The Race to Save the Romanovs
Page 36
2 Thirteen Years, 255; Wilton, Last Days of the Romanovs, 190.
3 Captain Harry de Windt, ‘Tobolsk’, The Globe, 18 August 1917.
4 Dolgorukov letter to Benckendorff, 27 August 1917, in Vinogradoff Collection, Hoover Institution; Benckendorff, Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo, 114.
5 Fall, 171.
6 Last Days, 61.
7 Tsaritsa, 100.
8 Ibid., 106, 110.
9 Murder, 137.
10 Ibid., 137. For a discussion of the Khitrovo incident, see Rappaport, Four Sisters, 329–3; Revolyutsiya, 201–7.
11 Tsaritsa, 105; Murder, 195.
12 Fall, 174; Nicholas II, 85.
13 Thirteen Years, 245.
14 Tsaritsa, 111.
15 Ibid., 113.
16 Radzinsky, The Last Tsar, 208.
17 Tsaritsa, 129.
18 Smith, Rasputin, 523.
19 Cook, Murder of the Romanovs, 134–5.
20 Benckendorff, Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo, 118–19.
21 Ibid., 120.
22 Ievreinov, ‘Poezdka v Tobolsk’, 15, Bakhmeteff Archive.
23 McNeal, Secret Plot to Save the Tsar, 59–60; Ross, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 497; Murder, 198.
24 Last Days, 51.
25 Alexandra to Vyrubova, 22 January 1918, in Vyrubova, Memories, 322.
26 Murder, 199.
27 Nicholas II, 135.
28 Last Days, 52–6; see Nicholas II, chapter 20.
29 Fall, 177–8; Thirteen Years, 256.
30 Radzinsky, Last Tsar, 168; Ross, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 498.
31 Last Days, 59.
32 Ross, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 499; Murder, 199.
33 Murder, 199; Ross, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 499.
34 Nicholas II, 135–6; Last Days, 59–60; Botkina, Vospominaniya, 79–80.
35 Pares, Fall of the Russian Monarchy, 486. Francq, Knout and the Scythe, 112; Revolyutsiya, 216–17.
36 Sudba, 314, 316–17; Sokolov, ‘Popytka osvobozhedeniya’, 288.
37 Sudba, 315.
38 Pares, Fall of the Russian Monarchy, 487; Botkina, Vospominaniya, 78–9.
39 Wilton, Last Days of the Romanovs, 194–5.
40 Trubetskoy, ‘Istoriya odnoy popytki’, 114–15: 32.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 118–19: 29.
43 Ibid., 120: 21.
44 Ibid., 22.
45 Ibid., 23.
46 ‘The Tsar’s Abandoned Family’ became the title of the Russian edition of Markov’s subsequent book, Pokinutaya tsarskaya semya.
47 Tsaritsa, 126.
48 Ibid., 146, 129.
49 Ibid., 131; Sudba, 332.
50 Tsaritsa, 145–6.
51 Ibid., 152–3.
52 Ibid., 154–5.
53 Ibid., 156; Sudba, 332.
54 Tsaritsa, 157; Dnevniki, 2: 331.
55 Tsaritsa, 158–9.
56 Ibid., 163.
57 Ievreinov, ‘Poezdka v Tobolsk’, 3, Bakhmeteff Archive.
58 Ibid., 6–7.
59 Ibid., 10–11.
60 Ibid., 15.
61 Ibid., 12.
62 Ibid., 13, 14, 16.
63 Ibid., 17. See Alexandrov, End of the Romanovs, 184–5.
64 Ibid.
65 Gleb Botkin, Real Romanovs, 169–71.
66 Tatiana Neumova-Teumina, ‘Poslednye dni poslednego tsarya’, Uralskii rabochii, 1950, 7: 5. See also S. Zakharov, ‘Poslednii put poslednogo tsarya’, Oktyabr, 1967: 3, 204.
67 Ibid.
Chapter 8: ‘Please Don’t Mention My Name’
1 TNA FO 800/205/219, 8 August 1917.
2 TNA FO 800/205, 215, 5 August 1917; ibid., 217, telegram of 8 August.
3 FOT, 247.
4 Letter of 5 December 1917, in Olivier Coutau Begari sale catalogue no. 106, 2007.
5 Letters of 13 and 154 October to Katya Zborovskaya, Hoover Institution.
6 Trewin, Tutor to the Tsarevich, 89–90.
7 Ibid., 90.
8 Zeepvat, Charlotte, From Cradle to Crown: British Nannies and Governesses at the World’s Royal Courts, Stroud: Sutton, 2006, 257–8.
9 Robert Wilton, confidential report: ‘Russia Still the Greatest Factor in the War. German Plans – The Need of Urgent Measures’, 27 December 1917, TNA 371/3018, 3, 4.
10 Ibid., 4.
11 Ibid., 5.
12 Occleshaw, Dances in Deep Shadows, 155.
13 HBCA, RG 22/26/5/10, telegram 520, 9 October 1917.
14 In her book The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar, 47, Shay McNeal claimed that ‘the house detailed in the Hudson’s Bay Company files was provisioned with dishes, food, beds, blankets etc. in quantities of seven [for the seven members of the Romanov family], and stressed luxury items that … were strikingly different from a normal provisions list’. Unfortunately she does not give the HBCA reference for this in her notes, and an extensive search of the archives at Winnipeg, commissioned for this book, failed to locate the document(s) in question.
15 HBCA RG 22/26/5/6, telegram 368, 9 November 1917.
16 TNA ADM 137/1714f 138. This crucial document was discovered by my colleague Phil Tomaselli in 1996.
17 Kuznetsov’s bill for the house came to 5,896 rubles. It can be found in HBCA RG 22/26/10/6.
18 Telegram no. 358 of 29 October, Hudson’s Bay Company, London; McNeal, Secret Plot, 46, is not clear about her precise sources; see the original documents in HBCA RG 22/26/10/16.
19 Report on the Murmansk consulate, 5 February 1917, TNA FO 369/950.
20 Graham, Part of the Wonderful Scene, 97.
21 I am indebted to Karen Roth for translating this valuable Danish article on Lied, for whom there is very little material in English; http://ww-article-cache-1.s3.amazonaws.com/no/Jonas_Lied
22 Graham, Part of the Wonderful Scene, 96.
23 ‘The Kara Sea Passage’, TNA 137/2844.
24 Graham, Part of the Wonderful Scene, 96; Marit Werenskiold, Consul Jonas Lied and Russia, 15.
25 For further details, see Terence Armstrong, The Northern Sea Route: Soviet Exploitation of the North-East Passage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 11–13, 16, 17, 18.
26 Ibid. For further information, see also Per Gjendem, ‘Jonas Lied and the Siberian Trading Company’, http://www.pergjendem.com/?p=898; Lied, Return to Happiness, 214–15.
27 Letter to Henry Armitstead of 18 February 1918, from unnamed Hudson’s Bay official, HBCA RG 22/4/2.
28 FOT, 250. Information from Phil Tomaselli, who from his research confirms that British intelligence did have an interest in Lied dating from about the right period and that MI5 had an (unreleased) file on him.
29 See entry for 4 March 1918, Jonas Lied Arkivboks nr. 28, Dagboker 1917–21, Norsk Maritimt Museum, Oslo. The original entries are in English.
30 FOT, 251.
31 Jonas Lied, Siberian Arctic: The Story of the Siberian Company, London: Methuen, 1960, 118–19. Lied, Return to Happiness, 217.
32 McNeal, Secret Plot, 116. McNeal claims Urquhart was part of this supposed secret Romanov rescue plan, but this is an absurd suggestion, although the economic mission itself may have been covertly counter-revolutionary. As a man with considerable lead- and zinc-mining concessions in Siberia, Urquhart was a businessman first and foremost, looking out for his own commercial interests and eager to recover his mines that had been confiscated by the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1918 he was ‘recruited by the British Foreign Office to run the Siberian Supply Company
– a Whitehall-funded agency which was intended in the short term to relieve shortages in Siberia through trade, but which had clearly been designed with the longer term aim in mind of securing for Britain as much of a monopoly of Siberian trade as possible’. The mission landed at Murmansk on 20 June, but was in fact delayed, first by pack ice on the White Sea and again in Vologda as they waited for permits from the Soviets to proceed. It finally set off on 17 July – the day the Romanovs were murdered – and proved fruitless, returning to London by 13 August. For details on Urquhart in Siberia, see Jonathan D. Smele, Civil War in Russia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 117. The mission is described in K. H. Kennedy, Mining Tsar: The Life and Times of Leslie Urquhart, London: Allen & Unwin, 1986, 129–33.
33 TNA FO 368/1970. The flax shortages are described in a report entitled ‘Department of the Surveyor General of Supplies. Flax Control Board’, at TNA MUN 4/6506.
34 1 March 1918 memorandum in FO 368/1970.
35 Lied, Return to Happiness, 218.
36 Ibid.; Revolyutsiya, 254.
37 FOT, 251; Lied, Return to Happiness, 218–19.
38 Ibid., 219.
39 Ibid.; FOT, 251.
40 Ibid, 220.
41 Ibid., 162–3.
42 FOT, 394.
43 Anthony Summers, letter to the Independent, 3 August 1999.
44 Lied, Return to Happiness, 211.
45 FOT, 250.
46 Email from Wilhelm Wilkens to the author, 9 July 2017.
47 Letter from unnamed HBC accountant, 18 February 1918, TNA RG 22/4/2.
48 Private email to the author, 25 October 2016.
49 My informant’s adoptive Russian grandmother confirmed that the rescue was indeed genuine, ‘but that some of the details in Patricia Eykyn’s letter weren’t correct’. But his grandmother ‘wouldn’t be drawn on the subject of who cancelled it’, and ‘changed the subject’ when he asked. He concluded that ‘There was a clear reluctance on her part to discuss anything more about it, other than to confirm that it had been planned’, but he was never able to clarify what the reluctance amounted to.
50 Unpublished TS notes by Mrs Patricia Eykyn, courtesy of Philip Kerin. These notes are also cited in Occleshaw, Romanov Conspiracies, 94. Occleshaw interviewed Patricia Eykyn for his book, but her additional comments about the Gordon-Smith mission are so garbled factually – including talk of flying the entire Romanov family to Archangel – that they make little logical sense. According to George Alexander Hill, Warrender had been on Poole’s staff in Petrograd in July 1917, when Hill met him on his arrival at the Finland Station. If Patricia Eykyn’s story is correct, Warrender must have returned to the UK at some point between July 1917 and January 1918.
51 Information by email from Philip Kerin, 11 October 2014.
52 Ibid.
53 Mail on Sunday, 20 November 1988.
54 Information from Phil Tomaselli.
55 Unpublished TS notes by Mrs Patricia Eykyn, courtesy of Philip Kerin.
56 Ibid.
57 Supplement 30720 to the London Gazette, 31 May 1918, 6512. The annotated Honours Gazette in the Military Cross files in TNA WO 389 give no further information on the award, 3 June 1918. Warrender’s Medal Card is at TNA WO 372/21/18972.
58 Information from Phil Tomaselli. TNA WO 160 Military Operations and Intelligence files relating to Major-General Poole’s Mission ‘reveal a sudden and unexplained flurry of activity in Siberia from April 1918’ onwards, according to Michael Occleshaw. This, he says, came via the activities of Rusplycom. Does it suggest they were involved in planning a Romanov rescue? See Occleshaw, Armour Against Fate, 266–8.
59 Robert Wilton, confidential report: ‘Russia Still the Greatest Factor in the War. German Plans – The Need of Urgent Measures’, 27 December 1917, TNA 371/3018, 4.
Chapter 9: ‘I Would Rather Die in Russia than Be Saved by the Germans’
1 Paléologue, Guillaume II et Nicolas II, 237.
2 Leontiev, ‘Otkrytoe pis’mo Imperatora Vil’gelmu’, 2.
3 Ibid., 6–7.
4 Jagow, ‘Die Schuld am Zarenmord’, 389.
5 Service, Nicholas II, 129.
6 Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900–1941, 1161.
7 Ibid.
8 For a discussion, see Röhl, Wilhelm II, 1155–6.
9 Wilton, Last Days of the Romanovs, 25.
10 Murder, 202.
11 Alexandrov, End of the Romanovs, 68.
12 Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 257; Prince Nicholas of Greece, Political Memoirs, 20.
13 Testimony to Sokolov in August 1919, in Ross, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 422–3.
14 Nicholas II, 141.
15 Thirteen Years, 257; Wilton, Last Days of the Romanovs, 70.
16 Pierre Gilliard notes on Nicholas II, sent from Lausanne to Nicholas de Basily, 29 April 1934, 2, Nikolai de Bazili Papers, 65017–9.23, box 2, Hoover Institution.
17 Bitner testimony in Ross, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 422–3; Wilton, Last Days of the Romanovs, 70.
18 Fall, 275–6.
19 GARF. F. R-130. Op. 2. D. 1109. L. 2.
20 TNA GFM 6/139 telegram no. 256, 12 March 1918. See also Hall, Little Mother, 303–4.
21 Aksel-Hansen, ‘Breve fra Petrograd’, 201.
22 TNA GFM 6/139 telegram no. 256, 12 March 1918.
23 TNA GFM 6/139 AS 1356, 15 March 1918.
24 Ibid.
25 TNA GFM 6/139 telegram, 17 March 1918.
26 See https://www.ippo-jerusalem.info/item/show/271.
27 Crawford, Michael and Natasha, 344–5; Larsen, Makten, 187.
28 Revolyutsiya, 249.
29 Steinberg, In the Workshop of the Revolution, 142.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.; Fall, 225. See also GARF F. R-130. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 85, 89; GARF F. R-130. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 135.
32 Konstantin Melnik testimony, in Ross, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 491.
33 Last Days, 62–3.
34 Ibid., 64.
35 Fall, 229; Revolyutsiya, 254; Pares, quoted in Francq, Knout and the Scythe, 113.
36 Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 257–8.
37 Dnevniki, 2: 352–3; and Khrustalev, Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra, 95.
38 Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 325–6. For a discussion of the political rivalries between the Omsk and Ekaterinburg Red Guards, their attempts to take control of the Romanov family and the turbulent political situation in Tobolsk, see Nicholas II, chapters 24 and 25, which provide a concise and lucid overview.
39 Dnevniki, 2: 351.
40 Nicholas II, 156.
41 Fall, 230; GARF F. 1235 (VTsIK). Op. 34. D. 36. L. 9; Service, Nicholas II, 153; Alexeev, Last Act of a Tragedy, 75.
42 Fall, 231; Revolyutsiya, 255.
43 Radzinsky, Last Tsar, 233.
44 Plotnikov, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 53; Radzinsky, Last Tsar, 234.
45 Plotnikov, Gibel tsarskoy semi, 39.
46 Revolyutsiya, 261.
47 Ibid.
48 Fall, 231–2. GARF F. 601. Op. 2. D. 33. L. 1; Nicholas II, 154. The directives are very clear about Ekaterinburg as the intended, albeit temporary, destination. See also Ioffe, Revolyutsiya, 261.
49 Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 258, 259.
50 Ievreinov, ‘Poezdka v Tobolsk’, 21.