“At least a hundred Romanovs must have their heads chopped off in order to unlearn their descendants of crimes” (Lenin). That is why the tsar and his family were doomed the moment they arrived at the Ekaterinburg station.
Yakov Yurovsky in 1918: a high-cheekboned face on a short neck; important, unhurried speech; a black leather jacket, black beard, black hair—he really was the “dark gentleman.” He evidently had already learned from the “spy” that Nicholas was keeping a diary in the old style. That was why he came to the door on the thirteenth “old style.” He knew that the mystic tsar noted omens. He appeared before him, the “dark gentleman” did, on that unlucky day like an ominous augury. Like advancing vengeance. He went to see him in the guise of a physician. As a medic, it was easy for him to play that role. Even Derevenko, a doctor, believed it and would later say how professionally he had examined the heir’s leg. In fact, this was more of the same revolutionary symbolism. They were healing this world with revolvers. Carrying out the great mission bequeathed to them in the name of the future by their teacher Marx: “Hasten the agony of the outlived classes.” In the name of this bright future, the tsar’s family had to die.
They began to prepare the Romanovs for the end.
“14 [27] May.… The guard under our window shot at our house when he thought someone was moving by the window after 10 at night. In my opinion he was just fooling around with his rifle the way guards always do.”
I am leafing through a big black notebook in the archive. This is the watch journal: “June 5 at post no. 9 guard Dobrynin fired accidentally, having left off the safety. The bullet went through the ceiling and stuck without causing any damage.
“8 June. Due to the incaution of the guard on duty a bomb exploded. No victims or injuries.”
The comrades handled their weapons artlessly and freely. So the tsar was correct in his entry.
But the guard’s “fooling around” immediately turned into a story about the tsar’s daughters giving someone signals from the windows and a vigilant rifleman immediately shooting at the window. That was how Avdeyev described the incident in his memoirs.
They were making their case.
The valiant Nagorny and the servant Sednev were taken from the house.
“14 [27] May [continued]. After tea Sednev and Nagorny were called in for questioning to the District Soviet.”
At that time, hanging around the Ipatiev house, Gilliard saw Red Army soldiers putting the arrested Nagorny and Sednev into droshkies. They silently exchanged looks but did nothing to betray the Swiss’s presence.
They never came back.
“16 [29] May. Supper at 8 in daylight. Alix went to bed earlier because of migraine. No word about Sednev or Nagorny.”
The Cheka was already at work, combing and weeding out, cutting back the doomed company around the family. To minimize confusion on the decisive night. It was approaching—that night!
They lived their usual life. And kept their diaries.
He: “20 May [2 June]. At 11 o’clock we had vespers. Alexei attended, lying in bed. The weather was magnificent, hot.… 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. The prison regime!”
She: “May 23 (June 5). Wednesday. Get up at 6.30, now at 8.30 by the watch. [That day they changed the clock to the new time.] Glorious morning. Baby did not sleep well. Leg ached probably more because Vlad[imir] Nik[olaevich, Dr. Derevenko] carried him out before the house and put him in my wheeling chair. I sat out with him in the sun … he went to bed as leg ached much for dressing and carrying about. Lunch only brought at 3 o’clock, are putting yet higher planks before all our windows so that not even the top of trees can be seen.”
So, they were “putting yet higher planks before all our windows.” The house was already being readied for something, but what?
At that point Nicholas took to his bed. From the constant sitting in the rooms. He loved his walks, not only because he liked walking. He had hereditary hemorrhoids. They got worse.
He: “24 May [6 June]. All day suffered from the pain of hem[orrhoids], therefore went to bed, since it is more convenient to apply compresses. Alix and Alexei spent half an hour in the fresh air, and we spent an hour after them. The weather was marvelous.”
She: “May 25 [June 7]. Friday. Beautiful weather. Nicholas] stayed in bed all day since he slept poorly last night due to the pains. P—a [these two Latin letters conceal the Russian word for “bottom,” which she modestly shortened to insert in her English text] is better when he lies quietly….
“… Vladimir Nikolaevich did not come today either.”
Dr. Derevenko was no longer allowed to see Alexei.
He: “27 May [9 June]. Finally got up and quit my bed, it was a summer’s day, walked twice. The green is very fine and lush, a pleasant smell.”
Again Nicholas felt something was going on. Something was about to happen.
“28 May [10 June].… Outward relations … have changed lately. Our jailers are trying not to talk to us, as if they did not feel right, and one senses alarm and worry in them! Incomprehensible!”
But beyond the limits of the Ipatiev house, everything was quite comprehensible. In the middle of May there was an uprising against the Bolsheviks by former tsarist war prisoners—the Czech Legion, who were joined by Cossack units. Chelyabinsk fell. Now they were advancing on the capital of the Red Urals.
The town was expecting them. On June 10 there were sinister riots. The night before, June 8–9, a certain Ensign Ardatov and his detachment had gone over to the Whites. Now the chief support of the Ural Soviet in the town was the detachment of Upper Isetsk workers led by Commissar Peter Ermakov. A huge, shouting crowd gathered on Ascension Square. Ermakov and his Isetsk detachment, Yurovsky and his Chekists, and Commissar Goloshchekin had a hard time dispersing the mutinous crowd. They just did not have enough loyal soldiers. Meanwhile, how many Red Guards were guarding the “tyrant and his family.”
He: “31 May [13 June]. This afternoon we were let out into the garden for some reason. Avdeyev came and talked for a long time with E. S. [Botkin], According to him, he and the Regional Soviet are worried about anarchist acts and therefore we may be facing a hasty departure, probably to Moscow. He asked us to prepare for departure. We immediately began to pack, but quietly, so as not to attract attention from the sentry officers, at Avdeyev’s special request. At about 11 at night he returned and said that we would remain another few days. Therefore on the 1st [14th] of June we stayed bivouacked, not unpacking anything. Finally after dinner Avdeyev, slightly tipsy, told Botkin that the anarchists had been captured, the danger had passed, and our departure had been postponed. After all the preparations it was rather tiresome.”
The former tsaritsa wrote obscurely that day:
“May 31 [June 13]. Pray morning. Sunshine.
“12.30 Avd[eyev]no walk.… said to pack up as any moment….
“At night Av[deyev] again … said not before several days.”
——
What a strange story. Not long before, the Ural Soviet had done battle with Moscow, explaining how dangerous it was to transport the Romanovs by rail. Now, frightened by anarchists, the Urals themselves wanted to take the tsar and his family to Moscow. Now—when the Czechs were advancing on the town. When there was an uprising in the town itself, when the land around Ekaterinburg was burning! And all this out of concern for the bloody tyrant?
No, something is not right here. It is hard to believe in this sudden concern on the part of the Uralites. This was a very strange trip for Moscow being planned.
Let us recall a conversation between Commissar Yakovlev and the commander of the Ekaterinburg detachment—Busyatsky—en route to Tobolsk, when the latter suggested to Yakovlev: “During the Romanovs’ trip, en route, stage an attack and kill them.”
Kill them on a trip?
MISHA’S LAST JOURNEY
If only Nicholas
had known, when he heard the “concerned” Uralites’ proposal to travel to Moscow, what had happened the previous night. If only he had known the “trip” that had already been taken. He never would, though, not even on the day he died.
On the night of June 12–13, three strangers appeared at a Perm hotel owned by a merchant named Korolev and presented an order from the Cheka to take away Nicholas’s brother Michael and his secretary, Brian Johnson.
When he was sent away from Gatchina, Michael had gone to live in a hotel in Perm, where, as Moscow confirmed several times in letters to the Perm Soviet, he enjoyed “all the rights of a citizen of the republic.”
With him in the hotel were his secretary, the Englishman Brian Johnson, his valet, and his driver (the grand duke was a passionate motorist—witness his daring trip through the Alps with his bride-to-be). But that day he had a very different trip ahead of him. The three strangers went up to the grand duke’s room and when they went back down beside them walked the tall grand duke and his short, fat secretary, who looked like Mr. Pickwick.
The grand duke, the secretary, and their three escorts got into two droshkies and drove away.
All that transpired in the hotel room was recounted to Alexander Volkov by the grand duke’s valet, Chelyshev, when the two were in prison together.
The visitors woke Michael, who did not want to go with them and demanded an important Bolshevik: “I know him, not you.” The one in charge swore and grabbed the former grand duke by the shoulder.
“Oh, you Romanovs! We’re sick and tired of it all!”
After which Michael dressed silently. His valet said: “Your Highness, do not forget to take your medicine.” The visitors swore again and took them away without the medicine.
In the morning the Cheka announced that they had issued no orders and that Michael had been abducted. A telegram went to Petrograd. “Tonight, unidentified men dressed as soldiers abducted Michael Romanov and his secretary Johnson. Searches have yet to yield results. The most energetic measures are being taken.”
Soon after, however, rumors spread that the role of the “unidentified men” had been filled by some very well known people: Myasnikov, who was chairman of the Motovilikha Soviet, and his comrades. They took Michael and his secretary away—and shot them. Their action was proclaimed an act of proletarian vengeance. The rumors were confirmed. The Perm Cheka and local authorities called it “an anarchistic lynching” and firmly distanced themselves from it.
THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE GRAND DUKE’S MURDER
In 1965, in Moscow, in his declining years, a deserving man died, a holder of the Red Banner of Labor: Andrei Vasilievich Markov.
A year before his death, he met with the head of the Perm Party Archives, N. Alikina, who had compiled the biographies of the Perm Bolsheviks, to make known the most glorious deed of his life. Before telling his story the old man showed her an unusually shaped silver watch, resembling a segment of a cut hard-boiled egg. Markov said that the watch had run without repair for nearly fifty years, and then he told her the whole story. Until recently these statements of Markov were kept in classified storage in the Perm Party Archives.
Markov told how the principal organizer of Michael’s murder, Myasnikov, had chosen for his assistants Chief of Police Ivanchenko and him, Markov. But three armed men seemed too few, so they brought in two more, Zhuzhgov and Kolpashchikov, both workers.
“At about seven in the evening, in two closed phaetons,” recalled Markov, “we set out for Perm. The horses had been furnished us in the Cheka courtyard, so we initiated the chairman of the provincial Cheka, P. Malkov, into the affair. That was where the plan for abducting Michael Romanov was worked out in full.… Malkov stayed at the Cheka, Myasnikov left on foot for the Royal Rooms hotel, and we four—Ivanchenko and Zhuzhgov on the first horse and Kolpashchikov and I on the second—approached the front door of the Royal Rooms at about eleven. Zhuzhgov and Kolpashchikov went into the hotel, and Ivanchenko and I stayed outside in reserve.”
Everything went just as the grand duke’s valet had told Volkov: Michael refused to go with the men, demanding that Cheka Chairman Malkov (the “important Bolshevik”) be telephoned and citing “the decree on my free choice of residence.”
While Michael was defending his rights, the men waiting outside were growing exasperated.
“Armed with a revolver and a bomb, I entered the room, having first cut the telephone line in the hall,” Markov continued. “Michael Romanov was still being stubborn, citing illness, and demanding a doctor and Malkov. Then I ordered him taken as he was. They threw whatever came to hand on him and started to take him away, after which he began to get ready and asked whether he needed to take any things with him. I told him someone else would collect his things. Then he asked to take along at least his personal secretary, Brian Johnson. Since that was in our plans, we consented. Michael Romanov threw on a raincoat. N. V. Zhuzhgov grabbed him by the collar and told him to go outside, which he did. Johnson followed voluntarily. Michael Romanov was put in a phaeton. N. V. Zhuzhgov sat behind the coachman, and V. A. Ivanchenko next to Michael Romanov.”
They bravely grabbed the grand duke by the collar (not the shoulder as the valet had testified, concealing the gentleman’s humiliation)—five armed against three unarmed men. To his death—by the collar!
“We rode as far as the kerosene storehouses,” Markov recounted, “which is 5 versts [3.5 miles] from the village of Motovilikha. We went another verst from the storehouses and turned right into the forest.… We met no one on the road [it was night]. When we had gone 100–120 sazhens [750 feet], Zhuzhgov shouted: ‘Get out.’ I jumped out quickly and demanded that my rider Johnson get out, too. As soon as he got up to get out of the phaeton I shot him in the temple; he swayed and fell. Kolpashchikov fired at Johnson, too, but his bullet stuck in his pistol. Zhuzhgov was doing the same thing, but he only wounded Michael Romanov. Romanov ran toward me with his arms spread open begging to say goodbye to his secretary. Zhuzhgov’s drum got stuck in his revolver [his bullets were homemade]. I had to make the second shot at a rather close distance (about a sazhen) from Michael Romanov’s head and felled him on the spot.
“… We couldn’t bury the corpses since it was growing light quickly and it was so close to the road. We just dragged them together to one side, heaped them with twigs, and returned to Motovilikha. Zhuzhgov and a very reliable policeman went back that night to do the burying.”
Tall, thin Michael, after taking a bullet, his arms spread wide, runs, begging to say goodbye, and in reply—another bullet!
After the murder Markov took the watch off the murdered Johnson, “a souvenir,” as he explained to Alikina. We will have cause to recall this tradition of murderers: taking watches off the slain.
Alikina recorded a most interesting detail at the end of the conversation. “Andrei Vasilievich Markov said at the end that after the execution of Michael Romanov he went to Moscow. With the help of Sverdlov he was received by Lenin, whom he told about the event.”
Such was the “lynching” in which the leaders of the local Cheka, the police, and the head of one of the Soviets participated. And about which they went with pride to tell the head of state.
WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE HAPPENED?
As they put an end to Michael, the unsuspecting family was feverishly preparing for the trip to Moscow.
We now know how Michael’s individual trip went. We can also imagine how the group trip of Nicholas and his family proceeded.
——
A month later, according to the scenario worked out in Ekaterinburg, a group trip for some other Romanovs would be carried out. Alix’s sister Ella, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, the sons of Grand Duke Konstantin—Ioann, Igor, and Konstantin—young Prince Oleg Paley, and their servants had all been held since May on the outskirts of Alapaevsk.
On July 18 a local cook would see them all get into wagons very calmly with the Red Guards: they too had been told they were going on a trip—to a place of s
afety.
The wagons would stop by a nameless mine shaft not far from Alapaevsk, and the Red Guards would start beating the captives with their rifle butts. The old grand duchess, too. Nicky’s childhood playmate and Kschessinska’s admirer, Sergei Mikhailovich, naturally would resist. For which he would get a bullet, the old dandy. He alone would be thrown into the mine dead; the others would still be alive. Grenades would be tossed in, brush and fallen branches heaped on, and all of it set afire. For a long time local residents—this is not a pretty legend—would hear the singing of prayers from underground. Ella would be dying in agony but would have strength for more than prayer. In the dark of the mine, gasping from the smoke, the crippled grand duchess crawled to the dying Ioann and bandaged his smashed head. To the end she fulfilled the vows of the Convent of Martha and Mary.
When the Whites would take Alapaevsk later that summer, they would find these bodies in the strewn mine. An examination of the corpses would reveal the trip’s denouement. As in Michael’s case, the Cheka in Alapaevsk staged the slain Romanovs’ escape.
A telegram dated July 19, 1918, to the Sovnarkom, Moscow, from Alapaevsk: “Reporting that in Alapaevsk I have learned of an assault on the quarters where the former Romanov princes were being kept and the removal of such. My brief inquiry and examination at the scene has shown that … the attackers broke into the building, freed all the Romanovs and servants, and took them away.… Examination of the building has shown the Romanovs’ things had been packed and stowed.… I assume that the attack and flight had been previously planned. Political Representative Kobelyanko.”
This is what awaited the family on their trip.
The same scenario lay at the base of all the Romanov murders, and all of them contained an element of provocation.
Yes, Russia’s revolutionaries had grown up with the secret police’s provocations, and when they conquered they adopted the familiar methods. The immortal, all-Russian institution—the secret police—was resurrected then and there, like a phoenix from the ashes. Now it was called the Cheka. It would become more powerful than its creators. And it would kill them. In 1917 the revolutionaries destroyed the secret police, and in 1937, at the height of the Great Terror, the secret police would destroy the revolutionaries.
The Last Tsar Page 37