So, the general action was planned for June 13–14: the night of the long knives, the destruction of both tsarist brothers and the annihilation of the tsar’s entire family at one fell swoop.
But only Michael’s murder was accomplished.
In the heat of preparations, Avdeyev suddenly arrived and the family’s trip was postponed.
What had happened?
Most likely carrying out the executions had been a local decision made by the ferocious Ural Bolsheviks. When they conceived of destroying the Romanovs, they were on their own. To them Moscow was a distant myth.
The decision, naturally, had been made by the head of the Ural government—Beloborodov. Subsequently Chekists captured by White Guards would corroborate this fact, stating that the Romanovs in Alapaevsk had been destroyed in response to a telegram from Ekaterinburg over the signatures of Beloborodov and his assistant Safarov. But there was one more person without whom Beloborodov could not have acted: the head of the Ural Bolsheviks, the military commissar of the Urals, Comrade Filipp Goloshchekin.
Beloborodov was hot-headed, young, and fierce. Goloshchekin was much older and more circumspect. As military commissar he was directly involved in fighting the White Army. When the Bolsheviks had conceived of their proletarian vengeance—the annihilation of the Romanovs—the military situation did not yet threaten irrevocable catastrophe. Now Commissar Goloshchekin knew for certain that Ekaterinburg would fall to the White forces. Soon they would have to flee, and the only place for them to go was Moscow. If yesterday they had treated the capital with mocking disdain, today it was their only island of salvation. No, without Moscow, without the permission of Lenin and his old friend Sverdlov, nothing important could be contemplated. The elimination of the tsar’s family—it was too dangerous to undertake something like that now.
At the last moment, Goloshchekin evidently rescinded his decision to proceed with the murders. He decided first to obtain Moscow’s consent.
Meanwhile he let go a trial balloon: to see how Moscow would react to Michael’s destruction.
The organizer of Michael’s murder, Myasnikov, did not want to be a guinea pig. That was why he disappeared the moment they brought Michael out of the hotel. According to Markov’s statements, Myasnikov was not involved in the actual murder at all. A shrewd man, Myasnikov. During the first postrevolutionary years he took part in the workers’ opposition and did battle with Lenin himself. When the persecutions of the workers’ opposition began in 1921–22, he managed to flee abroad and lived happily in Paris, where he forgot all about our bitter revolution. In vain. Just as he had once taken Michael away by force, so he too would be abducted by Stalin’s bold Chekists, who brought the poor forgetful man back to his homeland. And just as Michael had once been shot without trial, like a dog, so too would Myasnikov.
Or else it had all been conceived in Moscow—how to destroy both pretenders to the Russian throne—and now, when the days of Bolshevik power seemed numbered, the Central Committee panicked and decided to limit themselves to Michael and see how the world would react. They could leave the family for now, a trump card in possible negotiations with the Allied powers.
One way or another, the plan to kill the family was postponed. For now the Ural leaders decided to take the tried and true path.
Once again the days dragged on.
Nicholas’s diary:
“3 [16] June.… All week have been reading and today finished The History of Emperor Paul the First by Schiller [Schilder]—very interesting.”
What was he thinking about as he read the history of his unlucky ancestor? About his mother’s prophecy back in 1916, when he became commander-in-chief, that he would repeat Paul Is story? Or was he simply reading a book about a past life that had vanished so very quickly? As if there had always been this pitiful house and these long, boring, maddeningly hot days.
“5 [18] June. Dear Anastasia has turned 17. The heat outside and inside was terrific.… The girls are learning how to cook from Kharitonov and in the evenings they knead flour and in the morning bake the bread. Not bad!”
Chapter 13
FLIGHT
THE LETTER
It happened—in June.
That morning.… They had just gotten up. Getting up early was torture for her. She had to, though: every morning Commandant Avdeyev came “to verify the presence of the prisoners.”
Nicholas was standing by the window, examining a tiny piece of paper.
With the commandant’s permission they were now being brought food from the Novotikhvinsky monastery: out of the generosity of the father superior they were brought cream, eggs, and bottles of milk. In one of the monastery bottles he had found this letter.
Dull light through the lime-smeared window. It was still morning and not yet hot. Later would come the furnace—and in the rooms it would become unbearable. They were not allowed to open the windows, though. Once he had done battle with emperors—of Japan, Germany, Austria-Hungary. Now he was doing battle for permission to open the windows in a room.
“9 [22] June. Saturday.… Today at tea 6 men walked in, probably from the Regional Soviet—to see which windows to open. The resolution of this issue has gone on for nearly 2 weeks! Often various men have come and silently in our presence examined the windows.
“The fragrance from all the town’s gardens is amazing.”
But he has forgotten all about the windows and the gardens’ fragrance. He is torturously trying to read the letter—this scrap of paper cleverly slipped into the milk stopper.
He is pacing around the room with a marching step—his unbreakable guardsman’s habit. He is thinking about the letter.
In the translucent light of morning, through the smeared window, we are trying to see him.
The same strong muscular body. But he has filled out slightly from the enforced immobility. He is not very tall (the guards were very disappointed in his height. In their simple imaginations a tsar was supposed to be great, that is to say, tall). Compared with his father, his giant uncles, and his brother Misha, he has always seemed small. (Long ago his great-great-grandmother the Princess Württemburg-Stuttgart, the wife of the unlucky Paul I, brought her family’s beauty and build into the Romanov family. Ever since, tall men had been born—Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander III.) He is of ordinary height. His body is not perfectly proportioned: his muscular torso is rather massive and his strong legs relatively short. His neck is unusually powerful for his small, neat head. A pleasant face and a small nose, reddish mustache, tobacco-yellow beard. Not long ago he had grown a beard, but thanks to Alix….
Her diary: “June 7 (20) … I cut N.’s hair.”
She managed to cut it before.
Right now, in the light of day, scattered gray hairs can already be seen in his mustache and beard. His head, cut by the empress’s firm hand, is already graying evenly. His eyes are changeable—first bluish-gray, then sky blue … and sometimes steely green. A “charmer.” The enigma of his gaze. He always felt a little like a child. Was it because of the powerful size of his father, uncles, and brother? Was it because of the strength of the women by his side? This childlike quality of his combined with the constant foreboding of future suffering—all this is in his gaze. And it is upsetting. The gaze of a helpless and gentle sacrificial lamb. Those who saw him remembered that gaze.
Many years later his lover Kschessinska, already very old, would meet a mysterious woman who declared herself to be his daughter—the miraculously saved Anastasia. In answer to a journalist’s questions she would say:
“This woman has his gaze.… No one who looked into his eyes … could ever forget….”
“And you knew those eyes?”
“Very well.… Very well,” the ninety-year-old Little K. whispered with frightening tenderness.
Now his face is darker, coarsened from the sun. His neck is red, and there are bags under his light eyes.
Finally, he hands the letter to her. But Alix never gets the chance to read i
t.
In walks Commandant Avdeyev, “to verify the presence of the prisoners.” Nicholas walks from behind the table toward the commandant, as he always used to greet petitioners during audiences—standing, in front of his desk. Thus he now meets the former Zlokazov worker.
As always in the mornings, Avdeyev is gloomy, having overindulged the night before. He reeks of wine—in a room with closed windows.
Nicholas cannot bear drunkards.
In an even, quiet voice (none of his ministers had ever heard him raise his voice) Nicholas greets the commandant. Finally, Avdeyev leaves.
“WAIT FOR A WHISTLE TOWARD MIDNIGHT”
Alix reads the mysterious letter, which is written in French. With suspicious mistakes. But immediately she believes in it. It is just not written by aristocrats. Where are they—those aristocrats?! They have betrayed them. Common people are writing. “Good Russian people.” She feverishly absorbs the long-awaited text: “We are a group of Russian army officers….”
This is how the letter promising them escape appeared. It was signed: “Prepared to die for you, an officer of the Russian army.” Oh, how Alix likes this signature. Her migraines are but a memory. She is once again the old spitzbube. Yes, it has come to pass. They have come. They have not abandoned their tsar! Good Russian people! They are prepared to liberate their emperor. The holy man has sent the family a “legion of angels.”
She begs Nicky to reply. As always, he calmly agrees. Yes, he will write an answer.
He does, and so this secret correspondence is established.
“Your friends do not rest,” it says in the next note, sent in another bottle from the monastery. “The hour we have waited for so long has come. With God’s help and your presence of mind we hope to achieve our goal without risking anything.”
Another letter that same day:
“… One of your windows has to be unsealed so that you can open it. I beg you to indicate to me precisely which window. In the event that the young tsarevich cannot go, matters shall be greatly complicated.… Would it not be possible, an hour or two before the time, to give the tsarevich some kind of narcotic? Let the doctor decide. Rest assured, we will not undertake anything unless we are assured of success.”
It was an escape conceived in the style of a Dumas novel.
But how to open the window? Suddenly, as if at the holy man’s behest, the window was opened.
Nicholas’s diary:
“10 [23] June. Whitsunday.… Marked by various events: one of our windows was opened this morning.… The air in the room became clean, and by evening even cool.”
The former commander-in-chief sent another message in a milk bottle, as if it were a disposition of battle.
“Second window from the corner on the square has been open for two days and even at night. Windows 7 and 8 by the main entrance are also always open. The room is occupied by the commandant and the assistants who make up the inner guard at any given moment. There are 13 men armed with rifles, revolvers, and bombs.… The commandant and his assistant come in to see us whenever they like. The guard on duty makes the rounds of the house at night twice an hour.… There is one machine gun on the balcony and another under the balcony—in the event of a disturbance. Opposite our windows on the other side of the street the guard is staying in a little house. There are 50 men. From each guard post there is a bell to the commandant’s room and a wire to the guard quarters and other points.”
These bells … they would ring that night, their last night.
“Inform us,” concluded Nicholas, “as to whether we shall be able to take our people with us.”
As always, he carefully recorded everything, revealing the secret of this plot.
Nicholas’s diary:
“14 [27] June. Our dear Marie turned 19 .… The weather was the same, tropical. 26 degrees [79°F] in the shade, and 24 [75°F] in the rooms. It is even hard to bear!… Spent an uneasy night and kept vigil fully dressed. All this because a few days ago we received two letters, one after the other, telling us to prepare to be abducted by some loyal people! The days have passed, though, and nothing has happened, and the waiting and uncertainty have been very trying.”
Now in his diary he testified before the entire world “about a monarchist plot for the purposes of the family’s escape and liberation.”
Alix was more cautious: her entry for June 27 does not say a word about the letters or a plot. But she was waiting. Oh, how she was waiting—for the next night. She listened to the nighttime silence.
As if someone were mocking them, instead of the rustle of plotters stealing up, through the open window:
“June 15 (28). Friday. At night we heard under our windows the guard strictly ordered to watch every movement in our window.”
WHO WROTE IT?
Seventy years later I am sitting in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution.
The archive file on my desk: “The Family of the (Former) Tsar Nicholas the Second 1918–1920.”
For a very long time—seventy years—this thin little file has not been released. I am one of the first (the very first perhaps) to see it upon its declassification. We shall return to its astonishing contents more than once. I will spend many hours alone with this bloody file!
In the middle of it I find the same letters signed “An officer” and once sent to the Ipatiev house in a milk bottle. They would become one of the grounds for the execution of the Romanov family.
Here is the last letter. Written neatly, in a student’s hand, in French:
“We are a group of Russian army officers who have not lost our conscience, our duty before our tsar and fatherland. We are not informing you about us in detail for reasons you can well understand, but your friends D. and T. [Dolgorukov and Tatishchev], who are already saved, know us.”
The hour of liberation was approaching and the usurpers’ days were numbered. In any event, the Czechs were getting closer and closer to Ekaterinburg. They were but a few versts from town. “Do not forget that at the last moment the Bolsheviks will be ready to commit any crime. The moment has come, we must act. Wait for a whistle toward midnight—that will be the signal. An officer.”
Dolgorukov and Tatishchev, however, “who are already saved,” had long been lying in unmarked graves.
How strangely mendacious this well-wisher was. Moreover, how well informed he was that the Romanovs knew nothing about the fate of “D. and T.”
Now, just as I became weary of the constant suspicion, I receive a letter from the historian M. M. Medvedev, the son of the Chekist M. A. Medvedev, one of the executioners of the tsar’s family. (This letter became the starting point for our many conversations.) Here is what he told me in his letter:
“In 1964, two old men arrived at Moscow Radio.
“These two were felt to be the last people living of those present at the family’s execution.
“One of these old men was Grigory Nikulin, the murderer of Prince Dolgorukov and one of the main participants in the execution of the tsar’s family. The other was I. Rodzinsky, who did not participate in the execution of the Romanovs but who was a member of the Ural Cheka in 1918.”
This conversation and the invitation to the radio station had been devised and organized by this very historian, Mikhail Medvedev. With great difficulty he managed to talk the two into recording their statements for posterity. With equal difficulty he managed to talk the authorities into it: only after he went to Nikita Khrushchev himself was this taping at Moscow Radio permitted. Medvedev asked the questions, but a “representative of the Central Committee” also took part in the conversation.
This taping took a long time, and we will return to it again. Now we are interested in the statements of the Chekist Rodzinsky:
“The letter with the signature ‘An officer,’ which Nicholas Romanov believed, was composed at the Cheka. Its author was one of the Bolshevik leaders of Ekaterinburg, Peter Voikov.”
(Peter Voikov, 1888–1927, party name “Intell
ectual.” Expelled for revolutionary activity first from grammar school and later from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. Participated in terrorist acts. Emigrated, lived in Switzerland, graduated from the University of Geneva, in August 1917 returned to Russia and joined the Bolsheviks. In 1918, people’s commissar for government supply in the Red Urals. As of 1924, Soviet ambassador to Poland. He was lucky—he didn’t live until 1938; in 1927 he was killed by a monarchist in Poland for his participation in the execution of the Romanov family.)
According to Rodzinsky’s statements, this University of Geneva graduate composed all the letters in the bottles.
But Voikov had terrible handwriting (or he may not have wanted to leave evidence of his role as a provocateur), and he suggested that Rodzinsky copy out the letters. The Chekist had good handwriting, so he did. To ensure that there could be no doubt of the truthfulness of his words, Rodzinsky left a sample of his handwriting at the radio station.
The old Chekist had evidently come not only to reminisce but to repent.
INTRIGUE
How astonishingly well thought out everything in this story is. Beginning with the food from the monastery, which the conscientious Uralites suddenly allowed to be brought to the Romanovs.
It was all done very cleverly. In early June a certain Ivan Sidorov (an obvious pseudonym) arrived in Ekaterinburg with a large sum of money from Vyrubova and other loyal friends of the tsar’s family. Through Dr. Derevenko, Sidorov made contact with the Novotikhvinsky monastery and, simultaneously, with Commandant Avdeyev. Soon after, the suddenly soft-hearted commandant allowed food to be brought from the monastery (to establish his “concern” for the family and to fatten his own pocket—with the money Dr. Derevenko offered him for the food. Thus the tsar’s family began to connect the monastery with their good, loyal friends. That was why they believed in the letters.
The Last Tsar Page 38