The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia (29 page)

February brought blizzards as well as changes to Tobolsk. On the twenty-seventh, the new government ordered the family placed on “
soldiers’ rations.” After all, they asked, why should “Bloody Nicholas” live so luxuriously while others starved? Almost immediately, butter, sugar, coffee, and eggs vanished from the family’s table. Indeed, any kind of luxury—silver teaspoons, bone china cups, linen napkins—the soldiers considered aristocratic could be snatched away without warning.

At the same time, the family’s monthly allowance from the state was slashed. The family would have to cut its living expenses. But how? Nicholas had never needed to draw up a family budget before. He asked Pierre Gilliard and two courtiers who had followed him into exile for help. “
We held a ‘sitting’ this afternoon,” Gilliard wrote in his diary, “and came to the conclusion that the personnel must be reduced.” Nicholas reluctantly agreed to let ten servants go.

Yet these were minor changes compared to what was happening with the guards. Emboldened by all the Bolshevik talk of class revenge, they “
became cruder,” noted Nicholas, and “began to act like hooligans.” Forming a soldiers’ committee and proclaiming authority over the Romanovs, the guards now provoked a series of trivial, yet menacing incidents. When a shipment of wine arrived for the family from Tsarskoe Selo, the soldiers seized it and poured it into the river. They demanded that Nicholas remove his officer’s epaulets from his uniforms and jackets. Since they bore his father’s monogram, their forced removal was a deep affront to the entire family. Perhaps worst of all, they mean-spiritedly destroyed the family’s snow mountain. “
To stop us from climbing up onto it and looking over the fence,” admitted Nicholas. Said Gilliard, “
The children are disconsolate.”

Toward the end of March, a detachment of Red Guards arrived to replace those who had traveled with the family from Tsarskoe Selo. Fresh from Petrograd with its rebellious atmosphere, the men were tough, hardened radicals. In his diary, Gilliard described them as “a
pack of blackguardly-looking young men” whose behavior was positively “indecent.” One day, he recalled, they carved “
filthy, stupid, crude words and pictures with [their] bayonets” into the wooden seat of a swing used by the grand duchesses. Alexei found them first. But before he had a chance to study the graffiti, Nicholas quickly took down the seat. This did not stop the soldiers.
They simply carved obscene messages onto the boards of the fence, instead. Did the sheltered girls understand their meaning? Probably not, but they surely grasped the soldiers’ anger. “
It is obvious that [they were] deeply affected,” said Gilliard.

These soldiers imposed even more restrictions. They limited the family’s time outdoors, searched their belongings, and—at Moscow’s insistence—forced the remaining servants and courtiers to move out of the house across the street and squeeze into the Governor’s Mansion with the imperial family. Since the house was already overcrowded, this caused “
a great inconvenience,” said Dr. Botkin, with some servants sleeping three to a bed.

“
I should like to be a painter, and make a picture of [a] beautiful garden,” Alexandra wrote to Anna Vyrubova around this time. “Sometimes we see men with the most awful faces. I would not include them in my garden picture. The only place for them would be outside, where the merciful sunshine could reach them and make them clean from all the dirt and evil with which they are covered.”

Not all Russians backed Lenin. Many hated both him and his policies, and this hatred soon spurred the formation of a group intent on overthrowing him. Known as the White Movement, it was a collection of former tsarist officers, soldiers, and nobles. In the forests of Siberia, these men formed the White Army and marched on Moscow, the new Russian capital. As they marched, former landowners and factory owners angry over Bolshevik seizure of their property joined them. So did devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church who still believed the tsar was God anointed; supporters of the Provisional Government who wanted democracy
rather than communism; and twenty-five thousand Czech prisoners of war who were fighting their way east out of Russia in hopes of being reunited with Czech troops on the front.

In response, the Bolsheviks created their own army, known as the Red Army.

Civil war, Lenin realized, had erupted.

But how could he fight this new conflict when Russia remained at war with Germany? He knew he couldn’t.

Back when the Provisional Government was still in power, “Peace” had been Lenin’s key slogan. Workers had rallied around him because of his promise to end the war. Peace, they believed, would bring prosperity. Now, Lenin knew, he had to make good on his promise. He
had
to end hostilities. Otherwise, he risked being overthrown himself.

So he sent a delegation to meet with the German High Command at their military headquarters in the town of Brest-Litovsk (located in modern-day Belarus). There, on March 3, 1918, the delegates gave in to
all
of Germany’s demands, signing away Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and the Crimea. This amounted to 32 percent of Russia’s land, 54 percent of its factories, and 89 percent of its coal mines. It also placed more than one-third of its population—sixty million Russian citizens—into Germany’s hands. In return, Russia was allowed to put down her guns and walk away.

The news, when it reached Tobolsk, could not have come at a worse time. For days, Alexei had suffered with a bad cough. According to Nicholas, he “
developed a pain in the groin” from it. It was, said Alexandra, “
an awful internal hemorrhage … reminding me of
Spala.” Day and night, the boy screamed as both the pain and swelling grew worse.

Without Rasputin, Alexandra felt helpless. “
He is frightfully thin and yellow,” she wrote. “I sit all day beside him, holding his aching legs, and I have grown almost as thin as he.”

Nicholas was growing thin, too. “
It is such a disgrace for Russia,” he gasped when he learned of the treaty, “and amounts to suicide.” His mood swung between anger and sadness. “
To think they called [Alexandra] a traitor,” he cried indignantly one moment, only to moan in the next, “How much longer will our unfortunate motherland be torn and ripped apart? Sometimes it seems as if [I] have no more strength to stand it. I don’t even know what to hope for, what to desire.” He tried to comfort himself. “
Everything is in the hands of God! He is our only recourse,” he repeated over and over.

Busy with other, more pressing issues, officials in Moscow had put off making any decisions about the imperial family. But by March 1918 they turned their attention to the Romanovs. What should be done with them? Some of Lenin’s advisers insisted on tossing Nicholas into the fortress dungeons in Petrograd. Others wanted to drag him to Moscow and put him on trial for crimes against the people. But all worried he would be rescued by the White Army now marching across Siberia. If that happened, there was a chance Nicholas would be returned to his throne. There was only one option, those closest to Lenin advised: secretly move the family to a new location. They sent Commissar Vasily Yakovlev to Tobolsk to do just that.

Yakovlev arrived at the Governor’s Mansion on April 22, 1918. There he found a weak and bedridden Alexei. The sight of the
former heir lying so still in his bed shook the commissar. “
The yellow-complexioned, haggard boy seemed to be passing away,” he later wrote. It was obvious Alexei could not be moved.

Hurrying to the telegraph office, Yakovlev sent a coded message to Moscow: “
Only principal part of baggage can be transferred.”
Baggage
meant the imperial family, while
principal part
referred to Nicholas. What, Yakovlev asked, did the government want him to do?

Moscow answered immediately:
“Removal [of] only principal part is approved.”

The following day, Yakovlev interrupted the imperial couple’s breakfast. He came right to the point. “
I must tell you that … my mission is to take your family from Tobolsk, but as your son is ill, I have received a second order that says [Nicholas Romanov] alone must go.”

“
I refuse to go,” said Nicholas.

“
Then I must take you by force,” replied Yakovlev. He let his words sink in a moment before adding, “Be calm, I am responsible with my life for your safety. If you do not want to go alone, you can take with you any people you wish … [but] be ready. We are leaving tomorrow at four a.m.”

Alexandra’s face turned scarlet. Her fists clenched. Taking a step toward the commissar, she screamed, “
You want to tear him away from his family! How can you? How? His son is sick! He can’t go, he must stay with us! This is too cruel!”

“
Like an animal,” recalled Yakovlev, she began pacing back and forth. Under her breath she muttered, “If [Nicholas] is taken alone, he’ll do something stupid, like he did before. Without me, they can force him to do whatever they want.”

But how could she leave Alexei?

Rushing to her bedroom, she sent for Pierre Gilliard. When he
arrived, she wailed, “
I can’t let the tsar go alone.… I ought to be at his side in this time of trial.… But the boy is still so ill.… Oh, God, what a ghastly torture.… For the first time in my life I don’t know what I ought to do; I’ve always felt inspired whenever I’ve had to take a decision, but now I can’t think.”

All morning, she muttered, raged, wept, and paced.

Her behavior frightened her daughters. They’d never seen her act like this before. Even during the worst of times—Alexei’s illness in Poland, Rasputin’s murder, Nicholas’s abdication—Alexandra had kept her regal composure.

Finally, Tatiana spoke up. “Mother,” she said soothingly,
“something must be decided.”

Gilliard agreed. He suggested Alexandra go with the tsar. He and the others, he promised, “
would take great care of [Alexei].”

At last, Alexandra gave in. “Yes, that will be best; I’ll go with the tsar.”

But who would go with the empress and tend to her needs? Not Olga, Alexandra decided. She was too dispirited. And certainly not Tatiana. Her superior nursing skills were needed to care for Alexei. Anastasia? She was just “
too young to be taken into account.” That left Marie, “
an angel and the best of us.”

Their decision made, the family spent the rest of the evening together at Alexei’s bedside. It was a long, dreadful night. Faces swollen from crying, the girls clung to one another’s hands. Yakovlev had promised to fetch the rest of the family in three weeks. But could the Bolshevik be trusted? The family had never been separated this way before, and they were terrified. Again and again, one or another burst into tears.

“
God won’t allow the tsar’s departure,” said Alexandra, tears streaming down her face. “It can’t be. It mustn’t be.” Bowing her head, she desperately prayed that the frozen rivers, which they
would have to cross on their journey, would suddenly thaw and overflow their banks. “I know, I am convinced [it will happen],” she said. “I am sure a miracle will take place.”

But no miracle came. Just before four a.m. the next morning, an assortment of horse-pulled carts, wagons, and carriages rolled into the courtyard, followed by a long line of soldiers. Soon the front door of the Governor’s Mansion opened, and the three Romanovs stepped outside. Yakovlev escorted them and the handful of servants accompanying them to their vehicles. Then he gave the signal, and the procession moved forward—out through the wooden fence and down the frozen street, the sound of the rumbling wheels fading into the gray light.

On the steps, left behind and feeling utterly alone, stood Anastasia, Olga, and Tatiana. “
[They] gazed for a long time into the distance,” recalled one witness, “then turned and slowly, one after the other, entered the house.”

As they passed their brother’s room, where Gilliard sat with a distraught Alexei, the tutor heard the girls weeping.

With Nicholas and Alexandra gone, “
sadness … descended on the house,” said valet Alexei Volkov. The children waited nervously for news of their parents. What was happening to them? Even Anastasia turned solemn and fretful. “
These days I am boring, and not pretty,” she admitted.

Finally, on May 3, a week after the family’s separation, Commissar Yakovlev cabled with news. The group was in Ekaterinburg, a city located in the Ural Mountains.

The news stunned those in Tobolsk. “
Why Ekaterinburg?” wrote one household member. “We always thought that Moscow was their destination.”

Moscow
had
been their destination. But while Yakovlev and his “baggage” were en route, Bolshevik officials suddenly changed their minds. They ordered Nicholas and his family to the Urals. No one knows exactly why. Certainly, leaders in Ekaterinburg—a town with fierce anti-tsarist sentiments—had pressured the government to hand over the Romanovs to them. They claimed their remote location eight hundred miles east of Moscow would keep the family safe. But Moscow also knew that Ekaterinburg’s soviet was, according to one official report made in 1918, undisciplined and violent. Many of its town leaders eagerly spoke of “
finishing off the butcher [Nicholas II].” So brutal was their reputation that Commissar Yakovlev grew worried about delivering the family there. Aware that Lenin was considering putting Nicholas on trial for crimes against the Russian people, Yakovlev cabled Moscow
as soon as he received the new orders. “
I consider it my duty to warn [you],” he began. If the family was left in Ekaterinburg, not only would Moscow never be able to get them back, but “[the Romanovs] will be in utter danger at all times.” His warning did not change Moscow’s mind.