The Last Tsar (65 page)

So they chatted and reminisced peacefully over a cup of tea about how lucky they were to have carried out a historic mission.

But if Medvedev talked at home about the shooting, then very soon another, much more dangerous rival appeared before Yurovsky: Peter Ermakov. The former Upper Isetsk commissar would proclaim far and wide from 1918 on that he had killed the tsar.

So Yurovsky began his fight for “the honor of having executed the last tsar.” That is one reason why he gave his Note to the historian Pokrovsky. The chief Soviet historian was supposed to leave the name of Yakov Yurovsky, the tsar’s assassin, in official Soviet history for good.

Meanwhile, 1927 came around. The tenth anniversary of the revolution. Yurovsky was already living in anticipation of 1928—the great anniversary—ten years since the execution of the tsars family.

It was then that he gave both his revolvers to the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow, where the history of their new world was kept.

But a reply followed immediately: in 1927 Peter Ermakov also gave his Mauser to the local Museum of the Revolution.

“From an act of the Sverdlovsk Museum of the Revolution:

“On December 10, 1927, we received from Comrade P. Z. Ermakov a Mauser revolver no. 16174
with which, according to P. Z. Ermakov’s testimony, the tsar was shot.”

Now it was Yurovsky’s move.

The son of Chekist Medvedev: “In 1927, Yurovsky gave the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee the idea of publishing a collection of documents and reminiscences from the participants in the execution (reminiscences of the participants he needed, such as Nikulin and Strekotin, those who would want to confirm his historic mission of shooting the tsar) for the tenth anniversary of the Romanovs’ execution. But through a member of the OGPU [the name for the state security organs in the 1930s] board, F. Goloshchekin, Stalin passed on a spoken decree: ‘Don’t print anything and keep quiet generally.’”

Already then, in 1927, Stalin was beginning his battle against human memory. The death of the tsar’s family resurrected several names that were supposed to have been forgotten forever: the chief accuser in the proposed trial against the Romanovs, Trotsky; the chairman of the Ural Soviet, the Trotskyite Beloborodov (even if he had retracted), and so on.

As always, though, there were two models: “for them” and “for
us.” For them, that is, for the “progressive world public,” everything remained as before: the execution of the bloody despot, the holy vengeance of the people’s revolution. That was why when the journalist Richard Halliburton turned up in Sverdlovsk in the 1930s, Peter Ermakov willingly told him about the execution of the Romanovs and about how he personally had shot the tsar. But we know that without the permission of the “serious institution” a meeting with a foreign journalist would have been impossible. The sly Chekist explained this by his throat cancer—he was giving his dying testament, so to speak. Ermakov laughed when he lived to thrive another twenty years after that. He had borrowed the “throat cancer” from one of his friends in the Ural Soviet, a friend whom we will talk about again.

To his dying days, the Upper Isetsk “Comrade Mauser” fought relentlessly for primacy. At innumerable Pioneer campfires, on July summer nights at yet another anniversary of the Ipatiev night, he would tell his story with enthusiasm.

From a letter of Alexei Karelin in Magnitogorsk:

“I had the opportunity to see and hear one of the ‘heroes’ who participated in the execution of the tsar’s family, P. Ermakov. This was in 1934 or 1935 at the ChTZ [Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant] Pioneer camp on a lake near Chelyabinsk. I was twelve or thirteen at the time; my youthful memory preserved perfectly everything I heard and saw at this encounter with Ermakov by a Pioneer campfire. He was presented to us as a hero.… He was given flowers. My God, how they cultivated patriotism in us! I was looking straight at Ermakov with such envy!… Ermakov ended his ‘lecture’ with especially solemn words: ‘I personally shot the tsar.’ Then he listed everyone in the tsar’s family by name and patronymic as well as some old man from the court. Ermakov said that the execution had been based on Lenin’s personal instruction.”

That night by the Pioneer campfire Ermakov told them Nicholas’s last words.

Ermakov also wrote his own memoirs and on the thirtieth anniversary of the execution gave them to the Sverdlovsk Party Archive.

I heard a great deal about Ermakov’s memoirs. Naturally, I could not read them since they were kept in a secret depository in the Sverdlovsk Party Archive. Although from my readers’ letters I already knew certain excerpts from them.

——

All this I conscientiously told my guest. He just chuckled: he knew I did not know how to listen. He continued:

“Oh well, I too got caught up in this struggle for the right to be the tsar’s assassin. And you are right, in 1947 Ermakov did write his memoirs. But even before that, while Yurovsky was still alive, he wrote about it many times.”

At that point he opened his briefcase and placed some papers before me.

“Don’t get excited, and don’t try to turn the tape recorder on without my noticing, especially since you can’t. I will leave all these documents with you. I brought them for you. Read the first to start with.”

I began to read:

“From a brief autobiography of P. Z. Ermakov:

“In late June 1918 the Ural Executive Committee put me in charge of the guard for the special house where the former Romanov tsar and his family were being held under arrest. On July 16, 1918, I carried out the Regional Executive Committee’s resolution to execute the former Romanov tsar, so the tsar himself as well as his family were executed
by me
. The bodies, too, were burned
by me personally
. When the Whites took Sverdlovsk, they were unable to find the remains of the tsar and his family. August 3, 1932.”

He continued:

“As you see, every word in these few lines is boastful invention. Wouldn’t it have been easy for Yurovsky to expose the pretenses of his lying rival once and for all?

“But from the very beginning it’s as if something were holding the iron commandant back. It’s as if he were avoiding a direct confrontation with Ermakov. Instead, on a January night in 1934 he arranged a public lecture for party activists in the Ipatiev house.”

I could picture it. The party activists sitting on the chairs of the Ipatiev house, and among them—those two chairs on which Alexei and the tsaritsa had been sitting at the moment of the murder. Mayakovsky was right; “nails should be made from those people—they’d be the strongest in the world.”

“In short, in his lecture Yurovsky defended his Note. But because of Ermakov’s pretensions, he somehow reasoned very modestly: ‘I have to say that certain comrades, I have heard, are trying to say that they killed Nicholas. Perhaps they did fire, that is correct….’

“In short, Ermakov calmly expounded his fantastic ravings right up until Yurovsky’s death. As if he knew for certain that Yurovsky would not dare expose him. As if between them stood some circumstance that precluded their confrontation.

“So after the war, in the late 1940s, this began to interest me greatly.

“By the way, apart from his memoirs about the execution, Ermakov would give the Sverdlovsk Party Archives his long autobiography. It’s all kept in a secret depository, although now, I’ve heard, there has been a proposal to publish them.” Chuckling, he added, “But until that’s decided.… In short, I have brought them to you as well … and I’ll leave them here, too.”

Imagine what came over me when I saw the memoirs! Finally, finally! I could read what I had been hunting for all these years!

“This part of the memoirs is called ‘The Execution of the Former Tsar.’ But bear in mind, not everything is here—this only goes up to the moment the truck drove out of the gates with the corpses. I’ll give you the conclusion later.”

Appended to the memoirs was a portion of Ermakov’s autobiography:

“The good fortune befell me to carry out the ultimate proletarian Soviet justice against the human tyrant, the crowned autocrat, who in his reign had tried, hanged, and shot thousands of men, for which he had to bear responsibility before the people. I was honored to fulfill my obligation before my people and country and took part in the execution of the tsar’s entire family.”

After that came Ermakov’s reminiscences about the execution: “The Ekaterinburg Executive Committee passed a resolution to shoot Nicholas, but for some reason the resolution said nothing about the family and their execution. When I was called in they told me: ‘You are a lucky man. You have been chosen to execute and bury them in such a way that no one ever finds their bodies, this is your personal responsibility, which we entrust to you as an old revolutionary.’

“I accepted the assignment and said it would be carried out precisely. I prepared the site where they would be taken and hidden, always bearing in mind the significance of the political moment.

“When I reported to Beloborodov that I was ready to carry it out, he said: ‘Do it so that all of them are shot, we have decided that.’ I did not enter into any further discussion and began doing what I was supposed to do.

“I received my orders on July 16 at eight o’clock in the evening,
and came myself with two comrades—Medvedev and another Latvian (I don’t remember his name now) who served under me in my detachment—in the punitive section. I arrived at the special house at ten o’clock exactly; my vehicle came soon after, a small truck. At eleven o’clock the imprisoned Romanovs and their people confined with them were advised to go downstairs. To the suggestion that they go downstairs they asked: ‘What for?’ I said: ‘You are being taken to the center, you can’t be kept here any longer, it could get dangerous.’ ‘What about our things?’ they asked. I said: ‘We will collect your things and bring them to you.’ They agreed. They went downstairs, where chairs had been set up for them along the wall.

“It is well preserved in my memory: in the first flank sat Nicholas, Alexei, Alexandra, their older daughter Tatiana, then Dr. Botkin, and after that the lady-in-waiting and all the rest. When everything had settled down, I went out and told the driver: ‘Get going.’ He knew what he had to do, the truck roared to life, and exhaust started pouring out. All this was necessary in order to drown out the shots, so that no sound could be heard at liberty. Everyone seated was expecting something to happen. They were all tense and only from time to time exchanged words. But Alexandra said a few words not in Russian. When everything was in order, I handed Yurovsky, the house commandant, the Regional Executive Committee’s resolution. He was doubtful: ‘Why all of them?’ But I told him: ‘We have to do all of them, and we can’t go on talking here for long, time is short and we have to get going.’ I went downstairs with the commandant, and I must say that it had been decided beforehand who was to shoot whom and how. For myself I took Nicholas himself, Alexandra, the daughter, and Alexei, because I had a Mauser, and you could work with that. The rest had revolvers. After we got downstairs we delayed a little. Then the commandant suggested everyone stand, which they did, but Alexei sat in a chair. Then he began reading the sentence-resolution, which said: By resolution of the Executive Committee—execution. Then Nicholas burst out with: ‘So you’re not taking us anywhere?’ We couldn’t wait any longer, and I shot him point blank. He fell immediately, as did the others. At that time a wail rose up among them, they threw themselves on each other’s necks. Then several shots rang out—and everyone fell. When I began examining their condition—the ones that were still alive I shot again. Nicholas died from a single bullet, his wife got two, and the others also several bullets. Checking their pulses, when they were already dead, I gave the order to drag them all out through the lower entrance to the truck and stow them in it, which was done, and covered them all with a tarpaulin” (archive 221, list 2, file 774).

“I noted the archive reference especially for you to preclude any doubts,” he said when I had finished reading.

Nevertheless, I did check. By then I had received a letter from a reader in Sverdlovsk with excerpts from Ermakov’s memoirs, which her husband, an army political worker who had access to the secret archive, had made at one time. The excerpts coincided exactly, down to nonessential punctuation.

Yes, before me were the genuine memoirs of one of the principal actors on that monstrous night.

“The memoirs are odd, aren’t they?” my guest continued. “Nearly every detail is wrong.”

Indeed, if Yurovsky’s Note and the statements of the other witnesses coincided, Ermakov’s story differed surprisingly in many inaccurate details.

“In the first place, he combines himself with Yurovsky, ascribing to himself everything the commandant did. But if we toss out that boastful invention, then the memoirs represent a garbled compilation of well-known facts. As soon as he gets to the details the mistakes begin. The car did not arrive at ten but at midnight old style—that is, about two in the morning new style. Ermakov wasn’t the only one with a Mauser, Yurovsky had one as well; Yurovsky read the resolution, there were only two chairs, and so on. The only truthful detail, evidently, is the story about turning on the truck’s engine. As for Nicholas’s last sentence, that is evidently another invention, Ermakov himself changed that last sentence of the tsar’s many times.”

At this point I related to my strange guest Ermakov’s story told around a Pioneer campfire about the tsar’s last sentence.

“Yes, sure, ‘They know not what they do’—those are words Peter Zakharovich could scarcely have thought up, indeed. For all his wild imagination! He was after all very far removed from those kinds of words. So that it is quite likely those were Nicholas’s last words, which suddenly
surfaced
in Ermakov’s memory. We’ll be coming back to that ‘surfaced.’ It’s hard to believe that a man who took an active part in the execution could not remember a single truthful detail. And was only capable of garbling well-known facts. You get the feeling he simply wasn’t there, as if he were telling it from others’ words. Or as if it were all very hazy for him, surfacing in spates. No, I understand he was there but”—he chuckled—“he was
drunk!”