Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg (31 page)

This final sense of foreboding and need for reconciliation and acceptance had not suddenly come upon them. It was a necessary part of the Romanovs’ Christian faith to be prepared at all times for the life of the soul in the world hereafter. There is a popular saying, coined in the 1940s: ‘the family that prays together stays together’. Retrospectively, nothing could have been more truly said of the Romanovs. Religion was the glue that had bound them tightly together through all the years of anguish, over first the Tsaritsa’s collapsing health and then Alexey’s near-fatal attacks of haemophilia, and now through 16 months of imprisonment, uncertainty and isolation. Toward the end of his life, the Tsarevich’s tutor Sidney Gibbes recalled that if there was one thing that had impressed him more than anything else about the family, it was their religious harmony, the extent to which they were all strengthened by their Orthodox faith.

A British military observer in Russia, Lieutenant Patterson of the Armoured Car Brigade, put his finger on the power and evangelism of Russian Orthodoxy and the extent to which it was an intimate part of the nation’s everyday life:

To every Ruski [
sic
] religion was not just a convention or a fad, but the
fabric of his life.
Old and young, rich and poor, good and bad. It
was a daily revelation and solace. I don’t mean just bobbing to Ikons and signing the cross and sniffing up incense. I mean that in their hearts a lamp was lit and kept trim and holy . . . they reached a depth of emotions which we westerners hardly skim.

But while Nicholas now had slipped into a negative, almost sickly state of acceptance, resigned to disaster and ready for the sacrifice that had been inevitable since the day of his birth, Alexandra had reached a new plane of calm that was more actively engaged with the preparation of the soul for heaven and the path to Christian redemption she now felt sure she was travelling. Back in March 1918, writing from Tobolsk, she had observed the overwhelming sense of reconciliation growing within the family: ‘we live here on earth but we are already half gone to the next world’, she had said. She had long cultivated her own mystic resignation to suffering with an all-embracing Russianness that belied her German origins and her strict Lutheran upbringing. Orthodoxy in its traditional, mystical and ritualistic sixteenth-century form instantly appealed to Alexandra’s compulsive religiosity, as it had to her equally pious sister Ella when she married a Romanov in 1884. Maurice Paléologue was fascinated by the totality of Alexandra’s ‘moral and religious nationalisation’. She seemed a throwback to one of those old tsaritsas from the Byzantine and archaic Muscovy of Ivan the Terrible. In her propensity for profound religious exaltation, her belief in miracles and her extreme superstition, Alexandra had, by ‘a process of mental contagion’, absorbed the most ancient characteristics of the Russian soul, ‘all of those obscure, emotional and visionary elements which find their highest expression in religious mysticism’. It had, since the moment of her conversion, been her self-designated mission to save Holy Orthodox Russia. But that was all now lost. In confinement, denied the ritual of church services, all Alexandra could do was pause and cross herself whenever they rang the church bells at the Voznesensky Cathedral opposite, their sound announcing the sacred moments for prayer during the day.

Had she been able to read it, Article 13 of the new Soviet constitution would have horrified the Tsaritsa, for it now laid down that church and state were to be separated, as too school from church, supposedly in a drive to secure for the workers ‘real freedom of conscience’. From now on, every Soviet citizen had the right to take part in anti-religious propaganda, down to scrawling slogans on church walls and joining in the wholesale looting and despoliation of churches, tearing icons from their precious frames and burning them, driving priests from their congregations and overseeing the conversion of Russia’s ancient churches to secular use. It was the beginning of a new state policy of militant atheism.
But Lenin’s government, as too the increasingly repressive Stalinist regime that followed, failed absolutely in its underestimation of the great visceral power of religion in Russia. In the end, overthrowing the old tsarist empire proved easier than eradicating the intangible power of faith. This, at least, was one thing both Nicholas and Alexandra understood, for all their lack of empathy for other races and religions within the empire, and hidebound as they both were by the implacable, endemic anti-Semitism that tainted Russia. For them and for the multitude of observant Russians,
pravoslavie’ –
Orthodoxy – was and would forever remain the repository of the last vestiges of national spiritual feeling. It was a mystical gift passed down from God to the Tsar – this ‘invisible spiritual bond’ Nicholas shared with the people. British agent Sydney Reilly, currently in Russia to conduct covert negotiations with the Russian Orthodox Church for its support over the Allied intervention, had no doubt that Orthodoxy was ‘the one fundamental moral factor in Russian life which can be temporarily obscured, but which neither Bolshevism nor the German can destroy’. Bolshevik oppression in the first years after the Revolution brought with it for a while a backlash – a frenzy of religious observance, with people desperate for Bibles and other religious literature – but all too rapidly Russia’s old religious idealism was translated into a perverted form of messianic Socialist idealism. Where once in church people called out to their ‘Lord God’, the mob now subverted this to cries to ‘President God of the heavenly republic’. Many felt that only a Christian revival could save Russia from the dark days to come.

Meanwhile, all the Romanovs could do in confinement was submit meekly to their fate and forgive their enemies. Writing to a friend from Tobolsk earlier that year, Grand Duchess Olga had best expressed the family’s sentiments:

Father asks to have it passed on to all who have remained loyal to him and to those on whom they might have influence, that they not avenge him; he has forgiven and prays for everyone; and not to avenge themselves, but to remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love.

The redemptive power of acceptance and suffering had long been inculcated in the Romanov children by their parents. Alexandra knew that the family’s suffering in this world was a preparation for the next and impressed it upon her children. It is as though, in her final months, she was inviting martyrdom, her husband already long since reconciled to it.
Together as a family the Romanovs now sought to transcend the forces of irreligion that were destroying Russia. God was visiting his wrath on a sinful nation and was punishing his children. Perhaps the Romanovs felt in these final days that their sacrifice was a necessary part of it all. Perhaps, too, the Tsar, in his 16 months of passive Christian acceptance of his fate, had in some way redeemed the sins of his own deeply flawed monarchy.

Consoled and reassured by Father Storozhev’s service, and confident of the resurrection to come, Alexandra spent the rest of the day lying on her bed making lace and having the scriptures read to her when the others went out for their walk. Her choice of extracts from the 12 books of the Minor Prophets offered appropriate parables for the present state of Russia. Olga and Tatiana had read to her from Hosea – a book of dark and melancholy prophecy about the sins of Israel that had brought the country great national disasters. The apocalyptic tones of chapter four seemed to mirror what was now happening in their own country – a place where there was ‘no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God’. In Russia, just as in Israel, ‘blood toucheth blood’ as the country descended into internecine strife. Russia was a land in mourning where the people had rejected ‘knowledge’ – i.e. religion – and were now suffering for it. Further gloom and despondency followed in the readings from Joel, which prophesied a cataclysm over a land of Israel faced with desolation, plague and famine as punishment for its sins. God soon would swoop down in vengeance and sweep it all away: ‘Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand.’

What vestiges of ordinary life remained in the city of Ekaterinburg seemed to be taking no account of the Day of Judgement soon to come. You could still stroll down to the summer gardens by Iset Pond and catch a performance of Ostrovsky’s play
The Forest
, or go to the trotting races that afternoon at the local hippodrome at 2 p.m. or a football match at 6 p.m. But the grim reality was that the Ekaterinburg Soviet was now announcing the mobilisation of all loyal Communists in the city: two thirds of the membership of the local Urals Communist Party had joined up and were heading for the Front against the Czechs and Whites. Practically all the workers from the major factories and plants at Sysert and nearby Nizhe-Tagil and Alapaevsk were also leaving their jobs to fight.

Yurovsky, having overseen the Romanovs’
obednitsa
that morning, now had more important things on his mind: finalising where to dump their bodies after they had been killed and how to destroy as much of the evidence as possible at the same time. He had, over the last few days, been frequently in consultation with Petr Ermakov, who was in charge
of the disposal squad, about finalising the location in the forest for the purpose, the mine-workings at Four Brothers seeming to be the best bet. They had to decide on the location today, it could not be left any longer, but he had to be sure that the mine was sufficiently remote and would not be discovered. As a local man Ermakov claimed to know every inch of the outlying countryside and Yurovsky had placed his trust in him.

Today Petr Voikov had accompanied Yurovsky to double-check the two clearings they had chosen where the bodies would be destroyed on a huge funeral pyre – so they anticipated – their ashes then thrown down one of the mine shafts. Voikov had been busy of late trying to get the sulphuric acid and gasoline needed for the task from the city’s central supplies, Dr Arkhipov no doubt having proved unable to obtain sufficiently large quantities of sulphuric acid for his old friend Yurovsky through his own connections.

Other local Bolshevik bigwigs, including Goloshchekin, Beloborodov and Safarov, had also been out in the forest that day – having a picnic. They had even taken their women with them. According to evidence given by a local mining inspector, M. Talashmanov, they had been overheard loudly joking about what was to be done with the former Tsar and his family. Goloshchekin had been quite vocal, so it was noted, in his insistence that they had to kill all of them. But not all the others had agreed with him; there was no need to kill the Tsar, they said, he was a waste of time. But the Tsaritsa, yes, she was the guilty one. It was all her fault.

Back in the city, as the much-maligned Alexandra was stepping into a hot bath that evening at ten, the lights in room no. 3 on the first floor of the Amerikanskaya Hotel were burning bright and would do so late into the night. Once again the Ekaterinburg Cheka and the presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet were locked in urgent consultation, with Commandant Yurovsky in the chair. A report had arrived from the commanders at the Front confirming that they could not hold out much longer against the Czechs approaching from the south. Ekaterinburg had another few days at best. Yurovsky meanwhile was beginning to have serious doubts about the reliability of some of the guards from the Zlokazov works. They were not trustworthy and he was worried they might talk. Once the family were out of the way they would have to kill some of them too, to ensure secrecy. Beloborodov had immediately protested; it was a crazy suggestion, it would cause a riot in the town.

In Moscow, knowing that the situation was well under the control of the highly vigilant Sverdlov, Lenin left the city by chauffeur-driven car with his wife and sister to enjoy 24 hours of rest and relaxation at his official dacha 15 miles away at Kuntsevo. Why else would the Bolshevik
leader, a man who liked to be in total control at all times, leave town at this critical moment if the Romanovs’ fate had not now finally been decided at the centre?

MONDAY 15 JULY 1918

A
rriving at the Ipatiev House at 7 a.m. on 15 July with their daily delivery of milk, the nuns from the Novo-Tikhvinsky Convent had received a special request from Commandant Yurovsky. The next morning he wanted them to be sure to bring plenty of eggs – 50 at least, in a basket – and a quart of milk. Oh yes, and there was a written request from one of the Grand Duchesses too – for some sewing thread. As he thrust the note at them, Yurovsky hurried on. The eggs would be food for hungry men out in the forest, if all went according to plan.

Yakov Yurovsky was a busy man with murder on his mind; early that morning he had been out yet again to the Koptyaki Forest with Petr Ermakov, to discuss plans for the destruction and burial of the Romanovs’ bodies after they had killed them; there would be another meeting that night at the Amerikanskaya to finalise arrangements. Petr Ermakov might look the archetypal handsome revolutionary, with his shoulder-length black hair, his aquiline nose and his sensual mouth, but he had a track record of criminality and violence as a classic Bolshevik hooligan. As a young activist, thug and thief on behalf of the party, he had been arrested and imprisoned three times by the tsarist police and was sent into Siberian exile when he offended a fourth time. He was filled with a seething hatred for autocracy which regularly boiled over into violent rages. The tsars had kept him in prison for nine of his 34 years and he wanted his revenge. Ermakov saw himself as a hard man: he’d seen a lot of people killed and killed a lot himself, he later recalled, including that summer when, as an agent for the local Cheka, he’d been involved in rounding up counter-revolutionaries in the Ekaterinburg area. He was a ruthless killer who went by the nickname of ‘Comrade Mauser’, but nevertheless he regarded himself as a ‘softie’ compared to Yurovsky.