Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

  For this reason, a number of Russian conservatives, including Benckendorff and Alexander Trepov, the former Prime Minister, turned for help to Count William Mirbach, the newly appointed German Ambassador. Mirbach’s answer was always the same: “Be calm. I know all about the situation in Tobolsk, and when the time comes, the German Empire will act.” Unsatisfied, Trepov and Count Benckendorff wrote Mirbach a letter, pointing out that Germany alone was in a position to save the Imperial family and warning that if the Tsar and his wife and children died, Kaiser William would be personally responsible.

  Quite apart from the question of guilt, the Germans again were anxiously studying their eastern horizon. By injecting the Bolshevik bacillus into Russia, they had destroyed an enemy army. But they had also created a new menace which, they were beginning to sense, might become even more dangerous. Lenin’s openly pronounced goal was world revolution; even now, his creed was exerting a pull on the war-weary soldiers and workers of Germany. With this in mind, the German government had a growing interest in restoring in Russia a monarchy which would crush the Bolsheviks and at the same time be friendly to Germany. Nicholas and Alexandra were known to be bitterly hostile to Germany. But the German government presumed that if it was the Kaiser who saved them and restored them to the throne, the Russian sovereigns would be grateful and submissive to the German will.

  To achieve this goal, Mirbach began playing a delicate game. He insisted that Nicholas be brought to Moscow, where he would be within reach of German power. The request had to be made in such a way that the Bolsheviks would not take fright and guess the ultimate purpose, and yet also in a way which made clear that the request was backed by a threat of German military intervention. Sverdlov, apparently agreeing to Mirbach’s demand, deputized Yakovlev to bring Nicholas to Moscow.

  Sverdlov, of course, easily saw the German game and the need for thwarting it. He could not simply refuse; German power was too great. What he could do was to arrange secretly with Ekaterinburg, which was eight hundred miles east of Moscow and beyond the German reach, that they should intercept the Tsar and hold him in apparent defiance of the central government. This way, he could appear before Mirbach and say that he deplored the seizure but unfortunately was powerless to prevent it. The central government would appear all the more innocent as the fiercely Bolshevik sentiments of the Ural Soviet were widely known.

  Thus, Sverdlov was betraying both the Germans and his own agent Yakovlev, who was not in on Sverdlov’s scheme. With his right: hand, Sverdlov was directing Yakovlev, urging him to skirt Ekaterinburg and bring the Tsar to Moscow; with his left hand, he was closing the net tighter around Yakovlev to ensure that Nicholas would go to Ekaterinburg. Finally, to complete this circle of deception, it is possible that Yakovlev, beginning the game as Sverdlov’s dupe, began to guess what was afoot and actually did attempt to escape with the Tsar to freedom.

  In the end, once his train had been stopped, Yakovlev had no choice but to obey Sverdlov. Followed by another train filled with Bolshevik soldiers, he proceeded into Ekaterinburg. There, the train was surrounded by troops, and officials of the Regional Soviet immediately took charge of the captives. Yakovlev wired again to Sverdlov, who confirmed his order to give up the prisoners and return directly to Moscow. That night, at a meeting of the Regional Soviet, Yakovlev’s arrest was demanded. He argued that he had been attempting only to follow orders and bring his charges to Moscow as directed. As this could not be disproved and Yakovlev was still plainly a deputy of Sverdlov, he was allowed to go. Six months later, he deserted to the White Army of Admiral Kolchak.

  Mirbach, realizing that he had been outwitted, was furious. Sverdlov was deeply apologetic, wringing his hands and telling the German Ambassador, “What can we do? We have no proper administrative machinery as yet, and must let the local Soviets have their way in many matters. Give Ekaterinburg time to calm down.” But Mirbach, knowing that this game was lost, decided to try another tack. Later, in May, one of the Kaiser’s aides-de-camp appeared in the Crimea, where a scattering of Russian grand dukes had gathered. With him, this officer carried an offer from the Kaiser to proclaim Tsar of all the Russias any member of the Imperial family who would agree to countersign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. When every Romanov present refused, the German emissary even asked for a meeting with Felix Yussoupov. The meeting never took place and Rasputin’s murderer was spared the temptation of visualizing on his own head the Russian Imperial Crown.

  Mirbach wasted no more time on Nicholas. When the Russian monarchists came back to him in June, imploring him to save the Tsar from his captors in Ekaterinburg, Mirbach washed his hands, declaring, “The fate of the Russian Emperor is in the hands of his people. Had we been defeated, we would have been treated no better. It is the old, old story—woe to the vanquished!”

  Woe indeed! Early in July, Mirbach was assassinated in his Embassy in Moscow. His murderers were two Russian Social-Revolutionaries who were convinced that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had betrayed the revolution to the Germans: “The dictatorship of the proletariat,” they cried, “has become the dictatorship of Mirbach!” Four months later, in November 1918, Germany itself was vanquished.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Ekaterinburg

  THE city of Ekaterinburg lies on a cluster of low hills on the eastern slope of the Urals. Atop the highest of these hills, near the center of town, a successful merchant named N. N. Ipatiev had built himself a handsome, two-story house. Constructed into a slight incline on the side of the hill, the lower story was at: street level on one side of the house and became a semi-basement on the other. At the end of April, as Nicholas and Alexandra were being taken from Tobolsk, Ipatiev was suddenly given twenty-four hours to vacate his house. After he left, a group of workmen arrived and hurriedly erected a high wooden fence shutting off the house and garden from the street. Five rooms on the upper floor were sealed as a prison, with the glass on the windows painted white so that those inside could not see out. The lower floor was hastily converted into guardrooms and offices. When it was ready, the house was given the ominous official designation “The House of Special Purpose.”

  As Yakovlev’s train bearing the captives arrived in the city’s main railway station, the mood of Ekaterinburg was all too evident. An angry mob surged around the coaches, shouting, “Show us the Romanovs!” So threatening did the crowd become that even the officials of the local Soviet agreed to let Yakovlev move the train back to an outer station before handing over his prisoners. Nicholas stepped out, wearing an officer’s greatcoat with the epaulets removed, and carried his own luggage to a waiting car. Then, with Alexandra and Marie beside him, followed by only one other car, he was driven quickly through back streets to the Ipatiev house. There at the door stood Isiah Goloshchekin, a member of the Presidium of the Ural Soviet and personal friend of Sverdlov. Goloshchekin greeted the Tsar ironically: “Citizen Romanov, you may enter.”

  At once, the captives were ordered to open their hand luggage. Nicholas was willing, but the Empress objected. Seeing his wife upset, Nicholas paced up and down the room, saying bitterly, “So far we have had polite treatment and men who were gentlemen, but now …” The guards cut him short. Roughly, they told him to remember that he was no longer at Tsarskoe Selo, and that if he continued to act provocatively, they would isolate him from his family. A second offense, they warned, would result in hard labor. Frightened for him, Alexandra quickly submitted. Upstairs in their new room, she took a pencil and drew on a window a swastika as a symbol of faith. Beneath, she added the date of their first day in Ekaterinburg, “17/30 Apr. 1918.”

  In Tobolsk, meanwhile, the remaining four children waited anxiously to hear what had happened to their parents. On May 3, a telegram to Kobylinsky announced that the Tsar and Empress had been detained at Ekaterinburg. Soon after, a letter from Ekaterinburg, written by the maid Demidova but dictated by the Empress, said non-committally that all were well and advised the Grand Duchesses to “dispose of the medicines as h
ad been agreed.” In the code worked out by the family before separating, “medicines” meant “jewels.” All of the gems brought from Tsarskoe Selo had been left in Tobolsk, as Nicholas and Alexandra, leaving on hours’ notice, had had no time to hide them on their own persons. Now, having been thoroughly and roughly searched, Alexandra was advising her daughters to take the steps agreed on. Accordingly, for several days the girls and trusted servants sewed jewels into their clothing. Diamonds were sewed inside cloth buttons, rubies were hidden inside bodices and corsets. Tatiana, rather than Olga, supervised this work. She was regarded by prisoners and guards alike as head of the family remaining in Tobolsk.

  The Bolsheviks had no intention of leaving the family separated. On May 11, Colonel Kobylinsky, who had held his command for twelve difficult months, was relieved, and on May 17, the soldiers of the Tsarskoe Selo regiments acting as guard on the governor’s house were replaced by Red Guards from Ekaterinburg. Kobylinsky’s place was taken by a bullying young commissar named Rodionov, whose orders were to bring the remainder of the party to Ekaterinburg as soon as the Tsarevich could travel. When Rodionov arrived, he went immediately to see Alexis. Finding the boy in bed, Rodionov stepped out of the room, waited a minute and then reentered, thinking to catch him up, using his malady as a pretext for not moving. Determined not to let anyone deceive him, Rodionov instituted daily roll-call of all the prisoners. He refused to allow the young Grand Duchesses to lock their doors at night, explaining that he had to be able to enter at any time to make certain that they were there. One morning, Anastasia came to the window and seeing Dr. Botkin’s son Gleb in the street below, began to wave. Rodionov dashed into the street and pushed Gleb away, shouting, “Nobody is permitted to look at the windows! Comrades,” he cried to the sentries, “shoot everybody who so much as looks in this direction.” Anastasia continued to smile as Gleb bowed to her and walked away.

  By May 19, Alexis was well enough to travel, and at noon the following day, Nagorny carried him aboard the steamer Rus, which had brought them to Tobolsk the previous summer. On the river voyage, Rodionov again refused to permit the girls to lock their doors at night. He insisted, nevertheless, on padlocking Alexis and Nagorny into their room. Both Gilliard and Nagorny protested, “The child is ill and the doctor ought to have access to him at any time.” Nagorny was enraged and bellowed at Rodionov, but the commissar merely stared with slitted eyes at the loyal sailor.

  At the Tyumen railway station, Gilliard was separated from Alexis and placed in a fourth-class carriage at the rear of the train. They traveled all day and reached Ekaterinburg in the middle of the night. The following morning, looking out his window through a steady drizzle of rain, the tutor had a last glimpse of the Imperial children:

  “Several carriages were drawn up alongside our train and I saw four men go towards the children’s carriage. A few minutes passed and then Nagorny the sailor … passed my window carrying the sick boy in his arms; behind him came the Grand Duchesses, loaded with valises and small personal belongings. I tried to get out but was roughly pushed back into the carriage by the sentry. I came back to the window. Tatiana Nicolaievna came last, carrying her little dog and struggling to drag a heavy brown valise. It was raining and I saw her feet sink into the mud at every step. Nagorny tried to come to her assistance; he was roughly pushed back by one of the commissars.… A few minutes later the carriages drove off with the children.… How little I suspected that I was never to see them again.”

  Once the children and Nagorny had disappeared, the guards divided up the rest of the party. General Tatishchev, Countess Hendrikov and Mlle. Schneider were sent to prison to join Prince Dolgoruky, who had been there since arriving with the Tsar. Kharitonov the cook, Trup the footman, and Leonid Sednev the fourteen-year-old kitchen boy were sent to join the Imperial family and Dr. Botkin in the Ipatiev house. When these people had gone, Rodionov entered the coach and announced, to their amazement that everyone else—Dr. Derevenko, Baroness Buxhoeveden, Sidney Gibbs and Gilliard himself—were free. For ten days, they remained in Ekaterinburg, living in the fourth-class railway carriage, until ordered by the Bolsheviks to leave the city. On July 20, in Tyumen, Gilliard and the others were rescued by the advancing White Army.

  At the Ipatiev house, the children’s arrival brought a burst of happiness. Marie slept that night on the floor so that Alexis could have her bed. Thereafter, twelve people were crowded into five rooms. Nicholas, Alexandra and Alexis shared a room, the girls had another, and the rest were divided between the male and female retainers.

  In Ekaterinburg, Nicholas and his family were truly prisoners. Their guards were divided into two quite separate groups. Outside the fence and at intervals along the street, the guard consisted of ordinary Red soldiers. Inside, the guards were Bolshevik shock troops made up of former workers from the Zlokazovsky and Syseretsky factories in Ekaterinburg. All were old, hard-core revolutionaries, seasoned by years of privation and bitterness. Night and day, three of these men, armed with revolvers, kept watch outside the five rooms occupied by the Imperial family.

  The leader of the inner guard was a tall, thin-faced man who habitually referred to the Tsar as “Nicholas the Blood-Drinker.” Alexander Avadeyev had been a commissar at the Zlokazovsky works, where in the autumn of 1917 he personally had arrested the owner and had become head of the factory Soviet. Avadeyev hated the Tsar and dinned into the heads of his subordinates that Nicholas had forced Russia into war in order to spill the blood of larger numbers of workers. Avadeyev drank heavily and encouraged his men to join him. Together, they pilfered the Imperial family’s baggage, which was stored in a downstairs room. Following Avadeyev’s example, the guards went beltless and unbuttoned. They were deliberately rude. If a member of the family asked, for example, that a window be opened on a sweltering day, the guards either ignored the request or transmitted it to Avadeyev, whose customary response was, “Let them go to hell.” Then, pleased with themselves, they would go downstairs and brag that they had just refused this or that to “Nikolasha” and “the German woman.” The family had no privacy. The guards entered the rooms whenever they liked, swearing, telling dirty jokes or singing lewd ditties. When the girls went to the lavatory, the soldiers followed with loud guffaws to “guard” them. Inside the lavatory, they had scrawled obscene pictures depicting the Empress with Rasputin. Before one of the Grand Duchesses entered, the guard would tell her to be sure to notice.

  Except for a walk in the garden every afternoon, family activity was limited to what could be done within the walls of their rooms. Nicholas and Alexandra read, the girls knitted and embroidered, and Alexis played in bed with a model of a ship. The Empress and her daughters often sang hymns to drown out the noise of the soldiers singing revolutionary songs around a piano on the floor below. Birthdays passed and were scarcely noticed: on May 19, Nicholas was fifty, and on May 25, Alexandra became forty-six.

  Every morning, the family arose at eight and assembled for morning prayers. Breakfast was black bread and tea. The main meal arrived at two p.m., when soup and cutlets, sent from the local Soviet soup kitchen, were rewarmed and served by Kharitonov, the cook. They dined on a bare table lacking linen and silverware, and while they ate, Avadeyev and his men often came to watch. Sometimes, Avadeyev would reach past the Tsar, brushing Nicholas’s face with his elbow, to fetch himself a piece of meat from the pot. “You’ve had enough, you idle rich,” he would say. “There is enough for you, so I will take some myself.”

  Nagorny, whose arguments with Rodionov had already marked him, soon ran into more difficulty. The guards insisted that Alexis was to keep only one pair of boots. Nagorny insisted on two pairs, explaining that if one became wet, the Tsarevich needed a second as he was unable to walk without shoes. Soon afterward, one of the guards noticed a thin gold chain hanging from Alexis’s bed on which the boy had strung his collection of Holy Images. The man began to take the chain for himself, and Nagorny, outraged, stopped him. It was his last service to Alexis. H
e was immediately arrested. As he stepped out of the house surrounded by Red Guards, Gilliard, Dr. Derevenko and Gibbs happened to be walking past in the street. “Nagorny was going to the … carriage,” wrote Gilliard. “He was just setting foot on the step with his hand on the side of the carriage when, raising his head, he saw us all there standing motionless a few yards from him. For a few seconds he looked fixedly at us, then without a single gesture that might have betrayed us, he took his seat. The carriages were driven off … in the direction of the prison.” Nagorny was put in the same cell with Prince George Lvov, the first Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, who had been sent to Ekaterinburg. Their time as cellmates was brief; four days later, Nagorny was taken out and shot.

  With Nagorny gone, it became Nicholas’s task to carry Alexis into the garden. There, the Tsar placed his son in a chair and Alexis sat quietly while the others walked back and forth under the eyes of the guards. In time, the sight of Nicholas and his family began to change the impressions of even these seasoned revolutionaries. “I have still an impression of them that will always remain in my soul,” said Anatoly Yakimov, a member of the guard who was captured by the Whites. “The Tsar was no longer young, his beard was getting grey.… [He wore] a soldier’s shirt with an officer’s belt fastened by a buckle around his waist. The buckle was yellow … the shirt was khaki color, the same color as his trousers and his old worn-out boots. His eyes were kind and he had altogether a kind expression. I got the impression that he was a kind, simple, frank and talkative person. Sometimes I felt that he was going to speak to me. He looked as if he would like to talk to us.

  “The Tsaritsa was not a bit like him. She was severe looking and she had the appearance and manners of a haughty, grave woman. Sometimes we used to discuss them amongst ourselves and we decided that she was different and looked exactly like a Tsaritsa. She seemed older than the Tsar. Grey hair was plainly visible on her temples and her face was not the face of a young woman.…