The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  The third letter from the stranger requested additional information. Regrettably, it might not be possible to rescue everyone, he wrote. He promised to provide a “detailed plan of operations” by June 30, and instructed the family to be on the alert for a signal (which he did not describe): as soon as they heard it, they were to barricade the door leading to the hall and descend from the open window by means of a rope which they were somehow to procure.

  That night (June 26–27), in anticipation of the promised rescue attempt, Alexis was moved to his parents’ room. The family did not go to sleep. “We spent an anxious night and kept vigil, dressed,” Nicholas noted. But the signal never came. “The waiting and uncertainty were most excruciating.”

  What happened to have caused the Cheka to cancel its plan cannot be determined.

  On the following night, Nicholas or Alexandra overheard a conversation that made them give up the thought of escape. “We heard in the night,” Alexandra wrote on June 28, “sentry under our rooms, being told quite particularly to watch every movement at our window—they have become again most suspicious since our window is opened.” This seems to have persuaded Nicholas to communicate to his correspondent a tortured note to the effect that he was not prepared to escape although he was not averse to being abducted:

  Nous ne voulons et ne pouvons pas

  FUIRE

  . Nous pouvons seulement

  être enlevés

  par force, comme c’est la force qui nous a emmenés de Tobolsk. Ainsi, ne comptez sur

  aucune aide active

  de notre part. Le commandant a beaucoup d’aides, les changent souvent et sont devenu

  soucieux

  . Ils gardent notre emprisonnement ainsi nos vies consciencensement et son bien avec nous. Nous ne voulons pas qu’ils souffrent à cause de nous, ni vous pour nous. Surtout au nom de Dieu évitez l’effusion de sang. Renseignez vous sur eux vous même. Une descente de la fenêtre sans escalier est completement impossible. Même descendu on est encore en grand danger à cause de la fenêtre ouverte de la chambre des commandants et la mitrailleuse de l’étage en bas, où l’on pénètre de la cour intérieure. [Crossed out: Renoncez donc à l’idée de nous enlever.] Si vous veillez sur nous, vous pouvez toujours venir nous sauver

  en cas

  de danger imminent et réel. Nous ignorons completement ce qui si passe a l’extérieur, ne recevant ni journaux, ni lettres. Depuis qu’on a permi d’ouvrir la fenêtre, la surveillance a augmenté et on défend même de sortir la tête, au risque de recevoir un balle dans la figure.

  *

  At this stage the spurious rescue operation was aborted. The Imperial family received yet another, fourth and final, secret communication, which had to have been written after July 4 because it requested information about the new commandant of Ipatev’s, who replaced Avdeev on that day. It was a crude fabrication of the Cheka, which assured the Imperial family that its friends “D and T”—obviously, Dolgorukii and Tatishchev—had already been “saved,” whereas in fact both had been executed the previous month.

  After these experiences, the appearance of Nicholas and the children changed: Sokolov’s witnesses told him they looked “exhausted.”63

  Although it has been the undeviating practice of Communist authorities then and since to lay responsibility for the decision to execute the Imperial family on the Ural Regional Soviet, this version, made up to exonerate Lenin, is certainly misleading. It can be established that the final decision to “liquidate” the Romanovs was taken personally by Lenin, most likely at the beginning of July. One could have inferred this fact much from the knowledge that no provincial soviet would have dared to act on a matter of such importance without explicit authorization from the center. Sokolov was convinced of Lenin’s responsibility in 1925, when he published the results of his investigation. But there exists incontrovertible positive evidence to this effect from no less an authority than Trotsky. In 1935, Trotsky read in an émigré newspaper an account of the death of the Imperial family. This prodded his memory and he wrote in his diary:

  My next visit to Moscow took place after Ekaterinburg had already fallen [i.e., after July 25]. Speaking with Sverdlov, I asked in passing, “Oh yes, and where is the Tsar?” “Finished,” he replied. “He has been shot.” “And where is the family?” “The family along with him.” “All?” I asked, apparently with a trace of surprise. “All,” Sverdlov replied. “Why?” He awaited my reaction. I made no reply. “And who decided the matter?” I inquired. “We decided it here. Ilich thought that we should not leave the Whites a live banner, especially under the present difficult circumstances …” I asked no more questions and considered the matter closed.

  64

  Sverdlov’s offhand remark undercuts once and for all the official version that Nicholas and his family had been executed on the initiative of the Ekaterinburg authorities to prevent them from either escaping or being captured by the Czechs. The decision fell not in Ekaterinburg but in Moscow, at a time when the Bolshevik regime felt the ground giving way and feared a restoration of the monarchy—a prospect that only a year earlier would have appeared too fantastic to contemplate.*

  At the end of June, Goloshchekin, the most powerful Bolshevik in the Urals and a friend of Sverdlov’s, left Ekaterinburg for Moscow. His mission, according to Bykov, was to discuss the fate of the Romanovs with the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets.65 That the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks and Goloshchekin in particular wanted the Romanovs out of the way is well established: hence it can reasonably be deduced that he sought from Moscow authorization to proceed with the execution. Lenin approved this request.

  The determination to execute the ex-Tsar, and possibly the rest of his immediate family, seems to have been taken in the first days of July, very likely at the meeting of the Sovnarkom in the evening of July 2. Two facts speak in favor of this hypothesis.

  One of the items on the agenda of this Sovnarkom session was the nationalization of the properties of the Romanov family. A commission was appointed to draft a decree to this effect.66 This could hardly have been considered an urgent matter in those critical days, given that all the Romanovs living under Communist rule were either in jail or in exile and their properties had long been taken over by the state or distributed to peasants. It seems likely, therefore, to have been raised in connection with the decision to execute Nicholas. A decree formally nationalizing the properties of the Romanov family was signed into law on July 13, three days before the murder, but in an unusual departure from practice not published until six days later—that is, on the day the news of the murder was made public.67

  The other fact which speaks in favor of this conjecture is that immediately afterward, on July 4, the responsibility for guarding the Imperial family was shifted from the Ekaterinburg Soviet to the Cheka. On July 4, Beloborodov wired to the Kremlin:

  Moscow. Chairman Central Executive Committee Sverdlov for Goloshchekin. Syromolotov just departed to organize affairs in accord with center’s instructions fears groundless stop Avdeev replaced his assistant Koshkin [Moshkin] arrested instead Avdeev Iurovskii internal guard all changed replaced by others stop Beloborodov

  *

  Iakov Mikhailovich Iurovskii, the head of the Ekaterinburg Cheka, was the grandson of a Jewish convict sentenced for an ordinary crime and exiled to Siberia long before the Revolution. After a sketchy education he was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Tomsk. During the 1905 Revolution he joined the Bolsheviks. Later he spent some time in Berlin, where he converted to Lutheranism. On returning to Russia, he was exiled to Ekaterinburg, where he opened a photographic studio said to have served as a secret meeting place for Bolsheviks. During the war, he underwent paramedical training. On the outbreak of the February Revolution, he deserted and returned to Ekaterinburg, where he agitated among soldiers against the war. In October 1917, the Ural Regional Soviet appointed him “Commissar of Justice,” following which he joined the Cheka. He
was by all accounts a sinister person, full of resentment and frustration, a type that gravitated to the Bolsheviks in those days and provided prime recruits for the secret police. From interrogations of his wife and family, Sokolov obtained the portrait of a self-important, willful man, with a domineering, cruel disposition.68 Alexandra took an instant dislike to him, calling him “vulgar and unpleasant.” He had several virtues which made him valuable to the Cheka: scrupulous honesty in dealing with state property, unrestrained brutality, and considerable psychological insight.

  98. The murderer of Nicholas II, Iurovskii (upper right), with his family.

  The first thing Iurovskii did upon taking charge of Ipatev’s house was to put a stop to the stealing: this indeed presented a danger from the point of view of security, because thieving guards could be bribed to carry messages to and from the prisoners outside Cheka channels and even help them escape. On his first day, he had the Imperial family produce all the valuables in its possession (minus those which, unknown to him, the women had sewn into their undergarments). After making an inventory, he placed the jewelry in a sealed box, which he allowed the family to keep but inspected daily. Iurovskii also put a lock on the shed where the family’s luggage was stored. Nicholas, always ready to think the best of others, believed that these measures were taken for his family’s benefit:

  [Iurovskii and his assistant] explained that an

  unpleasant

  incident had occurred in our house; they mentioned the loss of our belongings.… I feel sorry for Avdeev that he is guilty of not having prevented his men from stealing out of the trunks in the shed.… Iurovskii and his assistant begin to understand

  what

  sort of people had surrounded and guarded us, stealing from us.

  *

  Alexandra’s diary confirms that on July 4 the internal guards were replaced by a fresh crew. Nicholas thought they were Latvians, and so did the captain of the guard when interrogated by Sokolov. But at the time the term “Latvians” was applied loosely to all kinds of pro-Communist foreigners. Sokolov learned that Iurovskii spoke with five of the ten new arrivals in German.69 There can be little doubt that they were Hungarian prisoners of war, some of them Magyars, some Magyarized Germans.† They had moved from the Cheka headquarters, housed at the American Hotel.70

  This was the execution squad. Iurovskii assigned them to the lower floor. He himself did not move into Ipatev’s house, preferring to stay with his wife, mother, and two children. Into the commandant’s room moved his assistant, Grigorii Petrovich Nikulin.

  On July 7, Lenin instructed Ekaterinburg to grant the chairman of the Ural Regional Soviet, Beloborodov, direct wire access to the Kremlin. He acted in response to Beloborodov’s request of June 28 for such access “in view of the extraordinary importance of events.”71 Until July 25, when Ekaterinburg fell to the Czechs, all communications between the Kremlin and that city on military matters and the fate of the Romanovs were conducted by means of this channel, often in cipher.

  Goloshchekin returned from Moscow on July 12 carrying the death warrant. On the same day, he reported to the Executive Committee of the Soviet on “the attitude of central authority toward the execution of the Romanovs.” He said that Moscow had originally intended to try the ex-Tsar, but in view of the proximity of the front, this ceased to be feasible: the Romanovs were to be executed.72 The Committee rubber-stamped Moscow’s decision.73 Now, as afterward, Ekaterinburg assumed responsibility for the execution, pretending that it was an emergency measure to prevent the Imperial family from falling into Czech hands.‡

  The following day, July 15, Iurovskii was seen in the woods north of Ekaterinburg. He was looking for a place to dispose of the bodies.

  The Imperial family suspected nothing because Iurovskii maintained a strict routine at Ipatev’s and with his solicitous manner even gained its trust. On June 25/July 8, Nicholas wrote: “Our life has not changed in any respect under Iurovskii.” Indeed, in some respects it improved, for the family now received all the provisions brought by the nuns, whereas Avdeev’s guards used to steal them. On July II, workmen installed iron railings on the single open window, but this too did not strike them as unusual: “Always fright of our climbing out no doubt or getting into contact with the sentry,” Alexandra noted. Now that the Cheka had given up its plan of a spurious escape, Iurovskii wanted to take no chances on a genuine escape. On Sunday, July 14, he permitted a priest to come and say mass. As he was leaving, the priest thought he had heard one of the princesses whisper: “Thank you.”74 On July 15, Iurovskii, who had some medical knowledge, spent time with the bed-ridden Alexis, discussing his health. The next day he brought him some eggs. On July 16, two charwomen came to clean. They told Sokolov that the family seemed in fine spirits and that the princesses laughed as they helped them make the beds.

  All this time, the Imperial family was still hoping to hear from their rescuers. The last entry in Nicholas’s diary, dated June 30/July 13, reads: “We have no news from the outside.”

  Until recently, the bloody events which transpired at Ipatev’s house on the night of July 16–17 were known almost entirely from the evidence gathered by Sokolov’s commission. The Bolsheviks abandoned Ekaterinburg to the Czechs on July 25. Russians who entered the city with the Czechs rushed to Ipatev’s house: they found it empty and in disarray. On July 30 an inquiry opened to determine the fate of the Imperial family, but the investigators allowed precious months to pass without any serious effort. In January 1919, Admiral Kolchak, recently proclaimed Supreme Ruler, appointed General M. K. Diterikhs to direct the work, but Diterikhs lacked the necessary qualifications and in February was replaced by the Siberian lawyer Nicholas Sokolov. For the next two years Sokolov pursued with unflagging determination every eyewitness and every material clue. When forced to flee Russia in 1920, he carried with him the records of his investigation. These materials and the monograph he wrote on the basis of them provide the principal evidence on the Ekaterinburg tragedy.* The recent publication of the recollections of Iurovskii supplements and amplifies the depositions of P. Medvedev, the captain of the guard, and additional witnesses whom Sokolov had questioned.75

  The Imperial family spent July 16 in its customary manner. Judging by the final entry in Alexandra’s diary, made at 11 p.m. as the family retired for the night, they had no premonition that anything unusual was about to happen.

  Iurovskii had been busy all that day. Having selected the place where the bodies were to be cremated and interred—an abandoned mineshaft near the village of Koptiaki—he arranged for a Fiat truck to park inside the palisade by the main entrance to Ipatev’s house. At the approach of evening, he asked Medvedev to relieve the guards of their revolvers. Medvedev collected twelve revolvers of the Nagan type, standard issue for Russian officers, each capable of firing seven bullets, and took them to the commandant’s room. At 6 p.m. Iurovskii fetched from the kitchen Leonid Sednev, the cook’s apprentice, and sent him away: he told the worried Romanovs that the boy was to meet his uncle, the valet Ivan Sednev. He was lying, because the elder Sednev had been shot by the Cheka weeks before, but even so it was his only humane act during these days, for it saved the child’s life. Around 10 p.m., he told Medvedev to inform the guards that the Romanovs would be executed that night and not to be alarmed when they heard shots. The truck, which was due at midnight, arrived one and half hours late, which delayed the execution.

  Iurovskii awakened Dr. Botkin at 1:30 a.m. and asked him to arouse the others. He explained that there was unrest in the city and for their safety they were to be moved to the lower floor. This explanation must have sounded convincing, for residents of Ipatev’s house had often heard sounds of shooting from the streets: the preceding day Alexandra noted hearing during the night an artillery shot and several revolver shots.* It took the eleven prisoners half an hour to wash and dress. Around 2 a.m. they descended the stairs. Iurovskii led the way. Next came Nicholas with Alexis in his arms: both wore military shirts and caps. Th
en followed the Empress and her daughters, Anastasia with her pet King Charles spaniel, Jemmy, and Dr. Botkin. Demidova carried two pillows, concealed in one of which was a box with jewelry76. Behind her came the valet, Trup, and the cook, Kharitonov. Unknown to the family, the execution squad of ten, six of them Hungarians, the rest Russians, was in an adjoining room. According to Medvedev, the family “appeared calm as if expecting no danger.”

  At the bottom of the inner staircase, the procession stepped into the courtyard and turned left to descend to the lower floor. They were taken to the opposite end of the house, to a room previously occupied by the guards, five meters wide and six meters long, from which all furniture had been removed. It had one window, half-moon in shape, high on the outer wall, barred with a grille, and only one open door. There was a second door at the opposite end, leading to a storage space, but it was locked. The room was a cul-de-sac.

  Alexandra wondered why there were no chairs. Iurovskii, as always obliging, ordered two chairs to be brought in, on one of which Nicholas placed his son; Alexandra took the other. The rest were told to line up. A few minutes later, Iurovskii reentered the room in the company of ten armed men. He thus describes the scene that ensued:

  When the party entered, [I] told the Romanovs that in view of the fact that their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking “What? What?” [I] rapidly repeated what I had said and ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously told whom to shoot and to aim directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. He turned again toward his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot.