The Race to Save the Romanovs

by Helen Rappaport

  The first letter immediately raised the family’s morale, for it opened by announcing that ‘Friends are no longer sleeping and hope that the hour so long awaited has come.’ The Whites and the Czech legions were about fifty miles away; Ekaterinburg would soon fall, and the family was instructed to ‘be attentive to any movement from the outside; wait and hope’.36 They were asked to make a drawing of the location of their bedrooms and of the furniture in them. What hour did they go to bed, the letter asked? ‘One of you must not sleep between 2.00 and 3.00 on all the following nights.’ It was signed ‘One who is ready to die for you. An Officer of the Russian Army.’37

  A response in French to this letter, written some time over the next two to three days, was added at the bottom of the crumpled page. It appears to be Olga Nikolaevna’s handwriting, probably to Nicholas’s dictation, and had the family’s bedtime of 11.30 inserted in the margin alongside the original question. It warned that all their windows facing the street were ‘glued shut and painted white’; worse, Alexey was ‘still sick and in bed and cannot walk at all’ – ‘every jolt causes him pain’. This immediate impediment to any rescue plan was further complicated by the fact that Olga also added – at the end of the letter – ‘No risk whatsoever must be taken without being absolutely certain of the result. We are almost always under close observation.’38

  Although the removal of the Romanovs from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg had been a major blow for the Russian monarchists, by the time this first letter was received there was a considerable gathering of former tsarist officers in the city. Some of them had followed the family from Tobolsk and were in hiding; others were based at the Nikolaevsky Military Academy of the General Staff, which had been evacuated to Ekaterinburg from Petrograd in March 1918. Composed of more than 300 students and thirty-six members of staff, it was an obvious breeding ground for pro-tsarist conspiracy and the Academy had already aroused considerable suspicion at the URS. As a result, Beloborodov had telegraphed his displeasure to Trotsky, who in July ordered the college to be transferred to Kazan.39

  There has been talk in White Russian sources published since 1918 of various secret cabals of loyal officers based at the Military Academy who were, in one way or another, plotting some kind of rescue of the Romanovs. Among these shadowy figures is Captain Dmitri Malinovsky, sent from Petrograd to the Academy by an unnamed underground group, who there recruited a team of twelve fellow officers to ‘gather information and make preparations for the “removal” of the family’.40 He seems to have made contact with Dr Derevenko, as well as the nuns – whose Novo-Tikhvinsky Convent was located not far from the Academy. It may well be that this first, genuine letter – though intercepted and rewritten – was smuggled in from the Malinovsky group, though there is no evidence at all to prove it was from them. In any event, Malinovsky* appears to have quickly abandoned his mission, later telling Sokolov that his group never received any help or financial support: ‘What could be done without funds?’ he asked. It was the same old complaint. The only help they were able to offer the Imperial Family was to ‘send in some kulich [sweet Easter bread] and sugar; nothing else was possible’.41

  Although the Romanovs had already expressed a degree of reluctance about agreeing to any reckless rescue plan, bearing in mind Alexey’s fragile physical state, the ‘officer letters’ seem to have drawn them into the trap that was being set. It is perhaps no coincidence that on 22 June, after the family’s reply to the first letter, the windows in Nicholas and Alexandra’s bedroom were inspected, and the following day one of the double windows was removed and a small ventilation window was opened, perhaps in order to facilitate this cat-and-mouse game.

  About two days later, on 25 June, a second letter in French arrived, reassuring the Romanovs that ‘we hope to succeed without taking any risk’ and that they should somehow contrive to unseal one of their windows in preparation for their daring escape. ‘The fact that the little tsarevich cannot walk complicates matters, but we have taken that into account,’ it said. The family must ensure that he was asleep for one or two hours before the escape and, if need be, they should give him something to sedate him. It was a vague letter, with no details on how this rescue was to be effected logistically, ending merely with the reassurance that ‘no attempt will be made without being absolutely sure of the result. Before God, before history, and before our conscience, we give you this solemn promise.’42 This final exhortation seems to have convinced the Romanovs sufficiently to compose a reply that same day, written by Olga in blue ink on the blank half of the page, describing the windows and the location of their guards – who moved freely in and around all their rooms at all times – and of the machine guns within the house. Another fifty guards were billeted in a house across the street, they warned.

  The family, however, had more pressing concerns: ‘Do not forget that we have the doctor, a maid, 2 men, and a little boy who is a cook with us. It would be ignoble of us … to leave them alone after they have followed us voluntarily into exile.’ They also expressed concern about two trunks stored in an outbuilding containing all of Nicholas’s diaries and letters (which, if the family fled and left them behind, could of course be highly compromising politically, if they fell into the wrong hands). Yet by the end of the letter they conceded:

  Doctor Botkin begs you not to think about him and the other men [Trupp the valet and Kharitonov the cook], so that your task will not be more difficult. Count on the seven of us and the woman [their maid Anna Demidova]. May God help you; you can count on our sangfroid.43

  Despite this, the Romanovs remained extremely preoccupied by what might happen to the people who would be left behind. What becomes most glaringly apparent, from all the details they provided in this letter, is how closely watched they were, day in and day out, and how well guarded the house was. Yet the flabby response to this, which arrived the following day, brushed aside the many difficulties and was once again extremely vague about how this escape plan would be carried out.

  ‘Do not worry about the fifty or so men who are in a little house across from your window,’ it began dismissively, referring to the nearby house where the guards lived, ‘they will not be dangerous when it comes time to act.’44 When the signal came from their rescuers, the family were to ‘close and barricade with furniture’ the door separating the entrance to their rooms from the guards, and were to climb out through the window on a rope that they were somehow to improvise themselves. Signed ‘An officer’, this third letter, when looked at objectively, carries no conviction. Perhaps they already had their suspicions, for Nicholas and Alexandra were by now very alarmed. They had done as instructed in the previous letter: on the night of 26–27 June they had moved Alexey into their bedroom and ‘kept vigil, dressed’, as Nicholas noted in his diary. ‘But the signal never came.’45 They had all found the ‘waiting and uncertainty … most excruciating’ and were totally unnerved. Later on the 27th they responded most emphatically:

  We do not want to, nor can we, escape. We can only be carried off by force, just as it was force that was used to carry us from Tobolsk. Thus do not count on any active help from us.46

  Their guards were kind to them, they said, and ‘we do not want them to suffer because of us, nor you for us; in the name of God, avoid bloodshed above all’. It was, moreover, impossible for them to escape via the only unsealed window in Nicholas and Alexandra’s room. They had heard the sentries under their window being told to be even more vigilant, in case any of them should attempt to make signals at the window, and there was a machine gun in the courtyard immediately below. There really was only one solution: ‘If you watch us, you can always come and save us in the event of real and imminent danger.’47

  There was a pause in the correspondence after this highly reluctant response from the Romanovs. A fourth letter was finally smuggled in some time after 4 July, when a new commandant, Yakov Yurovsky, and a change of guards arrived. Their arrival inaugurated a much tougher regime at the house, which included the
banning of milk and cream bottles being brought in for the family.48 The fourth letter’s awkward phrasing (indeed, the marked absence of any kind of deferential forms of address in any of the notes, which one might have expected from a loyal monarchist), in addition to a couple of spelling mistakes, mark it as a final, half-hearted attempt at luring the Romanovs into a positive response. But it was as woolly and evasive over the details as letter three had been: ‘We are a group of officers in the Russian army who have not lost consciousness of our duty before Tsar and Country,’ it insisted. But they were not prepared to tell the family ‘in detail about ourselves for reasons that you can understand’. It did, however, assure them that their two loyal friends ‘D and T’– a reference surely to Dolgorukov and Tatishchev – ‘who are already safe, know us’. It is this detail that betrays the lie. The two men had been thrown into jail, as the Bolsheviks well knew. The absurdity of this provocative letter is also exposed in its final crude reassurances:

  The moment has come. We must act. Rest assured that the machine gun downstairs will not be dangerous. As for the commandant, we will know how to take him away. Await the whistle around midnight. That will be the signal.49

  Until Russian historian Lyudmila Lykova’s article on the subject was published in Otechestvennye arkhivy in 2006, it had been thought that the correspondence ended here. But there was in fact one final, brief, anguished response, added by the Romanovs on the bottom corner of the small envelope containing letter four, which for decades had been overlooked. Barely discernible in faint pencil, it read simply: ‘Surveillance of us is constantly increasing, especially because of the window.’50 This fact alone belies claims that the Romanovs were in some way involved in the covert signalling of messages to supporters outside, or throwing notes through the window into the street. When Anastasia had tried to sneak a look outside, a guard had immediately shot at and narrowly missed her. Nor could a hidden observer nearby see over the two palisades into the garden and signal to Nicholas whenever he saw him there.51

  By the time the Romanovs capitulated to the impossibility of their situation in early July, not wishing any blood to be shed on their behalf, many of the monarchist plotters based at the Academy seem to have dispersed. Some were joining the counter-revolution, hoping that the city’s imminent seizure by the Czechs and Whites would effect a speedy and more effective liberation of the Romanovs. Others who had travelled out from Moscow and Petrograd, or had been left behind at Tobolsk, had tried and failed to get to Ekaterinburg and had been rounded up and arrested en route. One such was Captain Paul Bulygin, who had been sent to Ekaterinburg by a group known as the National Centre, following the announcement of Nicholas’s execution in early June, to check if this was true. On discovering it was not, Bulygin had become involved in a plan to rescue the family when (as he was misinformed) they were to be moved from Ekaterinburg to Kotelnich, near Vyatka.52 The rumour turned out to be deliberate Bolshevik disinformation intended to throw would-be rescuers off the scent, and Bulygin was arrested in Ekaterinburg in early July. Markov II seems also to have had his own separate plans, based around a small group, including Sedov, who had earlier been sent to Tobolsk; but – like everyone else – by June he had had to concede that he had no effective means of mounting any kind of rescue.53 A sense of frustration and resignation ruled among the old guard, and even the Tsaritsa’s loyal cornet, Little Markov, was now admitting defeat. ‘All those on whom we could rely who had been to Ekaterinburg agreed that a forcible abduction of the Tsar and his Family was out of the question.’ Quite apart from the risk to all involved, ‘money was not available to bring an adequate number of trustworthy men to Ekaterinburg’.54

  Attempts by Russian historians to unravel the truth of monarchist plans to rescue the Romanovs have, till now, been plagued by so much confusion, misinformation, rumour and contradiction that piecing together the true scenario is an impossible task. Mikhail Diterikhs, the White Russian general who supervised Sokolov’s investigation in 1919, took a highly sceptical view of the many claims he heard about monarchist plots. ‘It is possible that in reality none of them were part of any organized group and that no such groups in fact ever existed; they only existed by word of mouth,’ he concluded in 1922. ‘These officers were distinguished by their braggadocio and their arrogance; they sounded off about their activities wherever they could; they shouted from practically every rooftop, opened up to the first person they met, ignoring the fact that they might be overheard by Soviet agents and foreign powers.’55

  The distinguished Urals historian, Professor Ivan Plotnikov, after many years of research in the local archives, uncovered no feasible plans in Ekaterinburg. But there was, however, one story circulating in émigré literature, involving ‘37 officers’ at the Military Academy who had been ‘ready for everything’ in order to ‘save the dynasty’. It was a plan that may in some way be connected with a more detailed one that finally surfaced in 1923.56

  It comes, not via Russian sources, but from the American journalist Isaac Don Levine. During a visit to Moscow that year, he was staying at the Hotel Savoy when he was introduced to a twenty-five-year-old student at the technological institute named Gorshkov, who turned out to be the brother-in-law of a former imperial officer, Colonel Rustam-Bek (also known as Boris Tageev), whom Levine had already met in the USA. Levine and Gorshkov struck up a friendship, and one day Gorshkov called him and asked if they might meet, for he had a ‘confidential story’ he wished to tell him.57 At their meeting, Gorshkov handed to him ‘a neat manuscript of some eight legal-size sheets of paper’ and an accurately drawn map of Voznesensky Prospekt and the square opposite the Ipatiev House, which described a plan hatched by officers at the Military Academy to rescue the Romanovs. With the help of the British journalist Arthur Ransome, with whom he travelled by train out of Russia, Levine managed to hide the manuscript when the Soviet guards came to check their luggage at the border. In the safety of Berlin he translated the document and sent it to New York, where the article was published that August.58

  This is the story that it told.

  In the summer of 1918, Gorshkov, who had been born in Ekaterinburg – the son of a geologist and prospector in the Urals – was a cadet at the Military Academy. On 24 June, he had joined a conspiracy to rescue the Romanovs. It was led by Major General Vladimir Golitsyn, who at that time was based with anti-Bolshevik forces in the Urals, and Prince Riza-Kuli-Mirza, a Caucasian Muslim, formerly of the Imperial Cossack Escort, who had followed the Imperial Family in secret to Ekaterinburg.

  Rumours had been circulating that, in view of the threat from the Czechs, the Bolsheviks were going to try and move the Romanovs away from the city; the plot in which Gorshkov was involved sought to rescue them and hide them somewhere in the Urals until the Czechs arrived. The group was composed of some of the monarchist officers who had travelled on from Tobolsk: Colonel Berens, Major Gorev and a ‘Lieutenant X’; and four officers from the Military Academy: Captains Sumarokov, Dobrovolsky, Burov and a Lieutenant M.59 Kuli-Mirza apparently planned the mission in great detail. He, Golitsyn, Gorshkov and these seven officers were each to recruit ten trusted men. While Lieutenant X worked out the ground plan for the rescue, it was Gorshkov’s task to find a suitable refuge for the family. He came up with a hiding place – a dacha on the Upper-Isetsk Lake outside Ekaterinburg. The dacha was owned by the father of one of the men in his group named Agafurov, a notable Ekaterinburg merchant family.60 The lake was ‘about twelve miles long and from one to two miles wide’. Located three or four miles away from the villa there were ‘two unfrequented islands in the lake covered with dense woods’. Gorshkov suggested they create a camp there, where the Imperial Family could be taken by motorboat after they were rescued and ‘could live absolutely out of danger, guarded by eight or ten of our men’. Gorshkov’s suggestion was approved, and Agafurov began making preparations at the villa.61

  In the meantime Kuli-Mirza had made contact with Dr Derevenko, whom he had known when they were bo
th in service with the Imperial Family at Tsarskoe Selo. According to Gorshkov, the doctor managed to secretly pass a note written by Mirza to Tatiana, when he was called to the Ipatiev House to attend Alexey on 2 July, his visit being confirmed in Alexandra’s diary. If so, then this letter relating to the second plot – around the same time as the bogus ‘officer letters’ were arriving – must have created considerable confusion and anxiety in the family.62

  By the following day the group had seventy men it could count on and sent a message to the Czechs at Chelyabinsk about their rescue plan; word came back that the Czechs were preparing to move on Ekaterinburg on 20 July (in fact it was the 25th when they actually arrived). In the days between 2 and 20 July the group were to gather together the stockpile of arms needed for their operation.

  Their plan involved three strategic assembly points: the Kharitonov Gardens attached to the large Rastorguev-Kharitonov mansion opposite the Ipatiev House on Voznesensky Prospekt; the telegraph station down the lane at the back of the house; and the alleyways beyond that. The gardens (which are still there today) were deserted at night and provided the ideal assembly point for fifteen of the group under cover of darkness. A wagon with rifles, machine guns and munitions would drive up and rendezvous with them nearby, and the men would collect them and then hide in the bushes.63