The Last Tsar (55 page)

“… If ‘faith is dead without deed,’ then deeds can live without faith. If any of us does combine faith and deeds, then it is only out of God’s special kindness. One such happy man—through grave suffering, the loss of my firstborn, my half-year-old little boy Seryozha—was I. Ever since then my code has significantly expanded and defined itself, and in every case I have also been concerned about the patient’s soul. This vindicates my last decision, too, when I unhesitatingly orphaned my own children in order to carry out my physician’s duty to the end, as Abraham did not hesitate at God’s demand to sacrifice his only son.”

Nicholas’s diary:

“28 June [11 July]. Thursday. In the morning, at about 10.30, three workers came up to the open window, hoisted a heavy railing, and attached it to the outside of the frame without any warning from Yu. We like this man less and less! Began to read the eighth volume of Saltykov-Shchedrin.”

This was the last straw. It was awful to enter the room and see that dark railing. He suffered both for her and for the boy.

And she … she was living the hard existence of captivity. She explained in her diary Nicholas’s obscure entry: “We like this man less and less.”

“June 28 (July 11). Thursday.… Command[ant] insisted to see us all at 10, but kept us waiting 20 m. as was breakfasting & eating cheese wont permit us to have any more any cream. Workmen turned up outside and put up iron railings before our only open window. Always fright of our climbing out no doubt or getting into contact with the sentry. Strong pains continue.… Remained in bed all day.”

Yes, the dark man wielded them two blows that day. In the final analysis, the cream, cheese, and eggs brought from the monastery had been a distraction to Alexei’s perpetual boredom.

(“It’s boring! What boredom!” These exclamations filled the boy’s diary.) And now on top of that—the railings.

But Yurovsky was only doing his job.

Their days were numbered, and he had already begun to isolate them from the world. He feared the monastery. Yes, the Cheka had conceived of transmitting the deceitful letters, but what if suddenly someone else.… He had to consider that “suddenly.” There was anarchy in Ekaterinburg. The gold reserves had been evacuated, the archives had already left town. Only the small detachment—that was all he had.

That was all right, though, for a few days.

It happened on July 12—the day after the railings were put up.

Upon his return from Moscow, Goloshchekin called a meeting of the Ural Soviet Executive Committee.

The loyal Goloshchekin did not say a word about his agreements with Moscow: only the most restricted circle knew about them—the Ural Soviet presidium. The Soviet’s rank-and-file members were certain that today they themselves would decide the Romanovs’ fate. The Whites were advancing. All of them realized what this decision might mean in their lives.

Nevertheless, they passed the decree unanimously. The Ural Soviet’s decree of execution.

From a letter of Alexander Kruglov in Perm:

“My father kept a copy of the text of the decree on shooting the tsar, which was posted around town after the execution:

“ ‘Decree of the Ural Executive Committee of the Soviet of Worker, Peasant, and Red Army Deputies. Possessing information that Czechoslovak bands are threatening the Red capital of the Urals, Ekaterinburg, and bearing in mind that the crowned hangman could hide and escape the people’s tribunal, the Executive Committee, carrying out the will of the people, has decreed to execute the former tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes.’”

Implementation of the decree was entrusted to Yakov Yurovsky, commandant of the “House of Special Designation.”

Nicholas’s diary:

“30 June [13 July]. Saturday. Alexei took his first bath since Tobolsk. His knee is improving, but he cannot bend it completely. Weather is warm and pleasant. We have no news from the outside.”

With this hopeless sentence, the day after the execution decree, as if he had sensed something, Nicholas closed his diary (see Appendix).

What follows are empty pages carefully numbered by him to the end. There is something awful in those blank pages.

All these days she had been waiting. Waiting for more news from the suddenly silent “Russian army officer.”

She listened and listened to the sounds outside the window.

Alix’s diary:

“June 29 (July 12).… Constantly hear artillery passing, infantry & twice cavalry, during the course of two week. Also troops marching with music—twice. It seems to have been the Austrian prisoners who are marching against the Czechs (also our former prisoners), who are with the troops coming through Siberia & not far from here now. Wounded daily arrive to the town….

“June 30 (July 13). At 6½ Baby had his first bath since
Tobolsk
. He managed to get in and out alone, climbs also alone in & out of bed, but can only stand on foot as yet.… Rained in the night. Heard three revolver shots in the night.”

Three days before their end, Nicholas broke off his diary. She continued hers. She took their story to its end.

“July 1 (14). Sunday. Beautiful summer’s morning. Scarcely slept because of back & legs. 10½. Had the joy of a
vespers
—the young Priest for the 2nd time.”

It was Sunday. And while the new leader of the country, the atheist Ulyanov, was relaxing at his dacha in Kuntsevo, the former leader of the country, prisoner Romanov, received permission for a service.

Father Storozhev was invited to serve the vespers the family had
ordered. Father Storozhev had already held services once in the Ipatiev house, and Yurovsky agreed to call him a second time.

The commandant’s room was slovenly and filthy; grenades and bombs littered the piano. Grigory Nikulin was sleeping on the bed fully clothed after his shift. Yurovsky was slowly drinking his tea and eating his bread and butter. While the priest and deacon arrayed themselves, they began to talk.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Yurovsky, noticing that Father Storozhev kept wringing his hands.

“I have pleurisy.”

“I had active tuberculosis, too.”

Yurovsky began giving him advice. He was a medic, and he loved dispensing medical advice. In addition, only he understood the importance of the moment: he, a tailor’s pupil from a poor Jewish family, was allowing the last tsar his last service. His last—that he knew for certain.

When Father Storozhev walked into the family’s quarters, the family had already gathered. Alexei was sitting in the wheelchair; he was quite grown up, but his face was pale after his long illness spent in stuffy rooms. Alexandra Feodorovna was in the same lilac dress she had worn when Father Storozhev had seen her during the first service. She was sitting in a chair beside the heir. Nicholas was standing, dressed as he had been the last time—in a field shirt, khaki trousers, and boots. The daughters were standing, dressed in white tops and dark skirts. Their hair had grown out and reached to their shoulders. In the back, behind the arch, stood Dr. Botkin, the servants, and the little cook Sednev.

According to the vespers ceremony, they had to read the prayer “Rest with the Saints.”

Naturally he was the first to drop to his knees. He was the tsar, who always knew that the tsar’s lot “is in the hands of God.”

He also knew: Soon! Very soon.

On the way back the deacon told Father Storozhev, “Something has happened to them. They are
different.”

During that period Yurovsky was often away from the house. He was taking trips with Upper Isetsk Commissar Ermakov to the Koptyaki
countryside, 18 versts (
12
miles) from Ekaterinburg. There, not far from the village, in the deep woods, were abandoned mines.

Yurovsky knew that the execution of the Romanovs was only the beginning of his job. Then came the hardest part: burying them so that they could not be found.

“The family has been evacuated to a safe place.” Yurovsky and Ermakov were searching for that safe place.

Alix’s diary: “July 2 (15). Monday. Greyish morning. Later sunshine. Lunched on the couch in the big room, as women came to clean the floors, then lay on my bed again & read with
Maria
… Ezra 26–31. They went out twice as usual. In the morning T[atiana] read to me the
Spiritual Reading
. At 6½ Baby had his second bath. Bezique [a card game]. Went to bed 10¼.
…
Heard the report of an artillery shot in the night & several revolver shots.”

The women who washed the floor on the next to last day later told how they were ordered to wash all the floors—in the family’s rooms and downstairs, on the first floor, where the guard lived. They also washed the floor in the half-cellar room.

They had repaired the electricity, put in railings, and washed the floors. Yurovsky had thought of everything.

During that period he was finishing up the entries in the sentry journal:

“July 10. Notification of Nicholas Romanov about opening the windows to air out the rooms, which he had been refused.

“July 11. The family had its usual walk: Tatiana and Marie asked for their camera, which the commandant naturally refused them.”

Yes, there was a camera in the house. The one that had been confiscated from the tsaritsa when she first entered the Ipatiev house. The camera was lying in the room of the commandant—commandant and former photographer Yakov Yurovsky.

The Chekist’s son Mikhail Medvedev:

“My father said that during that time Yakov Yurovsky held a meeting in the American hotel. Participation in the execution was voluntary, and the volunteers gathered in his room, no, 3. They agreed to aim for their hearts, so that they wouldn’t suffer. And then and there they figured out who would shoot whom. Peter Ermakov took the tsar for himself. By rank he was the Upper Isetsk military commissar. He had people who were supposed to help bury the bodies.

“Most important, Ermakov was the only one among the execudoners
who had done hard labor as a political prisoner. This was one of the most honored pasts for a revolutionary. Anyone who did hard labor was for the revolution!

“Yurovsky took the tsaritsa, Nikulin Alexei, my father got Marie.”

(Mikhail Medvedev could have felt insulted. The next most honored past for a revolutionary was political prisoner, which Mikhail Medvedev had been—a professional revolutionary, a former sailor, who had served in a tsarist prison, although he had not done hard labor. His real name was Kudrin. Medvedev was his party pseudonym, from one of the countless false passports he had used during his underground work in Baku. In 1918 he began working for the Cheka. This was not all that common among “old” revolutionaries. As a rule they refused to work in the Cheka because they did not like to arrest Socialist Revolutionaries, their old comrades in the struggle against the tsar.)

The remaining daughters and retainers were left to another Medvedev, Pavel Medvedev, the head of the guard in the Ipatiev house, another Chekist, Alexei Kabanov, and six Latvians from the Cheka.

Yurovsky agreed: at exactly midnight a truck was to drive into the courtyard. Peter Ermakov was to come with the truck, which they planned to take from the Soviet’s garage. And replace the driver.

The truck was to be driven by Sergei Lyukhanov—the Ipatiev house driver. This truck would take away the bodies.

The town was restless, which was why Yurovsky designated a password. The password on the day of the execution was “chimney sweep.”

They adored revolutionary rhetoric. They chose “chimney sweep” because they were planning to clean out the dirty chimneys of history.

Now it remained to decide where to carry out the execution. The commandant did not hesitate. Next to the storeroom was a room—he had noticed it right away. The room let out onto Ascension Lane, which was a dead end. There was a grating on the window, and the window jutted out into a slope, so that the room was a half-cellar, and if they turned on a lamp—a bare bulb at the ceiling—the light would not be visible at all from the street because of the high fence.

It was a hungry time. They had to work all night. Yurovsky allowed the nuns from the monastery to bring milk and a basket of eggs for Alexei. And he asked them to pack the eggs better so they wouldn’t break. He took pains with everything.

On that last day, July 16, they got up at nine. As always, they gathered in the room of the father and mother and prayed together.

Before they had often sung religious songs together. But this last day for some reason they did not sing.

At nine in the morning, as always, Commandant Yurovsky arrived at the house. At ten they had tea and the commandant walked around the room, verifying the prisoners’ presence.

He also brought the eggs and milk.

Yurovsky informed Alix of this; he was pleased with this idea of his—in any event they would be in a good mood. And the eggs would come in handy. Later.

He allowed them to walk for an hour that day, as always. They walked half an hour in the morning and half an hour before dinner.

On their walk they saw the guard Yakimov, who said that only the tsar and his daughters walked; he did not see Alexei or the tsaritsa.

She did not go out but spent the entire day in her room.

From Yurovsky’s Note:

“July 16, 1918. The telegram arrived from Perm in the code language containing the decree to exterminate the Romanovs. At six o’clock in the evening Filipp Goloshchekin ordered the decree executed.”

What was this telegram? And where did this word
decree
come from? Who could issue a decree to Goloshchekin, the military commissar of the entire Ural district?

Even earlier, in late June, when a false rumor had spread in Moscow about the execution of Nicholas II, the Sovnarkom had sent an inquiry to the Urals. The reply—“All information about the murder of Nicholas Romanov is a provocation—arrived over the signature “Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Ural-Siberian Front R. Berzin.”