Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family

by Robert K. Massie

  Through the winter, the Tsarevich was lively and in excellent health. Despite the cold, he went out every morning, dressed in boots, overcoat and cap, with his father. Usually his sisters, in gray capes and red and blue angora caps, came too. While the Tsar walked back and forth with his fast military step from one side of the yard to the other with his daughters hurrying to keep up, Alexis wandered through the sheds attached to the house, collecting old nails and pieces of string. “You never know when they might be useful,” he explained. After lunch, he lay on a sofa while Gilliard read to him. Afterward, he went out again to join his father and sisters in the yard. When he returned, he had his history lesson from his father. At four, tea was served, and afterward, Anastasia wrote to Anna, “We often sit in the windows looking at the people passing and this gives us distraction.”

  For the four Grand Duchesses, all active and healthy young women—that winter Olga was twenty-two, Tatiana twenty, Marie eighteen and Anastasia sixteen—life in the governor’s house was acutely boring. To provide them with entertainment, Gilliard and Gibbs began directing them in scenes from plays. Soon, everybody was eager to participate. Both Nicholas and Alexandra carefully wrote out formal programs, and the Tsar acted the title role of Smirnov in Chekov’s The Bear. Alexis gleefully joined in, accepting any part, overjoyed to put on a beard and speak in a hoarse basso. Only Dr. Botkin categorically refused to take part on stage, pleading that spectators also were essential. Taking Botkin’s reluctance as a challenge, Alexis purposefully set himself to overcome it. After dinner one night, he approached the doctor and said in a serious tone, “I want to talk to you about something, Eugene Sergeievich.” Taking Botkin’s arm, the boy walked him back and forth through the room, arguing that the part in question was that of an old country doctor and that only Botkin could supply the necessary realism. Botkin broke down and agreed.

  After dinner, the little group all huddled near the fire, drinking tea, coffee and hot chocolate, trying to keep warm. Nicholas read aloud while the others played quiet games and the grand duchesses did needlework. “In this atmosphere of family peace,” said Gilliard, “we passed the long winter evenings, lost in the immensity of distant Siberia.”

  At Christmas, the group became especially intimate. “The children were filled with delight. We now felt part of one large family,” recalled Gilliard. The Empress and her daughters presented to the suite and servants the gifts on which they had been working for many weeks: knitted waistcoats and painted ribbons for use as bookmarks. On Christmas morning, the family crossed the public garden for early Mass. At the end of the service, the priest offered the prayer for the health and long life of the Imperial family which had been dropped from the Orthodox service after the abdication. Hearing it, the soldiers became angry and thereafter refused the family permission to go to church. This was a great hardship, especially for Alexandra. At the same time, soldiers of the guard were posted inside the house, ostensibly to make certain that the same prayer was not uttered again. Their presence led to closer surveillance and stricter supervision.

  One night after the inside watch had been established, the guard on duty reported, “at about 11 p.m…. I heard an extraordinary noise upstairs where the Romanovs lived. It was some family holiday with them, and dinner had lasted until far into the evening. Finally the noise grew louder, and soon a cheerful company, consisting of the Romanov family and their suite in evening dress came down the staircase. Nicholas headed the procession in Cossack uniform with a colonel’s epaulets and a Circassian dagger at his belt. The whole company went into the room of Gibbs, the tutor, where they made merry until 2 a.m.” In the morning, the guard reported the incident and the soldiers grumbled, “They have weapons. They must be searched.” Kobylinsky went to Nicholas and obtained the dagger.

  The same minor episode led to the affair of the epaulets. As the meaning of the Bolshevik Revolution penetrated through to Tobolsk, the soldiers of the 2nd Regiment became increasingly hostile. They elected a Soldiers’ Committee which encroached increasingly on Kobylinsky’s authority. Soon after Nicholas was seen wearing epaulets, the Soldiers’ Committee voted 100–85 to forbid all officers, including the Tsar, to wear epaulets. At first, Nicholas refused to comply. He had been awarded his colonel’s epaulets by his father and he had never taken a higher rank, even as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army. Kobylinsky did what he could to override the order, telling the soldiers that Nicholas could not be humiliated in that manner, that even if he no longer was Tsar he remained the cousin of the King of England and the Emperor of Germany. The soldiers brushed Kobylinsky rudely aside, threatening violence. “After dinner,” Gilliard wrote, “General Tatishchev and Prince Dolgoruky came to beg the Tsar to remove his epaulets in order to avoid a hostile demonstration by the soldiers. At first it seemed as though the Tsar would refuse but after exchanging a look and a few words with the Empress, he recovered his self control and yielded for the sake of his family. He continued nevertheless to wear epaulets in his room and when he went out, concealed them from the soldiers under a Caucasian cloak.”

  To the faithful Kobylinsky, the affair of the epaulets seemed a final blow. “I felt I could bear it no more,” he said. “I knew that I had absolutely lost all control of the men and I fully realized my impotence. I … begged the Emperor to receive me … and I said to him, ‘Your Majesty, all authority is fast slipping out of my hands…. I cannot be useful to you any more, so I wish to resign…. My nerves are strained. I am exhausted.’ The Emperor put his arm on my shoulder, his eyes filled with tears. He replied: ‘I implore you to remain. Eugene Stepanovich, remain for my sake, for the sake of my wife and for the sake of my children. You must stand by us.’… Then he embraced me…. I resolved to remain.”

  Kobylinsky’s decision was fortunate, for on February 8, the Soldiers’ Committee decided that Pankratov and Nikolsky must reign. Simultaneously, the Bolshevik government issued an order demobilizing all older soldiers of the Imperial Army. “All the old soldiers (the most friendly) are to leave us,” Gilliard wrote in his diary on February 13. “The Tsar seems very depressed at this prospect; the change may have disastrous results for us.” Two days later, he added: “A certain number of soldiers have already left. They came secretly to take leave of the Tsar and his family.”

  Their effort to say goodbye to the men of the 4th Regiment of Sharpshooters cost the family heavily. In January, amid the heavy snows, Nicholas and his family had begun to pile up a “snow mountain” in the courtyard. For ten days they worked, shoveling snow and carrying water from the kitchen to pour on the snow and freeze it into a small toboggan run. Everybody helped—Dolgoruky, Gilliard, the servants and even members of the guard. Often they had to run from the kitchen to pour the water before it froze solid in the bucket. When it was finished, the children were delighted. A number of wild games were developed by Alexis, Anastasia and Marie, involving pell-mell racing down the slide and tumbling and wrestling in the snow, all accompanied by shrieks of laughter. Then, early in March, Nicholas and Alexandra used the hill to stand on in order to see over the stockade and watch the departure of the 4th Regiment. The Soldiers’ Committee immediately declared that the Tsar and the Empress, exposed in this manner, might be shot from the street, an event for which they would be held responsible. The committee ordered that the hill be demolished. The following day, Gilliard wrote in his diary, “The soldiers with a hang-dog look, began to destroy the snow mountain with picks. The children are disconsolate.”

  The new guards sent from the regimental depots at Tsarskoe Selo were younger men, strongly affected by the currents of revolutionary excitement. Many enjoyed offering little insults to the captives. On a pair of swings used by the Grand Duchesses, they carved obscene words into the wooden seats. Alexis spotted them first, but before he could study them Nicholas arrived and removed the seats. Thereafter, the soldiers amused themselves by drawing lewd pictures and inscriptions on the fence where the girls could not avoid seeing them.

 
; Through the winter, Kobylinsky’s increasing difficulty with the soldiers had stemmed as much from problems of pay as those of politics. He had arrived in Tobolsk entrusted by the Provisional Government with a large sum of money out of which to pay the expenses of the Tsar’s table and household. The soldiers were to be paid from separate funds to be forwarded later. When the Provisional Government was replaced by the Bolsheviks, the sums promised by Kerensky stopped coming and Kobylinsky had to pay the soldiers from his original sum. When it was gone, he and General Tatishchev twice visited the local District Commissioner and each time borrowed fifteen thousand roubles. Meanwhile, in Petrograd, Count Benckendorff visited government offices pleading for money to maintain the Tsar and his family. As news of the Tsar’s circumstances spread, offers of money began to flow in. One foreign ambassador anonymously offered enough to keep the Tsar’s household for six months. A prominent Russian quietly offered even more. Eventually, Benckendorff collected two hundred thousand roubles, which was sent to Tobolsk. Unhappily, it fell into other hands and never reached the Imperial family.

  In Tobolsk, meanwhile, the captives were living on credit which soon began to wear thin. Just as the cook announced that he was no longer welcome or trusted in the local stores, a strongly monarchist Tobolsk merchant advanced another twenty thousand roubles. Finally, the matter was settled by a telegram which announced that, as of March 1, “Nicholas Romanov and his family must be put on soldier’s rations and that each member of the family will receive 600 roubles per month drawn from the interest of their personal estate.” As the family consisted of seven, that meant 4,200 roubles a month to support the entire household. Nicholas, facing the novel task of drawing up a family budget, asked for help. “The Tsar said jokingly that since everyone is appointing committees, he is going to appoint one to look after the welfare of his own community,” said Gilliard. “It is to consist of General Tatishchev, Prince Dolgoruky, and myself. We held a ‘sitting’ this afternoon and came to the conclusion that the personnel must be reduced. This is a wrench; we shall have to dismiss ten servants, several of whom have their families with them in Tobolsk. When we informed Their Majesties we could see the grief it caused them. They must part with servants whose very devotion will reduce them to beggary.”

  The new self-imposed regime was harsh. As of the following morning, butter and coffee were excluded as luxuries. Soon, the townspeople, hearing of the situation, began to send packages of eggs, sweetmeats and delicacies which the Empress referred to as little “gifts from Heaven.” Musing over the nature of the Russian people, she wrote, “The strange thing about the Russian character is that it can so suddenly change to evil, cruelty and unreason and as suddenly change back again.”

  At times, it seemed to the exiles in Tobolsk that they were living on a separate planet—remote, forgotten, beyond all help. “To-day is Carnival Sunday,” wrote Gilliard on March 17. “Everyone is merry. The sledges pass to and fro under our windows; sound of bells, mouth-organs, and singing…. The children wistfully watch the fun…. Their Majesties still cherish hope that among their loyal friends some may be found to attempt their release. Never was the situation more favourable for escape, for there is as yet no representative of the Bolshevik Government at Tobolsk. With the complicity of Colonel Kobylinsky, already on our side, it would be easy to trick the insolent but careless vigilance of our guards. All that is required is the organized and resolute efforts of a few bold spirits outside.”

  33

  Good Russian Men

  The idea of escape grew slowly inside the governor’s house. At first, it had scarcely seemed necessary. Had not Kerensky promised the safety of the Imperial family? Had he not assured them that Tobolsk was intended only as a winter refuge? “From there,” Kerensky wrote later, “we thought it would be possible in the spring of 1918 to send them abroad after all, via Japan. Fate decided otherwise.”

  Despite Kerensky’s promises, even before the Bolshevik Revolution there were Russians who were secretly planning to liberate the Imperial family. Both in Moscow and in Petrograd, strong monarchist organizations with substantial funds were anxious to attempt a rescue. The problem was not money but planning, coordination and, above all, clarity of purpose. Nicholas himself raised one serious obstacle whenever the question of escape was mentioned: he insisted that the family not be separated from one another. This increased the logistical problem: an escape involving a number of women and a handicapped boy could not be improvised. It would require horses, food and loyal soldiery. If it was to take place in summer, it would need carriages and boats; if it was planned for winter, there would have to be sledges and possibly a train.

  Soon after the Imperial family arrived in Tobolsk, a number of monarchist organizations began sending agents to Siberia. Former officers using assumed names stepped off the train in Tyumen and strode onto the river steamers bound for Tobolsk. Mysterious visitors with fine-combed beards and precise Petrograd accents mingled with the well-to-do merchants and shopkeepers of Tobolsk. They made veiled remarks and vague promises about the Imperial family, then quietly disappeared, accomplishing nothing. It was easy at first to establish contact with the Imperial family. Servants and members of the suite passed freely in and out of the governor’s house, carrying letters, messages and gifts. Only when the couriers attempted deception did the guards object. The clumsiest of these cases, involved Mlle. Margaret Khitrivo, a friend and maid-of-honor of young Grand Duchess Olga. In Petrograd, this girl decided on her own to share the family’s imprisonment. She traveled openly to Tobolsk, carrying a thick wad of letters to the family concealed in a pillow. Upon arrival, she was searched and the letters came tumbling out. They were harmless, but the guards were angered, and thereafter access to the governor’s house became more limited.

  The major obstacle to rescue was always lack of leadership. There were too many groups, each jealous of the others. The Dowager Empress Marie, assuming that she should take precedence in arranging the rescue of her son, sent an officer to Bishop Hermogen of Tobolsk, proudly demanding his aid. “My lord,” wrote the Tsar’s mother, “you bear the name of St. Hermogen who fought for Russia. It is an omen. The hour has come for you to serve the motherland.” An equal claim was made by members of the Petrograd group which had clustered around Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova. Feeling the Empress to be their special patroness, they demanded leadership of the effort to save her. Count Benckendorff and a group of former government officials were active in raising money and interest. Acting independently, each of these groups dissipated its energy in milling about, squabbling over money and arguing who was to have the honor of conducting so glorious an enterprise as the rescue of the Imperial family.

  Eventually, a leader seemed to appear in the person of Boris Soloviev. Establishing himself in Tyumen, Soloviev gathered into his hands all the threads of the various rescue enterprises. So clear was his authority that monarchists arriving in Tyumen to assist the Imperial family automatically reported to Soloviev for instructions. His mandate, it appeared, came from the Empress herself. In fact, this was true; Alexandra trusted Soloviev implicitly for what seemed to her an overwhelming, unchallengeable reason: he was the son-in-law of Gregory Rasputin.

  Boris Soloviev, the adventurous son of the Treasurer of the Holy Synod, had studied in Berlin and then become private secretary to a German tourist who was traveling to India. Once there, Soloviev left his employer and entered a school of mysticism founded by a Russian woman, Mme. Blavatskaya. For a year, Soloviev trained himself in hypnotism.

  During the war, as an officer of a machine-gun regiment, Soloviev managed to avoid serving at the front. In Petrograd, where he was stationed, his background in mysticism provided splendid credentials for entering the occult gatherings which still amused society. In 1915, he became friendly with Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova. At the time, he showed little enthusiasm for their august Imperial patrons. On the second day of the March Revolution, Soloviev led his entire unit to the Tauride Palace to pledge his a
llegiance to the Duma.

  Neither Rasputin’s death, the fall of the Tsar nor Anna’s imprisonment disturbed the faith of those who believed in Rasputin’s mystical powers. During the spring and summer of 1917, groups of fervent admirers continued through spiritualistic prayer meetings and seances to attempt to converse with the departed starets. Soloviev continued to attend these meetings. Maria Rasputin, Gregory’s daughter, was also present and a romance was hastily induced. “I went to Anya’s house last night,” she wrote in her diary. “Daddy spoke to us again. … Why do they all say the same thing: ‘Love Boris—you must love Boris…. I don’t like him at all.’”

  In August, immediately after the Imperial family was transferred to Tobolsk, Soloviev now acting as agent for this group in Petrograd, went to Siberia to explore the situation. He returned to Petrograd and on October 5, 1917, married Maria Rasputin in the Duma chapel. With Maria, he returned to Siberia and lived for several weeks in her father’s house in Pokrovskoe.

  Upon arriving in the region, Soloviev quickly established contact with the Empress through one of her maids, Romanova, who had an apartment in Tobolsk. Through her, he passed on notes and a part of the money with which he had been entrusted. More important, Soloviev used Romanova to raise the captives’ hopes by promising that “Gregory’s family and his friends are active.”

  It was impossible, given Soloviev’s family connection, for Alexandra to doubt his word. Confident that plans were proceeding for their liberation, she even passed along to him her choice for the name of the rescue organization which he was building. It was to be “The Brotherhood of St. John of Tobolsk” in honor of the town’s famous saint. Frequently, when her family became gloomy, she cheered them with the reminder that “three hundred faithful officers” of the Brotherhood were disguised in the vicinity, only waiting for Soloviev’s signal.