Before sunset on the afternoon of the second day, the boat rounded a bend in the river and the passengers saw the silhouette of the old Tobolsk fortress and the onion bulbs of the city’s churches. At dusk, the steamer docked at the wharf of the West Siberian Steamship and Trading Company, and Kobylinsky went ashore to inspect the governor’s house, where the prisoners would live. He found the house dilapidated and bare of furnishings. The following morning, postponing the family’s occupancy, he hired painters and paperers and bought furniture and a piano from stores and private families in Tobolsk. Electricians were summoned to improve the wiring, and plumbers came to install bathtubs. During the eight days it took to refurbish the house, the family lived aboard the Rus. To break the monotony, the steamer made afternoon excursions along the river, stopping so that Nicholas and the children could walk along the bank. Finally, on August 26, the house was ready, and at eight in the morning the Tsar, the Tsarevich and three of the Grand Duchesses walked from the dock to the house along a road lined with soldiers. Alexandra and Tatiana followed in a carriage.
Tobolsk, where the Tsar and his family were to live for the next eight months, lay at the juncture of the Tobol and the mighty Irtysh River. Once it had been an important trading center for fish and furs, a link with the Arctic, which lay farther north. But the builders of the Trans-Siberian Railroad had by-passed Tobolsk, going two hundred miles to the south, through Tyumen. In 1917, Tobolsk was, as Kerensky described it, “a backwater.” Its twenty thousand people still lived mostly from trade with the north. In the summer, all transport moved by river steamer; in the winter, when the rivers were frozen, people traveled in sledges along the river ice or paths cut through the snow along the banks. The town itself was a sprawl of whitewashed churches, wooden commercial buildings and log houses scattered along streets thick with dust in the summer. In spring and fall, the dust turned to thick, syrupy mud, and the wooden planks laid down as sidewalks often sank out of sight.
The governor’s house, a big, white, two-story structure fringed on each side with second-floor balconies, was the largest residence in town. Still, it was not large enough for the Imperial entourage. The family itself filled up the mansion’s second floor, with the four Grand Duchesses sharing a corner room and Nagorny sleeping in a room next to Alexis. Gilliard lived downstairs off the big central drawing room in what had been the governor’s study. The remainder of the household lived across the street in a house commandeered from a merchant named Kornilov.
At first, Kobylinsky posted no guards inside the governor’s house and allowed the family considerable freedom of movement. On their first morning in Tobolsk, they all walked across the street to see how the suite was settling into the Kornilov house. The soldiers immediately objected to this degree of freedom for prisoners, and Kobylinsky reluctantly authorized the building of a high wooden fence around the house, enclosing a section of a small side street which ran beside the house. Inside this muddy, treeless compound, the family took all its exercise. The suite, on the other hand, was permitted to come and go freely, and when Sidney Gibbs, the Tsarevich’s English tutor, arrived from Petrograd, he had no difficulty entering the house and joining the family. Several of the Empress’s maids took apartments in town, and Dr. Botkin was even allowed to establish a small medical practice in Tobolsk.
Evening prayer services were held in a corner of the downstairs drawing room which was decorated with icons and lamps. A local priest came in to conduct these prayers, but because there was no consecrated altar he was unable to offer Mass. On September 21, Kobylinsky arranged for the family to begin attending a private early Mass at a nearby church. On these occasions, two lines of soldiers formed in the public garden which lay between the house and the church. As the Imperial family walked between the two lines, people standing behind the soldiers crossed themselves and some dropped to their knees.
As Kerensky had suspected, the people of Tobolsk remained strongly attached to both the symbol and the person of the Tsar. Walking past the governor’s house, they removed their caps and crossed themselves. When the Empress appeared to sit in her window, they bowed to her. The soldiers repeatedly had to intervene and break up clusters of people who gathered in the muddy street whenever the Grand Duchesses came out on a balcony. Merchants openly sent gifts of food, nuns from the local convent brought sugar and cakes, and peasant farmers arrived regularly with butter and eggs.
Removed from the inflammatory atmosphere of Petrograd, Colonel Kobylinsky managed to restore some discipline in his men. The soldiers, watching the once august and unapproachable personages walking a few feet away, were surprised to find them a simple, united family. Although the men of the 2nd Regiment remained hostile, the soldiers of the 1st and 4th Regiments warmed, especially to the children. The Grand Duchesses talked often to these men, asking them about their villages and families. Marie quickly learned the names of all the wives and children. To many of the men, Alexis remained “the Heir,” an object of special respect and affection. When one favorite section of the 4th Regiment was on duty, Alexis and his father sometimes slipped quietly into the guardhouse to play games with these men.
Kobylinsky remained in sole authority until late in September, when two civilian commissars arrived to take charge of the captives, although Kobylinsky was ordered to keep his command of the military guard. The two commissars, Vasily Pankratov and his deputy, Alexander Nikolsky, both were Social Revolutionaries who had spent years in exile in Siberia. Although they were friends, Pankratov and Nikolsky were opposite in character. Pankratov, a small, earnest man with bushy hair and thick glasses, presented himself formally upon arrival to the Tsar.
“Not wishing to infringe the rules of politeness,” he wrote, “I requested the valet of the former Tsar to report my arrival and to state that I wished to see his master….
“‘Good morning,’ said Nicholas Alexandrovich, stretching out his hand. ‘Did you have a good journey?’
“‘Thank you, yes,’ I replied, grasping his hand.
‘“How is Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky?’ asked the former Tsar….”
Pankratov asked whether Nicholas was in need of anything.
“‘Could you allow me to saw wood? … I like that kind of work.’
‘“Perhaps you would like to have a carpenter’s shop? It is more interesting work.’
“‘No, just see that they bring some logs into the yard and give me a saw,’ replied Nicholas Alexandrovich.
“‘Tomorrow it shall be done.’
“‘May I correspond with my relatives?’
“‘Certainly. Have you enough books?’
“‘Plenty, but why do we not receive our foreign journals; is this forbidden?’
‘“Probably it is the fault of the post. I shall make enquiries.’”
Pankratov pitied the Tsar and was genuinely fond of the children. Alexis’s illness disturbed him, and he sometimes sat, just as Rasputin had done, and spun long stories of his years in Siberia. Once, entering the guardhouse, he was astonished to discover Nicholas and his children sitting and talking to the guards. The Tsar graciously asked Pankratov to sit and join them at the table, but Pankratov, disconcerted by this scene, excused himself and fled.
Nikolsky, tall, with a broad face and thick, uncombed hair, felt differently about the captive family. Rough and unmannered, he bitterly blamed the Tsar personally for his imprisonment and tried in petty ways to even the score. He burst into rooms without knocking and spoke to the prisoners without removing his cap. He liked to offer his hand in apparent innocence and then, seizing the hand proffered in return, squeeze with his bony fingers until his victim winced with pain. As soon as he arrived, Nikolsky announced that the entire Imperial party would have to be photographed for identification. Kobylinsky objected, saying the sentries already knew everyone by sight. Nikolsky flew into a rage, shouting, “We were once ordered by the police to have our pictures taken, full face and profile, and so now their pictures shall be taken.” As the picture
s were being taken, Alexis peeped to watch, which brought another bellow from the angry Nikolsky. The Tsarevich, who had never been yelled at before, retreated in astonishment. Later, a case of wine for the family arrived from Petrograd. Its appearance in Tobolsk fired a passionate debate among the soldiers on the issue of pampering prisoners. The soldier who accompanied the case from Petrograd declared that it had been packed not only with Kerensky’s permission but in Kerensky’s presence. Dr. Derevenko pleaded that if the alcohol was not to be given to the Imperial family, he be allowed to take it for use in the city hospital. The arguments were useless; Nikolsky sternly saw his duty. Without being opened, the bottles were dropped into the river.
As old, doctinaire Social Revolutionaries, both Pankratov and Nikolsky believed it their duty to assist the political education of the soldiers. Unfortunately, said Kobylinsky, who watched these proceedings with apprehension, “the result of these lectures was that the soldiers were converted [not to Social Revolutionary principles] but to Bolshevism.” There were more complaints about pay and food.
Nevertheless, the family was not markedly affected. They had endured worse treatment at Tsarskoe Selo, and they remained unafraid and hopeful for the future. All of the survivors remarked that, despite the narrow confinement, the peaceful autumn months in Tobolsk were not wholly unpleasant.
In October, the long Siberian winter descended from the Arctic upon Tobolsk. At noon, the sun still shone brightly, but by mid-afternoon the light had faded, and in the gathering darkness, crisp, heavy frosts formed on the ground. As the days grew shorter, Nicholas’s greatest privation was lack of news. Despite Pankratov’s assurances, the mail did not arrive regularly, and he depended for information on the blend of rumor and fact which drifted into Tobolsk and appeared in the local newspapers. It was through this medium that he morosely followed the rapid crumbling of Kerensky and the Provisional Government.
Ironically, Kerensky himself had assisted in making this tragedy inevitable. Despite the government’s narrow triumph over the July Uprising, General Kornilov, now Commander-in-Chief of the Army, concluded that the government was too weak to resist the growing power of the Bolsheviks. Accordingly, at the end of August, Kornilov ordered a cavalry corps to occupy Petrograd and disperse the Soviet. He proposed to replace the Provisional Government with a military dictatorship, keeping Kerensky in the Cabinet but assuming the dominant role himself. Kerensky, as strongly socialist as he was anti-Bolshevik, resisted Kornilov’s Rightist coup by what seemed to him the only means available: he appealed to the Soviet for help. The Bolsheviks responded enthusiastically and began forming the workers into Red Guard battalions. Meanwhile, as part of the arrangement, Kerensky released Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders.
As it happened, Kornilov’s threat evaporated quickly; his cavalrymen immediately began to fraternize with the militia sent to oppose them. Kerensky then asked the Red Guards to return the weapons they had been issued, and they refused. In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority within the Petrograd Soviet. From Finland, Lenin urged an immediate lunge for supreme power: “History will not forgive us if we do not take power now … to delay is a crime.” On October 23, Lenin, in disguise, slipped back into Petrograd to attend a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee, which voted 10 to 2 that “insurrection is inevitable and the time fully ripe.”
On November 6, the Bolsheviks struck. That day, the cruiser Aurora, flying the red flag, anchored in the Neva opposite the Winter Palace. Armed Bolshevik squads occupied the railway stations, bridges, banks, telephone exchanges, post office and other public buildings. There was no bloodshed. The next morning, November 7, Kerensky left the Winter Palace in an open Pierce-Arrow touring car accompanied by another car flying the American flag. Passing unmolested through streets filled with Bolshevik soldiers, he drove south to try to raise help from the army. The remaining ministers of the Provisional Government remained in the Malachite Hall of the Winter Palace, protected by a women’s battalion and a troop of cadets. Sitting around a green baize table, filling the ashtrays with cigarette butts, the ministers covered their scratch pads with abstract doodles and drafts of pathetic last-minute proclamations: “The Provisional Government appeals to all classes to support the Provisional Government—” At nine p.m., the Aurora fired a single blank shell, and at ten, the women’s battalion surrendered. At eleven, another thirty or forty shells whistled across the river from the batteries in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Only two shells hit the palace, slightly damaging the plaster. Nevertheless, at 2:10 a.m. on November 8, the ministers gave up.
This skirmish was the Bolshevik November Revolution, later magnified in Communist mythology into an epic of struggle and heroism. In fact, life in the capital was largely undisturbed. Restaurants, stores and cinemas on the Nevsky Prospect remained open. Streetcars moved as usual through most of the city, and the ballet performed at the Maryinsky Theatre. On the afternoon of the 7th, Sir George Buchanan walked in the vicinity of the Winter Palace and found “the aspect of the quay was more or less normal.” Nevertheless, this flick of Lenin’s finger was all that was necessary to finish Kerensky. Unsuccessful in raising help, Kerensky never returned to Petrograd. In May, after months in hiding, he appeared secretly in Moscow, where Bruce Lockhart issued him a false visa identifying him as a Siberian soldier being repatriated home. Three days later, Kerensky left Murmansk to begin fifty years of restless exile. Trotsky later, in exile himself, scornfully wrote Kerensky’s political epitaph: “Kerensky was not a revolutionist; he merely hung around the revolution…. He had no theoretical preparation, no political schooling, no ability to think, no political will The place of these qualities was occupied by a nimble susceptibility, an inflammable temperament, and that kind of eloquence which operates neither upon mind or will but upon the nerves.” Nevertheless, when Kerensky left, he carried with him the vanishing dream of a humane, liberal, democratic Russia.
From distant Tobolsk, Nicholas followed these events with keen interest. He blamed Kerensky for the collapse of the army in the July offensive and for not accepting Kornilov’s help in routing the Bolsheviks. At first, he could not believe that Lenin and Trotsky were as formidable as they seemed; to him, they appeared as outright German agents sent to Russia to corrupt the army and overthrow the government. When these two men whom he regarded as unsavory blackguards and traitors became the rulers of Russia, he was gravely shocked. “I then for the first time heard the Tsar regret his abdication,” said Gilliard. “It now gave him pain to see that his renunciation had been in vain and that by his departure in the interests of his country, he had in reality done her an ill turn. This idea was to haunt him more and more.”
At first, the Bolshevik Revolution had little practical effect on far-off Tobolsk. Officials appointed by the Provisional Government—including Pankratov, Nikolsky and Kobylinsky—remained in office; the banks and lawcourts remained open doing business as before. Inside the governor’s house, the Imperial family had settled into a routine which, although restricted, was almost cozy.
“Lessons begin at nine,” the Empress wrote in December to Anna Vyrubova. “Up at noon for religious lessons with Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexei. I have a German lesson three times a week with Tatiana and once with Marie…. Also I sew, embroider and paint, with spectacles on because my eyes have become too weak to do without them. I read ‘good books’ a great deal, love the Bible, and from time to time read novels. I am so sad because they are allowed no walks except before the house and behind a high fence. But at least they have fresh air, and we are grateful for anything. He [Nicholas] is simply marvelous. Such meekness while all the time suffering intensely for the country…. The others are all good and brave and uncomplaining, and Alexei is an angel. He and I dine a deux and generally lunch so.
“… One by one all earthly things slip away, houses and possessions ruined, friends vanished. One lives from day to day. But God is in all, and nature never changes. I can see all around me churches… an
d hills, the lovely world. Volkov [her attendant] wheels me in my chair to church across the street … some of the people bow and bless us but others don’t dare…. I feel old, oh, so old, but I am still the mother of this country, and I suffer its pains as my own child’s pains and I love it in spite of all its sins and horrors. No one can tear a child from its mother’s heart and neither can you tear away one’s country, although Russia’s black ingratitude to the Emperor breaks my heart. Not that it is the whole country though. God have mercy and save Russia.”
A few days later, she wrote again to Anna: “It is bright sunshine and everything glitters with hoarfrost. There are such moonlight nights, it must be ideal on the hills. But my poor unfortunates can only pace up and down the narrow yard…. I am knitting stockings for the small one [Alexis]. He asks for a pair as all his are in holes…. I make everything now. Father’s [the Tsar’s] trousers are torn and darned, the girls’ under-linen in rags…. I have grown quite grey. Anastasia, to her despair is now very fat, as Marie was, round and fat to the waist, with short legs. I do hope she will grow. Olga and Tatiana are both thin.”
In December, the full force of the Siberian winter hit Tobolsk. The thermometer dropped to 68 degress below zero Fahrenheit, the rivers were frozen solid, and no walls or windows could keep out the icy chill. The girls’ corner bedroom became, in Gilliard’s words, “a real ice house.” A fire burned all day in the drawing-room grate, but the temperature inside the house remained 44 degrees. Sitting near the fire, the Empress shivered and suffered from chilblains, with her fingers so stiff she could hardly move her knitting needles.
For Alexis, the winter weather and the family coziness were an exhilarating treat. “Today there are 29 degrees of frost, a strong wind and sunshine,” he wrote cheerfully to Anna. “We walked and I went on skees in the yard. Yesterday, I acted with Tatiana and … [Gilliard] a French piece. We are now preparing another piece. We have a few good soldiers with whom I play games in their rooms…. It is time to go to lunch…. Alexis.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 60