The news spread quickly through the house. Tatiana, weeping, knocked at Gilliard’s door and asked him to come to her mother. The tutor found the Empress greatly upset. She told him that the Tsar was being taken that night and explained her own painful dilemma:
“The commissar says that no harm will come to the Tsar and that if anyone wishes to accompany him there will be no objection. I can’t let the Tsar go alone. They want to separate him from his family as they did before…. They’re going to try to force his hand by making him anxious about his family. The Tsar is necessary to them; they feel that he alone represents Russia. Together, we shall be in a better position to resist them and I ought to be at his side in the time of trial. But the boy is still so ill. Suppose some complication sets in. Oh, God, what ghastly torture. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. I’ve always felt inspired whenever I had to take a decision and now I can’t think. But God won’t allow the Tsar’s departure; it can’t, it must not be.”
Tatiana, watching her mother, urged her to make a decision. “But, Mother,” she said, “if Father has to go, whatever we say, something must be decided.” Gilliard suggested that if she went with the Tsar, he and the others would take excellent care of Alexis. He pointed out that the Tsarevich was over the worst of the crisis.
“Her Majesty,” he wrote, “was obviously tortured by indecision; she paced up and down the room and went on talking rather to herself than to us. At last she came up to me and said: ‘Yes that will be best; I’ll go with the Tsar. I shall trust Alexis to you.’ A moment later the Tsar came in. The Empress walked towards him saying, ‘It’s all settled. I’ll go with you and Marie will come too.’ The Tsar replied: ‘Very well, if you wish it.’” The decision that Marie should accompany the parents had been made by the girls themselves. Hurriedly meeting, they decided that Olga was not well enough, that Tatiana would be needed in Tobolsk to supervise the household and manage Alexis, and that Anastasia was too young to be helpful to their mother, and so Marie was chosen.
Somehow, during this hectic day, General Tatishchev managed to send a telegram to Count Benckendorff’s group in Moscow, pleading for advice: “Doctors demand immediate departure to health resort. Much perturbed by this demand and consider journey undesirable. Please send advice. Extremely difficult position.”
The monarchists in Moscow knew nothing of Yakovlev’s mission and could only reply: “Unfortunately we have no data which could shed light on reason for this demand. Hesitate to give definite opinion since state of health and circumstances of patient unknown. Advise postpone journey if possible, agreeing only if doctors insist.”
Later, a single, last message was received from Tobolsk: “Had to submit to doctors decision.”
During these hours, Yakovlev also was nervous. He had discovered that Zaslavsky, the commissar from Ekaterinburg, had left Tobolsk suddenly that morning. Yakovlev was so worried that he scarcely noticed when Kobylinsky arrived to discuss the departure and the luggage. “It makes no difference to me,” he said distractedly. “All I know is we must leave tomorrow at all costs. There is no time to waste.”
Meanwhile, Alexis, who was still unable to walk, was lying upstairs awaiting the visit his mother had promised to make after lunch. When she did not appear, he began to call, “Mama, Mama!” His shouts rang through the house even as the Tsar and the Empress were talking to Yakovlev. When Alexandra still did not come, Alexis became frightened. Between four and five, she quietly came into his bedroom, her eyes reddened, and explained to him that she and his father were leaving that night.
The entire family spent the rest of the afternoon and evening beside Alexis’s bed. The Empress, with her hope for earthly rescue fading, prayed for help from heaven. As they would have to cross frozen rivers, she prayed for the thaw and the melting of the ice. “I know, I am convinced that the river will overflow tonight, and then our departure must be postponed,” she said. “This will give us time to get out of this terrible position. If a miracle is necessary, I am sure a miracle will take place.”
At 10:30 p.m., the suite went in to join them for evening tea. They found Alexandra sitting on a sofa surrounded by her daughters, their faces swollen from crying. Nicholas and Alexandra both were calm. “This splendid serenity of theirs, this wonderful faith, proved infectious,” said Gilliard. At 11:30 p.m., they came downstairs to say goodbye to the servants in the main hall. Nicholas embraced every man, Alexandra every woman.
From the Kornilov house across the street, those watching from their windows saw the governor’s house and its sheds blazing with lights throughout the night. Near dawn, the clatter of horses and the creak of carriages signaled Yakovlev’s arrival in the courtyard. The vehicles, which had to carry the Tsar and the Empress across two hundred miles of mud and melting snow to Tyumen, were crude, uncomfortable peasant tarantasses, more cart than carriage, lacking both springs and seats. Passengers could only sit or lie on the floor. As cushioning, the servants swept up straw from the pigsty and spread it on the floor of the carts. In the only one which had a roof, a mattress was placed for Alexandra to lie on.
When the family came downstairs, the Empress, seeing Gilliard, begged him to go back up and stay with Alexis. He went up to the boy’s room and found him lying in bed, his face to the wall, weeping uncontrollably. Outside, Yakovlev was infinitely courteous, repeatedly touching the brim of his hat in salute to the Tsar and Empress. Escorting Alexandra to her cart, he insisted that she put on a warmer coat and wrapped her in Botkin’s large fur overcoat while sending for a new wrap for the doctor. Nicholas started to climb into the same cart with his wife, but Yakovlev intervened and insisted that the Tsar ride with him in a separate, open carriage. Marie sat beside her mother, and Prince Dolgoruky, Dr. Botkin, a valet, a maid and a footman were distributed among the other carriages.
When all was ready, the drivers flicked their whips and the carts lurched into motion. The cavalry escort spurred their horses, the procession passed out the gates and down the street. Gilliard, sitting beside Alexis on the Tsarevich’s bed, heard Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia climb slowly up the stairs and pass, sobbing, to their room. The months in Tobolsk were ended. There was no “Brotherhood,” no “good Russian men,” no rescue. Only a boy and his sisters, frightened and utterly alone.
The journey to Tyumen was difficult and exhausting. The cavalcade crossed the river Irtysh on the melting ice with wheels sloshing axle-deep in water. Farther south, reaching the Tobol River, they found the ice beginning to crack. For safety’s sake, the entire party dismounted and crossed the river on foot. They changed horses frequently. The last of these remount stations was Pokrovskoe, and the change was carried out directly beneath the windows of Rasputin’s house. There sat the Tsar and the Empress, prisoners in a caravan of peasant carts, while in the windows above them the family of the man who had done so much to destroy them stood looking down, waving white handkerchiefs. Before the procession moved on, Rasputin’s widow, Praskovie, looked directly at Alexandra and carefully made the sign of the cross.
Fourteen miles north of Tyumen, the little cavalcade was met by another squadron of Red cavalry, who surrounded the carts and escorted them into town. As the horsemen rode alongside, the Empress leaned to look at them, scrutinizing their faces, full of hope that they might be the “good Russian men” who would have been alerted by the news that the Tsar was being moved. Totally oblivious of this pathetic hope, the soldiers escorted the carts into town to the station where a special train was waiting. Yakovlev transferred his prisoners into a first-class coach and then, taking his telegraph operator, installed himself at the station telegraph office. His first message went back to Tobolsk: “Proceeding safely. God bless you. How is the Little One.” It was signed Yakovlev, but those in Tobolsk knew who had written it. Then the commissar began sending a signal to Moscow.
When Yakovlev left the telegraph office some time later, he had made a startling decision. His orders had been to bring the former Tsar and Empres
s to Moscow. Either during his conversation with the Kremlin or perhaps from what he had learned in Tyumen, he realized that if he took the direct route to Moscow, his train would be stopped in Ekaterinburg and his prisoners removed by the Ural Regional Soviet. Accordingly, to avoid Ekaterinburg, he decided to go eastward rather than westward from Tyumen. Traveling east, they would reach Omsk, where they could join the southern section of the Trans-Siberian track and then double back through Chelyabinsk, Ufa and Samara to Moscow. Returning to the coach, he confided this plan to the captives. At five a.m., with all lights extinguished, the train left Tyumen, headed east for Omsk. Yakovlev did not mention it, but he knew that beyond Omsk lay thousands of miles of clear track to the Pacific.
As soon as the train left Tyumen, Ekaterinburg was informed that Yakovlev was traveling in the wrong direction. A special meeting of the Ural Soviet Presidium was hastily summoned and Yakovlev was proclaimed “a traitor to the revolution” and an outlaw. Desperate telegrams addressed “to all, to all, to all” were sent to every Soviet and party headquarters in the region. At the same time, the Ural Soviet directly contacted the West Siberian Soviet in Omsk, asking that it block Yakovlev. The Omsk Soviet, having received no contrary instructions from Moscow, agreed to do so, and when Yakovlev’s train reached the town of Kulomzino, sixty miles from Omsk, it was surrounded by troops. Yakovlev was told of the telegram declaring him a traitor. Unhitching the engine and one coach of his train, he left the Tsar and Empress behind and proceeded alone into Omsk to argue with the Omsk Soviet. When he failed to convince them, he insisted on contacting Moscow. He talked by telegraph directly to Sverdlov, explaining why he had changed his route. Sverdlov replied that, under the circumstances, there was nothing for Yakovlev to do but give in, take his prisoners to Ekaterinburg and hand them over to the Ural Soviet. Sadly, Yakovlev returned to his engine, rejoined the stranded train and told Nicholas and Alexandra, “I have orders to take you to Ekaterinburg.” “I would have gone anywhere but to the Urals,” said Nicholas. “Judging from the local papers, people there are bitterly hostile to me.”
What should be made of this strange tangle of cross-purposes, murky intrigue and reversed directions? Later, when Yakovlev defected from the Bolsheviks to the Whites, the Bolsheviks charged that Yakovlev’s enterprise had been all along a monarchist escape plot. Failing to break through Omsk to the Pacific—this theory goes—he turned back, but still considered stopping the train and taking the captives with him to hide in the hills. There is no serious evidence of this, and although Yakovlev was sympathetic to the plight of his prisoners, it is much more likely that he was exactly what he said he was: Moscow’s agent, trying to carry out Moscow’s order to bring Nicholas to the capital. When the most direct way was blocked and it looked as if he might lose his prisoners, he tried another way, via Omsk. But he became caught up in a struggle between the far-off Central Committee and the Ural Soviet, and, with the acquiescence of Sverdlov, he finally gave in to superior force.
But if Yakovlev’s motives and objectives seem reasonably clear, those of other parties involved in this intrigue are more blurred and sinister. In addition to the two possible characterizations of Yakovlev already suggested—the monarchist cavalier attempting to save the Imperial couple, and the agent of Moscow bowing to Ekaterinburg’s superior force—there is another role which Yakovlev may have been playing: that of dupe in an evil conspiracy involving the Ural Soviet in Ekaterinburg, the Bolshevik rulers in Moscow, and the German government of Kaiser William.
After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Russia’s withdrawal from the war, it became clear that the Western Allies had completely lost interest in the fate of the Russian Imperial family. The Tsar, who had summoned fifteen million Russians into the trenches, who had sacrificed an army to help save Paris, who had refused even when his country was being broken by war to make a separate peace, now was forgotten, scorned, despised. If the Tsar and his family were to be saved by the intervention of a foreign power, that power could only be Germany. In Russia, the Germans now spoke as conquerors. German troops had moved into the Ukraine to collect the food desperately needed by the Kaiser’s hungry people. The Germans had not occupied Petrograd or Moscow because it was easier to leave the administration of these chaotic areas to the enfeebled Bolsheviks. But, if necessary, German regiments could march on the two cities and scatter Lenin and his lieutenants like dry leaves.
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.
34
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.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 63