Alexandra (56 page)
Authors: Carolly Erickson
Chapter 28
1
.
Letters of the Tsaritsa
, p. 462.
2
. Moynahan, p. 321. Rasputin’s crony, the moneylender Aaron Simanovich, told Alix about Purishkevich’s boast
that Rasputin would
soon be eliminated, giving the date of December 16 (December 29 in the Gregorian calendar).
3
. In actuality Zinaida Yusupov had backed and encouraged another conspiracy in the fall of 1916 and most likely encouraged
her son and Grand Duke Dimitri in their plan to kill Rasputin. Edvard Radzinsky,
The Rasputin File
, trans. Judson Rosengrant (New York, 2000), p. 425.
Zinaida Yusupov’s close ties to Alix’s sister Ella, Ella’s apparent foreknowledge of the plot to kill Rasputin on the night of December 16/29, and Ella’s
congratulatory telegram to Dimitri after the crime was committed lend weight to the supposition that Ella was among those who sanctioned and approved of the event. It is conceivable that
Zinaida Yusupov and Ella were the primary conspirators, urging the young men to undertake the murder of the starets. But in this they were hardly unique; most of the imperials were discussing,
and many were plotting, the elimination of Rasputin in 1916.
4
. Buxhoeveden, p. 243.
5
. Radzinsky, p. 459.
6
.
Ibid.
, pp. 454–5.
7
.
Letters of the Tsaritsa
, pp. 461–2.
8
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 508.
9
. Buxhoeveden, p. 244. Buxhoeveden wrote that the news of Rasputin’s murder was a ‘shattering blow’ to the
empress.
10
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 512; Moynahan, p. 333.
11
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 509.
12
. Buxhoeveden, p. 244.
13
.
Ibid
., p. 243.
Chapter 29
1
. Iroshnikov, pp. 185–6.
2
. It should be noted that the regiments of Petrograd had for many months been alerted to the probability of a coup, and
their loyalty had been compromised. Officers and men alike had been overheard talking of ‘changing tsars’. Nicholas had been cautioned by the British ambassador and other Allied
ambassadors, and by his own foreign minister Pokrovsky, but he took no action.
Conspirators within the imperial family contacted regimental officers in secret to ensure their cooperation in a palace revolution. Indeed,
high-ranking officers
knew of so many plots that they were unsure which coup to support. d’Encausse, p. 216.
Both Rodzianko and his brother Michael had been urging Nicholas for months to avert catastrophe by exiling himself to Livadia, and especially removing Alix from the capital so that she would
have no further influence on the government.
3
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 249–50. Buxhoeveden herself was alarmed, having been cautioned in January by General Ressine, in
command of the regiment that mounted guard inside the palace, that morale among the men was low as ‘revolutionary propaganda had been active among them’. Ressine added that the police
had given him ‘serious warnings’ about the unreliability of his men.
4
. Buxhoeveden, p. 251.
5
.
Ibid
., p. 247.
6
. The following account is based on Buxhoeveden, pp. 252ff.
7
.
Ibid
., pp. 263–4.
8
. d’Encausse, pp. 229–30, gives a concise summary of Michael’s difficult decision and the forces
influencing it.
9
. Paul Benckendorff,
Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo
, trans. Maurice Baring (London, 1927), p. 16.
10
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 261–2.
Chapter 30
1
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 264–70, gives many details of the conditions in Tsarskoe Selo during the days following the
tsar’s abdication.
2
.
Ibid
., p. 269, dates Alix’s arrest March 21. In his memoirs Benckendorff gives March 20 as the date.
3
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 275–6.
4
. Immediately after the abdication, Nicholas told Count Grabbe that he could now follow his lifelong dream of being a
working farmer, perhaps on a farm somewhere in England. Kurth, p. 147.
5
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 277–8. The attitude of the soldiers sent by the Soviet, Buxhoeveden wrote, ‘became
threatening, and they were ready to use their machine-guns’.
6
. d’Encausse, p. 233.
7
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 579.
8
. Buxhoeveden, p. 264.
9
.
Ibid
., p. 277.
10
.
Ibid
., p. 275.
11
.
Ibid
., p. 268.
12
.
Ibid
., p. 288–90.
13
. Details of the guards and their hostile behaviour are in Buxhoeveden, pp. 283–4, 294–5, 298–9,
301–2; Benckendorff, pp. 37–8, and
Education of a Princess
, p. 310.
14
. Buxhoeveden, p. 299.
15
. This encounter between Alix and the soldier is described in Buxhoeveden, pp. 300–1.
Chapter 31
1
.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family
, p. 361.
2
. Buxhoeveden, p. 293.
3
.
Ibid
., p. 293.
4
.
Ibid
., p. 293.
5
.
Ibid
., pp. 278–9.
6
. Benckendorff, pp. 54–5. Kerensky’s visit is described in Buxhoeveden, pp. 278–9.
7
. Poliakov, pp. 262–3. The record of what was said at Kerensky’s interview came from Alexei, who recounted what
he remembered of it to his tutor Gilliard.
8
. Although in January, 1916, Alix had asked her husband to burn her letters ‘so that they should never fall into
anybody’s hands’, he preserved them; they were found at Ekaterinburg in a black box, along with his diaries and correspondence.
Letters of the Tsaritsa
, p. 255.
9
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 281–2.
10
.
Ibid
., pp. 291–2.
11
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 578.
12
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 303–4.
13
.
Ibid
., pp. 303–4.
14
.
Ibid
., pp. 306–7.
15
.
Ibid
., pp. 305–6.
Chapter 32
1
. Buxhoeveden, p. 308. Alexandra, Sophie Buxhoeveden wrote, was ‘utterly exhausted in both body and mind’ on the
journey, and lay all day in her carriage.
2
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 583.
3
. Two photos of the interior of the governor’s mansion in Tobolsk are in Buxhoeveden, facing
p. 322. Dr Botkin’s daughter wrote that the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg was ‘totally unlike the governor’s house in Tobolsk, where the large rooms and hall were more like a
country palace’.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family
, p. 372. Nicholas wrote in his diary ‘the house is good and clean’.
4
. Buxhoeveden, p. 312.
5
.
Ibid
., p. 313.
6
.
Lifelong Passion
, pp. 591–2.
7
. Buxhoeveden, p. 311.
8
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 587.
9
.
Education of a Princess
, p. 341.
10
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 591.
11
. ‘He is still close to us,’ she wrote after Father Gregory’s death. Moynahan, p. 346.
12
. The rescue effort is discussed in Paul Bulygin, ‘The Sorrowful Quest,’ in
The Murder of the
Romanovs
(London, 1935), pp. 198–9, 216, and Paul Bykov,
The Last Days of Tsardom
(London, 1934), p. 57.
Alix had a code book with her at Tobolsk, and later took it with her to Ekaterinburg, where it was found after her death. It was the key to a cypher she and Nicky had used in 1894, when they
were sending telegrams to each other.
Soloviev was accused of being a Bolshevik whose aim was not to rescue the Romanovs but to block any possible rescue plans made by members of the former imperial family, or by friends. He was
arrested when the Romanovs were sent to Ekaterinburg.
Chapter 33
1
. Alix began her diary on New Year’s Day according to the Julian calendar, which was still officially in use in Russia
until February 1/14, 1918, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted by the Bolshevik government. By January 3/16, Alix was assigning a double date to each entry, noting both the Julian and Gregorian
dates, which were thirteen days apart. The diary
was written primarily in English, with occasional Russian words or phrases. It has been published as
The Last Diary of
Tsaritsa Alexandra
, ed. Vladimir A. Kozlov and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv (New Haven, 1997).
2
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 322–3.
3
. Nicky wrote to Xenia late in January, 1918, that newspapers were not on sale in the town every day, and that when they did
come, they contained nothing but ‘new horrors, being perpetrated on our poor Russia’.
4
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, p. 30 note. Soloviev made encoded copies of Alix’s letters and notes and burned the
originals.
5
.
Ibid
., p. 32 note.
6
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 607.
7
.
Ibid.,
p. 607.
8
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, p. 77 note.
9
.
Ibid.,
p. 77. On March 25, 1918, Alix passed a large cigarette-holder, some other items and a note to Sergei
Markov who walked past the governor’s mansion and saw the family watching from the windows. Alix ‘nodded to him cautiously.’
10
. King, p. 331, citing Foreign Office transcripts. The opposition of Lloyd George was no doubt a factor in the
abandonment of the rescue effort.
11
. Buxhoeveden, pp. 325–6, describes the mayhem caused by the Red Guards. Sophie Buxhoeveden was living in a rented
house in Tobolsk at the time, having been refused permission to join the household in the governor’s mansion.
12
.
Ibid
., p. 326.
13
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, p. 95. The course of Alexei’s attack in April, 1918, is charted in Buxhoeveden,
p. 327,
Last Diary
, pp. 95ff, and
Lifelong Passion
, pp. 610ff, where the dates given differ from those in Alix’s diary.
14
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, p. 96.
15
.
Ibid
., p. 97.
16
. Buxhoeveden, p. 327.
17
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, p. 79. Alix believed that there were three hundred officers at Tiumen pledged to take
part in a rescue effort. Boris Soloviev and his wife Maria managed to escape Russia via Vladivostok and lived, impoverished, in Europe, where Boris worked as a car washer and night porter. After
Boris’s death in 1926, Maria worked as a dancer in Montmartre to support her two daughters.
18
.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 606.
19
. ‘I long to warm and comfort others,’ Alix wrote to Anna Vyrubov, ‘but alas,
I do not feel drawn to those around me here. I am cold towards them and this, too, is wrong of me.’
Lifelong Passion
, p. 606.
Chapter 34
1
. Maria Toutelberg described the crisis in testimony to Judge Sokolov during his official investigation. Buxhoeveden, p.
329, note.
2
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, p. 109.
3
.
Ibid
., p. 112. Alix wrote that they got to the train at midnight; Nicky put the time at ten o’clock.
Lifelong Passion
, p. 616.
4
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, p. 112.
5
.
Ibid
., p. 117.
6
.
Ibid
., p. 117 note and Buxhoeveden, pp. 333–4. Buxhoeveden’s source of information was Chemodurov,
who was taken from the Ipatiev house on May 24, 1918, and imprisoned but afterwards liberated by the White Army. Buxhoeveden herself eventually managed to escape to safety via Japan. In her
biography of Alexandra she gives a slightly different version of this exchange between Nicky and the commissar.
7
.
Ibid
., p. 121, note.
8
.
Ibid
., p. 144.
9
.
Ibid
., p. 144.
10
. Buxhoeveden, p. 341.
11
. Alexandra,
Last Diary
, pp. 166 and 165, note.
12
. Isaac Don Levine,
Eyewitness to History
(New York, 1973), p. 138. This letter and the others that reached the
Romanovs in the last days of June, 1918, were written by Cheka officials, most likely by Peter Voikov and Alexander Beloborodov, chairman of the Ural Regional Soviet, in order to elicit responses
that could then be used to prove that the family was engaged in a conspiracy with would-be rescuers. The letters and responses were seen as justification for eliminating the family.
13
. Levine, p. 139. The editors of
The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra
, p. 176, note, estimate that this letter
arrived between June 21 and 25.
14
. Although the leading officials in the Cheka were aware of the false information being given to the Romanovs, it is not
certain whether the Ipatiev guards had been alerted to what the family was being told, and to their expectation of imminent rescue.
