Preston knew nothing of attempts to rescue the Tsar, and Bykov found plots seething on every corner. Almost certainly, the truth was that there were people anxious to rescue the Imperial family who were never able to put their intentions into a workable plan. Two letters of reasonable authenticity supporting this view are quoted by General M. K. Dieterichs, Chief-of-Staff of Admiral Kolchak’s White Army, who assisted in the subsequent exhaustive White inquiry into the Tsar’s imprisonment and murder. The first letter was a message from an anonymous White officer to the Tsar:
“With God’s help and your prudence we hope to achieve our object without running any risk. It is necessary to unfasten one of your windows, so that you can open it; please let me know exactly which. If the little Tsarevich cannot walk, matters will be very complicated, but we have weighed this up too, and I do not consider it an insurmountable obstacle. Let us know definitely whether you need two men to carry him and whether any of you could undertake this work. Could not the little one be put to sleep for an hour or two with some drug? Let the doctor decide, only you must know the time exactly beforehand. We will supply all that is necessary. Be sure that we shall undertake nothing unless we are absolutely certain of success beforehand. We give you our solemn pledge of this before God, history and our own conscience.” The letter was signed: “Officer.”
The second letter quoted by Dieterichs is Nicholas’s reply:
“The second window from the corner, looking out onto the square, has been kept open for two days already, even at night. The seventh and eight windows near the main entrance … are likewise kept open. The room is occupied by the commandant and his assistants who constitute the inner guard at the present time. They number thirteen, armed with rifles, revolvers and grenades. No room but ours has keys. The commandant and their assistants can enter our quarters whenever they please. The orderly officer makes the round of the house twice an hour at night and we hear his arms clattering under our windows. One machine gun stands on the balcony and one above it, for an emergency. Opposite our windows on the other side of the street is the [outside] guard in a little house. It consists of fifty men.… In any case, inform us when there is a chance and let us know whether we can take our people [servants].… From every post there is a bell to the commandant and a signal to the guard room and other places. If our people stay behind, can we be certain that nothing will happen to them?”
Along with the letters, Nicholas’s diary clearly indicates that something was up. On June 27, he wrote: “We spent an anxious night, and kept up our spirits, fully dressed. All this was because a few days ago we received two letters, one after the other, in which we were told to get ready to be rescued by some devoted people, but days passed and nothing happened and the waiting and the uncertainty were very painful.”
On July 4, uncertainty was replaced by fear. On that day, Avadeyev, whose drunkenness and thieving had become well known, was suddenly replaced along with his factory-worker guards. Their places were taken by a quietly efficient squad of ten “Letts” of the Bolshevik Cheka, or Secret Police, sent from Cheka headquarters in Ekaterinburg’s Hotel America. In fact, the new men were not Letts, as uneducated Russians tended to call any foreigners who spoke in strange Germanic tongues. At least five of them were Magyars, taken as prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian army and hired by the Cheka for use in jobs at which they suspected native Russians might balk. Their leader, Jacob Yurovsky, was a Russian who had been a watchmaker in Tomsk and had become a photographic dealer in Ekaterinburg. When the Bolsheviks seized power, he became an active, efficient member of the secret police. Although Yurovsky’s behavior was entirely correct, he was so chillingly cold that Nicholas immediately found him sinister. “This specimen we like least of all,” he wrote in his diary. His apprehension was thoroughly justified. From the moment of Yurovsky’s appearance, the fate of the Imperial family was sealed. The Cheka squad were not guards, but executioners.
Of everything that was to follow, Sverdlov and Moscow had full knowledge. Avadeyev had been replaced not only because of his pilfering, but because members of the Regional Soviet and the Central Executive Committee had sensed the change in the feelings of his men for the prisoners and realized that he was losing control. On July 4, the reassuring news of his replacement was telegraphed to Sverdlov: “Anxiety unnecessary. Useless to worry.… Avadeyev replaced by Yurovsky. Inside guard changed, replaced by others.” The planning of the prisoners’ fate now moved swiftly forward.
The Ural Soviet had never been in any doubt as to what to do with Nicholas. Soon after his arrival in Ekaterinburg, the Soviet decided unanimously in favor of execution. Unwilling to take this responsibility upon themselves, they sent Goloshchekin to Moscow to learn the attitude of the central government. Goloshchekin was not a local Ekaterinburg man. Born in the Baltic provinces, he was a professional revolutionary who had escaped abroad and attached himself to Lenin. He knew Sverdlov well and while in Moscow stayed with him. Goloshchekin learned on his visit that the leaders had not yet decided what to do with the Tsar; they were still toying with Trotsky’s idea of holding a public trial at the end of July with Trotsky himself as prosecutor.
Before this could be arranged, however, there was a sudden dip in Bolshevik fortunes which, ironically, was to have a disastrous effect on the prisoners’ fate. Civil war and foreign intervention had begun to challenge Boshevism’s feeble grip on Russia. Already American marines and British soldiers had landed at Murmansk. In the Ukraine, Generals Alexeiev, Kornilov and Deniken had organized a White Volunteer Army in cooperation with the fiercely independent Don Cossacks. In Siberia, an independent Czech Legion of forty-five thousand men was advancing westward. They had taken Omsk and were moving rapidly toward Tyumen and Ekaterinburg. The Czechs were former prisoners of war taken from the Austro-Hungarian army, reorganized and equipped by Kerensky to fight on the Russian front for the freedom of their homeland. When the Bolsheviks arrived and made peace, Trotsky had agreed that the stranded Czechs be permitted to leave Russia by way of Siberia, Vladivostock and the Pacific to sail around the world to France and there resume the fight. The Czechs were already in Siberia headed eastward in a string of trains on the Trans-Siberian Railroad when the German General Staff vigorously objected to their passage and demanded that the Bolsheviks block and disarm them. The Bolsheviks tried, but the Czechs fought back. Already a formidable force in that chaotic arena, the Czechs were strengthened by anti-Bolshevik Russian officers and soldiers. It was the rapidly mounting threat of this advancing army which forced the Bolsheviks to abandon their thoughts of a show trial of the former Tsar and make other plans for Nicholas and his family.
On July 12, Goloshchekin returned from Moscow and appeared before the Ural Soviet to declare that the party leaders were willing to leave the fate of the Romanovs in their hands. The commander of the Red military forces was asked how long Ekaterinburg could hold out against the Whites. He reported that the Czechs already had outflanked the city from the south, and that Ekaterinburg might fall within three days. Upon hearing this, the Ural Soviet decided to shoot the entire family as soon as possible and to destroy all evidence of the act.
Yurovsky was given this order on the 13th, and at once preparations for the massacre began. For the next three days, Yurovsky and Goloshchekin made trips into the woods around the city, looking for a place to hide the remains. Fourteen miles from Ekaterinburg, near the village of Koptyaki, they discovered a suitable site: an abandoned mine shaft close to four lonely pine trees known to the peasants as the “Four Brothers.” At the same time, Voikov, another member of the Ural Soviet, began buying drums containing 150 gallons of gasoline and 400 pounds of sulfuric acid.
The prisoners quickly sensed the change in mood. Yurovsky was not the drunken bully that Avadeyev had been. He did not rant about “Bloody Nicholas” and appeared to have no strong feelings about his captives. He was a professional; they were simply his next assignment. Two women who came to the house to scrub the floors saw Yu
rovsky sitting and asking the Tsarevich about his health. Earlier that same day, Yurovsky had been at the “Four Brothers” supervising preparations.
The great change in the family’s attitude these last days was noted by an Ekaterinburg priest who had been permitted once before to enter the House of Special Purpose to read the service. On his first visit, at the end of May, he noticed that although the Empress seemed tired and ill, Nicholas and his daughters were in good spirits. Alexis, although unable to walk, had been carried to the service on a cot. He seemed happy, and when Father Storozhov approached with the crucifix, the boy looked up at him with bright, merry eyes. On July 14, when the priest returned, the change was marked. The family appeared extremely anxious and depressed. When the deacon sang the prayer “At Rest with the Saints,” the family knelt and one of the girls sobbed openly. This time, when the crucifix was brought to Alexis, the priest found him pale and thin, lying in a white nightshirt with a blanket covering him up to the waist. His eyes, looking up, were still clear, but sad and distracted.
On July 16, the day of the murder, Yurovsky ordered the kitchen boy sent away from the house. At four in the afternoon, the Tsar and his four daughters went for their usual walk in the garden. At seven p.m., Yurovsky summoned all the Cheka men into his room and ordered them to collect all the revolvers from the outside guards. With twelve heavy military revolvers lying before him on the table, he said, “Tonight, we will shoot the whole family, everybody. Notify the guards outside not to be alarmed if they hear shots.”
The decision was carefully hidden from the family. That night, at 10:30, they went innocently to bed. At midnight, Yurovsky awakened them, telling them to dress quickly and come downstairs. He explained that the Czechs and the White Army were approaching Ekaterinburg and that the Regional Soviet had decided that they must be moved. Still unsuspecting, the family dressed and Nicholas and Alexis put on their military caps. Nicholas came down the stairs first, carrying Alexis. The sleepy boy had his arms tightly around his father’s neck. The others followed, with Anastasia clutching the spaniel Jimmy. On the ground floor, Yurovsky led them to a small semi-basement room, sixteen by eighteen feet, with a heavy iron grill over the window. Here, he asked them to wait until the automobiles arrived.
Nicholas asked for chairs so that his wife and son could sit while they waited. Yurovsky ordered three chairs brought and Alexandra took one. Nicholas took another, using his arm and shoulder to support Alexis, who lay back across the third chair. Behind their mother stood the four girls and Dr. Botkin, the valet Trupp, the cook Kharitonov and Demidova, the Empress’s parlormaid. Demidova carried two pillows, one of which she placed in the chair behind the Empress’s back. The other pillow she clutched tightly. Inside, sewed deep into the feathers, was a box containing a collection of the Imperial jewels.
When all were assembled, Yurovsky reentered the room, followed by his entire Cheka squad carrying revolvers. He stepped forward and declared quickly, “Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed and we must now shoot you.”
Nicholas, his arm still around Alexis, began to rise from his chair to protect his wife and son. He had just time to say “What …?” before Yurovsky pointed his revolver directly at the Tsar’s head and fired. Nicholas died instantly. At this signal, the entire squad of executioners began to shoot. Alexandra had time only to raise her hand and make the sign of the cross before she too was killed by a single bullet. Olga, Tatiana and Marie, standing behind their mother, were hit and died quickly. Botkin, Kharitonov and Trupp also fell in the hail of bullets. Demidova, the maid, survived the first volley, and rather than reload, the executioners took rifles from the next room and pursued her, stabbing with bayonets. Screaming, running back and forth along the wall like a trapped animal, she tried to fend them off with the cushion. At last she fell, pierced by bayonets more than thirty times. Jimmy the spaniel was killed when his head was crushed by a rifle butt.
The room, filled with the smoke and stench of gunpowder, became suddenly quiet. Blood was running in streams from the bodies on the floor. Then there was a movement and a low groan. Alexis, lying on the floor still in the arms of the Tsar, feebly moved his hand to clutch his father’s coat. Savagely, one of the executioners kicked the Tsarevich in the head with his heavy boot. Yurovsky stepped up and fired two shots into the boy’s ear. Just at that moment, Anastasia, who had only fainted, regained consciousness and screamed. With bayonets and rifle butts, the entire band turned on her. In a moment, she too lay still. It was ended.
Epilogue
THE bodies were wrapped in sheets and placed in a truck outside the cellar. Before dawn, the vehicle with its sickening cargo reached the “Four Brothers” and the process of dismembering and destroying the bodies began. Each body was carefully cut into pieces with axes and saws, then placed in a bonfire kept burning fiercely with frequent soakings of gasoline. As the ax blades cut into the clothing, many of the jewels sewed inside were crushed, and the fragments spilled out into the high grass or were ground into the mud. As expected, many of the larger bones resisted fire and had to be dissolved with sulfuric acid. The process was neither easy nor quick; for three days, Yurovsky’s ghouls labored at their macabre work. Finally, the ashes and residue were thrown into the pool of water at the bottom of the mine shaft. So satisfied were the murderers that they had obliterated all traces that Voikov, the member of the Ural Soviet who purchased the gasoline and acid, proudly declared, “The world will never know what we did with them.” Later Voikov became Soviet Ambassador to Poland.
Eight days after the murder, Ekaterinburg fell to the advancing Whites, and a group of officers rushed to the Ipatiev house. In the courtyard, half famished, they found the Tsarevich’s spaniel Joy, wandering about as if in search of his master. The house itself was empty, but its appearance was sinister. The basement room had been thoroughly mopped and scrubbed, but the walls and floors bore the scratches and scars of bullets and bayonets. From the wall against which the family had been standing, large pieces of plaster had fallen away. It was obvious that some kind of massacre had taken place in the room. But it was impossible to tell how many victims there had been.
An immediate search for the family led nowhere. Not until the following January (1919) did a thorough investigation begin when Admiral Kolchak, “Supreme Ruler” of the White government in Siberia, selected Nicholas Sokolov, a trained legal investigator, to undertake the task. Sokolov, assisted by both of the Tsarevich’s tutors, Gilliard and Gibbs, located the mine and uncovered a wealth of tragic evidence. For Gilliard, especially, the work was excruciating. “But the children—the children?” he cried when Sokolov first told him of the preliminary findings. “The children have suffered the same fate as their parents,” replied Sokolov sadly. “There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind on that point.”
Before the investigation was concluded, hundreds of articles and fragments had been collected, identified and catalogued. Even the heart-broken Gilliard was convinced. Among the objects collected were these: the Tsar’s belt buckle; the Tsarevich’s belt buckle; an emerald cross given to the Empress Alexandra by the Dowager Empress Marie; a pearl earring from a pair always worn by Alexandra; the Ulm Cross, a jubilee badge adorned with sapphires and diamonds, presented by Her Majesty’s Own Uhlan Guards; and fragments of a sapphire ring which had become so tight on Nicholas’s finger that he could not take it off.
In addition, the investigators found a metal pocket case in which Nicholas always carried his wife’s portrait; three small icons worn by the Grand Duchess (on each icon, the face of the saint had been destroyed by heavy blows); the Empress’s spectacle case; six sets of women’s corsets (the Empress, her four daughters and Demidova made exactly six); fragments of the military caps worn by Nicholas and Alexis; shoe buckles belonging to the Grand Duchesses; and Dr. Botkin’s eyeglasses and false teeth.
There were also a number of charred bones, partly destroyed by acid but still bearing the mark of ax and saw; revolver bullets, many
of which had been reduced by heat to molten blobs; and a severed human finger belonging to a middle-aged woman. It was slender and manicured like the Empress’s.
The investigators collected an assortment of nails, tinfoil, copper coins and a small lock which puzzled them until they were shown to Gilliard. He immediately identified them as part of the pocketful of odds and ends always carried by the Tsarevich. Finally, mangled but unburned, the little corpse of the spaniel Jimmy was found at the bottom of the pit. For some reason, the murderers had taken great care to destroy the bodies of the owners, but had ignored the still recognizable body of their pet.
Later, to confirm this evidence, the Whites added the depositions of captured members of the guard at the House of Special Purpose, who described the execution. Later still, Sokolov’s findings were fully confirmed from the Bolshevik side by P. M. Bykov, Chairman of the Ekaterinburg Soviet.
Within a few hours of the murder, a report was telegraphed to Moscow. On July 18, the Presidium of the Central Executive Council approved the action. That night, as the Commissar of Health was reading a draft of a new public-health law to the Council of People’s Commissars, Sverdlov came into the hall and whispered to Lenin, who interrupted the speaker.
Nicholas and Alexandra Page 65
