The Romanovs
Page 102
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Sacking of Trepov Rasputin 182; family conspiracy 221–3. Empress to be annihilated, conversation with Maria Pavlovna (Miechen): Rodzianko 246; reception with tsar, wants to thrash Protopopov 252–4. Sandro interview with Nicky and Alix – ‘nobody has right to kill’ 309–310; new premier Golitsyn ‘soft . . . understood nothing, knew nothing’ 311; back to Alexander Palace with Misha and without Misha: 312–316. Nicky to Mossolov – no danger to dynasty, Lieven NII 230–1. Vyrubova on Sandro’s visit: 88; Misha visit 90; Nicholas knows centre of intrigue is British embassay 91; N upset and A feels return to Stavka dangerous 91. Nicholas to Stavka and A encourages strength: great firmness needed, you look weary, feel my lips tenderly on yours F 686 A to N 22 Feb 1917; measles F 688 A to N 23 February 1917; ‘my solitude, What you write about being firm, the master, is true’ F 687 N to A 23 February 1917. Jim Hercules: Zimin, Negroes 409–11, 415–18. Penny Wilson, at http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=348.0;wap2.
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Revolution: F 686–95, A to N, 22 February 1917; disorders in town, A to N, 26 February, and N to A, 23 and 24 February. Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv, The Fall of the Romanovs (henceforth Fall) 46–56; 76 text of Rodzianko telegram, 26 February 1917; 81 ‘totally calm’, War Minister Mikhail Beliaev to Alexeev, 27 February; 81 civil rule, NII to Nikolai Golitsyn, 27 February. Garrison figures: Kotkin, Stalin 168; Michael (Misha) diary quotes and role in Petrograd 256–78. Vyrubova 91–3. Figes, PT 307–16. Presence of Jim Hercules at Stavka and last sight of Moscow/Paléologue sees weeping court Negro, quoted in Zimin, Negroes 417–18. Penny Wilson, at http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=348.0;wap2. ND 27 February–3 March 1917. Michael 255–265.
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Fall 57–9; 88 grand ducal manifesto. Mordvinov on telegrams: 27 February 1917, Mordvinov 1.53–6. Michael 265–75. F 696–701, N and A letters and telegrams, 28 February–2 March 1917. ND 27 February–3 March 1917.
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Showdown with Ruzsky: F 696–701, N and A letters and telegrams, 28 February–2 March 1917. Fall 58–63, 88–93: on Rodzianko ministry, Alexeev to NII, 1 March 1917, and telegrams from Nikolasha and Brusilov and other commanders. Mordvinov 1.56–95, inc. Fredericks announces abdication conversation with Professor Fedorov. ND 1–3 March 1917. Figes, PT 316–18. Lieven NII 232–3 – N ‘responsible before God and Russia for everything’.
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LP 573, Benckendorff, 9 March 1917. Guchkov mission: Fall 96–100, protocol of talks between Guchkov, Shulgin and NII, 2 March 1917. Figes, PT 339–43. Michael 288–91. Tsar peaceful but secretly agonized/can’t forgive Ruzsky: A. A. Mordvinov, Otryvki iz vospominanii, Russkaia letopis (1923) 5.112–13; see also Mordvinov 1.95–139. ND 1–8 March 1917. Kill them, ask Cossacks; too late says N: Vyrubova 96.
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Michael 295–301.
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ND 3–7 March 1917. LP 561, Olga Paley on Grand Duke Paul informs Alexandra, 3 March 1917. Michael 295–301, 308, NII to Misha. Tears, reaction of daughters, Alix burns love letters, Vyrubova 93–95. Letter of Olga to Anna.
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Michael 302–15.
SCENE 7: AFTERLIFE
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Walking with Nicholas – go to Kostroma or abroad: Mordvinov 1.145–6; last speech and collects things not hastily on 8 March 1917, 192–3. Hall 282–5, inc. Minny’s diary. ND 3, 4 March 1917; 8 March, last day in Mogilev, heartbreaking. Sandro 319–24. Sight of Sandro unendurable to Nicky – Vyrubova 96–7.
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Gilliard 80–2. Vyrubova 94–7. LP 568, George V to NII, 6 March 1917; 569–72 Benckendorff memoirs, 8 March, Kornilov visit. ND 7 March 1917. Balmoral plan: author interview with Prince Michael of Kent.
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Tsarskoe: Vyrubova 95–9. Rappaport 306–21: 313 Anastasia letter, 20 May 1917; 313 Anastasia, 4 July 1917; 315 Olga Nikolaevna to Olga Alexandrovna, 21 June 1917. Rasputin 238–40. Rasputin-cucumber: Lars Tharp, Antiques Roadshow – How to Spot, a Fake, 12. Nicholas as prisoner for life: Rappaport, Ekaterinburg, 27.
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ND 9 March 1917, first walk with Dolgoruky; 21 March, Kerensky visit; 23 March, walks with Olga and Tatiana; 2–3 April, break ice/gapers; 8 April, guards from Soviet; 18 April, reading; 23 April, family in gardens; 14 May, gardening; 3 June, Kerensky/crisis with Alexei’s gun; 9 June, sitting here like prisoners; 26 June, Montecristo; 5 July, July days, root of all evil in Petrograd and not in Russia itself; 8 July, Kerensky PM– ‘the more power he has, the better’ 28 July, Conan Doyle/Livadia or where?; 31 July, the last day at Tsarskoe/meeting with Misha. Fall 153, Olga to P. Petrov, 19 June 1917; 154 Olga to Olga Alexandrovna, 21 June; 166 Alix to Anna, 1 August; 168 Elizaveta Naryshkina, 1 August. Departure for east: Rappaport 318–25; Alix to Naryshkina 320; Anastasia to Gibbes 321. Vyrubova 96–100. Gilliard 210–30. ND 9, 21 March 1917, on arrest by Kerensky of Anna. LP 575, Lord Stamfordham note, 9 March 1917; 578 George V diary, 11 March; 578 Stamfordham to A. J. Balfour, 17 March; 580 Balfour to Stamfordham, 20 March; 853–7 Stamfordham to Balfour, 21, 24 March (two letters); 588 Stamfordham note, 28 March (Lloyd George more serious than he was aware). The departure and Misha: LP 600–4, Benckendorff. Jewellery: Greg King and Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs (henceforth Fate) 70.
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ND 29 September, 6, 20 October (AIII anniversary), more disgraceful than Troubles, 17 November 1917; on Elders of Zion, 27 March 1917. LP 611, Olga to P. Petrov, 10 October 1917. Vyrubova 133–5, letters from Alexandra. Fall 201–2, Nicky to Xenia, 5 November 1917.
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Tobolsk: the girls Rappaport 339–55. Correspondence: Vyrubova 130–145 including A to V 14 and 21 October 1917; Alexei to V 24 November 1917; 8 December 1917 A to V I know the past is all done; Tatiana to V 9 December 1917; Alexei to V 10 December 1917; Anastasia to V we sit at the windows looking at people; A to V your perfume overcame us, it went the round . . . Nicholas a real marvel; all the past is a dream; A to V 2 March 1918 eternity is everything. Gilliard 235–262
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ND 12 April 1918, Yakovlev to take me away/more than difficult; no one slept. Vyrubova 154–6 A to V a new commissar has arrived, Yakovlev . . . Sunbeam is ill; 21 March we feel a storm approaching; late March A to V storm coming nearer, souls at peace. ND 17/30 April–30 June/13 July 1918, arrival in Ekaterinburg, tension between locals and our commissars, drive to Ipatiev, Dolgoruky not allowed in, Ukraintsev, prison regime, whitewashing. Fate 79–102, 112–13: policy of Centre, transfer to Ekaterinburg, crisis at Tiumen station, arrival at Ipatiev; diamonds hidden in corsets quoting Alexandra Teglev 136. Fall 239, Alexandra’s diary, 23–25 April 1918, on visit of Yakovlev, Alexei illness, her ‘horrible suffering’ of choice; 245 Yakovlev to Goloshchekin, 27 April; Sverdlov to Yakovlev, 27 April; 251 Sverdlov to Yakovlev, 29 April, hand over to Ekaterinburg; 255 interview with Yakovlev in Izvestia, 16 May; 278 arrest of Dolgoruky. Rappaport 364–6: letters of Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana to parents, May 1917. Tatishchev’s fatalism: Botkin 192. Gilliard not wanted and free, walk past Ipatiev 269–72. Lenin on Romanovs: V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia 20.166–7, 21.16–17. Goloshchekin, Sverdlov characters: Fate, 253–95. For Goloshchekin and Sverdlov relations with Stalin in exile, see Montefiore, Young Stalin 259–60. Rappaport, Ekaterinburg, 128–34; new regime/jewels/codename/Alexei 171–83, 191.
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GARF 601.2.27 Yakov Yurovsky’s notes 1920 and 1 February 1934 plus unpublished notes (five in total) including most detailed, note of 1922 in APRF 3.58.280, cited in Fate of the Romanovs; Pavel Medvedev’s note 21–22 February 1919, Sokolov Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Kilgour Collection 35.2.86; and Peter Voikov interview in Gregory Bessedowsky, Im Dienste Der Sowjets (Leipzig 1930). Alexandra diary, June–July 1918 GARF 640.1; Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexander (eds. V. Kozlov and V. Khrustalev). ND April–June 1918: GARF 601.1.217–266 Fall 277–85; Yurovsky 285; the decisions to kill, review of evidence leaning towards a decision by the Urals Soviet 287–94; Lenin and Sovnarkom approve transfer of famil
y to Ekaterinburg, 2 May 1918; 310 army officer escape plan, 19 June, and reply, 21–23 June 1918; life in Ekaterinburg, testimony of Medvedev 346–8 ND 17/30 April–30 June/13 July 1918, Ekaterinburg, tension between locals and our commissars, drive to Ipatiev, Dolgoruky not allowed in, pop-eyed enemy, prison regime. Fate 140–2, 146–7: the molestation of girls on journey to Ekaterinburg and betrayal by Buxhoeveden, arrival and separation of Gilliard and Gibbes; the sympathies of guards for prisoners and flirtation with girls especially Alexander Strekotin. Appointment and inspections of Yuri Yurovsky, Peter Ermakov 233–45; Goloshchekin 245–7.
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LP 665–6, testimony of killer A. V. Markov. Fate 200–11. Michael 349–63.
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Lenin and Goloshchekin in Moscow: Fall 290–345. Fate 282–295. Peter Voikov, Bessedowsky 203–205. Rappaport, Ekaterinburg, 129–43.
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Yurovsky preparations. Fate: 297–302. Fall 346–64. Rappaport, Ekaterinburg, 28–43; decision 129–443. Character of Goloshchekin/Ermakov and others: Fate 268–80; Goloshchekin in Moscow 113–15. LP 674–7, A. G. Belodorodov to N. P. Gorbunov, Sovnarkom, 4 July 1918; Protocol of Presidium of Central Executive Committee, 5 July; Sovnarkom protocol, 5 July.
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ND 12/26 May–30 June/13 July 1918. ND 27 November 1894 written by Alexandra. This is based on the various published memoirs of Yurovsky, Medvedev and unpublished full account of Yurovsky in AVPRI and also that Strekotin, both cited in Fate. Fall 346–64. Fall 333: Goloshchekin to Sverdlov and Lenin, 16 July 1918. Fate, 268–80 Letts and killing squad; 297–331 the killing and burial. Alexandra diary, 11–16 July 1918. Arrival of Voikov and girls still alive: Bessedowsky 208–211. Rappaport, Ekaterinburg, 184–202; burial 203–6; dog 207, 214. After the murders, lives of Goloshchekin, Yurovsky etc: Fate 509–14.
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Death of Ella and Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich: Ella 299–307. Beech 2.218–19.
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Burial: Fate 316–331, Rappaport, Ekaterinburg, 203–6. James Cockfield, The White Crow: The Life and Times of the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov, 1859– 1919 242. Beech 1.165, 2.200–2, 181–3.
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Crimea and after: Hall 288–352. For their escape: Frances Welch, The Russian Court at Sea: The Last Days of A Great Dynasty: The Romanov’s Voyage into Exile (London 2010) On later lives of Romanovs: see Arturo Beech, Grand Dukes and The Other Grand Dukes.
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Ella burial: Ella 306–12. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography 444.
EPILOGUE: RED TSARS/WHITE TSARS
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Embalming Lenin: Dzerzhinsky quoted in Kotkin, Stalin 543; ‘Russian people are tsarist’ Leningrad, April 1926, quoted 586; creation of the USSR, 475–81, 485–6. Stalin to Maria Svanidze on tsar, Ivan the Terrible teacher quoted in Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar 182–3; new empire 524; Putin, the story of his grandfather 118 and 300. See Vladimir Putin, First Person (NY 2000). On history and Putin: Vladimir Shapentokh, Anna Arutunyan, Freedom, Repression and Private Property in Russia 51–5, inc. quotes from Patriarch Kyril on miracle of God. Textbooks: Alexander Filippov (ed.), Noveishaia istoriia Rossii 1945–2006 87–8. Russian core civilization: Nezavisimaia gazeta, 23 January 2012, interview with V. Putin. This account of personal style of Putin, inc. story of traitors/weaklings like Nicholas II, is based on: Newsweek, 1 August 2014, The President by Ben Judah, inc. Putin’s assertion: ‘Never abdicate.’ Thanks to Ben Judah for sharing unpublished details of this story.
Also by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Catherine the Great and Potemkin
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
Young Stalin
Jerusalem: The Biography
Titans of History
FICTION
Sashenka
One Night in Winter
ILLUSTRATIONS
Michael, the first Romanov tsar.
His son and successor Alexei was boisterous, innovative and passionate, but his temper could be dangerous.
Alexei’s daughter, Sophia, was the first woman to rule Russia.
The Terem Palace, where royal princesses lived in sumptuous but pious and gloomy seclusion in the upper floors.
Alexei kept his dwarfs and actors in the exquisite Poteshnye (Amusements) Palace. It was later Stalin’s home, where his wife Nadya committed suicide.
The creator of modern Russia, Peter was exceptional in every way. A born autocrat who enjoyed drunken orgies, he combined menacing hyperactivity and ferocious violence with visionary genius.
Peter was even more terrifying and impatient in middle age. As he built Petersburg, he forced Russia to modernize so that he could finally defeat the Swedes.
Peter’s wife and successor, Catherine I, enjoyed an extraordinary rise from promiscuous Lithuanian peasant-girl to crowned empress of Russia in her own right.
Alexei, Peter the Great’s son and heir – until the tsar realized that he threatened to destroy everything he had created. When the boy fled to Vienna, Peter had him hunted down and lured back to Petersburg.
Menshikov – ‘the Prince from the Dirt’ – Peter’s vicious, ambitious and talented henchman, rose to vast wealth and became ruler of Russia, but ultimately reached too far.
Peter II, Peter the Great’s grandson, hoped to reverse all his reforms and move the capital back to Moscow. Half in love with his aunt Elizaveta, he was even keener on hunting, but on the day of his planned marriage he fell ill.
Anna, with cheeks ‘as big as a Westphalian ham’, was cruel and suspicious, embittered by a bullying mother and a long exile in Courland.
She favoured dwarf-tossing, collecting limbless freaks and forcing her fools to pretend to be chickens. Her lover, Ernst Biron, who rose from groom to become the duke of Courland, ‘talked to men as horses and to horses as men’.
Ivan VI became emperor at eight weeks old.
His good-natured and sensual mother, Anna Leopoldovna, ruled while enjoying a ménage à trois with her lovers Julie von Mengden and Count Lynar.
Elizaveta, Russian Venus: blonde, Amazonian and wanton, she kept several lovers simultaneously and enforced her fashion tastes on her court. But when it came to power, she was very much Peter the Great’s daughter.
Newlyweds, the future Peter III and Catherine. This obscure German princess of supreme intelligence was brought to Russia by Elizaveta to marry her heir. Their marriage ended in murder.
Blue-eyed and curvaceous, charming, majestic and industrious, Catherine the Great conquered Ukraine, Crimea and Poland, built a famed art collection, and projected Russian power – but she always had to be in love.
Catherine fell in love with the handsome war hero, Grigory Orlov, who helped her seize power.
She found her real partner in the brilliant and sultanic Grigory Potemkin, her ‘twin soul’ – right, in the uniform of Grand Admiral of the Black Sea Fleet (with Catherine’s diamond-set portrait pinned to his chest).
Catherine in her late fifties, wearing her travelling costume for Potemkin’s 1787 tour of Crimea.
Her last lover Platon Zubov – forty years her junior – was arrogant, inept and overpromoted. He was no Potemkin.
‘Let them hate so long as they fear me,’ Paul declared, but he was both tyrant and laughing stock: he reviewed his troops wearing Prussian uniform, tricorn hat and a sacred dalmatique that made him resemble a teapot with boots.
Maria Fyodorovna, the pretty Württemberg-born empress, struggled to manage Paul, making an alliance with his powerful mistress Nelidova.
Kutaisov, rose from Turkish slaveboy to Paul’s barber, pimp and then count, earning the nickname Figaro.
He arranged Paul’s affair with Anna Lopukhina.
Tormented by his role in his father’s murder, mocked by Napoleon, Alexander I was inscrutable and mystical, but he developed a will of steel that changed Europe. Underrated by history, he fought his way to Paris.
Alexander was fascinated and disgusted by Napoleon: at
their meeting on a raft at Tilsit in 1807, they divided up Europe. ‘If he was a woman I’d make him my mistress,’ raved Napoleon.
The burning of Moscow, 1812: the climax of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the greatest humiliation of Alexander’s life.
Alexei Arakcheev, ‘The Vampire’, organized the war for Alexander and ended up running Russia. He was loathed for his grotesque tyranny.
One-eyed, lazy and wise, Mikhail Kutuzov was hated by Alexander who was forced to appoint him commander-in-chief. He fought Napoleon to a draw at Borodino.
Alexander ignored his wife Elizabeth, who sought consolation in love affairs with a female courtier and the tsar’s best friend;