The Race to Save the Romanovs

by Helen Rappaport

  43  Benckendorff, Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo, 19. See also Puchenikova, ‘Deyatelnost Britanskikh diplomaticheskikh …’, 45, quoting Shulgin.

  44  TNA FO 800/205 f. 53. For Paléologue misinterpretation, see Ambassador, 864.

  45  TNA FO 371/2998, 25 March; Mission, 103.

  46  Francq, Knout and the Scythe, 239–40; Nicolson, King George V, 300; Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 154–5.

  47  TNA FO 800/205/50, draft of message, 19 March 1917.

  48  TNA FO 800/205/51–2, 27 March 1917.

  49  TNA FO 566/1199 Political Signals, 60126, Buchanan to FO, 19 and 21 March 1917.

  50  Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 153; Dissolution, 194.

  51  Dissolution, 194–5.

  52  Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 154.

  53  Ambassador, 850.

  54  Dissolution, 194.

  55  TNA CAB/24/8/265, 22 March 1917.

  56  Ibid.

  57  TNA CAB 281, 23 March 1917.

  58  TNA CAB 23/40, minutes of Imperial War Cabinet 22 March; FOT, 241. Sir Charles Hardinge, 1st Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, was a cousin of Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge, British ambassador to Madrid at this time.

  59  LP, 560.

  60  AVPRI Op. 470. 1917. D. 5. L. 87, 273 March, Nabokov to Milyukov; in Mironenko et al., Gibel semi imperatora, 86.

  61  Rose, King George V, 211.

  62  Mission, 105.

  63  Pierre Gilliard to Nicholas de Basily, Lausanne, 29 April 1934, De Basili Papers, Hoover Institution.

  64  Official note of 25 March, on front of file no 3743, marked ‘Ex-Emperor of Russia’, TNA 371/3088.

  65  23 March 1917, TNA 371/3088.

  66  AVPRI F. 133. Op. 470. D. 32. 1917. L. 25; quoted in Mednikov, ‘Missiya Spaseniya’, 70

  67  Kerensky and Milyukov, ‘Light on the Murder of Tsar Nikolas’, 642.

  68  Liverpool Echo, 31 March 1917.

  69  GARF F. 579. Op. 1. D. 3879a. L. 1–2. The document can be seen at: http://statearchive.ru/assets/images/docs/13a/

  70  Basily, ‘Notes on Departure’, 7. See Rose, King George V, 211.

  71  Dissolution, 194–5.

  Chapter 4: ‘Every Day the King Is Becoming More Concerned’

    1  Sukhanov, Russian Revolution, 220.

    2   Tsarism, 139; Krasnyi Arkhiv, 1:21, 1927, 67. Online at http://istmat.info/files/uploads/33041/krasnyy_arhiv_22–1927.pdf

    3  Sukhanov, Russian Revolution, 197, 199; Pipes, Russian Revolution, 333; Last Days, 33. See also the transcript of the document in Russian in Mironenko, Gibel semi imperatora, 130.

    4  Pravda, 28 March 1917.

    5  Dnevniki, 1: 384; Tsarism, 160; Grand Duchess George, Romanov Diary, 183.

    6   Tsarism, 140.

    7  Levine, Eyewitness to History, 122–3; Tsarism, 140; Wilton, Last Days, 173.

    8  Tsarism, 139; Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet resolution of 21 March 1917 in Kokovtsov, ‘La verité’, 860.

    9  Murder, 109–10.

  10  Ambassador, 862; Mission, 105.

  11  Murder, 112.

  12  Mission, 105.

  13  See ‘Instructions … to the head of the garrison’, 17 March, in Fall, 133–5.

  14  Gilliard letter to Nicholas de Basily, 29 April 1934, Nikolai de Bazili papers, Hoover Institution; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 276. The Mannerheim story is to be found in ‘Prakh Tsarskoe semi’, Komsomolskaya Pravada, 24 July 2001, 132.

  15  Liverpool Echo, 29 March 1917.

  16  TNA FO 800/205/63; LP, 561–2.

  17  LP, 566.

  18  See ‘Russia Free! Ten Speeches Delivered at the Royal Albert Hall London on 31st March 1917’, London: The Herald Office, 1917.

  19  Quoted in Prochaska, ‘George V and Republicanism, 1917–1919’, 33; RA/GV/O/1106/1; Marr, Diamond Queen, 27.

  20  RA/GV/O/1106/3. See Prochaska, ‘George V and Republicanism’, 34.

  21  Marr, Diamond Queen, 26.

  22  Murder, 112; Browder, Russian Provisional Government, 202–3; Egan, Ten Years near the German Frontier, 346.

  23  Kerensky, Memoirs, 331–2.

  24  Dnevniki, 1: 410–11.

  25  Ibid., 424.

  26  N. P. Karabchevsky, ‘Chto glaza moi videli’, in Haugolnykh, Beloemigranty, 190.

  27  Dnevniki, 1: 414; LP, 565.

  28  Dnevniki, 1: 413–14; LP, 561; TNA FO 800/205/58, 28 March;/68, 4 April.

  29  TNA FO 800/205/68; see also 9 April, Buchan to Balfour, FO 800/205/82.

  30  TNA FO 800/205/71, 6 April.

  31  TNA FO 800/205/76 and /78, 6 April.

  32  Stamfordham to Balfour, 6 April 1917, LP, 567; TNA FO 800/205/80. See also Lloyd George Papers F3/2/19, Parliamentary Archives.

  33  LP, 568.

  34  Ibid., TNA CAB 23/2, WC 118, 13 April 1917, available online.

  35  Quoted in Lacey, Monarch, 61.

  36  Sudba, 214–15; the quotation also appears in Revolyutsiya, 191–2, with the same incorrect attribution.

  37  https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/globe

  38  TNA FO 800/205/82, 9 April 1917.

  39  Sir Clive Wigram to Sir William Lambton, quoted in Anthony Lambton, Elizabeth and Alexandra, NewYork: Dutton, 1986, 389.

  40  LP, 569.

  41  Ibid.; see Nicolson, King George V, 301–2.

  42  Dissolution, 196.

  43  Ibid., 195, published 1932; the same error in the date is repeated in her 1958 memoir Ambassador’s Daughter. Meriel Buchanan also claims that the telegram told her father to ‘tell the Provisional Government to cancel all arrangements’, but it is clear that at this stage the British had not made any overt statement of refusal. Buchanan appears to have conflated events of March/early April with those of May/June, when the British position was finally made clear.

  44  TNA FO 800/205/88.

  45  TNA FO 800/205/90, 15 April.

  46  See Meriel Buchanan, Queen Victoria’s Relations, London: Cassell, 1954, 224.

  47  TNA FO 800/205, 90–91.

  48  TNA FO 800/205/105.

  49  Hardinge to Lord Bertie, 17 April 1917, Hardinge Papers, vol. 31, ff. 293–4.

  50  Peter Jackson, Beyond the Balance of Power: France and the Politics of National Security, 1914–1918, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 147–8.

  51  Bertie to Balfour, 22 April, TNA FO 800/78, 22 April; Bertie to Hardinge, 22 April, Hardinge Papers, vol. 31: 165–6. There is a striking absence of comment in French sources on the Romanov asylum issue, even in British and French Foreign Office archives for the period. Ambassador Maurice Paléologue is also strangely silent on France’s failure to help its ally, and has nothing at all to say about this suggestion in his memoirs.

  52  Hardinge to Bertie, 27 April 1917, Hardinge Papers, vol. 31, f. 299.

  Chapter 5: ‘Port Romanoff by the Murmansk Railway’

    1  Thirteen Years, 217–18.

    2   Wallscourt Waters, Potsdam and Doorn, 245.

    3  Murder, 107.

    4  Botkin, Real Romanovs, 140.

    5  Information from Phil Tomaselli.

    6   Murder, 116.

    7  Kerensky, ‘Why the Tsar Never Came to England’.

    8  Dissolution, 195.

    9  GARF 553. Op. 1. D. 42. L. 1–2 Ob; partially quoted in Exhibition Catalogue 131.

  10  Aide-memoire from British Embassy Petrograd to Milyukov, 24 March 1917, AVPRI Sekretnyi arkhiv ministra, Op. 467 D 662/693. L. 40; in Mironenko, Gibel semi imperatora, 131.

  11  All discussion of a possible evacuation scenario from here to t
he end of this chapter is based on conversations and email exchanges with Phil Tomaselli, an expert on WWI sources at the National Archives, plus a great deal of speculative searching in these archives.

  12  TNA ADM 137/1386.

  13  Information on Archangel in May, from the diaries and letters of Graham Romeyn Taylor, a US diplomat who was there in May 1918, private collection.

  14  AVPRI F. 133 (Kantselariya). Op. 470 Polit. D. 5. L. 105. 30 March 1917.

  15  LP, 560.

  16  For details, see British Embassy note to Provisional Government, 23 March 1917, AVPRI F. 133. Op. 470. Nepolit. D. 25 (Angliiskoe posolstvo). 1917. L. 19. The Bergen service was soon being taken full advantage of: Sergey Sazonov, the new Russian ambassador to the UK appointed by the Provisional Government, was due to travel to England by the Bergen route via Christiania in Denmark, as confirmed by Sir George Buchanan in a despatch to England of 14 April. TNA FO 371/3010.

  17  Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Romanovs, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016, 628.

  18  Murder, 116.

  19  Ibid., 117.

  20  Basily, ‘Question of the Departure of the Emperor Nicholas II’, 24 February 1933, 11, Nikolai de Bazili Papers, Hoover Institution.

  21  Revolyutsiya, 182; Dnevniki, 1: 408.

  22  TNA GFM 139/6, 20 May 1917.

  23  TNA GFM 139/6, 14 June 1917.

  24  Dehn, The Real Tsaritsa, 170.

  25  Tsaritsa, 79.

  26  Ibid., 70.

  27  Ibid., 83.

  28  Sudba, 183, 238.

  29  Tsaritsa, 87–8.

  30  Ibid., 88–9.

  31  Ibid., 90.

  32  Markov II, in Vestnik vyschego monarkhicheskogo soveta, Berlin, 28 April 1924, quoted in Revolyutsiya, 183.

  33  Stephen Locker Lampson, Nothing to Offer But Blood, TS of Oliver Locker Lampson’s memoirs, 214, Leeds Russian Archive RUS 30.

  34  Ibid., 215.

  35  Dnevniki, 1: 601.

  Chapter 6: ‘I Shall Not Be Happy till They Are Safely out of Russia

    1  FOT, 244; TNA CAB 23/2.

    2   Lloyd George, War Memoirs 1916–1917, 514; see also Bertie to Hardinge, 22 April, Hardinge Papers, vol. 31: f. 165.

    3  Leal, ‘Alfonso XIII y Su Actuación Humanitaria’, 57; Dissolution, 195.

    4  TNA CAB 23/2/WC118, 13 April 1917, 2; Leal, ‘Alfonso XIII y Su Actuación Humanitaria’, 58.

    5  TNA CAB 23/2 WC118 13 April 1917, 2.

    6   Allied microfilm of captured German Foreign Ministry documents, TNA GFM 6/139 Bd 66. Madrid, 29 March 1917. The microfilm of these documents, copied after they were captured by the Allies in Berlin, is extremely variable. Some frames are so blurred or dark as to be illegible, while many have darkened borders and top and bottom edges, making dates and reference numbers indistinct. Where possible, dates and references are given, but many of these are missing on the original microfilm.

    7  Ambassador, 904.

    8  Bessie Beatty, Red Heart of Russia, New York: Century Co., 1918, 32.

    9  Letter of 17 May 1917, Miller, Four Graces, 153.

  10  ThirteenYears, 227; Benckendorff, Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo, 47–8.

  11  Benckendorff, Last Days, 48–9.

  12  Milyukov, Vospominaniya, 487.

  13  See Milyukov, quoted in Kokovtsov, ‘La Verité’, 862; Kerensky and Milyukov, ‘Light on the Murder of Tsar Nikolas’, 642.

  14  In his 1932 article ‘Why the Tsar Never Came to England’ Kerensky claimed that the British FO ‘sent a conditional refusal, stating that “the British Government does not insist upon its former offer”.’

  15  ‘Informations données par M. M. Tereshchenko à M. N. de Basily à Paris le 23 Avril, 1934 au sujet de la question du départ de Nicolas II et de sa famille pour l’étranger après son abdication’, 1, de Bazili Papers, Hoover Institution, Box 27, folder 11.

  16  Dnevniki, 1: 503.

  17  Revolyutsiya, 179; Izvestiya, 21 May 1917, quoted in Revolyutsiya, 180; Dnevniki, 1: 548.

  18  Quoted in David Lloyd George, ‘Tsar’s Future Place of Residence’, 4.

  19  Revolyutsiya, 179.

  20  See Benckendorff, Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo, 50–3.

  21  Document no. 152, ‘Resolutions Adopted at the Congress of Delegates at the Front, April 12, 1917’, in Browder, Russian Provisional Government, 1: 184.

  22  23 May 1917, Donald Thompson, Donald Thompson in Russia, New York: Century Publishing, 1918, 238–9.

  23  4 April, Pourtales to Berlin; 4, 5 and 7 April, Lucius von Stoedten to Berlin, TNA GFM 6/139.

  24  Rose, King George V, 216.

  25  Document no. 77, 28 May 1917, Browder, Russian Provisional Government, 186.

  26  Spanish ambassador in Petrograd, 9 June 1917, in Ministerio de Exteriores H: Guerra en Europa, Correspondencia con la Embjada de Espana en Russia, Bundle 2993, File 16, N6.8.

  27  Revolyutsiya, 190–1.

  28  Murder, 118.

  29  ‘Informations données par M. M. Tereshchenko’, 2, Nikolai de Bazili Papers, Hoover Institution.

  30  Murder, 118.

  31  Lloyd George to Hardinge, David Lloyd George Papers LG/F/5, Parliamentary Archives.

  32  Revolyutsiya, 189, 192–3.

  33  Kerensky, Memoirs, 336.

  34  Kerensky, ‘Why the Tsar Didn’t Come to England’; Murder, 118.

  35  Zhuk, Voprositelnye znaki, 47; partially quoted in ‘Pereezd Tsarskoy Semi v Angliyu byl vozmozhen: beseda “I. R.” c A. F. Kerenskim’, Vozrozhdenie, no. 3331, 17 July 1934.

  36  Jagow, ‘Die Schuld am Zarenmord’, 389.

  37  Information from Bernadette Preben Hansen; FOT, 346.

  38  Sir Esmé Howard to Lord Hardinge at the Foreign Office, 29 May 1917, Howard Papers DWH.5/6, quoted in Ronald W. Clark, Lenin: The Man Behind the Mask, London: Faber & Faber, 1988, 347–8.

  39  FOT, 361.

  40  Neklyudov, Diplomatic Reminiscences, 502.

  41  Ibid., 503.

  42  Ibid.

  43  Neklyudov’s letter to Prince Lvov, Madrid, 3 July, GARF F. 601. Op. 2. D. 13. L. 1–4.

  44  Ibid.

  45  Alban Gordon, Russian Year: A Calendar of Revolution, London: Cassell & Co., 1935, 182.

  46  Hanbury-Williams, Emperor Nicholas II, 223.

  47  Murder, 118; Dnevniki, 1: 587.

  48  Murder, 119; Revolyutsiya, 193.

  49  Murder, 120; Revolyutsiya, 194.

  50  Murder, 119–20.

  51  Ibid., 120.

  52  Revolyutsiya, 195. For a detailed discussion of Kerensky’s thinking on the Romanov evacuation, see King and Wilson, ‘The Departure of the Imperial Family’, 112–30.

  53  Murder, 118; King and Wilson, ‘Departure of the Imperial Family’, 20.

  54  25 July 1917, Fall, 155; TNA FO 371/3015/2, 4–5.

  55  Ross.Arkhiv, 277.

  56  Ibid.

  57  Murder, 121.

  58  Paléologue, ‘Le Drame d’Ekaterinebourg’, 1107.

  59  TNA FO 800/205/225, 13 August 1917.

  60  For a detailed description of the departure of the Romanovs from Tsarskoe Selo, see Rappaport, Four Sisters, 316–21.

  61  Sanvoisin, ‘Comment Nicolas II a quitté Tsarskoie-Selo’.

  62  Ibid.

  Chapter 7: ‘The Smell of a Dumas Novel’

    1  Draft letter in French to the Dowager Empress, 2–8 August 1917, in Chernovniki pisem P. K. Benkendorfa raznym litsam, GARF f. 553 Op.1 D. 40. This letter can also be found in Kseniia Aleksandrovna Papers, Box 8, no. 80011 9.39 Hoover Institution.