explored the Yenisey on a chartered steamer with the famous Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, thus pioneering the opening up of the route upriver from southern Siberia. By 1914 Lied had been appointed Norwegian consul at Krasnoyarsk by King Haakon and had established a state-of-the-art sawmill at Malaklovo on the Yenisey. One of the Russian grand dukes happily arranged the Russian citizenship that Lied needed in order to enter the Russian steamship business and buy shares in the riverboat fleets on the Ob and Yenisey. In 1915 the Tsar elevated Lied’s citizenship to honorary and hereditary status, ‘in recognition of his successful leadership of a convoy of cargo ships and river steamboats from Hamburg through the North Sea to Siberia at the outbreak of World War I’.24 By 1916 his Siberian Company held the majority of shares for all boats operating on the Yenisey, and control of forty-nine riverboats on the Ob and 140 barges.25
The Race to Save the Romanovs Page 17