The Last Tsar (56 page)

After Muraviev’s betrayal, power in the Urals had been given to the Latvian revolutionary commanding the front against the advancing Czechs—Reinhold Berzin, whom Moscow had evidently instructed to set the family’s execution in motion. This was logical; he could be a guarantee that the Ural Soviet did not do this before
Ekaterinburg’s fate at the hands of the Czechs had been decided. Only he, the commander of the army, could know this fateful hour precisely. Only he, the commander-in-chief, could issue an order to a military commissar. On July 16, realizing that the town’s situation was hopeless, Berzin clearly gave his order, sentencing eleven people to death—including a minor.

In 1939, Reinhold Berzin would be shot in Stalin’s camps.

It was seven o’clock in the evening.

The Romanov family was having tea. Their last tea. That morning the guards had come and taken away the little cook Sednev. Alix was very concerned and sent Botkin to ask what was going on. They explained that the boy had gone to see his uncle. He would return soon.

Having received Berzin’s order, the cautious Filipp Goloshchekin decided in any event to telegraph Moscow, so he sent that telegram—to the effect that the family’s execution agreed upon with Moscow could not be delayed because of the town’s imminent surrender.

“If your opinion is contrary, inform us immediately.”

He wanted to secure a direct decision from Moscow. He sent the telegram through Zinoviev—the execution’s ardent supporter. He understood that Zinoviev would not allow the execution decision rescinded. Zinoviev sent the telegram on to Lenin in Moscow. At 21:22 it was in Moscow, as the telegram itself attests.

Did Ekaterinburg receive an answer? Or, as always, was Moscow silent, implying agreement?

On August 11, 1957, an article was printed in
Construction Newspaper
entitled “On Lenin’s Advice.” An article with a title like that scarcely had many readers, which was too bad—the essay was as curious as could be.

Its hero was a certain Alexei Feodorovich Akimov, a senior lecturer at the Moscow Architecture Institute. Akimov had a meritorious revolutionary past, about which the essay’s author wrote. From
April 1918 to July 1919, Alexei Akimov served in the Kremlin guard—first guarding Yakov Sverdlov and then Vladimir Lenin.

The newspaper recounted an event that involved Akimov in the summer of 1918:

“Most often he stood at his post by Lenin’s reception room or on the staircase to Lenin’s office. But sometimes he had to carry out other orders as well. Run down to the radio station or the telegraph office, for example, and transmit especially important telegrams from Lenin. In those instances he brought back not only the original of the telegram but also the telegraph ribbon. After transmitting one such telegram of Lenin’s the telegraph operator told Akimov that he would not give him the ribbon but would keep it. ‘I had to take out my pistol and insist,’ recalled Akimov. But when he returned to the Kremlin half an hour later with the original of the telegram and the telegraph ribbon, Lenin’s secretary said pointedly: ‘Go in to Vladimir Ilich, he wants to see you.’

“Akimov entered the office with a bold military step, but Lenin stopped him cold: ‘What were you up to there, comrade? Why did you threaten the telegraph operator?

“ ‘… Go to the telegraph office and publicly apologize to the operator.’”

This essay contained one very strange detail: not a word was said about the
subject
of that “especially important telegram” that Alexei Akimov took away from the telegraph operator while waving a revolver.

From a letter of Nikolai Lapik, director of the Progress Factory’s museum in the town of Kuibyshev:

“We have in our museum a typed record of a conversation between A. F. Akimov and A. G. Smyshlyaev, a veteran of our factory whose hobby was searching for materials on its history.

“In the stenographic record of this conversation, which took place on November 19, 1968, the following was written down from the words of A. F. Akimov:

“ ‘When the Ural Regional Party Committee decided to shoot Nicholas’s family, the Sovnarkom and Central Executive Committee wrote a telegram confirming this decision. Sverdlov sent me to take this telegram to the telegraph office, which was located then on Myasnitskaya Street. He said to send it as cautiously as possible. This meant that I was to bring back not only a copy of the telegram but the ribbon as well.

“ ‘When the telegraph operator sent the telegram, I asked for the
copy and the ribbon. He would not give me the ribbon. Then I pulled out my revolver and began to threaten the operator. When I got the ribbon from him I left. While I was on my way to the Kremlin, Lenin found out about what I had done. When I arrived, Lenin’s secretary told me, “Ilich is asking for you, go, he’s going to give you a dressing down right now.”’”

So, the Sovnarkom and Central Executive Committee (that is, Lenin and Sverdlov) sent that telegram to Ekaterinburg “with confirmation of this decision” about the execution of the tsar’s family.

In Ekaterinburg at that moment it was already getting on toward midnight. They were still waiting for a reply.

When he received the reply after midnight, Goloshchekin sent the truck. That was why the truck and Ermakov arrived only at 1:30 in the morning, two hours late. Yurovsky would write about this delay with annoyance in his Note.

While they were awaiting the telegram in Ekaterinburg, the family was getting ready for bed. That night Alexei slept in his parents’ room. Before bed she wrote at length in her diary—the whole day—the last day (
see Appendix
).

“July 3 (16). Tuesday.… Grey morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby has a slight cold. All went out ½ hour in the morning, Olga & I arranged our medicines. T[atiana] read the spiritual reading. They went out, T. stayed with me & we read: the book of the prophet Obadiah and Amos.”

From the book of the prophet Amos:

“And their king shall go into captivity, and he and his princes together, saith the Lord: (1:15).

“The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks” (4:2).

“Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it
is
an evil time” (5:13).

“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:

“And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to see the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (8:11–12).

From the prophet Obadiah:

“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy next among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord” (1:4).

Hearing these ominous sacred words, Tatiana suddenly fell silent and got to thinking.

“Every morning the commissar comes to our rooms, at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby.

“8. Supper. Suddenly Leshka Sednev was fetched to go see his uncle & flew off—wonder whether it’s true & we shall see the boy back again.”

Alix still did not believe him: she remembered how everyone who had been taken away had vanished without a trace: Sednev, Nagorny….

“Played bezique with N[icholas].

“10½. to bed.”

At that moment two rather drunk guards, the sharpshooters Proskuryakov and Stolov, walked up to the Popov house across the way, where the guards lived.

The day before had been payday (we shall also remember this). They had been drinking at a policeman friend’s house, and they reached the Popov house in a jolly mood. They were met by the head of the guard, Pavel Medvedev, who was for some reason very nasty. Cursing, he drove them both into the bathhouse in the Popov house yard. The night was warm. They lay down and fell asleep immediately.

Meanwhile the guard Yakimov was posting the watch.

Sharpshooter Deryabin to post 7.

Sharpshooter Kleshchev to post 8 in the garden by the window to the entry.

Yakimov posted the watch and went to bed.

Alix finished writing in her diary.

It was cool. She recorded the temperature in her diary. These became her last words: “15 degrees.”

She said her prayers before going to bed. The girls were already asleep.

At eleven o’clock the light in their room went out.

July 17, 1918: early morning. Opposite the Ipatiev house, in the Popov house, where the guard was quartered on the second floor, ordinary inhabitants of the town lived on the first. Late on the night of July 16–17, two of them woke up. Muffled shots … many shots—there, outside, from somewhere beyond the fence of that terrible house. The Ipatiev house.

They whispered quietly to each other.

“Hear?”

“Yes.”

“Understand?” “Yes.”

Oh, life was dangerous in those years, and people were wary, they learned well: only the wary survived. So they said no more to each other and hid in their rooms until morning.

Later they told their White Guard investigator about this nighttime conversation—on that warm, “garden fragrant” night of July 16–17.

——

July 17: dawn.

From a letter of Peter Lyurtsov in Kuibyshev:

“In 1918 my grandfather Peter Nikolaevich Lyurtsov was working in a Soviet institution in Ekaterinburg. On July 15 they were paid, and he went out with his friends. Toward morning they decided to go home. It was a warm night. He was walking not far from the racetrack. Dawn was already breaking. A truck was driving down the empty street, and in it were armed men. Calculating the look of the Red Guards in the cab, my grandfather decided to make himself scarce just in case. When the Whites came, everyone starting talking about the execution. My grandfather immediately realized what that truck had been. Later he told us, ‘Well, what’s so savage and horrible about that—a truck, but for some reason I can’t forget it, and whenever I want to think about that terrible thing—I think about that dark truck in the dawn.’”

July 17: morning in the Ipatiev house. The morning was overcast. But again the gardens had blossomed—“the fragrance of the gardens,” as he had written.

As always, sentries were posted around the Ipatiev house. A novice came from the monastery that morning again and, like the day before, brought eggs and cream. They did not let the novice into the house; she was met on the porch by the commandant’s young assistant Nikulin. He did not take the food but said: “Go back and don’t bring anything else.”

The head of the guard, Yakimov, arrived at the Ipatiev house early in the morning. The Latvians were not inside the house anymore. The sentries were only outside. Yakimov was told the Latvians had gone back to the Cheka that morning and only two remained. But after what had happened last night they hadn’t wanted to sleep downstairs, so they were sleeping in the commandant’s room on the second floor. Yakimov walked to the commandant’s room and saw the Latvians sitting on the grand duchesses’ camp beds (which had been brought from their rooms). Yurovsky was not there, and Nikulin and Pavel Medvedev were sitting at the table, which was strewn with jewels, some of which were in open boxes and some simply dumped on the cloth. Medvedev and Nikulin seemed rather tired, depressed even. They were silently putting the jewels away in the boxes. The door to the family’s room was closed.

The spaniel Joy stood quietly, poking its nose at the closed door. And waiting. Not a sound came from the family’s room, although usually you could hear voices and steps.

That is what Guard Commander Yakimov later told the White Guard investigator.

On July 17, Beloborodov acted out his amusing play entitled “Informing Unsuspecting Moscow about the Execution” for the uninitiated members of the Ural Soviet Executive Committee.