The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  A few minutes later we heard the rumbling of wheels. The Grand-Duchesses passed their brother’s door on their way to their rooms, and I could hear them sobbing …

  27

  Iakovlev was in a desperate hurry. Any moment the thaw could set in and make the roads impassable. He also knew of lurking dangers. His orders were to safeguard the life of the ex-Tsar and deliver him safely to Moscow. But everything he had learned on his mission convinced him that the Bolsheviks of Ekaterinburg had different plans. The Bolshevik conference of the Ural Region at this very time voted in favor of a prompt execution of Nicholas to prevent his flight and a restoration of the monarchy.28 Iakovlev had information that Zaslavskii, one of the Bolshevik commissars in Tobolsk, had fled to Ekaterinburg on the day of his arrival; there were rumors that he had set up an ambush at Ievlevo, where the road leading to the railroad junction of Tiumen crossed the Tobol River, with the intention of capturing and, if necessary, killing Nicholas.29

  The party left as scheduled, traveling in tarantassy (or, as they are known in Siberia, koshevy), long, springless carts pulled by two or three horses. They were accompanied by a bodyguard of thirty-five. In front rode two men armed with rifles, followed by a cart with two machine guns and two more riflemen. Next came the tarantass carrying Nicholas and Iakovlev, who had insisted on sitting by the ex-Tsar. Behind were two more riflemen, the tarantass with Alexandra and Maria, followed by more riflemen, machine guns, and carts. Included in the party were Dr. Evgenii Botkin, the family’s physician, Prince Alexander Dolgorukii, the Court Marshal, and three domestics. Alexandra put her favorite daughter, Tatiana, in charge of the boy and the two sisters. Iakovlev promised that as soon as the rivers became ice-free, which was expected to occur in two weeks, the children would rejoin their parents. He remained secretive about the ultimate destination: the Imperial couple knew only they were being taken to Tiumen, the nearest railroad junction, 230 kilometers away.

  The road to Tiumen was in an atrocious condition, badly rutted after the winter and in parts dissolved in mud. Four hours from Tobolsk, they forded the Irtysh River, with the horses wading deep into the icy waters. Halfway, at Ievlevo, they ran into the Tobol River: here the water had flooded the ice and they crossed it walking on wooden planks. Just before Tiumen, they traversed the Tura River, partly on foot, partly by ferry. Iakovlev had organized along the way relays of horses, which reduced stops to a minimum. At one point, Dr. Botkin became ill and the party halted for two hours to allow him to recover. In the evening of the first day, after sixteen hours of travel, they arrived at Bochalino, where arrangements had been made to spend the night. Alexandra jotted down in her diary before retiring:

  Marie in a tarantass. Nicholas with Commissar Yakovlev. Cold, gray and windy, crossed the Irtish after changing horses at 8, and at 12 stopped in a village and took tea with our cold provisions. Road perfectly atrocious, frozen ground, mud, snow, water up to the horses’ stomachs, fearfully shaken, pains all over. After the 4th change the poles, on which the body of the tarantass rests, slipped, and we had to climb over into another carriage-box. Changed 5 times horses … At 8 got to Yevlevo where we spent the night in house where was the village shop before. We slept 3 in one room, we on our beds, Marie on the floor on her mattress … One does not tell us where we are going from Tiumen, some imagine Moscow, the little ones are to follow us soon as river free and Baby well.

  30

  En route Iakovlev permitted Alexandra to post letters and telegrams to the children. At one of the stops a peasant approached to ask where Nicholas was being taken. When told he was going to Moscow, the peasant responded: “Glory be to the Lord … to Moscow. That means we will now have order here in Russia again.”31

  The guards accompanying the party grew ever more suspicious of Iakovlev because of the deferential manner with which he continued to treat the ex-Tsar. They could not understand why Nicholas seemed so cheerful and began to wonder whether Iakovlev did not intend to spirit him away to eastern Siberia or even Japan. Through patrols which had been posted along the way, they communicated their misgivings to Ekaterinburg.

  At 4 a.m. on April 27, after a night passed without incident—the expected ambush had not materialized—the journey resumed. At noon, the party stopped at Pokrovskoe. This village, one of thousands scattered across Siberia, had been the home of Rasputin. Alexandra noted: “stood long before our Friend’s house, saw His family and friends looking out of the window.”

  According to Iakovlev, Nicholas seemed to flourish from the exercise and fresh air, while Alexandra “was silent, talked to no one, and acted proud and unapproachable,”32 but both greatly impressed him: “I was struck by the humbleness of these people,” he later told a journalist, “They never complained of anything.”33

  As far as one can determine from the confusing evidence, Iakovlev intended to get to Ekaterinburg as quickly as possible and, leaving it fast behind, proceed to Moscow. But he grew anxious about the prospects of getting his charges safely through that city. He would have been even more alarmed had he known that on April 27, while his party was on the second leg of its journey, a commissar from the Ekaterinburg Soviet appeared at the residence of the engineer Nicholas Ipatev, on the corner of Voznesenskii Prospekt and Voz-nesenskii Street, to inform him that his house was requisitioned for the needs of the Soviet and he was to vacate it within forty-eight hours.34 Ekaterinburg had its own plans for the Romanovs.

  Iakovlev’s party arrived at Tiumen at 9 p.m. on April 27. There it was at once surrounded by a troop of cavalrymen, who escorted it to the railroad station, where stood a locomotive and four passenger cars. Iakovlev supervised the transfer of the Imperial family, its staff, and their belongings. Then Nemtsov appeared and, as the Romanovs retired to sleep, the two commissars went to the telegraph office. Using the Hughes apparatus, Iakovlev communicated to Sverdlov his misgivings about the intentions of the local Bolsheviks and requested authorization to remove the Imperial family to a safe place in Ufa province. In the course of a five-hour conversation, Sverdlov rejected this proposal. He agreed, however, to Iakovlev’s proceeding to Moscow not directly, through Ekaterinburg, but by the same roundabout route he had taken earlier that month on his way to Tobolsk—that is, through Omsk, Cheliabinsk, and Samara. To conceal his plan, Iakovlev instructed the station master to send the train in the direction of Ekaterinburg, then, at the next station, attach a new engine, reverse directions and have it proceed at full speed through Tiumen toward Omsk.35 At 4:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 28, the train bearing the Imperial family left for Ekaterinburg and then turned around. By way of explanation, Iakovlev told Avdeev, an associate of Zaslavskii’s, he had information that Ekaterinburg intended to blow up the train.36

  When he awoke in the morning, Nicholas noted with surprise that his train was traveling eastward. He wondered in his diary: “Where are they going to take us after Omsk? To Moscow or Vladivostok?”* Iakovlev would not say. Maria struck up a conversation with the guards, but even her beauty and charm failed to draw them out. Very likely they, too, were ignorant.

  Ekaterinburg was advised in the early hours of the morning that the train with the Imperial family was on its way. It only learned of Iakovlev’s ruse later in the day from a telegram sent by Avdeev. The Presidium declared Iakovlev “a traitor to the Revolution” and placed him “outside the law.” Wires to this effect were dispatched in all directions.37

  On receipt of this information, Omsk sent a military detachment to intercept Iakovlev’s train before it reached the Kulomzino junction, where it could turn west and, bypassing Omsk, head for Cheliabinsk. When Iakovlev learned that he was accused of attempting to abduct his charges, he stopped the train at the Liubinskaia station. Leaving three passenger cars under guard, he detached the locomotive and proceeded in the fourth to Omsk, to communicate with Moscow. This happened during the night of April 28–29.

  The substance of Iakovlev’s conversation with Sverdlov is known only from a most suspect secondhand account by Bykov:<
br />
  [Iakovlev] called Sverdlov to the telegraph and explained the circumstances which had caused him to change the itinerary. From Moscow came the proposition [

  predlozhenie

  ] that he take the Romanovs to Ekaterinburg and there turn them over to the Ural Regional Soviet.

  *

  38

  This version is almost certainly false, for three reasons. For one, Iakovlev did not “change the itinerary” but proceeded exactly as Sverdlov had instructed him during their previous conversation. Second, the powerful chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Lenin’s close confidant would not “propose” to a minor functionary, but would order him. Third, if Sverdlov indeed wanted Iakovlev to turn over the Imperial family to the Ekaterinburg Soviet, there would not have occurred the next day a three-hour altercation in Ekaterinburg between Iakovlev and the local Bolshevik Party. The most plausible explanation—though it is only conjecture—is that Sverdlov told Iakovlev to avoid getting into an argument with the Ekaterinburg Soviet, which mistrusted him, and to proceed to Moscow by way of Ekaterinburg so as to put to rest suspicions that he intended to abduct the ex-Tsar.

  After talking to Sverdlov, Iakovlev ordered the engineer to reverse direction. All this transpired during the night, while Nicholas and family were asleep. On awakening in the morning of April 29, Nicholas noted that the train was now traveling westward, which confirmed his earlier belief that he was being taken to Moscow. Alexandra noted in her diary, most likely from information supplied by Iakovlev: “Omsk soviet would not let us pass Omsk and feared one wished to take us to Japan.” Nicholas wrote on that day: “We are all in good spirits.” Thus, the prospect of being delivered out of the hands of their tormentors to foreigners did not please them, but it raised their spirits to be taken to Russia’s ancient capital, now the main citadel of Bolshevism.

  They traveled all that day and the night that followed, with occasional stops, to cover the 850 kilometers between Omsk and Ekaterinburg. The voyage was uneventful. Iakovlev recalled that the ex-Tsarina was so painfully shy that she would wait for hours to go to the lavatory, until the car was clear of strangers, and remain there until she was sure there was no one in the corridor.39

  The train pulled into the main Ekaterinburg station on April 30 at 8:40 a.m. Here a large hostile crowd had gathered, apparently assembled by the local Bolsheviks to pressure Iakovlev into turning over his charges. The events of the next three hours, during which the train stood in place, its passengers forbidden to leave, are shrouded in confusion. It seems that Iakovlev refused to surrender Nicholas and Alexandra because they would not be safe in Ekaterinburg. According to Nicholas’s diary: “We waited three hours at the station. A strong conflict [literally: fermentation] occurred between the local commissars and ours. In the end, the former won out.” Nicholas, in his simplicity, believed that the argument was over which station to detrain, because shortly after noon they were shunted to a secondary, commercial depot, Ekaterinburg II. Alexandra knew better: “Yakovlev had to give us over to the Ural regional soviet,” she wrote in her diary. The dispute between Iakovlev and the local commissars was indeed over the question whether the party would proceed to Moscow. Iakovlev lost the argument, possibly after the intervention of Moscow, which did not wish to antagonize the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks and was not quite certain what to do with the Romanovs in any event. Leaving them in Ekaterinburg in safe hands, until some future trial of the ex-Tsar, may well have appeared to Lenin and Sverdlov as not a bad compromise.

  Once the train pulled into Ekaterinburg II, Iakovlev turned over the prisoners to Beloborodov, obtaining from him a handwritten receipt which absolved him of further responsibility in the matter.40 He demanded guards, presumably to protect the Imperial family from mob violence.41 Before being allowed to depart for Moscow he had to explain his actions to the Ekaterinburg Soviet, which he apparently did to its satisfaction.42 That he had done nothing wrong in the eyes of his superiors in Moscow is indicated by the fact that a month later he was appointed chief of staff of the Red Army forces in Samara and, subsequently, commander of the Second Red Army on the Eastern (Ural) Front.*

  At 3 p.m. Nicholas, Alexandra, and Maria, accompanied by Beloborodov and Avdeev, were taken in two open cars to the center of town, followed by a truck which Alexandra described as filled with soldiers “armed to their teeth.” According to Avdeev,43 Beloborodov told Nicholas that the Central Executive Committee in Moscow had ordered him and his family detained until his forthcoming trial. The cars stopped at Ipatev’s large, whitewashed house, which the owner had vacated the day before and which the Bolsheviks now called the “House of Special Designation.” The Imperial family would not leave it alive.

  Nicholas Ipatev, a retired army engineer, was a well-to-do businessman. He had acquired the house only a few months earlier, and used it partly as residence, partly as business office. It was a two-story stone building, constructed in the late nineteenth century in the ornate style favored by Muscovite boyars which returned to fashion at that time, with unusual luxuries such as hot running water and electric lights. He had furnished only the upper story, which consisted of three bedrooms, dining room, salon, reception room, kitchen, bathroom, and lavatory. The lower story, a semi-basement, was empty. The building had a small garden and several attached structures, one of which was used to store the belongings of the Imperial family. While the train was shuttling between Ekaterinburg and Omsk, workers had constructed a crude palisade to conceal the house from the street and block the inmates’ view. On June 5, another, taller palisade was added.

  95. Ipatev’s house—the “House of Special Designation”: The murder occurred in the basement room with the arched-frame window on the lower left.

  The house was converted into a high-security prison. The palisades prevented any communication with the outside world; and as if this were not enough, on May 15 the sealed windows were covered with white paint, except for a narrow strip at the top. The prisoners were allowed to send and receive a limited amount of correspondence, mainly with the children, which had to pass through censorship by the Cheka and the soviet, but this privilege was soon withdrawn. Once in a while outsiders were allowed in—priests and charwomen—but conversation with them was forbidden. The guards too had instructions not to speak with the prisoners. For a time newspapers were delivered but that ceased on June 5. Food brought from town—at first from the canteen of the soviet, later from a nearby convent—underwent inspection by the guards. The prisoners’ isolation was complete.

  The guard of seventy-five men, all Russians except for two Poles,44 recruited from among local factory workers, was divided into internal and external detachments. They were well paid, receiving 400 rubles a month in addition to food and clothing. The smaller internal detachments lived in Ipatev’s house; the external guard was initially billeted on the lower floor but later moved into a private residence across the street. While on duty, the guards carried revolvers and grenades. Two or three of them manned posts on the upper floor, keeping the prisoners under constant surveillance. Four machine guns defended the house: on the second floor, on the terrace, on the lower floor, and in the attic. Guards were posted outside, protecting the entrances and ensuring that no unauthorized persons came near. Avdeev had overall command. He set up his office and sleeping quarters in the reception room on the upper floor.

  96. Ipatev’s house surrounded by a palisade. Photograph taken in the Fall of 1918 by an American soldier.

  Nicholas and Alexandra fretted about the children, but their worries came to an end in the morning of May 23 when the three girls and Alexis suddenly appeared. They had traveled by steamer on the Tobolsk River as far as Tiumen, and from there by train. The girls had concealed in their special corsets a total of 8 kilograms of precious stones. On arrival, the guards forbade servants to help them with the luggage.

  The Cheka arrested four retainers: Prince Ilia Tatishchev, Nicholas’s adjutant; A. A. Volkov, the Empress’s valet; Princ
ess Anastasia Gendrikova, her maid of honor; and Catherine Schneider, the Court Lectrice. They were taken to the local prison, to join Prince Dolgorukii, who had accompanied Nicholas and Alexandra from Tobolsk. With a solitary exception, they were all to perish. Most of the remaining members of the Imperial suite were told to leave Perm province. Alexis’s personal attendant, K. G. Nagornyi, and the valet Ivan Sednev moved into Ipatev’s residence. Dr. Vladimir Derevenko, Alexis’s physician, received permission to stay in Ekaterinburg as a private citizen. He visited the Tsarevich twice a week, always in the company of Avdeev.

  The Tobolsk party had brought a great deal of luggage, which was stored in the garden shed: members of the Imperial family frequently went there to fetch things, accompanied by guards. The guards helped themselves to the contents. When Nagornyi and Sednev protested the thefts, they were arrested (May 28) and sent to prison, where four days later the Cheka killed them. These pilferings caused Nicholas and Alexandra a great deal of anxiety because the baggage included two boxes with their personal correspondence and Nicholas’s diaries.

  At the end of May 1918, Ipatev’s residence housed eleven inmates. Nicholas and Alexandra occupied the corner room. Alexis at first shared the bedroom of his sisters, but on June 26, for reasons which will be spelled out, moved in with his parents. The princesses had the middle room, where they slept on folding cots. A. S. Demidova, the lady-in-waiting, was the only prisoner to have a room to herself, next to the terrace. Dr. Botkin occupied the salon. In the kitchen lived the three servants: the cook, Ivan Kharitonov, and his apprentice, a boy named Leonid Sednev (a nephew of the arrested valet), and the valet of the princesses, Aleksei Trup.

  The family settled into a monotonous routine. They rose at nine o’clock, took tea at ten. Lunch was served at one, dinner between four and five, tea at seven, supper at nine. They went to sleep at eleven o’clock.45 Except for the meals, the prisoners were confined to their rooms. Life grew so dull that Nicholas began to skip entries in his journal. Much time was spent reading aloud from the Bible and from Russian classics, sometimes by candlelight because of the frequent power failures: Nicholas had his first opportunity to read War and Peace. The family prayed a great deal. They were allowed short walks in the garden, fifteen minutes at most, but no physical exercise, which was very hard on Nicholas. In good weather, Nicholas carried his disabled son into the yard. They played bezique and Russian backgammon, called tricktrack. They were not allowed to attend church, but on Sundays and holidays a priest would hold services in an improvised chapel in the salon, under the watchful eye of the guards.