The Last Tsar (47 page)

But what if it was
before?

Then his entire journey appears in an entirely new light. His softness, his heartfelt conversations, and, finally, the puzzling telegram the former grand duchesses received in Tobolsk with his signature: “We are traveling well. Christ be with you. How is Little One’s health. Yakovlev.” What an unlikely vocabulary for a Bolshevik! Of course, this was the tsar’s telegram. The last telegram of Nicholas II. Which Yakovlev sent over his own signature. A Bolshevik commissar sending the telegram of Nicholas the Bloody over his own signature?

Revolution is a time of little Napoleons. Perhaps this man with three names was playing his own, third game. There was Sverdlov’s game, there was Goloshchekin’s game, but there was also Yakovlev’s desperate game. Perhaps he never intended to take his train to Moscow after Omsk at all. An interesting note slipped into the tsaritsa’s diary:

“April 16 (29). In train.… The Omsk Soviet of Deputies does not let us go through Omsk since they are afraid they want to take us to Japan.”

Might there be some truth in this half-hint? Might the mysterious plenipotentiary have hinted only to her, the true head of the family, of his goal? Hence his behavior with the tsarist couple?

But the inevitable end awaited those who made the revolution. On September 16, 1938, the last companion of the last tsar, Yakovlev-Myachin-Stoyanovich, was arrested and disappeared forever into Stalin’s camps, taking his secret with him.

A
bove the town, on the highest hill, rose the Church of the Ascension. Next to the church a few houses formed Ascension Square.

One of these houses stood directly opposite the church—low-slung, white, with thick walls and a stone carving all the way across the facade, which was turned toward the boulevard and the church. One of the house’s thick sides dropped down a slope along blind Ascension Lane. Here the windows of the first half-cellar barely peeked out from below ground level.

One of these half-cellar windows was between two trees. This was the window of that very room to which we will find ourselves returning.

Driving up to the house, however, they saw none of this. The house was masked nearly to the roof by a very high fence. Only a bit of the uppermost part of the second-floor windows looked out.

Around the house stood the guard.

This house belonged to the engineer Ipatiev, an unlucky man. An influential member of the Soviet and also a graduate of the University of Geneva, Peter Voikov was the son of a mining engineer. He
knew Ipatiev and had been in this house with the thick walls that was so conveniently situated (from the standpoint of guarding it).

That is why at the very end of April the engineer was called in to the Soviet of Deputies and ordered to clear out of his house in twenty-four hours. They promised “to return the house soon” (engineer Ipatiev did not understand the portent in this statement). He was ordered to leave all his furniture where it was and put his personal possessions into storage.

The cement storeroom was located on the first floor, next to a half-cellar room—the execution room.

Both cars drove along the fence to the plank gates.

The gates opened and the cars were allowed in. Neither Nicholas nor Alix nor their daughter would ever leave those gates alive.

They were led across the paved courtyard to the house. In the entry, a carved wooden staircase ascended to the second floor.

Standing by the stairs, Beloborodov made a formal announcement: “By decision of the Central Executive Committee, the former tsar Nicholas Romanov and his family are transferred to the conduct of the Ural Soviet and shall henceforth be located in Ekaterinburg with the status of prisoners. Until their trial. Comrade Avdeyev has been appointed house commandant, and all requests and complaints shall be made to the Ural Executive Committee through the commandant.”

After which both Ural leaders, Goloshchekin and Beloborodov, went off in a car and the family was invited to tour their new quarters in the company of the commandant and Ditkovsky.

Nicholas’s diary:

“Little by little our people arrived, as well as our things, but they would not let Valya in.”

Yes, their things arrived, and along with them Botkin and their people.

But not Dolgorukov. Poor Valya was taken away somewhere directly from the station. Somewhere….

Subsequently a rumor spread that two guns and many thousands in cash had been found on Prince Dolgorukov. This was reported in Tobolsk by the returning riflemen of the old guard. Why would Dolgorukov have had two guns? One way or another, Nicholas would not see Valya again; the prince had disappeared for good.

M. Medvedev (the son of a Chekist who participated in the execution of the tsar’s family) told the story to me:

“Dolgorukov was shot by the young Chekist Grigory Nikulin.
Nikulin said so himself. I don’t remember the details anymore, I remember he took Dolgorukov out with his suitcases into a field.”

“You mean this was immediately after the train? If there were suitcases?”

“I just don’t remember. I only remember there was snow, and after the execution Nikulin himself had to carry Dolgorukov’s suitcases across a snowy field. The snow was deep and he cursed all the way.”

Thus perished this charmer, the gallant cavalier at the brilliant Winter Palace balls.

Nicholas’s diary:

“The house is fine, clean. We have been assigned 4 rooms: a corner bedroom, a lavatory, next door a dining room with windows onto a little garden and a view of a low-lying part of town, and finally, a spacious hall with arches in place of doors.

“We arranged ourselves in the following manner: Alix, Marie, and I together in the bedroom. A shared lavatory. Demidova in the dining room, and in the hall—Botkin, Chemodurov, and Sednev. In order to get to the washroom and water closet one must go past the sentry. A very high wooden fence has been built around the house 2 sazhens [14 feet] from the windows: a chain of sentries has been posted there and in the little garden too.”

Here the drama’s last act would unfold. The dynasty’s finale.

The tsar and tsaritsa would be staying in the spacious corner room with four windows. Two windows looked out on Ascension Avenue, but the high fence two sazhens from the windows closed off the view. Only the cross over the bell tower was visible from the rooms. The two other windows looked out onto Ascension Lane, which was a dead end. The room was very light, with pale yellow wallpaper covered by a free-form frieze of faded flowers.

A rug on the floor, a baize-covered table, a bronze lamp with a handmade lamp shade, a small card table, a bookcase between the windows where she would put her books. Two beds (Alexei would sleep on one of them when he was brought from Tobolsk), and a couch.

Her vanity and mirror with two electric lamps on the sides, on the table a jar of cold cream with the inscription “Court Pharmacy to His Excellency.”

How strange that inscription sounded already.

A washbasin on a cracked marble counter and an armoire, which now held all the clothing of the former tsar and tsaritsa.

Next to their room, with windows on Ascension Lane, was a large empty room. In it were a table, chairs, and a large pier glass. The four daughters would live in this room. They would come, in May, and until their camp beds were brought they would sleep on mattresses right on the floor.

Both these rooms were directly above that half-cellar room.

Next to the daughters’ room, in the dining room “with the view on the garden,” slept Anna Demidova. In the large hall (the drawing room) slept Botkin, Chemodurov, and Sednev.

There was one more as yet sealed room—designated for Alexei.

Catercorner from the former grand duchesses was the commandant’s room—date palm wallpaper, gold baguette molding, and the head of a dead deer. And one more—next to the commandant’s—set aside for the watch.

Completing the suite was the lavatory. The porcelain vessel left over from engineer Ipatiev would be fouled by the commandant and the guards, and amid the shameless drawings on the lavatory walls depicting the tsaritsa and Rasputin, amid the obscene utterances of the guard and reflections such as “I don’t know why I wrote either, but you strangers read it,” was a note nailed to the wall: “You are implored to leave the seat as clean as you found it.”

This was the joint creation of the former tsar and his personal physician Botkin.

Entering the bedroom, Alix walked over to the right-hand window and on the jamb penciled her favorite symbol, the swastika, and the date of their arrival: 17 (30).

She drew another swastika as an incantation directly on the wallpaper over the bed where Alexei was to sleep.

17 (30). Thus she innocently signaled the start of the last game with the last tsar.

It began right away.

When their belongings arrived they were taken out into the hall and, in the presence of the former military academy student and present member of the Ural Executive Committee Ditkovsky and the former turner and present commandant Avdeyev, the inspection began.

The captors opened the suitcases and looked through them carefully. They examined Alix’s hand luggage. They confiscated the camera she had brought from Tsarskoe Selo and also, as Commandant Avdeyev would write in his memoirs, “a detailed map of Ekaterinburg.” How could that have turned up in her bag if they had assumed they were going to Moscow? Even if it couldn’t have, though, it did. Like the two guns allegedly found on Dolgorukov.

They even opened the medicine bottles—they dug through her entire traveling pharmacy.

Nicholas’s diary:

“17 [30] April [continued].… The search of our things was like at customs: just as strict, right up to the last vial in Alix’s pharmacy. That exasperated me and I expressed my opinion sharply to the commissar.”

Alix did not understand the reason for the search. She was nervous and indignant: “This is an insult!” Her accent made the searchers smile; the impotent anger of the former empress was funny. But she continued her irate monologue; she even mentioned “Mr. Kerensky.” She cited the example of the revolutionary who was nevertheless a gentleman. The word
gentleman
amused the former turner Avdeyev. Finally, Nicholas blew up. He declared: “Up until now we have dealt with decent people!” This was the ultimate manifestation of anger for this most well-bred of monarchs.

Why did they make this search?

To demonstrate the conditions of their new life in the capital of the Red Urals? In part. But only in part.

They were looking for the jewels. The legendary tsarist jewels. The “spy” had not been napping. Evidently in Tobolsk he found out that Alix used the word “medicine” when talking in the presence of outsiders about the jewels (that was how she would refer to them in her letters to her daughters from Ekaterinburg). That was why they examined the vials of medicine so thoroughly and vainly, though they did not find anything.

They realized the jewels had been left in Tobolsk.

There was a third reason for the harsh examination. Since the day of the family’s arrival in Ekaterinburg they had begun to gather evidence of a “monarchist plot.” That was why they took the camera away—as evidence. That was apparently why they discovered the map of Ekaterinburg—more evidence (plus the rumor about the two guns confiscated from unlucky Valya—another link in the evidence).

This terrible game with the tsar began at the Ekaterinburg station.
We shall call it the monarchist plot game. The plot that would serve as grounds for their execution. The “just punishment” had been decided upon from the very start.

Nicholas’s diary:

“21 April [4 May].… All morning wrote letters to the girls from Alix and Marie. And drew a plan of this house.”

He wanted those in Tobolsk to be able to picture their new quarters. He was preparing them for their encounter with the crowded house. But—

“24 April [7 May].… Avdeyev, the commandant, removed the plan of the house I had done for the children on a letter the day before yesterday and took it away, saying I could not send it.”

In his memoirs Avdeyev would describe this incident quite differently:

“Once while reviewing the letters my attention was drawn to one letter addressed to Nicholas Nikolaevich [!]. Upon examination of the envelope lining, I discovered a thin sheet of paper on which was drawn a plan of the house.”

Avdeyev further described how he called Nicholas into the commandant’s room and how the tsar lied, refused to admit it, and begged for the commandant’s forgiveness. This was not simply a fabrication. The plan of the house, allegedly concealed under the envelope lining, was one more “irrefutable proof.” As was the “frightened and exposed Nicholas.” They were making their case. And waiting.

Waiting for the children to arrive from Tobolsk. And the jewels.