Nicholas and Alexandra (86 page)

"All my evil thoughts about the Tsar disappeared after I had stayed a certain time amongst the guards. After I had seen them several times I began to feel entirely different towards them; I began to pity them. I pitied them as human beings. I am telling you the entire truth. You may or may not believe me, but I kept on saying to myself, 'Let them escape ... do something to let them escape.' "

In the few days before Pierre Gilliard was forced to leave Ekaterinburg, he, along with Gibbs and Baroness Buxhoeveden, paid frequent calls on Thomas H. Preston, the British Consul in Ekaterinburg, urging him to do something to help the Imperial family. Preston was pessimistic.

"We spent long hours discussing ways and means of saving the royal family," said Preston later. "With 10,000 Red soldiers in the town and with Red spies at every corner and in every house, to have attempted anything in the nature of an escape would have been madness and fraught with the greatest danger to the royal family themselves. . . . There was never any organized attempt at Ekaterinburg to do so."

Preston's statement has been disputed by P. M. Bykov, Chairman of the Ekaterinburg Soviet, who saw a monarchist behind every tree. "From the first days of the Romanovs' transfer to Ekaterinburg," he

wrote, "there began to flock in monarchists in great numbers, beginning with half-crazy ladies, countesses and baronesses of every calibre and ending with nuns, clergy, and representatives of foreign powers." According to Bykov, contact between these persons and the Imperial family was maintained through Dr. Derevenko, who was still allowed to enter the Ipatiev house to treat Alexis. In addition, Bykov said, notes were intercepted inside loaves of bread and bottles of milk, containing messages such as: "The hour of liberation is approaching and the days of the usurpers are numbered," "The Slav armies are coming nearer and nearer Ekaterinburg. . . . The time has come for action," "Your friends sleep no longer."

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, Ava-deyev, 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 Golosh-chekin 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 Yurovsky 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 Khari-tonov 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