The Romanovs

by Robert K. Massie

  Alexander Avdonin first encountered Koltypin and Scherbatow in March 1992 in St. Petersburg at the burial of Grand Duke Vladimir, the pretender to the Russian throne. Avdonin, by then, was well known among Russian emigres for his role in the discovery of the grave in Ekaterinburg. After the service, people wanted to ask him questions, and he suggested gathering so he could speak to everyone simultaneously. He spoke for an hour, after which most of the audience applauded. Then he was questioned by Koltypin and Scherbatow. “I understood that they did not believe me, not for one minute,” Avdonin says. “What they were really saying with their provocative questions was that the murder of the tsar had been thoroughly investigated by Sokolov and that they deemed his investigation sufficient. They believed that the heads were cut off and taken away and the rest of the bodies burned. They believed that everything I was telling them had been set up by the KGB.” When Avdonin told them that Russian and Ukrainian scientists were testing the remains, Koltypin and Scherbatow declared that no one would believe these scientists. When Avdonin said that American scientists had been invited to participate, Koltypin and Scherbatow laughed: “So you have sold yourself to the Americans.” “Then,” Avdonin proposed, “you choose competent people and send them to us.” “No,” Koltypin said, “you will still cheat.” “In that case”—Avdonin shrugged—“we will never be able to prove the truth to you.” “No, there is one way,” Koltypin said. “It is DNA. But you in Russia don’t know how to do it.” Avdonin asked who did know. “In England,” Koltypin replied.

  The next meeting between Avdonin and the emigre Expert Commission took place in February 1993, in Nyack, New York. Avdonin and his wife had flown to Boston as guests of William Maples so that Avdonin could present a paper on finding the Romanovs at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Avdonin gave another talk in Nyack and afterward retreated into a library for private discussions. Koltypin and Scherbatow were there, joined this time by Magerovsky. As in St. Petersburg, the emigres attacked Avdonin. “I may be an old White Russian so-and-so,” Magerovsky told him, “but I just don’t believe you.” “I don’t like Avdonin,” Scherbatow said later. “He was lying. He’s a real, old Communist.”

  The attack from outside Russia became formal on December 25, 1993, when the Expert Commission of Russians Abroad wrote to Yuri Yarov, deputy premier of Russia and chairman of the Russian government commission examining evidence on the Romanov remains. The emigre commissioners began by warning Yarov to beware of information coming from anyone ever connected with “the Communist Party, the KGB, or the Procurator’s Office [i.e., Soloviev].” They declared that “some facts of Geli Ryabov’s biography are rather doubtful … he was connected with the KGB … his getting acquainted with A. N. Avdonin causes suspicion.” The Expert Commission rejected the authenticity of the Yurovsky note, declaring that “it is a known fact that the head of the last emperor was brought to Moscow.” Therefore, the commission hypothesized, if it was Nicholas II’s skull that Ryabov found in the Ekaterinburg grave, the skull must have been put there later “under someone else’s direction.” Finally, the emigre commissioners announced, “We suppose the other bones were put there in 1979 so that it was possible to fake the recovery of the remains in July 1991.”

  Vladimir Soloviev read the emigre letter and vigorously refuted the charges against Ryabov and Avdonin. “There is talk, especially abroad, that this grave was not the grave of the tsar’s family; that this burial was ‘fixed’ or arranged by the KGB or the Cheka or one of the other ‘organs’ of olden days,” he said. “They say that Ryabov was and is an agent of the KGB. The fact is that we now have access to the KGB files, and I have officially checked this allegation against both Avdonin and Ryabov. Prior to 1989, there are no documents on either man in the KGB records. Once Ryabov published his interview and article in Moscow News and Rodina, surveillance on both Ryabov and Avdonin was established. And the KGB began trying to find out where the grave site was. In fact, there was a thick file on previous KGB efforts to find this grave. So, all of the rumors that this discovery was an action of the KGB or other special organs is ridiculous. I give you my word of honor, knowing those times and those circumstances, that if this grave site had been known to either the KGB or the Party, it would have existed for exactly the amount of time necessary to gather up a crowd of soldiers and get them to that site.”

  In dealing with their attack, Soloviev has tried to understand the emigre point of view. “You know, people have stereotypes,” he said. “As they get older, it is difficult to change them. For many years, they had no reason to trust what was said here. But now, the investigations we have done and the conclusions we have produced in this case would be sufficient for any other criminal case. There would be no doubts of any kind, not in the courtroom, not from anyone. But in this case, we must do five or six times more than has already been done. So there will be no doubts. They [Koltypin, Scherbatow, and Magerovsky] do not believe anything we say. In their view, I am a scoundrel, Ryabov and Avdonin are scoundrels, everyone is a scoundrel. Only Koltypin knows the truth. He should come here himself and see everything. But he has not done that.”

  Soloviev was talking about the absence of any serious research by the emigre Expert Commission. “When I come into the archives,” he said, “I see the list of documents pulled and I see the names of those who have looked at them. There is the signature of Avdonin, there is Geli Ryabov, there is a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on. With this circle of people, I can have discussions. These are people who have actually familiarized themselves with firsthand sources and are able to say something meaningful. Whereas, the others do not want to see anything, do not want to learn anything, do not want to know anything.”

  The emigres, Soloviev believed, attacked him because they had pinned all of their faith on Sokolov’s findings of seventy-five years ago. “It is often written,” Soloviev said, “that I am leading the investigation without knowing Sokolov’s material, am not interested in it, and do not accept Sokolov as a prominent investigator. This is not true. The fact is that Sokolov made a mistake, but this mistake could have been made by any investigator in his place. His mistake was to believe that the corpses were totally burned and destroyed. At that time, the evidence supported that theory. Now, we have more evidence. However, in my opinion, this was Sokolov’s only mistake.”

  One charge made by Koltypin’s Expert Commission was true: it was that not every Russian archive had been completely opened. Soloviev admitted this, saying that he had been given access to all the archives “except the Presidential Archive,” the archive of the Politburo. Naturally, this restriction inflamed the suspicions of Russian emigres that important facts still were being hidden. One able to help in this matter was Edvard Radzinsky, who was a member of the government commission and, independently, was writing a biography of Stalin. “It is true that Soloviev can’t get permission to work in the Presidential Archive,” Radzinsky said, “but I have permission. The chief of administration of the Office of the President personally permitted me to work there on materials concerning Stalin. When I became a member of the government commission, I asked to expand my research to the Romanovs. Now I have a special pass to check all papers regarding the Imperial family in the Presidential Archive. Everyone agrees that it makes sense for me to do this work.”

  Radzinsky believed, based on his experience, that the reason no materials on the Romanovs were turning up was not that they had been deliberately concealed or withheld but that they were unfindable. The Presidential Archive, he explained, was still active; it contained secret diplomatic documents not only of the Soviet Union but of the current Russian state. “When I started working there,” Radzinsky said, “I realized that it is impossible for them, at this stage, to separate historical documents from active state secrets. They said to me, ‘We will show you the papers from this period to this period. We can’t let you just go in and rummage around.’ Also, everything is mixed up. They have only just begun to
sort and classify documents. Files are mislabeled or unlabeled. In my book, I printed material from the archives which they didn’t know they had. When they read it in my book, they asked me, ‘Where in our archive did you find this?’ ”

  Radzinsky did find one document that offered additional proof of Lenin’s cynical mendacity in regard to the survival of the empress and her daughters. It was the memoirs of Adolf Ioffe, a Soviet diplomat serving in Berlin at the time of the murders. Curious about the official story that only Nicholas had been killed, Ioffe later asked Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka. Dzerzhinsky admitted that the entire family was dead, adding that Lenin had categorically forbidden that Ioffe be told. “Better if Ioffe knows nothing,” Lenin had said. “It will be easier for him to lie.”

  This document did not surprise Soloviev. “Let me give you another example of Lenin’s thinking,” he said. “In 1912 or 1913, there was a terrorist attack on a minor member of the Spanish royal family. Lenin was contemptuous. ‘We must not be concerned with individual terror,’ he said. ‘If one must eliminate, one must eliminate the whole dynasty, not hunt down one person.’ Again, in 1918, the fact that they did not immediately announce that they had killed everyone was not connected to any moral criteria. Officially, they said that they had executed only Nicholas for a good reason. Let us imagine that they had announced that they had eliminated everyone. In monarchist circles there immediately would have arisen the question of a new tsar. Lenin did not want opposition to crystallize around a single successor to Nicholas. So he allowed everyone to wonder who was alive and who was dead. And where those still living might be. During the Civil War, the White Army leaders of monarchist persuasion did not know on whom they should focus. So Lenin operated on two fronts: he killed all the members of the Imperial family and many other Romanovs, but he also dangled the idea that some of the immediate family remained alive. Later, when Soviet power had gained strength, when the possibility of a monarchist or any other kind of counter-revolution had disappeared, the Communists felt free to announce what they actually had done. Not only announce, but boast about the fact that they had killed children.”

  These matters were beyond the charge of the government commission on validation and burial of the Romanov remains. But they are to remain under investigation by the Office of the Russian Public Prosecutor. “When I have finished my investigation,” promised Vladimir Soloviev, “I will present my findings.”

  * The appointees made up what Americans call a blue ribbon commission. Its twenty-two permanent members represented a wide spectrum of Russian political, scientific, historical, and cultural institutions. The chairman was Yuri Yarov, vice premier of Russia, and meetings were held in Yarov’s office in the Moscow White House. The vice chairman was Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg. The Russian Orthodox Church was represented by Metropolitan Euvenaly. The commission also included the deputy minister of foreign affairs, the deputy minister of culture, the deputy minister of health, and Vladislav Plaksin, the chief medical examiner. Also, a historian, a painter, the president of Moscow’s Nobility Society, and the playwright-biographer Edvard Radzinsky. From Ekaterinburg, three members originally were listed: Edvard Rossel, the former governor, Veniamin Alekseyev, director of the Institute of History and Archeology in Ekaterinburg, and Alexander Avdonin.

  CHAPTER 12

  BURYING THE TSAR

  The last ceremonial burial of a Russian tsar took place in 1894, when Tsar Alexander III, father of Nicholas II, was interred in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg. A century later, the Russian government commission was completing its findings and recommendations regarding the burial of Nicholas II. Thereafter, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Council of Ministers and president of the Russian Federation were to make their decisions: the church would decide how, and the government where and when, the last Russian tsar and his family were to be buried.

  “We are waiting for the scientists to finish their work,” said Edvard Radzinsky. “Once the scientists have assured the commission absolutely that these bones are valid, the Patriarchal Orthodox Church must determine what ritual will be used in the burial service. There is one ritual if Nicholas is to become a saint, another if he is not to become a saint. The Church Abroad already has made Nicholas a saint. So our church has a big problem.”

  Alexander Avdonin, whose small working space is filled with pictures of Nicholas II, attempted to explain the dilemma confronting the Patriarchal Church: “Remember that—unlike the Church Abroad—our church is located in the country where these events took place,” he said. “Here, many people consider that Nicholas II himself was guilty of permitting the revolution and therefore was at least partly responsible for his own death. If this is true, should he be canonized? How will our people react to this? After all, one must not forget that our people are not thrilled with Nicholas II. Over seventy years, respect for him has been destroyed. The truth is that he was a weak emperor. The fact that he was a good person, a kind man, who treated his family well, this cannot take away his guilt for his poor governing of our country. It is a different matter for the others who died with him. They, emphatically, are not guilty. They, indeed, are martyrs.”

  Metropolitan Euvenaly, the church’s representative on the government commission, was the official primarily charged with the question of canonization. Euvenaly, according to Avdonin, “personally examines everything that has to do with the remains. However”—Avdonin’s expression changed—“the church has known about the remains for four years. During this time not once did anyone from the Moscow patriarchate come even to look at the remains. Not one priest! Not even a deacon!”

  Avdonin was correct that mixed feelings exist about Nicholas II in contemporary, post-Communist Russia, but he was mistaken when he said that, according to Orthodox doctrine, Nicholas’s performance as a ruler affected the question of his martyrdom. “Martyrdom has nothing to do with the personal actions of a person,” explained Father Vladimir Shishkoff, a priest of the Orthodox Church Abroad. “It only has to do with why and how that person died. In the case of Nicholas II, it is irrelevant what kind of a ruler he was, what he did or did not achieve as tsar. Nicholas became a martyr because he was brutally killed for no other reason than that he was ruler of the country.” Father Shishkoff did not condemn the Moscow Patriarchal Church for taking its time in coming to its decision. “The truth,” he admitted, “is that before our Church Abroad made Nicholas II a saint in 1981, we had a lot of resistance from people here, including priests. They used exactly the same arguments against the canonization of Tsar Nicholas.”

  The Russian government’s decision, once the bones have been scientifically verified, will be where to bury them. Officially, the decision is between two cities: Ekaterinburg, where the family was murdered and the bones were found, and St. Petersburg, where for three hundred years Romanov tsars and empresses have been buried. Many factors have been considered, including questions of religion and historical tradition, but essentially the decision will rest on sheer political power. Here, St. Petersburg, whose mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, was vice chairman of the commission and a powerful political ally of Boris Yeltsin, has an overwhelming advantage. But Ekaterinburg, although talk of tourist hotels and restaurant complexes has faded, still continues to hope.

  Bishop Basil Rodzianko of Washington, D.C., who had been to Ekaterinburg and seen the remains, insisted that the Romanovs should be buried in that city, where they lay in a grave for seventy-three years. The decision, he said, already has been made by God: “The bones should not be separated from the bodies. The bodies are there in different form, but they are there in the soil. Therefore, to take the bones away and place them in St. Petersburg means a dismembering of the bodies. To me, this is sacrilege.” Bishop Basil condemned the plan to inter the Romanovs in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, which, he said, is a “purely earthly, purely secular place; it has nothing to do with the church or rel
igion. Burying them there would be only a political rehabilitation. ‘We killed them,’ the state says. ‘Now we rehabilitate them and accuse Lenin and others of this crime.’ ”

  If the family is canonized, Bishop Basil went on to explain, there would be not a burial service but an Orthodox service of glorification. The bones, instead of being placed in coffins or vaults, would become relics, and fragments of these relics would be distributed and placed in the altars of Orthodox churches. Every Orthodox church has a piece of a relic in the altar; without this a service cannot be celebrated. But if there is not a canonization, he says, “they should be buried in Ekaterinburg. And they should all be buried together.”

  None of the surviving Romanovs was asked to sit on the commission discussing the burial of their relatives. The Romanovs communicated their views to President Yeltsin, to commission chairman Yarov, to the patriarch, and to Investigator Soloviev, but the family’s voice was weakened by the fact that it was split; the two branches dislike each other intensely, and each vehemently objected to claims of primacy by the other. The Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who lives in Madrid and sees herself as the pretender to the throne—on behalf of either herself or her fourteen-year-old son, George—proposed that the remains be divided into three groups: Tsar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra to be buried with earlier tsars in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg; the three daughters to be interred among the grand dukes now buried in a vault next to the cathedral; the doctor and the three servants to be buried in Ekaterinburg.