The Romanovs

by Robert K. Massie

  May 24: Baby and I had meals in our bedroom; his pains varied.… Vladimir Nicholaevich [the tsarevich’s physician, Dr. Derevenko, who was allowed to live in the town and make occasional visits to his patient] came to see Baby and change his compresses.… Baby slept in the room with Nagorny.… Baby had a bad night again.…

  May 25: Swelling a wee bit less but pains off and on very strong.

  May 27: Baby had again not a good night. Eugene Sergeivich [Dr. Botkin] sat up part of the night [with him] so as to let Nagorny sleep. On the whole better, though very strong pains. At 6:30 Sednev [a cook] and Nagorny were taken off; don’t know the reason.* … [Dr. Botkin] spent the night with Baby.

  May 28: Baby slept on the whole well, though woke up every hour—pains less strong. I asked when Nagorny will be let in again as don’t know how we shall get on without him.… Baby suffered very much for a while. After supper, Baby was carried to his room. Pains stronger.

  May 30: Baby had a better night, spent the day in our room. Very rarely in pain. [Dr. Derevenko] found swelling in the knee one centimeter less. Before dinner, pains became stronger, took him to his room.

  June 2: Baby slept some time—played cards with him.… After supper he was carried back to his room by Trupp and Kharitonov.

  June 4: Knee much less swollen. He may be carried out[doors] tomorrow.

  June 5: Glorious morning. Baby did not sleep well, leg ached because … [Dr. Derevenko] took it yesterday out of plaster of Paris cast which held the knee firm.… [Dr. Botkin] carried him out and put him in my wheelchair and Tatiana and I sat out with him in the sun. Went back to bed as leg ached from dressing and carrying about. 6:00 P.M. [Dr. Derevenko] came and made him again a plaster of Paris cast as knee more swollen and hurts again so.

  Thereafter, as the bleeding stopped and the fluids in Alexis’s knee were reabsorbed, his pain subsided and his leg began to straighten. When the weather was good, he was carried outdoors to sit in the sun. “Sat with Baby, Olga, and Anastasia before the house,” Alexandra wrote. “Went out with Baby, Tatiana, and Marie … wheeled Baby into the garden and we all sat there for an hour. Very hot, nice lilac bushes and small honeysuckle.”

  Most of the time, Alexandra, like Alexis, was immobilized. Unable to walk because of sciatica, she lay in her bed or sat in her wheelchair in the pale yellow bedroom. Confronted by the white-painted windows, she embroidered, drew, or read her Bible, her prayer books, or the Life of Saint Serafim of Sarov. On May 28 she recorded that “I cut Nicholas’s hair for the first time,” and on June 20, “Cut N’s hair again.” Alexandra was cared for by her daughters: “Marie read to me after tea.… Marie washed my hair.… Tatiana read to me.… Anastasia read to me.… the others went out, Olga stayed with me.” The empress suffered from recurring migraines: “I remained in bed as feeling very giddy and eyes ache so.… Lay with eyes shut as head continued to ache.… Remained the whole day with shut eyes, head got worse towards evening.”

  The strain on Nicholas was that of an outdoor animal caged. Unable to go out when he wished, he paced his room, back and forth, back and forth. One warm evening in June, he wrote in his diary, “It was unbearable to sit that way, locked up, and not be in a position to go out into the garden when you wanted and spend a fine evening outside.” He was tired, and the pouches deepened under his eyes. “The tedium,” he wrote, “is incredible.” Suffering from hemorrhoids, he went to bed for three days, “since it is more convenient to apply compresses.” Alexandra and Alexis sat by his bed for lunch, tea, and supper. After two days and nights, he sat up, and the next morning got up and went outside. “The green is very fine and lush,” he wrote.

  Immersed in tedium, isolated from the world outside, unaware even of events like Nagorny’s death, the prisoners found variety mainly in the ups and downs of illnesses and the capriciousness of the weather. Birthdays were scarcely noticed, although four occurred while the family was in the Ipatiev House: On May 19, Nicholas was fifty; on June 6, Alexandra was forty-six; on June 18, Nicholas recorded, “dear Anastasia has turned seventeen”; on June 27, “Our dear Marie has turned nineteen.” Occasionally there were breaks in their routine. Early in May a package arrived. “Received chocolate and coffee from Ella [her sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth],” Alexandra noted. “She has been sent from Moscow and is at Perm.” The following morning the empress wrote: “Great treat, a cup of coffee.” Sometimes the electricky failed. “Supper, 3 candles in glasses; cards by light of one candle,” she wrote. On June 4 she noted that the new ruler of Russia had exercised his power even over the clock: “Lenin gave the order that the clocks have to be put two hours ahead (economy of electricity) so at ten they told us it is twelve.”

  As the days passed, the captives, from emperor to cook, merged into an extended family. Botkin, an old friend rather than a servant, frequently sat with Nicholas and his wife after supper to talk and play cards. During the day when Alexandra and Alexis could not leave the house, Botkin remained inside with them for card games. After Nagorny was removed, Botkin sometimes slept in the room with the tsarevich, and he shared with Nicholas, Trupp, and Kharitonov the task of carrying Alexis out of doors. On June 23 Botkin himself became violently ill with colic, requiring an injection of morphine. He remained sick for five days; when he was able to sit up in an armchair, Alexandra sat with him. Sednev, the cook, became ill, and Alexandra kept watch over his temperature and progress.

  The four grand duchesses, now young women, did what they could. Tatiana and Marie read to and played bridge with their mother. Tatiana also played cards with Alexis and, during the peak of his illness, slept near him at night. Olga, closest to Nicholas, walked beside her father twice a day. All four helped Demidova darn stockings and linen. At the end of June, Kharitonov, the cook, proposed that the five children help him make bread. “The girls kneaded the dough for the bread,” recorded Alexandra. “The children continued rolling and making bread and now it is baking.… Lunched: excellent bread.… The children help every day in the kitchen.”

  In June summer and heat were upon them. This was a season of storms with thunder and lightning, sheets of rain, and then, quickly, bright sunshine and more heat. On June 6 Alexandra noted, “Very hot, awfully stuffy in rooms.” Heat from the kitchen made things worse: “Kharitonov has to cook our food now,” she wrote on June 18. “Very hot, stuffy as no windows open and smells strong of kitchen everywhere.” On June 21, she reported, “Out in the garden, fearfully hot, sat under the bushes. They have given us … half an hour more for being out. Heat, airlessness in the rooms intense.”

  Closed windows made the heat stifling. In order to keep the prisoners from escaping or signaling to the outside, all of the white-painted, double windows in the family rooms were kept shut by order of the Ural Soviet. Nicholas set himself to overturn this decree. “Today at tea, six men walked in, probably from the Regional Soviet, to see which windows to open,” he wrote in his diary on June 22. “The resolution of this issue has gone on for nearly two weeks! Often various men have come and silently in our presence examined the windows.” On this issue the tsar triumphed. “Two of the soldiers came and took out one window in our room,” Alexandra wrote on June 23. “Such joy, delicious air at last and one window no longer whitewashed.” “The fragrance from all the town’s gardens is amazing,” wrote Nicholas.

  In the sunlight, Alexis sat quietly while the tsar and his daughters walked under the eyes of the guards. In time impressions of the family began to change. “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 … I got the impression that he was a kind, simple, frank and talkative person. Sometimes, I felt he was going to speak t
o 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.…

  All my evil thoughts about the tsar disappeared after I had stayed a certain time amongst the guards. After I had seen them several times, I began to feel entirely different towards them; I began to pity them. I pitied them as human beings. I am telling you the entire truth. You may or may not believe me, but I kept saying to myself, “Let them escape … do something to let them escape.”

  On July 4, a “lovely morning, nice air, not too hot,” a man whom Nicholas called “the dark gentleman” appeared and took control of the Ipatiev House. This man, who had black eyes, black hair, and a black beard, and who wore a black leather jacket, was the Chekist Commander, Yakov Yurovsky. Ironically, that same day Alexandra recorded that Alexis was getting better: “Baby eats well and is getting heavy for the others to carry. He moves his leg more easily. Cruel they won’t give us Nagorny back again.”

  Yurovsky’s arrival heralded minor improvements in the prisoners’ situation. The new guards he brought were better disciplined; petty harassment of the young grand duchesses on their way to the toilet ceased. Alexandra’s diary entry for July 13 ended with an optimistic note about Alexis: “Beautiful morning. I spent the day as yesterday lying on the bed, as back ached when move about. Others went out twice. Anastasia remained with me in the afternoon. One says Nagorny … has been sent out of the … [region] instead of giving … [him] back to us. At 6:30, Baby had his first bath since Tobolsk. He managed to get in and out alone, climbs also in and out of bed, but can only stand on one foot as yet.”

  On Sunday, July 14, Alexandra recorded “the joy of a vespers—the young priest for the second time.” Father Storozhev had come before, in May, and Yurovsky had agreed that he could come again. The priest found the family waiting together: Alexis sitting in his mother’s wheelchair; Alexandra, wearing a lilac dress, sitting beside him; Nicholas, in khaki field shirt, trousers, and boots, standing with his daughters, who were dressed in white blouses and dark skirts. When the service began, Nicholas fell on his knees.

  A poem, dedicated to Olga and Tatiana, had been sent to Tobolsk by a friend of Alexandra, In the Ipatiev House, Olga copied it in her own hand and inserted it into one of her books. It was found there by the Whites:

  Give patience, Lord, to us Thy children

  In these dark, stormy days to bear

  The persecution of our people,

  The tortures falling to our share.

  Give strength, Just God, to us who need it,

  The persecutors to forgive,

  Our heavy, painful cross to carry

  And Thy great meekness to achieve.

  When we are plundered and insulted

  In days of mutinous unrest

  We turn for help to Thee, Christ-Savior,

  That we may stand the bitter test.

  Lord of the world, God of Creation,

  Give us Thy blessing through our prayer

  Give peace of heart to us, O Master,

  This hour of utmost dread to bear.

  And on the threshold of the grave

  Breathe power divine into our clay

  That we, Thy children, may find strength

  In meekness for our foes to pray.

  On Tuesday, July 16, after a gray morning, the sun came out. The family gathered, prayed together, and had tea. Yurovsky arrived to make his inspection and, as a special treat, brought fresh eggs and milk. Alexis had a slight cold. Nicholas, Olga, Marie, and Anastasia went out for half an hour in the morning while Tatiana stayed behind to read to her mother from the prophets Amos and Obadiah. At four in the afternoon, Nicholas and his four daughters walked again in the garden. At eight the family had supper, prayed, and then separated; Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia went to their room; Alexis went to his bed in his parents’ room. Alexandra stayed up to play bezique with Nicholas. At 10:30 she made an entry in her diary. It was cool, she wrote: “15 degrees” (58 degrees F). Then she turned out the light, lay down next to her husband, and went to sleep.

  * Four days later Sednev and Nagorny were shot. The family never knew.

  For Christopher

  SOURCES AND

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Most of the written sources of my understanding of Nicholas II, his family, and his era are listed in the bibliography of my earlier book Nicholas and Alexandra. For this new book, I carefully reread Nicholas Sokolov’s Enquete Judiciaire sur l’Assassinat de la Famille Impériale Russe and Pavel M. Bykov’s The Last Days of Tsardom. The Yurovsky note was unavailable when my first book appeared, and I, like many others, put too much faith in Sokolov’s conclusion that the bodies had been destroyed. Yurovsky’s account of the murders, first revealed by Edvard Radzinsky in 1989 and later included in his book The Last Tsar, described what actually happened and helped Alexander Avdonin and Geli Ryabov discover where the bodies were.

  Essentially, the source material for the present book was not in written form; it came from over one hundred interviews with people in Ekaterinburg, Moscow, London, Birmingham, Paris, Copenhagen, Madrid, Gstaad, Ulm, New York City, Albany, Hartford, Boston, Washington, Charlottesville, Durham, Gainesville, Palm Beach, Austin, Phoenix, Berkeley, and Jordanville, New York. Helping me with the first part of the book, “The Bones,” were many Russians, including Dr. Sergei Abramov, Alexander and Galina Avdonin, Dr. Pavel Ivanov, Nikolai Nevolin, Geli Ryabov, Vladimir Soloviev, Sergei Mironenko, Prince Alexis Scherbatow, Metropolitan Vitaly, Archbishop Laurus, Bishop Hilarion, Bishop Basil Rodzianko, and Father Vladimir Shishkoff. I am very grateful to all of them. I wish to thank Dr. Peter Gill, Karen Pearson, Prince Rostislav Romanov, Michael Thornton, Julian Nott, Nigel McCrery, and Barbara Whittal for the help I received in England. In the United States, I was assisted by James A. Baker III, Margaret Tutwiler, Grace and Ron Moe, Bill Dabney, Mike Murrow, Dr. William Maples, Dr. Michael Baden, Dr. Lowell Levine, Dr. William Hamilton, William Goza, Cathryn Oakes, Dr. Charles Ginther, Dr. Alka Mansukhani, Dr. Walter Rowe, Dr. Richard Froede, Dr. Bill Rodriguez, Matt Clark, Mark Stolorow, Marilyn Swezey, and Robert Atchison.

  On Romanov impostors in general, Alexander Avdonin, Edvard Radzinsky, Vladimir Soloviev, Prince Nicholas Romanov, Ricardo Mateos Sainz de Medrano, Pavel Ivanov, Bishop Basil Rodzianko, Marilyn Swezey, and Victor Dricks all told me interesting stories. In The Romanov Conspiracies, Michael Occleshaw describes the escape and subsequent life of Larissa Feodorovna Tudor.

  On Michael Goleniewski and Eugenia Smith, I was greatly assisted by Countess Dagmar de Brantes, Brien Horan, Bishop Gregory (formerly Father George Grabbe), Father Vladimir Shishkoff, Dr. Richard Rosenfield, David Martin, David Gries, Leroy A. Dysick, and Denis B. Gredlein. David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors and Guy Richards’s The Hunt for the Tsar contained useful information about Michael Goleniewski.

  The literature on Anna Anderson is extensive and, undoubtedly, will continue to expand. It includes a purported autobiography, I Am Anastasia (or, in England, I, Anastasia), of which Anna Anderson had no knowledge until she was presented with a finished copy of the book. Most of the early witnesses and disputants put their opinions in writing; among these works I read Anastasia, by Harriet Rathlef-Keilman, La Fausse Anastasie, by Pierre Gilliard and Constantin Savitch, The Real Romanovs and The Woman Who Rose Again, by Gleb Botkin, The Last Grand Duchess (Olga, Nicholas II’s sister), by Ian Vorres, Anastasia, Qui Êtes-Vous?, by Dominique Auclères, and The House of Special Purpose, by J. C. Trewin (compiled from the papers of Charles Sidney Gibbes, the English tutor of the Imperial children). There are two relatively recent biographies of Anna Anderson: Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, by Peter Kurth, and Anastasi
a: The Lost Princess, by James Blair Lovell. In depth of research, style of writing, and seriousness of purpose, Kurth’s book is infinitely superior. Brien Horan was kind enough to give me a copy of his unpublished manuscript on the evidence on both sides of the Anna Anderson case. I am grateful to Dr. Gunther von Berenberg-Gossler for permitting me to see a chapter of his unpublished work on Franziska Schanzkowska.

  Michael Thornton was generous, not only with his vast collection of Anna Anderson correspondence and memorabilia, but with his time and counsel. Similarly, Brien Horan helped me greatly with his knowledge of Anna Anderson and of the Romanov family schism. John Orbell of Baring Brothers, William Clarke, author of The Lost Treasures of the Tsar, and H. Leslie Cousins of Price, Waterhouse assisted me in grappling with the disputed story of Romanov money in English banks.

  The account of the legal proceedings in Charlottesville is drawn exclusively from interviews and conversations. In this respect, Richard and Marina Schweitzer, whose integrity and honorable effort I greatly admired although I never was able to share their belief, were indispensable. In addition, I am grateful to Susan Burkhart, Mary DeWitt, Mildred Ewell, Baron Eduard von Falz-Fein, Dr. Peter Gill, Dr. Charles Ginther, Vladimir Galitzine, Ron Hansen, Penny Jenkins, Dr. Willi Korte, Peter Kurth, Syd Mandelbaum, Matthew Murray, Ann Nickels, Julian Nott, Maurice Philip Remy, Dean Robinson, Rhonda Roby, Prince Alexis Scherbatow, and Michael Thornton.

  My chapter on the Romanov survivors and the possibility of a restoration of the dynasty in Russia benefited from conversations with Marina Beadleston, Prince Dimitri and Princess Dorrit Romanov, Grand Duke George, Grand Duchess Leonida, Grand Duchess Maria, Prince Michel Romanov, Prince Nicholas and Princess Sveva Romanov, Prince Rostislav Romanov, Paul R. and Angelica Ilyinsky, Xenia Sfiris, Prince Franz of Prussia, Prince Giovanni di Bourbon-Sicilies, Prince George Vassiltchikov, Professor Irina Pozdeeva, Dr. Pavel Ivanov, Geli Ryabov, Jose Luis Sampredo Escolar, Ricardo Mateos Sainz de Medrano, and Albert Bartridge.