The Last Tsar (37 page)

Anya did not for one second abandon the “tsar’s family, abandoned by all”; she acted. She waited impatiently for news from a certain Boris Soloviev, whom she had sent to Tobolsk immediately after the family.

At Freedom House it was the era of Commissar Pankratov. “The little man,” as Nicholas mockingly referred to him.

“You yourself have experienced much. You have the ability to fulfill your mission with dignity and nobility, as befits a revolutionary. You and the guard entrusted to you will be guarding and protecting the former tsar and his family until the Constituent Assembly decides his fate.” These were Kerensky’s parting words to Pankratov the revolutionary, who had spent fourteen years in solitary confinement, and then had been sent from Siberian prison to another. And here he was—overseeing the tsar!

Unlike the empress, delicate Nicholas was gracious with the commissar, but their conversations gradually came to focus on Nicholas’s request (or rather, dream):

“Why won’t you let us walk in town? You can’t actually be afraid that I shall run away?”

The little man did sense the concealed ridicule, and he responded gravely. “I don’t have the slightest doubt of it, Nicholas Alexandrovich, Generally speaking, an attempt to escape would only make matters worse—for you and your family.” (Just in case, he warned him.)

“So what is the matter, kind sir? I was in Tobolsk in my youth, I remember it is a very beautiful town, and I would like to see it—along with my family.”

But the commissar rejected the notion of a walk.

Nicholas’s diary:

“Recently P. S. Botkin received a paper from Kerensky from which we learned that we are allowed walks outside town.… Pankratov, the rascal, has replied that there can be no question of that now due to some incomprehensible fear for our safety.”

Good-natured Pankratov did not want to disappoint him so he did not explain his “incomprehensible fear”: the chancellery had been inundated with letters and telegrams from all ends of Russia full of threats and obscenities. People were sending nasty depictions of the tsaritsa and Rasputin. What particularly alarmed the commissar was that many of the letters came from Tobolsk. Soldiers back from the front were hanging around town, poor and hardened men “who had spilled a little blood because of the tsar.” No, he could not let the family out into town.

For this Nicholas did not like him.

Nor did the suite—Dolgorukov and Tatishchev—to Pankratov’s astonishment, understand anything either. They never stopped demanding that the tsar be allowed to take walks, citing Kerensky’s promise. Meanwhile, their own walks around town had already begun to provoke grumbling. The soldiers on the street warned the commissar with a chuckle: “If the prince [Dolgorukov] doesn’t stop roaming around town, we’re going to beat him up for starters.” Russia was on the rampage.

The good Pankratov put up with Nicholas’s dislike. He had long since forgiven him for the fortress and fourteen years of his life. Now he simply saw Nicholas as the father of a large family who had absolutely no understanding of this terrible new life. Pankratov became attached to Nicholas’s children and gave the duchesses a book he had written about his sufferings and wanderings through Siberia. The girls read it aloud and liked it. He volunteered to be Alexei’s geography teacher. Nonetheless, Nicholas did not like him.

In Dr. Botkin’s papers I found a poem that evidently enjoyed great success at that time in Freedom House, a poem written in an elegant hand similar to the empress’s:

To Nicholas, Pankratov was also a typical civilian with the audacity to lead soldiers. Like a true Romanov, Nicholas did not look favorably upon men who lacked military bearing.

That was why Pankratov remained the “little man.”

The soldiers of the guard too, following Nicholas’s lead, despised the good commissar and obeyed only Colonel Kobylinsky, who had been appointed commandant at Tsarskoe Selo by General Kornilov, having recommended himself as a devoted supporter of the February Revolution and the Duma.

But the colonel had changed greatly since then. He did try to do his duty, but … Nicholas’s strange charm … his gentleness and delicacy, and those charming little girls, and the empress, so helpless in her arrogance. That was the colonel’s portrait of the family, and more and more he was beginning to feel responsible for their fate.

“I have given you what is most precious, Your Excellency, my honor.” He had every right to say that to Nicholas.

The colonel began to feel close to Nicholas and his family. Thus, in that quiet town, where the sole military force were those 330 riflemen guarding the family, their commander was heart and soul on the side of the tsar—a strange puzzle.

The head of the guard was for the tsar. The riflemen received endless gifts from the family. Dr. Botkin’s daughter wrote very specifically: “During those months [from August to the October Revolution], the family could have escaped. The guard most definitely would have helped them.”

Quiet Tobolsk, the influence of the mighty Archbishop Hermogen—everything ought to have facilitated an escape.

Clearly Kerensky had sent them to Tobolsk with the secret intention of creating the conditions for their liberation (as if their flight would have simplified his life). That was why he chose the quiet and very good-hearted Pankratov to watch over the family.

Nonetheless, they did not flee. Why?

Kobylinsky’s deputy in the guard was a certain Captain Aksyuta, who ran the affairs of the entire detachment—quite a noteworthy individual. Two years later, in the heat of the Civil War, in the bloody year 1919, a White officer, Count Mstislav Gudovich, was traveling through the unimportant town of Eisk, where he saw a familiar face, that of Captain Aksyuta, whom the count had known during his service at Tsarskoe Selo.

Aksyuta invited him to spend the night in his home and all night he told the count stories about life with the tsar’s family in Tobolsk. Aksyuta described in detail the whole story of the tsar’s family’s departure from Tobolsk as well, and how before their departure they gave things to Captain Aksyuta: the tsaritsa a pearl necklace and diamonds; the sovereign his saber. Aksyuta hid these things on the outskirts of Tobolsk. Only two people knew about the cache: he himself and General Denikin, whom he had told at the inquiry. (Aksyuta was arrested upon his return from Tobolsk and accused of bolshevism, but he was released when they did not find him guilty of anything.)

By the way, we can verify these nighttime stories of Aksyuta’s through the tsar’s diary.

Like Prince Dolgorukov and Pierre Gilliard, the tsar, of course,
would have taken along the pride of any soldier—his saber. In April 1918, shortly before the tsar’s departure from Tobolsk, the house was searched, and the tsar recorded the results of that search in his diary:

“This morning the commandant, a commission of officers, and two riflemen walked around a part of our quarters, the result of this ‘search’ being the confiscation of sabers from Valya and Gilliard and a dagger from me.”

So they did not take his saber away. Evidently someone had warned him of the search beforehand and he had given it to that someone—evidently Captain Aksyuta—for safekeeping.

But the little southern town of Eisk was hopelessly distant from Tobolsk, lost in the expanses of Siberia, and in the bloody jumble of the Civil War neither of the two initiated was likely to have been able to reach the hiding place. So in all likelihood the tsar’s saber and the tsaritsa’s jewels are still buried there somewhere.

We can trust Aksyuta’s testimony. That is why his answer to the very important question Gudovich asked him is so interesting: “Why didn’t you give the sovereign a chance to escape?”

Aksyuta answered that he and Colonel Kobylinsky did have a plan to free the sovereign, but the tsar told him that in this difficult time for Russia, no Russian should abandon the country. He had no intention of running away and would await his fate right there, he said. We find a reflection of those thoughts in Pankratov’s memoirs, where he relates his conversation with one of the grand duchesses:

“ ‘Papa was reading in the papers yesterday that they are sending us abroad as soon as they can convene a Constituent Assembly. Is that true?’

“ ‘There’s no telling what they write in our papers!’” ‘No, no. Papa says we ought to stay in Russia. Let them send us deeper into Siberia.’”

Time dragged on and on. Everything was an event: the long-awaited wine brought from Tsarskoe Selo was poured out on the wharf. Gray coats, having heard about the wine, had converged on the wharf like flies on sugar. Fearing their “visit” to Freedom House, Pankratov had ordered the wine destroyed.

Nicholas’s diary:

“They decided to pour all the wine out into the Irtysh.… The departure of the cart carrying the bottles of wine on which the commissar’s assistant sat with an axe in his hands … we saw from our windows before tea.”

General Lavr Kornilov had unsuccessfully demanded dictatorial powers to deal with the Soviets and the Bolsheviks and bring order to the rear and the front.

Nicholas’s diary:

“5 September.… Clearly in Petrograd there is great confusion.… Evidently nothing ever came of General Kornilov’s undertakings.”

In his confinement, all events were equal, although his disappointment over the loss of the wine may have been greater.

September 17 (again 17!). Shortly before the October overthrow of the Provisional Government Nicholas finished the fiftieth notebook of his diary, the last he was to complete. He began a new one, which he would fill only halfway.

“51,” the tsar numbered it. “Begun in Tobolsk.”

“18 September. Monday. 1917. Fall this year is remarkable here. Today 15 degrees in the shade and the air utterly southern and warm. In the afternoon Valya and I played gorodki, which I haven’t done for many years.… Olga’s ill health has passed, and she sat on the balcony for a long time with Alix.… Mama wrote a letter through the censor Pankratov.”

This entry began his fateful final notebook.

A monotonous life.

A letter from Alix to Anya:

“I cant guess what lies ahead.… God knows—& will work in His own way.… I put all in His hands.… am knitting socks for Little One, he asked for a pair: his are full of holes, but mine are thick & warm.… We used to knit in winter, remember? Now I do everything for my people: Papa’s trousers are all patched … the girls’ nightgowns are full of holes, Mama has masses of grey hair, & Anastasia is very fat, like Marie used to be—big, thick-waisted, then tiny feet—I hope she grows more. Olga is thin & so is Tatiana—their hair is growing marvelously, so in winter they can go without shawls.” (In February the grand duchesses’ hair had been shaved when they had the measles.)

They entertained themselves with amateur shows. Gilliard and the daughters and the tsar himself were the actors. “We rehearsed the play,” “we did a small play very amicably … much laughter.”

Nicholas appeared in the leading role in Chekhov’s
The Bear
, playing the “not very old landowner” who comes to collect a debt from the “little widow with the dimples in her cheeks” and falls in love with her.

Nicholas’s diary:

“18 February.… We performed our play [
The Bear
], in which Olga, Marie again, and I acted. At the beginning of the performance there was a great deal of nervousness, but it seems to have come off well.”

He stood on his knees before Olga, who played the widow. “I love you as I have never loved before: I have left twelve women, and nine have left me, but I never loved one of them as I love you.”

How they all laughed when Nicholas said this. Even Alix. Rarely did she laugh anymore.

Their voices, there in the darkness, in a vanished house, a vanished time.

October had come.

Snow-draped Tobolsk dozed, and no one knew about the events in Petrograd. The newspapers had suddenly stopped arriving. Nicholas was reading
1793
.

He did not read this book aloud, but Alix could not have helped but see it—and remembered: Versailles, the Revolution, the execution of the royal couple.

“11 November. No papers or even telegrams from Petrograd for a long time. In such a trying time this is awful.”

On November 17 (again 17!) he learned of the Bolshevik seizure of power.

“17 November.… It makes me sick to read in the papers what happened two weeks ago in Petrograd and Moscow! Much worse and more shameful than events in the Time of Troubles.”

During that time Commissar Pankratov recorded: