97. Alexis and Olga on board the ship Rus on their last journey from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg: May 1918.
There exist many lurid stories about the abuse of the Imperial family at the hands of the guards. It is said that the latter entered the rooms occupied by the princesses any time of day or night, helped themselves to the food which the family, at Nicholas’s insistence, shared with their servants at a common table, and even jostled the ex-Tsar. These stories, while not baseless, tend to be exaggerated: the behavior of the commandant and his guards was undoubtedly rude, but no evidence exists of actual maltreatment. Even so, the conditions which the Imperial family endured were exceedingly painful. The guards posted on the second floor amused themselves by accompanying the princesses to the lavatory, demanding to know why they were going there and standing outside until they came out.46 It was not uncommon for obscene drawings and inscriptions to be found in the lavatory and bathroom. A proletarian lad named Faika Safonov amused friends with renditions of obscene ditties under the windows of the Imperial prisoners.
The Romanovs bore their confinement, discomforts, and indignities with remarkable serenity. Avdeev thought that Nicholas did not behave like a prisoner at all, displaying “natural gaiety.” Bykov, the Communist historian of these events, speaks with irritation of Nicholas’s “idiotic indifference to the events occurring around him.”47 The behavior of the ex-Tsar and his family, however, was due not to indifference but to a sense of decorum and a fatalism rooted in religious faith. We shall, of course, never know what went on in the minds of the prisoners, behind the façade of Nicholas’s “natural gaiety,” Alexandra’s hauteur, and the children’s irrepressible spirits, for they confided in no one: Nicholas’s and Alexandra’s diaries for the period are logs rather than intimate journals. But an unexpected insight into their inner feelings is provided by the discovery among their belongings of a poem called “Prayer.” It was written by S. S. Bekhteev, a brother of Zinaida Tolstoy, a close friend of Alexandra’s, in October 1917 and sent to Tobolsk with a dedication to Olga and Tatiana. In the papers of the Imperial family, two copies of this poem were found, one in the hand of Alexandra, the other in that of Olga. It read:
Give patience, Lord, to us Thy children
In these dark, stormy days to bear
The persecution of our people,
The tortures falling to our share.
Give strength, Just God, to us who need it,
The persecutors to forgive,
Our heavy, painful cross to carry
And Thy great meekness to achieve.
When we are plundered and insulted,
In days of mutinous unrest,
We turn for help to Thee, Christ-Savior,
That we may stand the bitter test.
Lord of the world, God of Creation,
Give us Thy blessing through our prayer,
Give peace of heart to us, O Master,
This hour of deadly dread to bear.
And on the threshold of the grave
Breathe power divine into our clay
That we, Thy children, may find strength
In meekness for our foes to pray.
48
In the spring of 1918, when they had confined Nicholas and his family in Ekaterinburg and the rest of the Romanov clan in other towns of Perm province, the Bolsheviks were placing them in what appeared to be a safe area: far away from the German front and the White Army, in the midst of a Bolshevik stronghold. But the situation in this territory changed dramatically with the outbreak of the Czech rebellion. By the middle of June, the Czechs controlled Omsk, Cheliabinsk, and Samara. Their military operations endangered the province of Perm, located directly north of these cities, and placed the Romanovs close to a battlefront where the Bolsheviks were in retreat.
What was to be done with them? In June, Trotsky still favored a spectacular trial:
During one of my brief visits to Moscow—I believe it was a few weeks before the execution of the Romanovs—I remarked in passing to the Politburo that, considering the bad situation in the Urals, one should speed up the Tsar’s trial. I proposed an open court that would unfold a picture of the entire reign (peasant policy, labor, nationalities, culture, the two wars, etc.). The proceedings of the trial would be broadcast nationwide by radio; in the
volosti
, accounts of the proceedings would be read and commented upon daily. Lenin replied to the effect that this would be very good if it were feasible. But … there might not be time enough.… No debate took place, since I did not insist on my proposal, being absorbed in different work. And in the Politburo there were only three or four of us: Lenin, myself, Sverdlov … Kamenev, as I recall, was not present. At that time Lenin was rather gloomy and had no confidence that we would succeed in building an army …
49
By June 1918 the idea of a trial had ceased to be realistic. There exists convincing evidence that shortly after the outbreak of the Czech uprising, Lenin authorized the Cheka to make preparations for the execution of all the Romanovs in Perm province, using for pretext the device of contrived “escapes.” On his instructions, the Cheka arranged for elaborate provocations in the three towns where members of the Romanov family were then either confined or living under surveillance: Perm, Ekaterinburg, and Alapaevsk. In Perm and Alapaevsk the plan succeeded; in Ekaterinburg it was abandoned.
A rehearsal for the massacre of Nicholas and his family was staged in Perm, the place of exile of Grand Duke Michael.50 On his arrival in Perm in March, in the company of his secretary, the Englishman Nicholas Johnson, Michael was placed in jail. He was soon released, however, and allowed to take up residence, along with Johnson, a servant, and a chauffeur, in a hotel, where he lived in relative comfort and freedom. Although under Cheka surveillance, had he wished to escape he could have done so without difficulty, for he was permitted to move freely about town. But like the other Romanovs he displayed utter passivity. His wife visited him during the Easter holidays, but at his request returned to Petrograd, from where she eventually escaped and made her way to England.
On the night of June 12–13, five armed men drove up in a troika at Michael’s hotel.51 They awoke the Grand Duke and told him to dress and follow them. Michael asked for their credentials. When they could not produce any, he demanded to see the head of the local Cheka. At this point (as Michael’s valet later told a fellow prisoner before being himself executed), the visitors lost patience and threatened to resort to force. One of them whispered something in the ear of either Michael or Johnson which seems to overcome their doubts. It is almost certain that they posed as monarchists on a rescue mission. Michael dressed and, accompanied by Johnson, entered the visitors’ vehicle parked in front of the hotel.
The troika sped away in the direction of the industrial settlement of Motovilikha. Out of town, it turned into the woods and stopped. The two passengers were told to step out, and as they did so, they were cut down by bullets, probably shot in the back, as was the Cheka’s custom at the time. Their bodies were burned in a nearby smelting furnace.
Immediately after the murder, the Bolshevik authorities in Perm informed Petrograd and cities in the area that Michael had escaped and a search was underway. Simultaneously, they spread rumors that the Grand Duke had been abducted by monarchists.52
The local newspaper, Permskie Izvestiia, carried the following report of the incident:
During the night of May 31 [June 12] an organized band of White Guardists with forged mandates appeared at the hotel inhabited by Michael Romanov and his secretary, Johnson, abducted them, and took them to an unknown destination. A search party sent out that night found no trace. The searches continue.
53
This was a tissue of lies. Michael and Johnson in fact had been abducted not by “White Guardists” but by the Cheka, headed by G. I. Miasnikov, an ex-locksmith and professional revolutionary, chairman of the Motivilikha Soviet. His four accomplices were pro-Bolshevik workers from the same town. Since the
myth of a “White Guard” plot could not be sustained once the remains of Michael and Johnson had been located by the Sokolov commission the next year, the subsequent official Communist version has claimed that Miasnikov and his accomplices had acted on their own, without authorization either from Moscow or from the local soviet—a version which must strain the credulity of even the most credulous.*
On June 17, newspapers in Moscow and Petrograd carried reports of Michael’s “disappearance,”† Concurrently rumors spread that Nicholas had been killed by a Red Army soldier who had broken into Ipatev’s house.54 These rumors could have originated spontaneously, but it is much more likely that they were intentionally floated by the Bolsheviks to test the reaction of both the Russian public and foreign governments to the killing of Nicholas, preparations for which were underway. What gives credence to this hypothesis is the extraordinary behavior of Lenin. On June 18, he gave an interview to the daily Nashe slovo in which he said that while he could confirm reports of Michael’s escape, his government was unable to determine whether the ex-Tsar was dead or alive.55 It was most unusual for Lenin to give an interview to Nashe slovo, a liberal newspaper and as critical of the Bolshevik regime as the conditions permitted, with which the Bolsheviks normally had no dealings. Equally curious was his pleading ignorance about the fate of the ex-Tsar, since the government could readily establish the facts of the case: as late as June 22, the Press Bureau of the Sovnarkom stated that it still did not know the fate of Nicholas, although it admitted to maintaining daily communication with Ekaterinburg.56 This behavior of the government lends strong support to the hypothesis that Moscow spread these rumors to test the public reactions to the projected murder of the ex-Tsar.‡
Apart from aristocratic and monarchist circles, the Russian population, intelligentsia and “masses” alike, gave no indication of caring one way or another what happened to Nicholas. Nor was foreign opinion upset. A dispatch filed by the Petrograd correspondent of The Times of London on June 23 and published on July 3 carried an ominous hint:
Every time this kind of public prominence is given to the Romanoff family people think that something serious is on foot. Bolshevists are getting impatient of these frequent surprises about the deposed dynasty, and the question is again raised as to the advisability of settling the fate of the Romanoffs, so as to be done with them once for all.
“Settling the fate of the Romanovs” could, of course, only mean killing them. This rather crude feeler fell on deaf ears.
The indifference to these rumors inside Russia and abroad seems to have sealed the fate of the Imperial family.
On June 17, the family heard the welcome news that the nuns of the Novotikhvinskii Convent, whose previous requests of this nature had been rejected, would be allowed to deliver eggs, milk, and cream to them. As became subsequently known, this was done not out of concern for their well-being but as part of a Cheka plot.
On June 19 or 20, the Imperial prisoners received from the nuns a container of cream, the cork of which had concealed a piece of paper with the following message, carefully penned or more likely copied by someone with poor knowledge of French:
Les amis ne dorment plus et espèrent que l’heure si longtemps attendue est arrivée. La revolte des tschekoslovaques menace les bolcheviks de plus en plus serieusement. Samara, Tschelabinsk et toute la Sibirie orientale et occidentale est au pouvoir de gouvernement national provisoir. L’armée des amis slaves est à quatre-vingt kilometres d’Ekaterinbourg, les soldats de l’armée rouge ne resistent pas efficassement. Soyez attentifs au tout mouvement de dehors, attendez et espérez. Mais en même temps, je vous supplie, soyez prudents, parce que les bolcheviks avant d’être
vaincus represent pour vous le peril réel et sérieux
. Soyez prêts toutes les heures, la journée et la nuit. Faite le croquis des
vos deux chambres
, les places, des meubles, des lits. Ecrivez bien l’heure quand vous allez couchir vous tous. L’un de vous ne doit dormir de 2 à 3 heure toutes les nuits qui suivent. Repondez par quelques mots mais donnez, je vous en prie, tous les renseignements utiles pour vos amis de dehors. C’est au même soldat qui vous transmet cette note qu’il faut donner votre reponse
par ecrit mais dites pas un seul mot
.
Un qui est prêt a mourir pour vous
L’officieu [sic] de l’armée Russe.
*
The response was supplied on the same sheet of crumpled notebook paper. Next to the inquiry about the hour when the family retired, is written “à 11½”; the query about “two rooms” is corrected to “three rooms.” Underneath is written in a firm, legible hand:
du coin jusqu’au balcon. 5 fenêtres donnent sur la rue, 2 sur la place. Toutes les fenêtres sont fermées, collées et peintes en blanc. Le petit est encore malade et au lit, et ne peut pas marcher du tout—chaque secousse lui cause des douleurs. Il y a une semaine, qu’a cause des anarchist[es] on pensait a nous faire partir à Moscou la nuit. Il ne faut rien risquer sans être
absolument sûr
du résultat. Sommes presque tout le temps sous observation attentive.
*
This secret message from alleged rescuers has some puzzling features. To begin with, its language. The letter is not written in a form which a monarchist officer would adopt toward his sovereign: it is hard to conceive that he would address him as “vous” instead of “Votre Majesté.” Altogether, the vocabulary and style of this letter are so unusual that one investigator of the Ekaterinburg tragedy believed it to be an outright forgery.57 Then there is the question of how the letter reached the prisoners. Its author refers to a soldier, presumably a guard. But Avdeev, the commandant of the Ipatev guards, writes that the secret letter was discovered in the cork of a bottle with cream brought by the nuns, and turned over to the Chekist Goloshchekin, who had it copied before delivering it to the prisoners. According to Avdeev,58 the Cheka pursued the matter and found the author to be a Serbian officer by the name of “Magich,” whom it arrested. There was, indeed, in the area a Serbian officer and member of the Serbian military mission to Russia, Major Jarko Konstantinovich Mičič (Michich), who had aroused suspicion by requesting to see Nicholas.59 It is also known that Mičič traveled to the Urals to locate and rescue the Serbian Princess Helen Petrovna, the wife of Grand Duke Ivan Konstantinovich, interned at Alapaevsk. But it can be established from the recollections of Micic’s traveling companion, Serge Smirnov, that the two men had arrived in Ekaterinburg only on July 4, which meant that Mičič could not have written from there on June 19–20.60
Another possible bearer of the initial note was Alexis’s physician, Dr. Derevenko. It is known, however, from Derevenko’s deposition, given the Soviet authorities in 1931, that he was forbidden during his visits to have any communication with the prisoners.61 It can be further established from Alexandra’s diaries that he paid his last visit to Ipatev’s house on June 21, which makes it theoretically possible for him to have carried the first secret message, but even this was not likely since, confirming Derevenko, Alexandra wrote that he never appeared “without Avdeev, so impossible to say one word to him.”
It thus seems reasonable to suppose that the letter was fabricated by the Cheka and delivered to the prisoners by a guard involved in the provocation.*
According to Avdeev, Nicholas replied to the first letter two or three days after he had received it,62 which would date it between June 21 and 23. The response was, of course, intercepted, setting in motion the Cheka’s scheme.
On June 22, apparently in reaction to Nicholas’s response, workers inspected the windows in the Imperial couple’s bedroom. The next day, to the latter’s delight, one of the double windows was removed and a ventilation pane opened, letting fresh air into the stuffy and hot upper floor. The prisoners were forbidden to lean out: when one of the girls stuck her head out too far, a guard fired.
On June 25, a second secret message arrived; a third followed on June 26. Incontroverti
ble evidence that these letters reached the Imperial family comes from the diary of Nicholas, who under the date June 14 [27] incautiously wrote: “We have recently received two letters, one after the other, which advised us to be ready to be spirited away by some devoted people!”
The second letter urged the recipients not to worry: their rescue carried no risks whatsoever. It was an astonishing assurance, even if one makes allowance for the desire of the alleged conspirators to allay the fears of the captives, given that they were surrounded by dozens of armed guards. It certainly casts the deepest doubts on its authenticity. It was “absolutely necessary,” the letter went on, that one of the windows be unglued—which indeed had been arranged, two days earlier, by the obliging commandant. Alexis’s inability to walk “complicated matters,” but it was “not too great an inconvenience.”
To this letter Nicholas responded at some length on June 25. He informed the correspondents that two days earlier one of their windows had indeed been opened. It was imperative to save not only them but also Dr. Botkin and the servants: “It would be ignoble for us, even if they do not want to burden us, to leave them behind after their following us into exile voluntarily.” Nicholas then expressed concern over the fate of two boxes stored in the shed, a smaller one, labeled AF No. 9 (i.e., Alexandra Fedorovna No. 9), and a larger one, designated “No. 13 N.A.” (Nicholas Alexandrovich), which contained “old letters and diaries.”
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