The Last Tsar

by Edvard Radzinsky

  July 17: morning in the Ipatiev house. The morning was overcast. But again the gardens had blossomed—“the fragrance of the gardens,” as he had written.

  As always, sentries were posted around the Ipatiev house. A novice came from the monastery that morning again and, like the day before, brought eggs and cream. They did not let the novice into the house; she was met on the porch by the commandant’s young assistant Nikulin. He did not take the food but said: “Go back and don’t bring anything else.”

  The head of the guard, Yakimov, arrived at the Ipatiev house early in the morning. The Latvians were not inside the house anymore. The sentries were only outside. Yakimov was told the Latvians had gone back to the Cheka that morning and only two remained. But after what had happened last night they hadn’t wanted to sleep downstairs, so they were sleeping in the commandant’s room on the second floor. Yakimov walked to the commandant’s room and saw the Latvians sitting on the grand duchesses’ camp beds (which had been brought from their rooms). Yurovsky was not there, and Nikulin and Pavel Medvedev were sitting at the table, which was strewn with jewels, some of which were in open boxes and some simply dumped on the cloth. Medvedev and Nikulin seemed rather tired, depressed even. They were silently putting the jewels away in the boxes. The door to the family’s room was closed.

  The spaniel Joy stood quietly, poking its nose at the closed door. And waiting. Not a sound came from the family’s room, although usually you could hear voices and steps.

  That is what Guard Commander Yakimov later told the White Guard investigator.

  On July 17, Beloborodov acted out his amusing play entitled “Informing Unsuspecting Moscow about the Execution” for the uninitiated members of the Ural Soviet Executive Committee.

  One of those uninitiated—the editor of the Ural Worker, V. Vorobiev—conscientiously described this scene in his memoirs:

  “In the morning I was given the text of the official announcement of the Romanovs’ execution for the newspaper at the district soviet presidium. ‘Don’t show it to anyone yet,’ they told me. ‘The execution announcement text has to be coordinated with the center [Moscow].’ I was discouraged; anyone who has ever been a newspaper worker will understand how much I wanted to scoop such unusual and sensational news in my newspaper: it’s not every day we have events like the execution of a tsar!

  “… Every other minute I kept calling to find out whether they had gotten Moscow’s consent to publish. My patience was seriously undermined by this ordeal. Only the next day, that is, on July 18, was I able to get a direct line through to Sverdlov. Beloborodov and some other member of the presidium went to the telegraph office to talk with him. I couldn’t stand it and went too. The telegraph commissar himself sat down at the apparatus. Beloborodov started telling him what he was supposed to tell Moscow.” [He was supposed to tell Moscow that as a result of the advance of the Whites and the monarchist plot, by decision of the Urals Nicholas Romanov had been shot and his family evacuated to a “safe place.”]

  He did.

  “In view of the advance of the enemy on Ekaterinburg and the Cheka’s discovery of a significant White Guard plot having as its purpose the abduction of the former tsar and his family stop the documents are in our hands, by resolution of the Reg[ional] Soviet Presidium Nicholas Romanov has been shot stop his family has been evacuated to a safe place. Because of this we have issued the following announcement: ‘In view of the advance of counterrevolutionary bands on the Red capital of the Urals and the possibility of the crowned hangman eluding the people’s justice (a plot has been uncovered involving White Guards attempting to abduct him and his family and compromising documents have been found) … the Regional Soviet Presidium, by the will of the revolution, has resolved to execute the former tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of innumerable bloody crimes.’

  “After which we started to wait for an answer from Moscow. Steadying our breathing, we all leaned toward the emerging ribbon of Sverdlov’s reply: ‘Today I will report of your decision to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee. There is no doubt that it will be approved. Notice about the execution must follow from the central authorities, refrain from publication until its receipt.’

  “We breathed more freely, the issue of taking the law into our own hands could be considered exhausted.”

  The day before, on July 17, at nine o’clock at night, the initiated members of the Ural Regional Soviet had sent the initiated in Moscow the following encoded telegram:

  “Moscow, Kremlin, to Sovnarkom Secretary Gorbunov with return confirmation. Tell Sverdlov that the same fate has befallen the entire family as has its head. Officially the family will perish in the evacuation.”

  This telegram was later seized by the White Guard at the Ekaterinburg telegraph office and decoded by the White Guard investigator, Sokolov.

  July 18: Moscow, the Sovnarkom. In the evening Sverdlov appeared at a meeting of the Soviet of People’s Commissars, the Sovnarkom, which was under the chairmanship of Lenin. They heard the report of the people’s health commissar. Sverdlov sat down behind Lenin and whispered something in his ear. Lenin announced: “Comrade Sverdlov asks for the floor for an announcement out of turn.”

  Sverdlov informed the Sovnarkom of all that had been officially transmitted from Ekaterinburg and of the fact that the tsar had been preparing to escape, that Nicholas had been shot and the family evacuated to a safe place, and so on.

  An excerpt from Proceedings No. 1 of the Central Executive Committee meeting:

  “Heard: Announcement about the execution of Nicholas Romanov (telegram from Ekaterinburg).

  “Resolved: Upon discussion the following resolution was passed: The Central Executive Committee in the person of its Presidium approves the decision of the Ural Regional Soviet. Instructs Comrades Sverdlov, Sosnovsky, and Avanesov to compose an appropriate announcement for the press. Instructs the documents in the possession of the Central Executive Committee (diary, letters) be published. Instructs Comrade Sverdlov to form a special commission of inquiry.”

  During the discussion Lenin was silent; then the meeting continued.

  Attempts have been made to find in his silence Lenin’s condemnation of what had happened. Lenin could be accused of many things, but not of being able to keep silent when he disagreed with something.

  On July 18 the sentries were posted around the Ipatiev house as before, and on that day two men were seen in town who then mysteriously disappeared—Commandant Yurovsky and Commissar Goloshchekin.

  July 19: Ekaterinburg. In the morning Yurovsky finally returned to town. The fall of Ekaterinburg was expected from hour to hour, and Yurovsky was in a hurry.

  A coachman drove up to the Ipatiev house. Yurovsky came out and began loading his things. The coachman helped. In his statements to the White Guard investigator, the coachman noted that Yurovsky had seven pieces of luggage and one large dark suitcase sealed with wax. This was the Romanov archive.

  Yurovsky was departing for Moscow. He was in such a hurry that he forgot his wallet with all his money on the table in the Ipatiev house. (En route he sent a telegram about it—the Whites would find the telegram at the telegraph office.)

  But the money was nothing; he was also unable to get his own mother, Esther, out of the town. The Whites would arrest her, but fortunately they did not have sufficient class consciousness to shoot the unlucky old woman, and Esther Yurovskaya would live to see her son’s triumphant return to Ekaterinburg.

  On that day, July 19, Moscow officially announced the execution of Nicholas Romanov.

  July 20: Ekaterinburg. The other chief participant in the events was also leaving town—the commandant’s assistant Nikulin.

  In the Museum of the Revolution I found a sinister certificate written on the letterhead of the Ural government and issued that day to Nikulin: “… issued to Comrade Nikulin, G. P., to the effect that he is under orders from the Ural Soviet to safeguard the specially designated cargo located in the two train cars proceeding t
o Perm. All railway organizations and municipal and military authorities must render Comrade Nikulin the utmost assistance.

  “The procedure and location of the unloading are known to Comrade Nikulin from the instructions in his possession. Ural Soviet Chairman A. Beloborodov.”

  Those cars were transporting the packed-up property from the Ipatiev house.

  Separately, in a dirty sack, Nikulin was also carrying something else.

  Travel was terrifying. Merry bands roamed the countryside, plundering trains and passengers mercilessly. That was why Nikulin was proceeding to Perm in the poor clothing of a clumsy peasant.

  The contents of his dirty sack were dangerous. That sack could cost him a painful death.

  In 1964, during that radio recording session, old Nikulin would tell how he carried the Romanov jewels out of Ekaterinburg in a dirty sack. The same jewels that had been kept in their cases in the Ipatiev house.

  Engineer Ipatiev’s house was empty. The sentries had been removed and the guard sent directly to the front. They would have to fight to their last drop of blood, for under no circumstances could they fall into White captivity. White captivity would be fatal for them after the Ipatiev house.

  On July 20, at the last meeting in the municipal theater, Commissar Goloshchekin formally announced the execution of Nicholas Romanov. Official announcements of the execution of the tsar and the evacuation of the family to a safe place were pasted on poster columns all over town.

  Only after this was Editor Vorobiev permitted to print his long-awaited report in the Ural Worker along with Safarov’s article:

  “… Many formal aspects of bourgeois justice may have been violated in this process, nor was traditional-historical ceremony observed in the execution of the crowned persons. However, worker-peasant power was manifested in the process, making no exception for the All-Russian murderer, shooting as if he were an ordinary brigand. [Oh well, once the Savior hung on a cross “as if he were an ordinary brigand.”]

  “… Nicholas the Bloody is no more.… And the workers and peasants have every right to tell their enemies: ‘You placed your bet on the imperial crown? It’s broken, take one empty crowned head in change!’” (Evidently this picturesque phrasing of Safarov’s gave rise to the legend about Yurovsky taking the tsar’s severed head with him to Moscow.)

  July 21. The Soviet called in Ipatiev the engineer and gave him back the keys to his own house.

  How did he feel walking into that trash-filled, terrible house of his, now stained with the incredible horror of the night of July 16–17?

  THAT ROOM

  On July 25 the Bolsheviks surrendered Ekaterinburg to the Czech Legion and Siberian White Army units entering the town. White officers rushed to the Ipatiev house immediately.

  The house was a spectacle of hasty departure. All the quarters were trashed. Pins, toothbrushes, combs, hairbrushes, empty vials, and broken photograph frames had been dropped on the floors. Empty hangers hung in the wardrobe, all the stoves in the rooms were stuffed with ashes from burned papers and possessions.

  An empty wheelchair stood by the fireplace in the dining room. The old, worn-out wheelchair with three little wheels where she had spent almost all her days, her feet aching, incapacitated from constant headache. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s last throne.

  The girls’ room was empty. A box with one fruit drop, the sick boy’s bedpan—that was all. A woolen blanket hung across the window. The grand duchesses’ camp beds were found downstairs in the guard’s rooms. No jewelry and no clothing at all. Grigory Nikulin and his friends had done a good job.

  Scattered throughout the rooms and the rubbish dump of the Popov house, where the guard had lived, they found what had been most precious to the family—the icons. There were books as well. Her brown Bible with its bookmarks, a prayer book, On Suffering Grief, and of course The Life of Saint Serafim of Sarov, Chekhov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Averchenko, volumes of War and Peace—all this had been dropped in the rooms or dumped on the rubbish heap.

  In the bedroom they found a well-planed board—this was the board on which the sick boy played and ate. There were also numerous vials of holy water and medicine. In the entry lay a box of the grand duchesses’ hair, which had been cut off in February when they had had the measles.

  In the corner of the dining room lay the slipcover of one of the daughters’ headboards. The cover bore the bloody trace of wiped hands.

  In the rubbish heap in the Popov house they found the St. George’s ribbon that the tsar had worn on his greatcoat until the last days. By that time the house’s former inhabitant, the servant Chemodurov, and the tutor Gilliard had already gone to the Ipatiev house.

  Chemodurov was an old lackey, the archetype of the loyal Russian servant, a kind of devoted Chekhovian Firs who all his life walked behind his master like a child.

  The tsar had brought Chemodurov to Tobolsk, but when another lackey came to the Ipatiev house with the children, young Trupp, the tsar decided to let the old man go get some rest and treatment. In those days, though, tsarist lackeys did not go for treatment—old Chemodurov was sent to prison. He grieved in prison and did not know that prison would save his life. He would wait it out there happily until the arrival of the Whites. Now he had been brought to the Ipatiev house. When Chemodurov saw the icon of the St. Feodor’s Mother of God among the holy icons scattered about the house, the old servant paled. He knew his mistress would never part with that icon as long as she lived! They also found her other favorite image—of Saint Serafim of Sarov—in the rubbish. Looking at the terrible devastation, the loyal lackey kept trying to find “his master’s personal belongings.” How many times did he enumerate for the investigator everything he had brought from Tsarskoe Selo: “one coat of officer’s cloth, another of plain soldier’s. One short fur coat from Romanov sheep, four khaki shirts, three high-collared jackets, five pairs of wide trousers and seven box calf boots, and six service caps”—the old servant remembered everything. But there were no shirts, no jackets, and no coats….

  Books and icons amid “abomination and desolation”—this was the picture of what had happened.

  Among the books they found one belonging to the Grand Duchess Olga—Rostand’s L’Aiglon in French. She had taken with her this story of the son of the deposed emperor Napoleon. The eldest daughter of another deposed emperor was rereading the story of a boy who remained faithful to his deposed father to the very end.

  Like that boy, she idolized her father. On her chest she wore an image of Saint Nicholas. A poem copied out in Olga’s hand and inserted into her book reflected her father’s thoughts in their long days together in Ekaterinburg. It remained there like a legacy, hers and his, to those who would come to the looted house:

  PRAYER

  Send us, Lord, the patience

  In this year of stormy, gloom-filled days,

  To suffer popular oppression

  And the tortures of our hangmen.

  Give us strength, oh Lord of Justice,

  Our neighbor’s evil to forgive

  And the Cross so heavy and bloody

  With Your humility to meet.

  And in upheaval restless,

  In days when enemies rob us,

  To bear the shame and humiliation,

  Christ our Savior, help us.

  Ruler of the world, God of the universe,

  Bless us with prayer

  And give our humble soul rest

  In this unbearable, dreadful hour.

  At the threshold of the grave

  Breathe into the lips of Your slaves

  Inhuman strength—

  To pray meekly for our enemies.

  They descended from the second floor of the house to the first—the guard’s rooms. Here the same garbage predominated.

  But one room.… To get to that half-cellar room from the second floor where the family’s rooms were, they first had to go downstairs, then outside, then through the garden, in by another door, and through the whole s
uite of first-floor rooms where the guard lived, to reach the small entry.

  This entry had a window onto the garden. Out the window they saw trees and the joy of the July summer’s day.

  The door from the entry led to that room. It was a small room, 100–115 square feet, hung in checkered wallpaper. The room was dark, its window jutted out into the slope, and the shadow of the high fence lay on the floor. A heavy railing had been installed over its sole window.

  This room was in perfect order: everything had been washed.

  It adjoined the storeroom and was separated from it by a partition; the storeroom door was nailed shut. This entire partition and the nailed door were sown with bullet holes. It was obvious: this was where they had been shot.

  Along the baseboards were traces of washed blood. Bullet holes fanned across the other two walls: evidently the people doing the shooting had rushed about the room.

  The floor had dents from bayonet blows (where some of the family were stabbed), and two bullet holes gaped in the brown floor, where they had fired at someone lying down.

  Most of the bullets in the room had been shot from a revolver, but there were also bullets from a Colt and a Mauser.

  On one wall someone had scratched a line from Heine in German: “This night Belshazzar was murdered by his fellows.”

  By this time the Whites had dug up the garden near the house, searched the pond, and dug up the communal graves in the cemetery, where a special contractor had brought bodies from the Cheka, but no traces of the eleven people who had lived in the house could be found. They had vanished.

  MR. SOKOLOV

  The investigation began.

  The ideas of the February Revolution were strong in the Ural government. In instituting an investigation the government worried that it might be providing “the givens for reactionary principles … fuel for monarchist plots.”