The Last Tsar

by Edvard Radzinsky

  Completing the suite was the lavatory. The porcelain vessel left over from engineer Ipatiev would be fouled by the commandant and the guards, and amid the shameless drawings on the lavatory walls depicting the tsaritsa and Rasputin, amid the obscene utterances of the guard and reflections such as “I don’t know why I wrote either, but you strangers read it,” was a note nailed to the wall: “You are implored to leave the seat as clean as you found it.”

  This was the joint creation of the former tsar and his personal physician Botkin.

  Entering the bedroom, Alix walked over to the right-hand window and on the jamb penciled her favorite symbol, the swastika, and the date of their arrival: 17 (30).

  She drew another swastika as an incantation directly on the wallpaper over the bed where Alexei was to sleep.

  17 (30). Thus she innocently signaled the start of the last game with the last tsar.

  It began right away.

  THE LAST GAME

  When their belongings arrived they were taken out into the hall and, in the presence of the former military academy student and present member of the Ural Executive Committee Ditkovsky and the former turner and present commandant Avdeyev, the inspection began.

  The captors opened the suitcases and looked through them carefully. They examined Alix’s hand luggage. They confiscated the camera she had brought from Tsarskoe Selo and also, as Commandant Avdeyev would write in his memoirs, “a detailed map of Ekaterinburg.” How could that have turned up in her bag if they had assumed they were going to Moscow? Even if it couldn’t have, though, it did. Like the two guns allegedly found on Dolgorukov.

  They even opened the medicine bottles—they dug through her entire traveling pharmacy.

  Nicholas’s diary:

  “17 [30] April [continued].… The search of our things was like at customs: just as strict, right up to the last vial in Alix’s pharmacy. That exasperated me and I expressed my opinion sharply to the commissar.”

  Alix did not understand the reason for the search. She was nervous and indignant: “This is an insult!” Her accent made the searchers smile; the impotent anger of the former empress was funny. But she continued her irate monologue; she even mentioned “Mr. Kerensky.” She cited the example of the revolutionary who was nevertheless a gentleman. The word gentleman amused the former turner Avdeyev. Finally, Nicholas blew up. He declared: “Up until now we have dealt with decent people!” This was the ultimate manifestation of anger for this most well-bred of monarchs.

  Why did they make this search?

  To demonstrate the conditions of their new life in the capital of the Red Urals? In part. But only in part.

  They were looking for the jewels. The legendary tsarist jewels. The “spy” had not been napping. Evidently in Tobolsk he found out that Alix used the word “medicine” when talking in the presence of outsiders about the jewels (that was how she would refer to them in her letters to her daughters from Ekaterinburg). That was why they examined the vials of medicine so thoroughly and vainly, though they did not find anything.

  They realized the jewels had been left in Tobolsk.

  There was a third reason for the harsh examination. Since the day of the family’s arrival in Ekaterinburg they had begun to gather evidence of a “monarchist plot.” That was why they took the camera away—as evidence. That was apparently why they discovered the map of Ekaterinburg—more evidence (plus the rumor about the two guns confiscated from unlucky Valya—another link in the evidence).

  This terrible game with the tsar began at the Ekaterinburg station. We shall call it the monarchist plot game. The plot that would serve as grounds for their execution. The “just punishment” had been decided upon from the very start.

  Nicholas’s diary:

  “21 April [4 May].… All morning wrote letters to the girls from Alix and Marie. And drew a plan of this house.”

  He wanted those in Tobolsk to be able to picture their new quarters. He was preparing them for their encounter with the crowded house. But—

  “24 April [7 May].… Avdeyev, the commandant, removed the plan of the house I had done for the children on a letter the day before yesterday and took it away, saying I could not send it.”

  In his memoirs Avdeyev would describe this incident quite differently:

  “Once while reviewing the letters my attention was drawn to one letter addressed to Nicholas Nikolaevich [!]. Upon examination of the envelope lining, I discovered a thin sheet of paper on which was drawn a plan of the house.”

  Avdeyev further described how he called Nicholas into the commandant’s room and how the tsar lied, refused to admit it, and begged for the commandant’s forgiveness. This was not simply a fabrication. The plan of the house, allegedly concealed under the envelope lining, was one more “irrefutable proof.” As was the “frightened and exposed Nicholas.” They were making their case. And waiting.

  Waiting for the children to arrive from Tobolsk. And the jewels.

  “I BREATHED THE AIR THROUGH AN OPEN PANE”

  “17 [30] April.… The sentry has been put in the two rooms by the dining room, so that to go to the washroom and water closet one must pass by the guard and sentry by the doors,” Nicholas wrote in his diary.

  On May 3, however, the sentry was moved to quarters downstairs, where that half-cellar room was, and they who had so recently owned the most magnificent palaces in Europe were happy at this new convenience and opened up space.

  On the first day of their stay in the Ipatiev house, their “false titles were rescinded” by resolution of the Ural Soviet. Avdeyev made certain the servant did not address Nicholas as “Your Excellency.” He was now to be called Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov.

  “18 April [1 May]. On the occasion of the first of May we heard music from some parade. We were not allowed to go out in the garden today. Felt like washing in an excellent bath, but the water was not running. This is tiresome, since my sense of hygiene has suffered. Marvelous weather, the sun shone brightly, I breathed the air through an open pane.”

  A year before, at Tsarskoe Selo, the arrested former emperor had written the following angry words on this day:

  “18 April, 1917. Abroad today is May 1, so our blockheads have decided to celebrate this day with parades through the streets with choruses, music, and red flags.”

  By now he had learned not to get annoyed. He realized that “breathing the air through an open pane” was itself happiness, and “washing in an excellent bath” could be an unrealized dream.

  Gradually things improved. Their captors started letting them out for a walk. For two whole hours. He still believed that Dolgorukov would return and kept worrying about his loyal friend.

  “20 April [3 May]. From the vague hints of those around us we are given to understand that poor Valya is not at liberty, and that an inquiry will be carried out against him after which he will be freed: there is no possibility of entering into any contact with him, no matter how Botkin has tried.”

  Their daily life at that time was recounted by a certain V. Vorobiev, editor of the Ural Worker. He described it, naturally retaining the revolutionary’s “class” point of view:

  “Besides the commandant, for the first while in the Ipatiev mansion members of the Regional Executive Committee took turns standing guard. Among others, it fell on me as well to perform this type of sentry duty.… The prisoners had only just gotten up and greeted us, as they say, unwashed. Nicholas looked at me dully and nodded silently.… Maria Nikolaevna on the contrary looked at me with curiosity, wanted to ask me something, but evidently embarrassed by her morning toilette, became flustered and turned away toward the window….

  “Alexandra Feodorovna, spiteful, constantly suffering from migraine and indigestion, did not deign to look at me. She reclined on the couch, her head bound with a compress.

  “I spent all day in the commandant’s room. I was supposed to check on the sentry. During their walk Nicholas paced the road with a soldier’s steps.

  “Alexand
ra Feodorovna refused to go for a walk.”

  At the end of Vorobiev’s guard duty, the former tsar asked him to subscribe to the Ural Worker for him. “He had not had any newspapers for more than a week and was suffering greatly as a result.” Vorobiev promised to do so and asked the tsar to send the money.

  The Ural Worker would print the first report of his execution.

  “1 [14] May. Tuesday. Was gladdened by the receipt of letters from Tobolsk. Got one from Tatiana. We read them to each other all morning.… Today we were told through Botkin that we are allowed to walk only one hour a day. To the question, Why?… ‘So it looks more like a prison routine.’ …

  “2 [15] May.… The application of the ‘prison routine’ has continued and expressed itself in the fact that in the morning an old housepainter painted over all the windows in all our rooms with lime. It was like a fog you see out the window….

  “5 [18] May.… The light in the rooms is dim. And the tedium is incredible.”

  Thus he wrote in his diary on the eve of his fiftieth birthday.

  “THAT SPRING CHRIST WAS NOT RISEN”

  Inside the house, “Latvians” from the Cheka and the young workers Avdeyev had selected from his old Zlokazov factory were rushing around with revolvers and bombs. “Latvians” was the name given to the Austro-Hungarian prisoners who had joined up with the Russian revolution and the Latvian sharpshooters. The “Latvians” were slow to speak, and when they did talk among themselves the workers could not understand them.

  This internal guard lived in the house in the first-floor rooms. Next to that half-cellar room. Part of the guard lived across the way, in the Popov house (named after the former owner).

  The outside guard around the house was borne by the Zlokazov workers.

  The house had its own automobile. As driver, Avdeyev appointed his sister’s husband—Sergei Lyukhanov. The elder Lyukhanov son had also been taken into the guard. Avdeyev did not forget his Lyukhanov relatives. It was an enviable position to guard the tsar—they paid cash and fed you and you were alive—not like dying in the Civil War.

  Avdeyev himself did not stay in the house. In the evening he went back to the Lyukhanov house, where he spent the night. His assistant remained in the house—another Zlokazov worker, Moshnik.

  Moshnik was a genial drunkard. As soon as the commandant was across the threshold, Moshnik started to get smashed. From the sentry room the family heard the piano, songs to a harmonica. The merrymaking went on half the night: the sharpshooters were on a binge.

  In the morning—once again—Avdeyev appeared at 9. Avdeyev liked his position. The former turner did not forget whom he was now in charge of. This was his hour to shine. When he was given the family’s requests, he answered, “Oh, to hell with them!” and watched triumphantly to see what impression he made on the sharpshooters. Back in the commandant’s room, he specified at length what he had been asked about in the family’s room and what he had refused them.

  Commandant Avdeyev, the guard Ukraintsev, a certain “pop-eyed” someone—these were the new names in the tsar’s diary. They replaced Count Witte, Stolypin, and the countless European monarchs.

  “This evening chatted at length with Ukraintsev and Botkin” (April 22) [May 5]. Whereas before he had chatted … just whom had he not chatted with!

  “My ‘pop-eyed’ enemy was sitting there instead of Ukraintsev” (whereas before his enemy had been Emperor Wilhelm).

  As we come to the end of the next to last, fiftieth notebook of his diary, we can draw some conclusions. Everything that truly touched him, truly upset him, all his internal storms—only slip by in individual phrases. No, he wrote beautifully. Suffice it to recall his letters to his mother, or his Manifesto of Abdication.

  That was simply the style of his diary.

  He was secretive and reticent. He wrote about conversations with Avdeyev and Ukraintsev, about the painted-over windows. And just as briefly, in passing, mentioned: “this morning and evening, as on all days here, read the proper in the Holy Gospels aloud.”

  That was the main thing.

  ——

  Their forced arrival in Ekaterinburg coincided with Holy Week.

  The bloody Easter of 1918 was approaching. The country was drenched in blood—“Russia washed in blood.”

  During these great days of the Lord’s Passion, as the hour of His Crucifixion was approaching—they entered the Ipatiev house. For the mystical Nicholas, the family’s arrival in the Ipatiev house at that particular time was replete with meaning. He had to have felt a flutter of foreboding.

  On the third day of Easter, Alix’s sister Ella was sent out of Moscow. At first the new authorities had not touched Ella or her Cloister of Martha and Mary. She wrote in one of her last letters: “Obviously we are not yet worthy of the martyr’s crown.” Her favorite thought: “Humiliation and suffering, drawing us closer to God.”

  So her path to that crown had begun. At Eastertime, the arrested Ella was brought to Ekaterinburg, where she stayed in the same Novotikhvinsky monastery that would soon be bringing food to the tsar’s family. But by the end of May Ella would be sent even farther, 140 versts (93 miles) away, to the small town of Alapaevsk, where the Romanovs sent from Petrograd were gathered: Sergei Mikhailovich, the companion of Nicky’s childhood games; Grand Duke Konstantin’s three sons; and Grand Duke Paul’s son by his second marriage, the seventeen-year-old poet Prince Oleg Paley.

  On Easter the tsar and his family received gifts from Ella.

  The martyr’s crown was Ella’s main theme. During those days she must have written to them about this. Ioann of Kronstadt, whom Nicholas respected, as had his father, had said in his sermons: “The Christian enduring misfortunes or sufferings must not doubt in God’s goodness and wisdom and must guess how much of God’s will is manifested in them.… May every man bring his own Isaac to God’s sacrifice.”

  “Guess how much of God’s will is manifested in their sufferings”—that is what he had to be contemplating during those days.

  A notable event linked with these thoughts then:

  “6 [19] May.… I have lived to 50; even to me it is strange.”

  Romanovs did not live to fifty very often. The tsars of this dynasty had lived little, and here the Lord had given him this age. Why had He given it to someone whom his own country had rejected?

  A martyr’s crown? A reward of suffering?

  The land was burning, towns were in flames, brother had gone against brother, and the people God had entrusted to him were creating evil. He himself had been at the beginning of the evil. He had assisted at its birth.

  A redeeming sacrifice? Perhaps his whole life had been for this? “Guess how much of God’s will….”

  The days dragged on slowly, identically, as did the “bull’s” slow, persistent contemplation … or was he a lamb?

  Alix spent her days in the pale yellow bedroom between her four lime-washed windows—in that white fog—in her wheelchair, her head bandaged (a migraine). The former tsaritsa went out for walks only rarely. She daydreamed, read her holy books, embroidered, or drew. Her small watercolors were scattered around the house. How she disdained those little men who dared guard them, God’s anointed. But the guards respected her, feared her even. “The tsar, he was a simple man … not much like a tsar. But Alexandra Feodorovna was a severe lady and an absolutely pure tsaritsa!” (as their guards would later say).

  As before she awaited her liberation. The holy man would protect them; it was no accident that his village had appeared on their journey. Indeed, legions of deliverers were already approaching. She knew that all Russia was in flames. In the north, the south, the east, and the west there was civil war. And in her correspondence with her daughters, in her semi-encoded letters to the Tobolsk house, she wrote about the “medicines … that are extremely important for you to bring along to Ekaterinburg.” Although her Tobolsk friends implored them to leave the jewels in reliable hands in Tobolsk rather than take them to the terrible capit
al of the Red Urals, she was implacable. She believed her liberation was drawing nigh, and they must have their jewels with them.

  In Tobolsk, under the guidance of Tatiana (the “governor”), the nurse Sasha Tegleva and her helper Liza Ersberg began to prepare the jewels for the trip. They concealed them by sewing them into the girls’ bodices: two bodices were placed on top of one another and the stones sewn in between.

  They hid the diamonds and pearls in buttons and sewed them into the fur linings of hats.

  THE EXODUS FROM TOBOLSK

  What about Feodor Lukoyanov, the “spy”? He, of course, was in Tobolsk, for that was where the jewels were. Now he was their sentry. So that they would be returned “to the working people of the Red Urals, whose sweat and blood had won those jewels.”

  Leaving Tobolsk, Nicholas had embraced Alexander Volkov and instructed him: “Protect the children.” It was not easy for the devoted old servant to fulfill his tsar’s instruction. Now the remaining family was in the charge of the Soviet and its chairman, the former stoker from the steamer Alexander III who was now master of Tobolsk, Pavel Khokhryakov. He was readying the departure of the tsar’s children, the remaining suite, and the people from Freedom House. They were going to the capital of the Red Urals. For many, this would be their last journey.

  Inside the house Commissar Rodionov and his detachment were in charge. Subsequently Sasha Tegleva would tell White Guard investigator Sokolov: “I have nothing bad to say about Khokhryakov, but Rodionov—there was a malicious snake.”

  Baroness Buxhoeveden identified Rodionov. Sofia Karlovna asserted that she had once seen him at Verzhbolovo, a station on the German border. A policeman, who was as like Rodionov as two drops of water, had checked their passports.

  Kobylinsky spoke about Rodionov: “You immediately felt the policeman in him.… A bloodthirsty, cruel police detective.”

  It turned out, though, that they were both partially wrong.

  From a letter of Yakov Verigin in Tver: