Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  As winter loosened its grip on Siberia, life became precarious for Alexandra Feodorovna. In April, Alexei was felled by another crippling attack of hemophilia brought on by sliding down a flight of stairs on a sled and made worse by whooping cough. A few days later, his upper abdomen filled with blood, and he had a soaring fever. He stopped eating for days, growing pale and thin as a result. The boy was forced to endure unbearable pain, but this time there were no teams of doctors—or even simple comforts—to ease his suffering. All that the poor child had was his family, their physician Dr. Botkin, and one vial of morphine that was to be used for the entire family in only the worst emergencies. “I would like to die, Mama,” Alexei muttered; “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m so afraid of what they might do to us here.”1022 The situation became even more heartrending for Alexandra when her captors insisted on transferring Nicholas from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg, deep in the Siberian frontier, only fifty miles from the border dividing Asia from Europe.

  The news made Alexandra’s heart sink because it was widely known that Ekaterinburg was home to the most fanatically radical group of Bolsheviks in all of Russia. Terrified for her husband’s life, she was torn between accompanying Nicholas and staying with her son. It was a devastating decision for a wife and mother, and she came to an impasse. The person who finally made the decision for Alexandra was the resolute Tatiana. “You cannot go on tormenting yourself like this,” she told her mother. Alexandra chose to join her husband and leave Alexei in the care of his loving sisters and Dr. Botkin. “It is the hardest moment of my life,” she admitted to her maid. “You know what my son is to me, and I must choose between him and my husband. But I have made up my mind. I must be firm. I must leave my child and share my husband’s life or death.”1023 The decision was also made easier when they were allowed to bring Marie and several of their servants with them.

  The night before Nicholas, Alexandra, and their group departed, tea was served to the family in Alexandra’s room. It was a solemn scene where no one tried to feign happiness. The next day, there was nothing but tears at the Governor’s Mansion: “With superhuman effort Alexandra tore herself from the house where her sick son, Alexei, could be heard crying wildly: ‘Mother, mother.’”1024 The long, arduous journey was made on carts covered with straw and mattresses. Alexandra had to be lifted onto the back of the only hooded cart because she had been suffering chest pains and had not slept the night before. On April 30, the three Romanovs were delivered into the custody of Alexander Beloborodov, chairman of the Ural soviet. “In one of Russian history’s more frightful gestures,” a receipt was issued for the acquisition of the three captives:

  1. The former tsar, Nicholas Alexandrovitch Romanov.

  2. The former tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova.

  3. The former Grand Duchess Marie Nicholaievna Romanova.

  All to be kept under guard

  in the city of Ekaterinburg.1025

  Weeks of uncertainty passed for the children who remained at Tobolsk because they received no word from their parents since they had left. When they finally received the news that their parents and sister had arrived in Ekaterinburg, the girls and Alexei were ecstatic. “We were so terribly glad to receive news, we kept on sharing our impressions!” Anastasia wrote to Marie. “I am always with you dears in my thoughts. It’s so terribly sad and lonely. I just don’t know what to do. The Lord helps and will help.”1026

  Fearful that monarchist forces would try to liberate the Romanovs still in Tobolsk, the Bolsheviks decided to relocate them to Ekaterinburg as well. They were reunited with their parents at 2:00 a.m. on the morning of May 23. Their arrival in Ekaterinburg was harrowing. An angry mob formed as their train pulled into the station, demanding to see the Romanovs and crying out for them to be hanged. It was a hatred the likes of which Alexandra’s children never knew before. The “petty humiliations and uncertainties endured by [the children] in the year since their father’s abdication must have been replaced by the first very real fears for their lives.”1027 If they had thought the conditions in Tobolsk were restrictive, they were wholly unprepared for what awaited them at their new home, the Ipatiev House, along Voznesensky Prospect. Originally belonging to a local businessman named Nicholas Ipatiev, the house was seized by the Bolsheviks, who gave the owner twenty-four hours’ notice to vacate. They unnervingly renamed it “the House of Special Purpose.” It was turned into a prison with a stockade, high fence, and seventy-five armed guards on duty twenty-four hours a day. As with so much else in the lives of Alexandra and her family, the selection of the Ipatiev House was both fateful and ominous. The Romanov dynasty began in 1613 at the ironically though coincidentally named Ipatiev Monastery at Kostroma on the Volga River, when the sixteen-year-old Michael Romanov became the first tsar. Three centuries later, the dynasty would end at the Ipatiev House.

  At Ekaterinburg, the family’s last bit of dignity was stripped away. Nearly all of their servants were sent away, save for Dr. Botkin; the maid Anna Demidova; the cook Ivan Kharitonov; the footman Ivan Sednev and his twelve-year-old nephew Leonid, the kitchen boy; and the valets Alexei Trupp and Terenty Chemodurov. The family’s personal belongings, packed into suitcases at Tobolsk, were torn open, and most of their goods were stolen by revolutionary soldiers. “So far we have had polite treatment and men who were gentlemen but now,…”1028 Alexandra remarked when their belongings were stolen. The only two pieces of jewelry that she continued to wear were bracelets given to her by her uncle the Duke of Albany, which she could no longer get off her wrists. Inside the house, the Romanovs were crammed into three small rooms on the south side of the upper floor; Alexei was initially given his own room but was eventually moved in with his parents. Alexandra’s four daughters shared a single room, sleeping on camp beds. Their servants were forced to sleep on pieces of furniture in hallways, kitchens, or closets. There were almost no furnishings, save for a few wardrobes, mirrors, and several military beds. The windows were completely whitewashed to prevent them from looking outside or signaling anyone on the street. Alexandra took these latest indignities in stride, but she was terribly anxious for the fate of Russia. “Although we suffer horribly still there is peace in our souls,” she wrote.1029 She later wrote to Anna Viroubova, “I suffer most for Russia … it is the sufferings of the innocent which nearly kills us.”1030

  The summer heat proved to be just as suffocating as the winter had been bone-chillingly cold. The intense heat waves were punctuated only by occasional, violent thunderstorms. In either weather, the guards refused to give the family permission to open the windows to let some of the heat out. The Romanovs had reached their nadir. They spent the long days and nights almost entirely in their tiny rooms, reading the Bible, praying softly, or playing bezique (a card game popular among royals). Alexandra settled into as much of a daily routine as she could. She awoke between eight and nine every morning and gathered with her family in one of the more comfortably furnished drawing rooms for prayer. Each day, she wrote her activities in her beloved diary. She never confided her innermost thoughts, hopes, or fears, knowing full well that the guards would read her entries. The diary had been a gift to her from Tatiana the previous Christmas, which she had sewn together by hand—on the first page was a handwritten inscription from the grand duchess: “To my sweet darling Mama…May God’s blessing be upon you and guard you for ever. Your ever loving girl, Tatiana.”1031 On rare occasions when weather permitted, the family was allowed to take exercise in the gardens after breakfast and later in the afternoon. Alexei and Nicholas loved the chance to take in the fresh air. Alexei, though, was still recuperating from the hemophilia attack he suffered during their last weeks in Tobolsk and could not walk yet and had to be carried by his father. More often than not, Alexandra was too ill to join her family. The pain in her back, legs, and head were crippling. One of her daughters, usually Olga or Tatiana, stayed with her, pressing a cold compress to her head or reading to her from the Psalms. In the evenings, Nicholas of
ten read aloud to his family, or they occasionally sang hymns. By eleven o’clock, everyone was usually in bed.

  Alexandra’s four daughters continued to be an invaluable, if not the only, source of strength for her. She was immensely proud of the Christian morality they displayed. A priest who was summoned to take confession for the family during their confinement noted of the Romanov girls, “Lord, let all children be morally upright as the children of the former tsar. Such mildness, restraint, obedience to their parents’ wishes, such absolute devotion to God’s will … and complete ignorance of worldly filth—either passionate or sinful—amazed them.”1032 Even the soldiers on duty at the Ipatiev House could not help but be impressed by the family’s quiet dignity and grace under fire. Analoy Yakimov, one of the guards, admitted how his feelings had changed once the Romanovs arrived: “After I had seen them several times I began to feel entirely different toward them. I began to pity them. I pitied them as human beings … I kept on saying to myself, ‘Let them escape, or do something to allow them to escape.’”1033 Hope for escape was something Alexandra held on to during this desperate period. A number of well-meaning monarchist groups planned but never carried out rescue attempts. Rescue seemed so real in late 1917 and early 1918 that Alexandra drew up plans of the Ipatiev House and had them smuggled out. “The friends sleep no longer, and hope the hour so long awaited has arrived,” she wrote cryptically to a sympathizer at the end of June 1918. “The revolt of the Czechoslovaks menaces the Bolsheviks more and more seriously. Samara, Cheliabinsk and the whole of Siberia, eastern and western, are under the control of the provincial national government [the White, monarchist government]. The army of the Slavic friends is eighty kilometers from Ekaterinburg.”1034

  Throughout the last weeks of June, a sense of hope gripped the Romanov family. A public announcement was made that Nicholas’s brother Grand Duke Michael escaped Russia with the help of monarchist armies. The ghastly truth was that, on the night of June 13, the Bolsheviks executed Michael in the forest near Perm. A week later, Alexandra received a letter signed by “An Officer of the Russian Army,” who wrote explicit instructions for the family’s rescue: “Be ready all the time, day and night. Make a sketch of your two rooms, the places of the furniture, of the beds. Write exactly when you all go to bed. One of you should not sleep between two and three o’clock all the following nights.” From then on, the family changed their routine. They began packing away clothes when the guards were not looking. Following their instructions, one member of the family stayed awake each night listening for a signal. A second letter informed them that the signal would be a whistle in the night. Once they heard it, they were to barricade the door to their room and then escape out the window. “The means for getting away are not lacking and the escape is surer than ever,” the mysterious officer wrote. June 27—Marie’s nineteenth birthday—arrived, and there was still no sign of their rescuers. That night, the entire family lay awake in their clothes, sweating from the intense heat, anxiously listening for a whistle. It never came. The sun began to rise, and Nicholas and Alexandra realized there would be no escape. “The waiting and uncertainty were torture,” Nicholas wrote in his diary.1035 Only years later was it revealed that there was no rescue plan. The letters had been concocted by the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, to gain evidence of the family’s supposedly traitorous motives. Nicholas and Alexandra had no way of knowing that all of their letters to their would-be rescuers were being received by the Cheka at their headquarters, the Hotel America, a few streets away.

  By July 1918, Ekaterinburg was turning into a war zone. The White Army—made up of loyal army officers, monarchists, and conservatives—led by the Czechoslovaks was less than fifty miles away and advancing on the city. In response, the Bolsheviks fortified Ekaterinburg with weapons and artillery. Infantry comprised of Austrian prisoners of war were brought in to bolster the Bolsheviks’ ranks. When a seemingly uneventful change of guards took place a few days later, the family had no way of knowing that their new captors were the brutally violent Cheka, the same group who had sent the false rescue letters the previous month. Along with the Cheka came a new commandant of the Ipatiev House, the ruthless Jacob Yurovsky. Under this new dictator, the Romanovs’ freedoms became nonexistent. Outdoor exercise was forbidden, and the few personal belongings the family had left were taken by Yurovsky and locked away. He “made us show all our jewels we had on,” Alexandra wrote in her diary, “and the young one [Yurovsky’s assistant] wrote them all down in detail and then they were taken from us (where to, for how long, why?? don’t know).”1036

  They heard Mass on Sunday, July 14, when a priest named Father Ivan Storozhev and a deacon were brought to the house in what was unknowingly to be the last rites of Alexandra Feodorovna and her family. All the while, Yurovsky stood in a corner of the room watching. Storozhev later recalled his experience at the Ipatiev House:

  It seemed to me that on this occasion, Nicholas Alexandrovich and all of his daughters were—I won’t say in depressed spirits—but they gave the impression just the same of being exhausted.… According to the liturgy of the service it was customary at a certain point to read the prayer Who Resteth with the Saints. On this occasion, for some reason, the Deacon, instead of reading this prayer, began to sing it, and I as well, somewhat embarrassed by this departure from the ritual. But we had scarcely begun to sing when I heard the members of the Romanov family, standing behind me, fall on their knees. After the service everyone kissed the Holy Cross.… As I went out, I passed very close to the former Grand Duchesses and heard the scarcely audible words, “Thank you.”1037

  After the service, as Storozhev took his leave, Jacob Yurovsky made the bone-chilling comment, “Well, they’ve said their prayers and unburdened themselves.”1038 Later, the deacon remarked to Storozhev upon leaving the house, “You know, Father Archpresbyter, I think something must have happened there.”1039

  The day after this poignant service, two nuns from a local convent arrived with provisions for the family. Later in the morning, four women were brought in from the Ekaterinburg Union of Professional Housemaids to clean the family’s rooms. When they arrived, the Romanovs were playing cards at the dining room table. The women noticed that the grand duchesses seemed happy and vibrant, with little sign of worry or anxiety. After welcoming the maids with warm smiles, the girls accompanied them upstairs to help with the cleaning. The ominous Yurovsky stood at the door listening to the maids’ conversations with the girls. Anastasia became so fed up with him that when he turned and walked away, she stuck her tongue out and thumbed her nose at him. All eight women broke out laughing.

  The morning of Tuesday, July 16, was a gray, cloudy one remarkable for its excessive humidity. In the afternoon, when the clouds disappeared and a clear blue sky emerged, Nicholas and the children were allowed to walk in the gardens surrounding the house. Alexandra sat inside with Tatiana, reading from the Old Testament, specifically the prophets Obadiah and Amos. In the evening, the temperature was warm but comfortable. There seemed to be sympathy toward the family from the Cheka. Yurovsky even visited his prisoners to ask if there was anything they needed. When Nicholas asked for some simple medical supplies, eggs, dairy, and a little meat, Yurovsky said he would have them brought as quickly as possible. In her diary that night, Alexandra recorded the details of what was—unbeknownst to her—the last day of her life.

  July 3 (16). Tuesday. Irina’s [Princess Irina Youssopov, the tsar’s niece] 23rd BD. 11 [a.m.]. Gray morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby has a slight cold. All went out ½ hour in the morning. Olga and I arranged our medicines. T[atiana]. read. 3[p.m.] rel[igious] readings. They went out. T. stayed with me and we read the b[ooks] by pr[ophet]. Amos and pr. [prophet] Avdiy [Obadiah]. Talked. Every morning the superint. comes to our rooms, at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby. 8. Supper….Played bezique with N. 10½ to bed. 15 degrees.1040

  Around 2:00 a.m., the Romanovs were startled awake by Dr. Botkin. Yurovsky ordered him to ass
emble the family in the basement. They were ostensibly being moved to another location ahead of the monarchist White Army, which was only a matter of days away from capturing Ekaterinburg. The girls hastily dressed themselves while Nicholas carried a groggy Alexei downstairs. Accompanying the family was Dr. Botkin, the valet Alexei Trupp, the maid Anna Demidova, and the cook Ivan Kharitonov. The kitchen boy Leonid had been sent away the day before under the pretense he was joining his uncle Ivan, who had been removed from the Ipatiev House six weeks earlier. Unbeknownst to any of them, Ivan Sednev had already been executed.

  The group was led to the ground floor, through the courtyard, and back inside where they reached the staircase and entered the basement. In the damp, leaky room, Alexandra immediately protested the conditions. “Aren’t there even any chairs?” she asked, her face wincing from the pain in her legs. “Can we not sit down?”1041 She insisted that there should be at least three chairs: one for herself, Nicholas, and Alexei, who was still weak from his recent hemophilia attack. With no questions asked, three were brought in. Behind Yurovsky, one of his guards muttered under his breath that the “heir wanted to die in a chair. Very well then, let him have one.”1042 For nearly an hour, they waited in silence with no further explanation from the gruff soldiers guarding them. At three o’clock, a truck outside began running its engine as loudly as possible. No one seemed to notice that it drowned out all the other sounds from the area, including those from inside the house. A few minutes later, Yurovsky ordered the Romanovs to assume the positions for a formal photograph, which he insisted needed to be taken to prove to the Soviets that they had not been kidnapped by the White Army. Yurovsky left the room, presumably to get a camera, but when he returned, flanked by guards, there was no camera in sight. His face was pale, and his hands were clammy.