Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg

by Helen Rappaport

  The house appeared rather low and unimposing from the outside, because it was built into the side of the hill, so that the lower semi-basement was only visible at its full height from the side, along Voznesensky Lane. But it was attractive and reassuringly Russian in style rather than classically elegant. It was built on the site of an old wooden church, pulled down in the eighteenth century when the grand new Voznesensky Cathedral had been built across the road.

  Constructed of brick and stone and faced with white stucco, it had carved decorations on the doors and window frames and under the eaves and faced a dusty, unpaved street shaded by linden trees. Opposite was Voznesensky Square with its baroque cathedral and the grandly classical Rastorguev-Kharitonov mansion, but beyond, the poorer log and frame houses of ordinary working-class Ekaterinburgers were a stark reminder of the contrast between wealth and poverty still to be seen all over the city. Near the front door stood a small shrine dedicated to St Nicholas, built where the altar of the old wooden church had been located, but the family could not see this poignant and ironic reminder of the Tsar’s patron saint because a palisade blocked it from view.

  Having failed to keep the family’s presence in the city a secret (it had been announced in the daily Ural’skiy Rabochiy on 9 May), the Romanovs’ Bolshevik captors had initiated a deliberate policy of isolation and desensitisation from the very beginning. Before the Tsar’s arrival the house had been descended on by a gang of 100 workmen who hastily surrounded it with a high palisade of sawn timber and telegraph poles standing a few feet from the front of the house. Originally about 12 feet, the palisade was heightened at the end of May, but worse was to come. On 5 June a second, higher palisade was thrown up in an even larger sweep, enclosing the entire house from the courtyard at the northern end, right across and down into Voznesensky Lane. The front entrance to the house was now dominated by Guard Post No. 1, the first of 10 placed in and around the building, and the exterior of this fortress was patrolled twice hourly – day and night – by a constantly changing roster of guards. All 10 guard posts had connecting bells to both Commandant Avdeev’s room and the guardhouse across the street.

  With the palisade only 14 feet from their windows, Alexandra’s ‘lovely world’ was now finally shut off from the family. Despite the approach of summer, every window had been sealed tight, and on 15 May the world outside was whitewashed from view when an old man came and painted the windows over, thus ensuring no one could see in or out. Nicholas wrote that it felt ‘as if there is a fog outside’. No matter how bright the day, there was a perpetual gloom indoors. As the temperature rose and the rooms became increasingly stuffy, the Tsar made repeated requests to Avdeev for the windows to be reopened. The Bolsheviks were reluctant to accede: the Romanovs already had access to the fortochka, a small winter ventilator in the upper section of a window looking on to Voznesensky Prospekt. Repeatedly, early in the morning, the sentries outside had noticed the head of one or other of the daughters peeking out. Warnings were ignored, and finally one morning a sentry had fired when Anastasia’s head had appeared, the bullet striking the upper sill and ricocheting into the plaster on the bedroom wall.

  Not surprisingly, after this near miss it took weeks of further pleading about the lack of air inside the Ipatiev House until finally the grinding wheels of bureaucracy responded with a formal inspection by the ‘Committee for the Examination of the Question of Windows in the House of Special Purpose’, after which the second window in from Voznesensky Lane was unsealed on 23 June. But the guards were ordered to increase their surveillance outside accordingly. The family were strictly forbidden to put their heads out of the window or attempt to signal to people outside – not that they could see them – on pain of being shot. Beyond the window and above the top of the palisade, they could at least detect a small, elusive patch of sky and, rising up from the cupola of Voznesensky Cathedral opposite, a spire topped with the Orthodox cross. If they stood close enough to the window they could still catch the sounds of the city – birdsong and the clatter of the electric tramway. But they could not see the machine-gun emplacement nestling in the cathedral’s bell tower that was pointing straight at them. There were two more machine-gun emplacements: one monitored the balcony overlooking the garden at the back of the house, the other the basement window facing the street.

  The Special Detachment of about 40 external guards on duty at any one time were drawn from a pool of 100 or so mainly young workers in their twenties, recruited at short notice from local factories. By early June, 35 of these were men from the Sysert metallurgical works located in the Ekaterinburg suburbs, where the workers had been heavily politicised. Before being recruited, the external guard were vetted for membership of the Bolshevik Party and for any fighting experience or handling of weapons. Those who had already fought in Red detachments against the Cossack rebel leader Dutov or the Czechs were given priority; others had served on the Eastern Front. But they were soon complaining about the long hours on duty and an additional 21 men were recruited from the Zlokazov factory, bringing the external guard numbers up to 56, with another 16 men making up the internal guard.

  Poorly educated, oppressed by poverty and food shortages, most of the men were attracted to the job by the offer of 400 roubles a month (plus board and lodging in town) while being able to retain their factory jobs. And by signing on they could evade conscription into Trotsky’s newly established Red Army. Armed with rifles with fixed bayonets and a few standard-issue Russian Nagant revolvers, they might have seemed a threat, but in reality few had any experience in handling weapons. They all enjoyed frequent visits from wives, families and friends, so much so that requests were made for overnight facilities for them, and the Popov House opposite the side of the house in Voznesensky Lane was requisitioned for the purpose by the Ural Regional Soviet.

  These men were overseen by Pavel Medvedev – a civilian Bolshevik from the Sysert works who had already seen action in a Red Army detachment against Dutov – along with three senior guards. At first the external guards lived in the basement, crowded together on camp beds in the storerooms. The additional guards from the Zlokazov works brought in in June were allowed to bed down in the hallway and the small room next to the commandant’s quarters on the upper floor of the house where the Romanovs lived. From the courtyard at the northern end of the house, entered through the big double gates, a side door led up a carved wooden staircase to the Romanovs’ accommodation on the first floor. The flight of stairs was shut off by a locked doorway. Behind this the Romanovs and their servants were crowded into a suite of five interconnecting rooms, at the far end of which lay the landing, bathroom and toilet and a small kitchen.

  Life here for the Imperial Family became noisy, crowded, disruptive, the stuffy summer air fetid with so many living on top of each other. Later the external guards were moved to rooms on the first floor of the Popov House and the internal guard moved down to the basement rooms of the house, but the commandant and his three senior aides had complete access at any time to all rooms occupied by the Imperial Family. The lack of a common landing across the rooms was itself an excellent security feature, making escape from the first floor past the guards impossible, something which might well have influenced the Bolsheviks in their choice of the Ipatiev House.

  Nicholas was not one to grumble and, on arrival, had pronounced their accommodation ‘pleasant and clean’; as had Maria, who found it ‘small but nice’. The Tsar and Tsaritsa had taken the largest, corner bedroom, which had two tall windows facing the street. Two other windows overlooked the narrow lane to the side of the house. With its pale yellow wallpaper and frieze of flowers, the room was congenial enough and contained the usual furniture: two beds, a dressing table, couch, occasional tables and étagère with china knick-knacks, bronze lamp, bookcase, wash basin on a washstand and an armoire for clothes. Alexey, who had shared his sisters’ room when he first arrived, moved in here with his parents on 26 June. The only exit from this room was into the Grand Duchesses’
bedroom beyond, where Maria had moved in with her sisters.

  Reunited in one single room, the Romanov girls happily crammed in together, sleeping on a pile of coats and blankets on the floor until the four portable metal camp beds they had brought into exile arrived from Tobolsk on 27 May. Compared with the communal living and sitting rooms, their room was light and airy, with linoleum on the floor, an Oriental rug and floral wallpaper. The rest of the furniture was sparse – a small table, upright chairs and an incongruously large looking-glass on a stand. What use had the girls for such things now? Their clothes were becoming increasingly worn and threadbare. No more white dresses with satin ribbons like they used to wear every summer in the Crimea. The only significant features on the walls were their family photographs and the miniature icons of saints hung above each of their beds. Setting the room off was a delicate art nouveau chandelier of Venetian glass tulips (which would eventually find its way to England). Beyond the Grand Duchesses’ room, towards the back of the house, was a small room where the maid Anna Demidova slept. Originally designated for Alexey, the room had been given to her after his continuing poor health prompted his parents to move him back in with them.

  A connecting door to the right of the Grand Duchesses’ room led into a large drawing-cum-sitting room, separated into two halves by an archway. In the sitting room the Tsaritsa improvised an altar on Sundays, decorated with her own lace bedspread and the family icons. It was an attractive room with carved, gilded features and unobtrusive wallpaper. Down to the landscapes in gilded frames on the walls and the large potted palm, the furnishings left by Ipatiev included the familiar pieces of the day – a suite of chairs and sofa, another étagère of knick-knacks, a desk and an opulent-looking electrified chandelier of Italian glass. Here the daughters occasionally played the mahogany piano. Botkin and Chemodurov slept at one end of the drawing room, while the servants Trupp, Nagorny, Kharitonov, Sednev and his nephew the kitchen boy Leonid, eventually bedded down in either the kitchen or a small room next to it.

  With its parquet floor and large oak doors, the dining room beyond contained a pier glass mirror over the marble mantel and a solid oak sideboard. Reflecting the prosperity of a successful businessman, the furniture was dark and heavy, with ornately carved fin de siècle pieces upholstered in leather, but the dark objects soaked up what little light penetrated through the opaque windows. Here the Romanovs sat down to meals together with their servants. It had been the Tsar’s express wish that they do so. But the expensive table linen and silver service that they had brought with them from the Alexander Palace lay unopened in an outhouse, and there was not enough cutlery to go round.

  The commandant’s office was also located upstairs, in Ipatiev’s old study, at the northern end of the first floor. With its wooden wainscoting, glass-fronted mahogany bookcase, plush sofa and red wallpaper decorated with golden date palms, it was a genteel room for such unsophisticated, dirty men as the guards. Avdeev, a locksmith by trade and a political commissar at the Zlokazov works who had overseen the dispossession of its owners and their replacement by an ‘executive’ soviet, made himself comfortable here. He enjoyed his new-found status, issuing memorandums and orders on ‘House of Special Purpose’ notepaper printed to order. His control over the lives of his illustrious prisoners gave him a sense of power and he liked to show off by allowing his worker friends in to take a look at ‘Nikolashka’, as he referred to the Tsar. As they came and went in Avdeev’s office between shifts, the men of the internal guard would throw their rifles down, skewing the pictures on the walls, soiling the sofa with dirty boots as they lounged around drinking endless glasses of tea from the samovar. They filled the room with cigarette smoke, and slept wherever they could, curled up in every available corner. From the wall, a mounted stag’s head stared down as the men listened to the Imperial Family’s gramophone records on the confiscated phonograph. In early May they had moved the piano from the dining room in here, and when Avdeev went home off duty, his assistant Moshkin and the night guard would sit around like good tovarishchi singing Russian revolutionary songs as well as the ‘Marseillaise’ and the Marxist ‘International’ and getting drunk. Avdeev himself was often dead drunk on duty, and sometimes when Beloborodov turned up from the Ural Regional Soviet for an impromptu inspection, the commandant’s colleagues had to cover up for him.

  Two armed guards were always present on the landing near the lavatory, bathroom and kitchen, but no others were allowed upstairs into the Imperial Family’s living area and only the guards on duty upstairs were allowed to use the lavatory. Some could not resist the temptation to scribble political slogans and crude graffiti – relating mainly to the Tsaritsa’s relationship with Rasputin – in the hallway and on the lavatory walls. There were 14 more rooms located downstairs in the semi-basement, some given over to Ipatiev’s business premises, three of which were used by the external guards on duty during the day. But most of them were storerooms and lay dark and empty.

  When they arrived, the family had only been allowed to bring small suitcases, but there was a great deal more luggage to follow from Tobolsk. Case upon case of it arrived at Ekaterinburg station a few days later and nearly sparked a riot from a crowd of onlookers who huddled round to view its contents as it was unloaded with revolutionary shouts of ‘Death to the tyrant!’ ‘Death to the bourgeois!’ ‘Hang them!’ ‘Drown them in the lake!’ Many of these possessions – everything from fur coats to binoculars, riding crops and – improbably – suitcases full of Alexey’s baby clothes – were promptly siphoned off at Ekaterinburg station by local commissars and Bolsheviks. After being thoroughly searched and pilfered again by the guards at the Ipatiev House, what remained had been stored in an outhouse in the interior courtyard.

  Nevertheless, when finally allowed to unpack their things after numerous rigorous inspections overseen by Avdeev, the Romanovs had crammed as many precious items as possible into their cramped living space. Essential to them were their prayer books and Bibles, novels and history books for the Tsar, toys and board games for the Tsarevich, sewing, knitting and embroidery materials for the Tsaritsa and her daughters. Surprisingly, they were still allowed to use their bed linen with personalised monograms and Imperial crest, as well as the fine porcelain dinner plates bearing the name ‘Nicholas II’. Other valuable tableware and silver from the Alexander Palace had also been packed under Alexandra’s strict instructions: faience soup plates, silver sugar tongs, clocks, letter openers and silver pencils, embroidered cushions and delicate crystal vases, all the clutter of their home at the Alexander Palace. Anything to maintain a semblance of the life they had once led.

  Other indispensables were the electro-shock machines used to stimulate the Tsarevich’s weak leg muscles after long periods of enforced bed rest. Even the Tsar’s one indulgence was catered for – bath oil for his daily ablutions before dinner. So great was the Romanov predilection for copious baths that the water supply at the house regularly ran out, provoking much grumbling among the guards, for it had to be carted up the hill in barrels from the city pond and heated up. Strict rationing of this privilege was soon introduced. The Tsaritsa had also brought supplies of her favourite English eau de cologne by Brocard, as well as cold cream and lavender salts. But if one thing dominated the Romanov living quarters, it was the bottles of holy water, jars of ointments and ranks of medicine bottles. These came in every shape and size: aromatic oils, tinctures, drops, medicines and smelling salts – all specially labelled by the Imperial Court pharmacist, Rozmarin. Alexandra had her own personal medicine kit and there was a supply of Cascarine Leprince laxative to ease the Tsar’s haemorrhoids. There was morphine too, a precious supply, but not, as one might expect, to control the Tsarevich’s agonising attacks of haemophilia; this was a drug his doctor and parents resisted administering, for fear of dependency. The morphine was to dull Alexandra’s aches and pains, and sometimes Nicholas’s too. This and an array of other cocaine-based liquids and opiates betrayed the increasing phys
ical toll imprisonment was taking on Nicholas and Alexandra, both of whom suffered from crippling headaches and insomnia.

  Most precious of all were the family’s portable icons, which came in an assortment of sizes, some very simple and rustic, others in diamond-studded silver frames. Among these, by far the most valuable and treasured was the ‘Fedorovsky Mother of God’ which accompanied the devout Tsaritsa everywhere. Nor had the family been able to travel without the dozens of photograph frames in leather, silver and ormolu that so characterised their obsessive love for each other. But their precious Box Brownie cameras and photographic equipment which, even in Tobolsk, regularly recorded their family life had now been confiscated. Sentiment had prevailed over many of the choices made about what to bring into exile, none more so than in the Tsar’s decision to bring with him the 50 volumes of neatly written diaries he had kept since the age of 14, as well as the 653 letters Alexandra had sent him during their 24 years of marriage, the bulk of them during the war years of 1914–17. Only now they both constantly worried about what would happen if all these most personal of documents, packed away in crate number 9 marked A. F. and no. 13 marked N. A., were discovered by the guards at the Ipatiev House.