This puzzling episode began at the very beginning of April 1918, when announcements started appearing in the papers about “the impending trial in Moscow against Nicholas the Bloody.”
On April 1 the Central Executive Committee passed a secret resolution: “To form a detachment of 200 men and send it to Tobolsk to reinforce the guard. Should the opportunity arise, to transfer the prisoners to Moscow.” The resolution was not intended for publication in the press; however, it immediately became known to the Uralites (Sverdlov? Of course, Sverdlov!), provoking a storm of indignation in Ekaterinburg.
As a result Sverdlov “was forced to back down”: the Central Executive Committee passed an “addendum” to the earlier resolution: “1. The tsar and his family shall be moved to the Urals. 2. For this, military reinforcement will be sent to Tobolsk.”
Sverdlov sent an official letter covering all this to Ekaterinburg on April 9.
Why did the powerful supporters of a Moscow trial against the tsar agree to this “addendum”? Only because Sverdlov evidently reassured them, and there was only one way he could have done that: by explaining that the “addendum” had been passed only toquiet the energetic Uralites and avert an independent seizure of the tsar’s family by Ekaterinburg.
Indeed, the “armed reinforcement” sent to Tobolsk had a secret mission: to bring the tsar and his family to Moscow.
Clever Sverdlov did not explain, however, that the “addendum” would now give Ekaterinburg the legal right to demand the tsar’s family for itself.
Sverdlov’s double game had begun. Oh, how that game would mislead all future investigators.
Placed at the head of the secret mission was Vasily Yakovlev.
Commissar Yakovlev. Here he is in his big fur hat, a sailor’s shirt visible underneath his open sheepskin coat. His face is “rather intelligent,” as Dr. Botkin’s daughter described it.
What biographies! And how infuriatingly bland our own lives!
Vasily Yakovlev—that was his party nom de guerre from one of his many fake passports. His real name was Konstantin Myachin. Born in 1886 in Ufa, he had worked quietly and peaceably as a turner for the railroad until the First Russian Revolution drew him into its many storms. The nineteen-year-old turner Myachin became a member of an armed workers’ detachment—in plain words, a terrorist. Lenin had very eloquently defined the tasks of those armed workers’ detachments in a letter to the Petersburg Bolshevik Action Committee dated October 3, 1905: “Establish … armed workers’ detachments anywhere and everywhere—especially among students and workers.… Each should arm itself immediately according to its own abilities: one with a revolver, another with a knife, another with a kerosene-soaked rag to set fires, etc. The detachments must start their military training right away in immediate operations. One right now could undertake the murder of a secret agent or the bombing of a police station; another could assault a bank to confiscate funds for the uprising. Let each detachment train itself, if only for assaulting policemen.”
This ruthless and sinisterly romantic group in the party took shape on spilled blood: bank robberies, bombings, assassinations of officials. “Starting with my first speech, bullets and a soaped rope dogged my heels,” Myachin wrote with pride.
Very quickly the party status of these armed detachments became rather ambiguous. At their 1907 congress, the Bolsheviks discussed terror and prohibited expropriations. As always in Bolshevik history, though, the obvious concealed the hidden. The First Revolution had ended in defeat, and the Bolsheviks feverishly sought funds—both to live in emigration and to create a secret underground in Russia. Having prohibited terrorism for the sake of public opinion, they secretly encouraged it. It was then, in Tiflis in 1907, that Joseph Stalin prepared his attack on a post office and seized funds totaling more than a million dollars. It was then in 1907 that Myachin became leader of the Ufa armed workers’ detachment. And soon after, at the Miass station, a mail train was seized: led by Myachin, the workers stole 72 pounds of gold. They were tracked down, and arrests followed. Myachin escaped by shooting his way out.
Ever since his youth, secret activity had shaped this man’s character.
He crossed the border illegally—with a passport in the name of Vasily Yakovlev. In Italy—in Bologna and on Capri—he created a Marxist school (that is what the tsarist gold was used for!). Yakovlev and his comrades did not recognize parliamentary struggle against the authorities. In their school they taught underground work—how to hide and murder. During this time he crossed the Russian border illegally more than once. In a conspiratorial apartment in Kiev in 1911, he prepared to seize the treasury, but the police came upon his trail. Yakovlev managed to vanish from the city, fleeing Kiev right as Tsar Nicholas II was making a triumphant entrance into the city. (It was at this time in Kiev that Stolypin was murdered right in front of the tsar.)
Another illegal border crossing: Yakovlev turned up in Belgium. The bomber and expropriator became a modest electrical repairman for the General Electric Company in Brussels.
After the February Revolution he returned posthaste to Russia. In October 1917 he was in Petrograd preparing for the Bolshevik takeover and secretly bringing in weapons. During the Bolshevik overthrow, Vasily Yakovlev, perched on a cannon, and a detachment of sailors traversed all of Petrograd to seize the telephone station and cut off the provisional government, gathered in the Winter Palace, from the world.
After the Bolshevik victory Yakovlev became commissar of all the telegraph and telephone stations in Petrograd. In 1918, Vasily Yakovlev was among five men whom the Bolshevik government instructed to create the sinister Cheka. Throughout 1918 Yakovlev’s name popped up in many political events. On the night the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly on Lenin’s order, Yakovlev repeated his October trick: he disconnected the telephone system in the Tauride Palace. Later he brought forty train cars of grain to starving Petrograd. In his wake there was a great deal of crossfire and blood. He made one more lucky transshipment: he brought twenty-five million gold rubles out of besieged Petrograd to the Ufa bank—accompanied once again by chases and shooting.
This was the legendary man who was sitting in Sverdlov’s office in the early spring of 1918.
It was Sverdlov who proposed sending Yakovlev to Tobolsk to bring out the Romanovs. Trotsky, who knew Yakovlev well, also approved his candidacy: after all, Yakovlev had already made more than one high-risk run.
There was one detail in Yakovlev’s biography, though, known only to Sverdlov, who had worked in the Urals for a long time. Back during the time of the underground and expropriations, a “black cat” had run between Ufa’s Yakovlev and Ekaterinburg’s armed workers, and at the very beginning of 1918, when Moscow appointed Yakovlev military commissar of the entire Urals, Ekaterinburg flatly rejected him. They preferred someone else. So Goloshchekin, the head of the Ural Bolsheviks, became military commissar. Yakovlev’s mandate had to be reversed. The mutual ill will between Yakovlev and the Uralites had acquired new fuel.
Was this why the clever leader of the Central Executive Committee appointed Yakovlev to head the secret mission?
Sverdlov handed Commissar Yakovlev the ominous mandate of a Central Executive Committee plenipotentiary, a mandate bearing the signatures of Lenin and Sverdlov that obligated everyone to facilitate the plenipotentiary’s mission—or be shot for failure to obey orders. The powerful mandate said not a word, however, about the mission’s purpose.
Sverdlov explained Yakovlev’s task to him orally: the tsar’s family must be brought to Moscow.
Sverdlov asked Yakovlev his plan of action. Yakovlev proposed the typical plan of that insane period: without explaining anything to anyone (citing state secrecy), he would take the tsar’s family out of Tobolsk and down the frozen Tobol to Tyumen, where there was a railroad. He would put the family on a train and start out in the direction of Ekaterinburg, so as not to provoke any hostility on the part of the Uralites. But once he was well out of Tyumen he would turn toward Omsk—eastward. He would take the tsar’s family to Moscow via Omsk, which was at odds right then with Ekaterinburg. Should circumstances intervene, he would take the tsar’s family to his own Ufa, where there were people loyal to him and where it would be quite simple to continue on with the family to Moscow whenever necessary.
Sverdlov suggested keeping a third plan in reserve: if all else failed, Yakovlev could take the family to Ekaterinburg. The former terrorist was quite sure of himself, however. In his previous high-risk escapades he had always triumphed, and he would triumph this time as well: the tsar’s family would be in Moscow.
Yakovlev had two telegraphists put at his disposal—he must maintain constant contact with Moscow and Sverdlov. The telegrams were to use a code of sorts: “cargo” and “baggage” meant the tsar’s family; the “old route” was the Moscow route; the “new route” was the Ufa route; and finally, the “first route” was the Ekaterinburg route.
Having received his assignment, Yakovlev immediately left for Ufa to assemble a detachment. Ufa was his home, he had old friends there. The local Cheka formed a detachment of reliable men, the majority of them former comrades who had taken part in seizing the Miass gold. Yakovlev referred to them affectionately as the Miass robbers.
In Ufa, Yakovlev summoned the leader of the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks, Military Commissar Filipp Goloshchekin.
Yakovlev presented his mandate and demanded that Goloshchekin write orders subordinating all the Ekaterinburg men in Tobolsk—the head of the Tobolsk Soviet Pavel Khokhryakov, Avdeyev, and so on—to Yakovlev.
Certainly, Goloshchekin was prepared to give him the paper, but first he demanded that Yakovlev disclose the purpose of his mission: after all, the Central Executive Committee had already promised the tsar’s family to Ekaterinburg. Yakovlev explained that the tsars family would be brought to Ekaterinburg, just as the Central Executive Committee had promised, but no one must know that yet. Especially in Tobolsk. Why the secrecy? Yakovlev had a likely explanation: otherwise the Omsk detachment in Tobolsk would make trouble and matters might go as far as open conflict. Moreover, the old guard could mutiny as well. They had a long-standing dislike for the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks from the Tobolsk Soviet—it was no accident that they refused even to let them into Freedom House. That was why Yakovlev asked Goloshchekin to order the Ekaterinburg men to obey him without question.
Goloshchekin gave him his written order.
All this was a game. Of course, Goloshchekin, Sverdlov’s old friend, had had information about the true purpose of Yakovlev’s secret mission for a long time, and he had prepared for it.
What was Lukoyanov doing while Yakovlev and his detachment were leaving for Tobolsk?
After the middle of March, after Khokhryakov and Avdeyev and their detachment entered the town, he evidently left for Perm. In any event, on March 15, 1918, Feodor Lukoyanov was named head of the Perm Cheka. At the end of April, however, he left Perm again—“to put down kulak disturbances.” In fact, he evidently returned to Freedom House: Goloshchekin had declared that the decisive moment was near.
Meanwhile, in Freedom House, life went on as usual.
Nicholas’s diary:
“7 [20] April. Saturday.… Vespers at 9. An excellent bass sang.”
As always, vespers on Saturday. An electric light burned dimly in the large hall, and the icon of the Savior shone in the half-dark.
Alix entered the empty hall and covered the lectern with her own embroidery. And left. At eight the priest, accompanied by four monks from the monastery, entered the hall with a chasuble. Candles were lit. Dolgorukov, Tatishchev, and Botkin formed a line to the left of the lectern, and then came the ladies-in-waiting of the former court and the various “people.”
Finally a tiny door in the wall opened, and in walked the family.
The chorus and the “excellent bass” began to sing: “Glory to God from on high.” The family knelt, whereupon everyone else dropped down as well.
Thus they greeted their favorite day, April 8, the twenty-fourth anniversary of their engagement. That night, as always, they reminisced … brother Ernie, Wilhelm, Georgie, Ella. Where were they now? Grandmother Queen Victoria was long since in her grave. Nevertheless, all that had happened. There had been a kiss in Coburg Castle. And there had been a young man and a young woman—insanely happy. Or rather, happy and insane, for, “Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars….”
But on this special anniversary Nicholas learned he was no longer allowed to wear his epaulets. Nor was “Little One” either. His epaulets were a kind of connecting thread: he wore epaulets with his father’s initials, and his son wore his, Nicholas’s.
I can imagine how impatiently Matveyev and the “spy” waited for him to go on his walk—to read what he had written in his diary.
Evidently, the usual ritual took place: Matveyev roamed the halls, keeping watch, and Lukoyanov entered the room.
On the desk, as usual, all was compulsively in place: pencils, a few watches—part of his collection—and, finally, the diary.
Lukoyanov read:
“8 [21] April. Sunday. The 24th anniversary of our engagement!… Mass at 11.30, after which Kobylinsky showed me a telegram from Moscow that confirmed the detachment committee’s decision to take our epaulets away from me and Alexei. My decision: not to wear them for walks but wear them only at home. Shall not forget this beastliness!”
Lukoyanov finally understood: the tsar was stubbornly writing everything in the diary. Even assuming (he had to assume!) the possibility of the diary’s being read by his enemies. Herein lay Nicholas’s contempt for them.
That was when the “spy” got an idea!
He could not carry out his idea in Tobolsk, though, for the next day everything changed.
THE PLENIPOTENTIARY ARRIVES
On an April morning in 1918, Avdeyev, a member of the Tobolsk Soviet of Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks, was on his way from Tobolsk to his native Ekaterinburg. Avdeyev was pleased because he was carrying the long-awaited documents: information (the tsaritsa’s correspondence and so on) about the monarchist plot of Rasputin’s son-in-law Soloviev, obtained by the “spy,” and a resolution of the Tobolsk Soviet: in view of the threat of escape by Nicholas the Bloody from Tobolsk, begging the Ural Soviet to transfer the tsar’s family to Ekaterinburg.
On the platform where Avdeyev was waiting for his train, he saw a military unit disembarking. The sight of unfamiliar armed men greatly disturbed him. He counted fifteen cavalry and twenty infantry. This was a time of furious hostility between Omsk and the Urals, which made him think another Omsk detachment had arrived, so he decided to ferret out information about what kind of soldiers they were.
He walked over to the train, asked for the officer in charge, and was led to a man wearing a sheepskin coat over a sailor’s shirt and a big fur hat. Avdeyev presented the man his papers from the Tobolsk Soviet. The man read them, got very excited, announced, “You’re just the man I need,” and showed the Ekaterinburg man his mandate with the signatures of Lenin and Sverdlov. He also showed him the written instructions signed by Goloshchekin ordering all Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks in the Tobolsk Soviet to obey Central Executive Committee plenipotentiary Yakovlev without question.
Avdeyev had to return to Tobolsk with the detachment.
Avdeyev and Yakovlev were on horseback. Yakovlev was asking Avdeyev about Freedom House. Avdeyev replied listlessly: he did not know the details, the guard would not let them inside the house.
After traveling some 20 versts (13 miles), they noticed chains of soldiers up ahead. At first they thought: White Cossacks! Fortunately, matters did not go so far as firing: through binoculars they saw a red flag and red ribbons on fur hats. The horsemen galloped toward one another.
It turned out to be the detachment sent from Ekaterinburg to Tobolsk … for the Romanovs!
This was Ural Military Commissar Goloshchekin’s first surprise. Yakovlev was shocked to realize that Ekaterinburg was controlling him.
Now they proceeded together, the two detachments. Yakovlev galloped on his horse flanked by two Ural horsemen—Avdeyev and the detachment commander, the Uralite Busyatsky.
One of the Miass robbers recorded in his memoirs their amazing conversation en route. Busyatsky suggested a plan to Yakovlev: when Yakovlev took the tsar and his family out of Tobolsk, en route, near the village of Ievlevo, Busyatsky’s detachment could stage an ambush on Yakovlev’s detachment, as if they were trying to free the tsar and his family. In the crossfire they could do away with all the Romanovs. “We should be finishing off the executioner, not wasting our time on him,” said the Ekaterinburg man.
In reply Yakovlev silently showed Busyatsky his mandate: that all should obey him, the plenipotentiary of the Central Executive Committee, in everything. Busyatsky only chuckled. He was silent the rest of the way.
Thus, on April 22, 1918, both detachments entered the town of Tobolsk.
In Tobolsk there was one more surprise: another detachment from Ekaterinburg, led by the Bolshevik Zaslavsky, was waiting for Yakovlev.
Thus from the very first day Yakovlev found himself surrounded by two detachments of Uralites. Goloshchekin had prepared for his encounter with the Central Executive Committee’s plenipotentiary.
Yakovlev stayed in Kornilov’s house, where the Nicholas’s “suite” was housed. That very night he went to the Tobolsk Soviet to present his mandates.
The Ekaterinburg Tobolsk men listened to Yakovlev’s short speech. He informed them of the goal of his secret mission: to take the tsar and his family out of Tobolsk.
To the natural question, Where? Yakovlev replied that “it was not for them to discuss that, as prescribed in the mandate.” In response Yakovlev heard the furious words of Zaslavsky, the Ural detachment’s commander: “We shouldn’t be wasting our time on the Romanovs, we should be finishing them off!”
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“I told him just one thing: all your detachments must obey me and fulfill my instructions! I hope you understand?”
Zaslavsky muttered through his teeth: “Yes.”
In conclusion Yakovlev announced a change of the guard for tomorrow. Local Red Guards were to take up all the posts in Freedom House. Yakovlev appointed his friend from the platform, Avdeyev, Freedom House’s new commandant. This was a nod in the direction of the Uralites.
As soon as Yakovlev left, however, the Uralites passed a resolution—to keep a sharp eye on the plenipotentiary from Moscow!
Goloshchekin had prepared well for Yakovlev’s arrival.
Once he realized that the Uralites in the Tobolsk Soviet were his enemies, Yakovlev had to exercise supreme caution with the guard and Kobylinsky. If that did not work out, the mission would fail.
In the morning he called in Kobylinsky.
The Moscow commissar’s unusually gracious manner won the colonel over. Yakovlev explained that he had come to take the tsar and his family away. Unfortunately he could not announce the secret route, but the colonel could be assured he would learn everything, and very soon.
Kobylinsky repaid a confidence with a confidence. He informed Yakovlev of all the difficulties in store for his mission. Alexei was very sick, and there was no possibility of moving him.
Lately the boy had been amazingly healthy and had played endless games in the house, including a desperate game: riding a wooden boat down the stairs from the second floor. His boat whooshed down with a crash that made the inhabitants of the house cover their ears. It was as if he were trying to prove something to himself. There was another game, too—swinging on a log swing. “I do not know during which of these games he bruised himself and, as always, was taken to his bed,” recalled Dr. Botkin’s daughter.
What a bruise meant for Alexei given the conditions of their confinement was described by Dr. Botkin himself:
“Alexei Nikolaevich is subject to a disease of the vessels under the influence of insults utterly unavoidable for boys of his age, attended by … the severest pain. In such instances, the boy can suffer so inexpressibly day and night that none of his closest relatives, to say nothing of his mother, who has a chronic heart ailment, not sparing themselves for him, can bear caring for him for very long. My waning powers are also insufficient. N. G. Nagorny, who has remained with the patient through several sleepless and torture-filled nights, is wearing thin and would be in no condition at all to hold out if not for being spelled and assisted by Alexei Nikolaevich’s teachers, Mr. Gibbes and especially his tutor Gilliard.… Taking turns reading and exchanging impressions, they distract the patient during the day from his sufferings” (from the statement of E. S. Botkin before the Tobolsk Executive Committee).
On April 23, Yakovlev, accompanied by the new commandant, Avdeyev, and Colonel Kobylinsky, went to Freedom House. The night before, however, the family had prepared for this meeting.
Nicholas’s diary:
“9 [22] April. We learned about the arrival of the special plenipotentiary, Yakovlev, from Moscow. He is staying in the Kornilov house. The children imagine he will come today to make a search and burn all the papers, and Marie and Anastasia even burned their diaries….
“10 [23] April. At 10.30 in the morning Kobylinsky and Yakovlev appeared with his suite.
“Received him with my daughters. We had expected him at 11, which is why Alix was not ready. He entered, clean-shaven, smiling and embarrassed, asked whether I was content with the guard and the quarters. Then almost ran into Alexei’s room, not stopping to inspect the other rooms, and excusing himself for the disturbance, went downstairs. He stopped in at the others on the other floors just as cursorily.
“Half an hour later he appeared again to be introduced to Alix. Again he hurried in to see Alexei and went downstairs. That so far has been the extent of the search of the house.”
How sympathetically all this was written in the tsar’s diary: “excusing himself for the disturbance,” “smiling.” The former master of half the world had already forgotten about smiles and excuses.
Chekist Yakovlev knew how to get along with people.
Twice that day the commissar from Moscow viewed the sick boy. He kept trying to imagine whether it was possible, after all, to move him—and realized it was not. His task had become even more complicated.
The Uralite Avdeyev, appointed commandant of the house, was bringing about a change of the guard. Instead of the soldiers from Tsarskoe Selo, Red Guards took up the posts. On one side there was a platoon of handsome mounted soldiers in formation, dressed in uniform. On the other, the Red Guard—the comrades—some in greasy sheepskin coats, some in woolen coats, some in faded overcoats. Instead of riding boots they wore sewn and patched felt boots. Their weapons corresponded. One had an ammunition belt across his shoulder, another a rifle, still another a revolver. Their lineup was unusual, too: the Red Guard formed up according to friendship, not height.
Both detachments regarded each other with astonishment. A fragment of an empire and the army of the revolution—a great photograph of the era.
“WE IMAGINE THAT THIS IS MOSCOW”
The next day Yakovlev did not come to the house.
Nicholas’s diary:
“A fine day and rather warm. Sat a lot on my favorite greenhouse porch, the sun warms up marvelously there. Worked by the hill and clearing out a deep ditch.”
While the tsar was clearing out the ditch and reflecting on the porch of the hothouse, Yakovlev was faced with his hardest task—his encounter with the tsar’s guard. They had meekly allowed themselves to be replaced by Red Guards, but as of yesterday they were already starting to grumble.
Gathering the guard, Yakovlev spent a long time flattering the sharpshooters. Then came the important part: he triumphantly handed them their unpaid salaries for six months of Soviet power and informed them of wonderful news: their service was at an end, and they could go home to their families at last. In the evening he called a meeting of the guard’s soldiers’ committee, where he announced his purpose: he must take the tsar and his family out of Tobolsk. To the recurring question Where? Yakovlev answered with the same sentence: “This is not a subject for discussion.” They began to grumble and he immediately capitulated: he proposed including eight sharpshooters from the former guard in the guard that was going to accompany Nicholas and the family to the designated place, to convince themselves that the tsar and his family would be safe.
Yakovlev had been told back in Moscow that he could rely on the committee chairman, Matveyev.
From Matveyev’s Notes:
“Yakovlev calls me in and asks me a question: have I ever had to carry out secret military instructions. Upon receiving an affirmative answer, Yakovlev announces he’s been given the task of transferring the former tsar to Moscow. He suggests I choose eight men from my detachment to escort Nicholas Romanov en route.”
One can only guess whether Matveyev shared this astonishing news with his friend, the “spy.”
That evening, at Yakovlev’s quarters, the main meeting was held, with Kobylinsky. In his conversation with the colonel, Yakovlev made his move. He informed Kobylinsky that he must take the tsar to Moscow for trial, although naturally there would not be a trial; the tsar and his family would be sent straight to Scandinavia. He extracted a promise from the colonel not to spread this secret, knowing full well he would. He needed it spread. To calm the family and the tsar and the suite so that all would go smoothly.
That same night Kobylinsky secretly informed Botkin, and Botkin his daughter.
His daughter wrote:
“Father has told us important news.… Yakovlev has come here on Lenin’s order to take Their Excellencies to Moscow for trial, and the issue is whether to let the guard go unimpeded. Despite the terrible word ‘trial,’ everyone has taken this cheerfully, since they are convinced it does not mean a trial at all but departure abroad. Yakovlev himself must have talked about this, since Kobylinsky was walking around very happy saying, ‘What trial? There’s not going to be any trial, they’re going to take them straight from Moscow to Petrograd—and on to Finland, Sweden, and Norway.’”
Kobylinsky did not manage to inform the tsar of all this, however.
Early on the morning of April 25, Yakovlev showed up again at Freedom House.
He told Nicholas he had to take him away from Tobolsk, but he did not have the right to disclose where.
Nicholas was stunned. He had not expected this; he had been certain that Yakovlev was just the new commissar, replacing the departed Pankratov. Such a “little man in a big fur cap.” The situation heated up: Nicholas refused to leave—Alexei was too ill, he must not be touched.
Yakovlev went down to the commandant’s room, where Avdeyev and Khokhryakov were sitting. Yakovlev was distraught. (A new game!) He conferred with the Uralites about what to do. In fact, he was still trying to involve the Uralites in his mission.
Once again Yakovlev went up to the tsar’s room. He declared: resistance was useless; if Nicholas did not agree to go peacefully, he would be taken by force. Of course, he said all this gently, again endlessly begging his pardon. He suggested to Nicholas that he go alone. “Alone!” Naturally, it occurred to the tsar: a way out! After all, without him, they would probably be freed immediately.
Then Nicholas agreed.
Yakovlev left to prepare for the departure. An immediate departure, at dawn. He realized the departure rumor could not be confined to the house now.
Nicholas returned to his family, where something unexpected awaited him: Alix! She had already found out from Kobylinsky that they were taking the tsar to Moscow. She was horrified. Her first thought was the Treaty of Brest. The trial was a ploy, of course. They were taking him there to sign that dishonorable peace. They wanted to sanctify that loathsome paper with his name. The Germans must be demanding it. Only a peace signed by the tsar would have any value. That was why they wanted to take him to Moscow without her! Without her, he had always been forced to make dreadful decisions. No, she would not allow that. There was the duty of a sick child’s mother, and there was the duty of a tsaritsa. Her duty before the people and God.
He went out for a walk, and she, who could not stand for even five minutes because of her weak legs, paced restlessly around his office for an entire hour. Her thoughts were leaping about, she was going mad.
Alix’s diary:
“This is the first time in my life I have no idea how to act. Until now God has shown me the way. Right now tho’ I cannot hear His instructions.”
When the tsar got back from his walk she said determinedly: “I am going with you.”
Then she went to see her son. She took herself in hand and explained to the boy very calmly that she and the sovereign must leave. When he was better, he and his sisters would join them.
“THAT NIGHT, NATURALLY, NO ONE SLEPT”
In the evening the boy cried out in pain, calling to her, but she would not go to him in his room again. She was afraid she would not have the strength to say goodbye to him one more time. She wept, repeating: “No, this is impossible, something has to happen.… No, I am certain something will have happened by morning.… God will send an ice floe—and this trip will not take place.”
Gradually she calmed down; she had made her final decision. But the boy kept crying and calling out to her.
She decided to split up the family; she could not travel alone. But which of her daughters to take? Tatiana—the most reliable—had to take care of Alexei and run the household. Olga’s health was too fragile—it was 300 kilometers to Tyumen in an open cart. Anastasia was too small, and Alexei loved her so much. “I will go,” said Marie.
Thus witnesses (Gilliard and others) recounted this scene.
But Alix and Nicky too described the whole drama in their diaries.
He: “12 [25] April. Thursday. After breakfast Yakovlev came with Kobylinsky and announced he had received an order to take me away, not saying where. Alix decided to go with me and take Marie: no point protesting. Leaving behind the other children, with Alexei sick, and given the present circumstances, was more than difficult. We have already begun packing the essentials. But then Yakovlev said he would come back for O., T., An., and A.… We spent a sad evening, that night, naturally, no one slept.”
She: “I had to decide to stay with ill Baby or accompany him. Settled to accompany him as can be of more need & too risky not knowing where or for what (we imagine Moscow). Horrible suffering.… Took leave of all our people after evening tea with all. Sat all night with the children. Baby slept & at 3 went to him till we left. Started at 4¼ in the morning.”
Thus the entire family sat in the sleeping boy’s room.
Yakovlev did not sleep that night either. While Avdeyev was rushing around town scavenging horses and carts, Yakovlev was preparing for the trip. As if for battle. He called in the commander of the second Ural detachment, Busyatsky.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“ ‘I charge you with the task of guarding the road out of Tobolsk.… It is your responsibility to guard my passage. You and your detachment will answer with your heads for our safety.… If anything happens, you will be the first shot.’ Busyatsky was standing in front of me as white as a sheet.”
Busyatsky was broken for the time being.
Yakovlev had ordered one of his most desperate Miass robbers to guard the exit from Tobolsk. He and his men must occupy the Tobol crossing and try to keep the other, very dangerous Ural detachment—Zaslavsky’s—from leaving town for as long as possible.
Dawn. The readied “carriages” stood in the yard. They were Siberian carts, called koshevy—woven baskets set on long poles—no seats; one sat or lay directly on the bottom.
There was only one covered cart, which Commandant Avdeyev had managed to find in the town, in which the tsaritsa was to ride. A mattress was put in there and hay thrown on top.
At five in the morning they started carrying out their things.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“Sobs were heard from every corner of the house. The Romanov daughters and their entire staff had gone out on the porch. Nicholas was going from one to another, making the sign of the cross over his daughters with convulsive movements. His proud wife bore up to her daughters’ tears. Each of her gestures said: you must not display weakness before the ‘Red enemy.’”
A long, hard journey lay ahead of them: to traverse the 300 kilometers to Tyumen in these carts with the roads so bad, switching back and forth from sleighs to wagons (in many places the sun had already melted the snow) and back again to sleighs. Farther on by train—into the unknown where Commissar Yakovlev was supposed to take them.
They seated themselves in the carts. Alix wanted to ride with Nicholas, but Yakovlev explained gruffly that he himself must sit with the former tsar. She got in silently with Marie. She would “maintain this persistent silence” nearly the entire terrible way.
Three servants were sent along with them: the tsar’s valet Chemodurov, the parlormaid Demidova, and the lackey Sednev. Also taking their seats in the carts were Dolgorukov, from the suite, and Botkin, as the physician. This was all Yakovlev would allow.
The tsaritsa had begged Gilliard not to see them off, so he was sitting in the darkness by the sleeping boy.
“Is it really possible that no one has made the slightest attempt to save the tsar’s family? Where, finally, are those who remained loyal to their sovereign?” Thus this strange Swiss, loyal to the Russian tsar to the very end, exclaimed in his diary. Now he realized there was no one.
From a neighboring house, yet another witness looked on: Dr. Botkin’s daughter.
She was seeing her father for the last time. He had blessed his daughter in parting and kissed her, but she kept watching as he crossed the street in his civilian coat and felt hat. Previously her father had worn a general’s greatcoat. But after the order to remove the epaulets, he had not wanted to remove Nicholas’s initials, so he exchanged his greatcoat for a civilian coat (and immediately changed once he put his civilian’s coat on, as Baron Tuzenbakh had in Chekhov’s Three Sisters).
The night before, they had come for his suitcases and his fur-lined fur coat. And here was the dawn and she saw the carts in Freedom House yard and her father wearing Prince Dolgorukov’s rabbit fur coat. They had wrapped the empress and Marie in her father’s fur. Yes, they turned out not to have an adequate fur coat for the savage morning frosts, for this penetrating wind in the cart racing over the ice.
Six in the morning. For the last time she saw her father’s face, Marie’s sweet face, the empress’s mournful face. And Nicholas’s calm face.
The carts got under way. Gilliard’s three pupils ran down the halls of Freedom House—three sobbing girls.
THE FINAL JOURNEY
Avdeyev galloped alongside the cart where the tsar and the Central Executive Committee’s plenipotentiary were sitting. Up ahead were carts carrying Red Guards and three cannon. Cavalry detachments rode in the lead and at the rear of the sleigh train. Way up ahead galloped the scouting party.
Thus, accompanied by dashing horsemen (his whole life was “accompanied by,” at first to protect him, now to guard him—what did it matter!) on their hot Siberian horses, his final journey began.
He had missed this freedom, this air of freedom. How little one needs: to breathe and be free. The road was difficult, and he suffered for her.
What about her? She was darkly silent. She was thinking about Alexei, still hearing his cry. A fracture had rent her soul. The luxurious yachts, the carriages on soft springs with rustling tires—all was coming to an end in these pathetic, filthy carts.
Carts, carts. Soon, in this same kind of cart, very soon, their bodies would be taken away.
Nicky talked to Yakovlev without letup the entire way. They found they had something to talk about—the former terrorist and the former emperor. The coachman driving them later told how all the way they argued about politics. Yakovlev would attack—“skewer the tsar”—but the tsar would not give in.
While responding to the former autocrat and joking with him, however, Yakovlev was thinking about something completely different.
Patrols left by Yakovlev stood all along the route from Tobolsk to Tyumen, and fresh horses awaited them. But his patrols were so few. How would Busyatsky, who was in the van, behave? Would he stay scared for long? The people he had left along the way were scarcely going to be able to restrain Zaslavsky’s numerous detachment. Yakovlev realized that he was traveling between two detachments of Uralites, one in back and one in front, squeezing him like pincers. That was the reality! He kept wondering whether they would dare attack.
Nicholas’s diary:
“13 [25] April. Friday.… At 4 in the morning said goodbye to our dear children and got in the tarantasses. Yakovlev, Alix and Marie, Valya [Dolgorukov] and Botkin, and I. The people who went with us: Nyuta Demidova, Chemodurov, and Sednev. Eight sharpshooters and a 10-man mounted Red Guard convoy. It was cold, the road very difficult and terribly bumpy from the slightly frozen ruts. Crossed the Irtysh through quite deep water, had four changes of horses, arrived at the village of Ievlevo to spend the night. We were quartered in a large, clean house and slept soundly on our cots.”
The tsaritsa wrote in her diary as well: “Journey by carriage.… dead tired & aches all over.”
At dawn the journey continued. At Ievlevo cold water was already running over the ice. The wind lashed at their faces. They went into the water in their carts. Alix refused to ride on water. Planks were brought from the village, they fashioned a bridge, and the empress and Marie, leaning on the arms of gallant Valya (as once at balls in the Winter Palace) and the good doctor, crossed the water over the boards. That day they reached Pokrovskoe.
She saw Rasputin’s house and was happy: a sign, a promise of future luck.
She wrote in her diary: “14 (27) April. Saturday. Journey by carriage.… About 12, got to Pokrovskoe … stood long before our friend’s house, saw his family & friends looking out of the window at us.”
Thus the Holy Devil blessed them for death.
Now the last stage remained to Tyumen. Should the Uralites decide to attack, it would happen here. Yakovlev’s detachment had become more numerous as the patrols attached themselves. The plenipotentiary had prepared for a battle. To his amazement, though, it was again avoided.
Nicholas’s diary:
“14 [27] April.… The last stage was made slowly taking all military precautions. Arrived in Tyumen at 9.15 under a beautiful moon with the entire squadron surrounding our carts as we entered the town. It was nice to get on a train, tho’ not a very clean one. We ourselves and our things had a desperately filthy look. Went to bed at 10 without undressing. I on a cot and Alix, Marie, and Nyuta [Demidova] in a section nearby.”
In Tyumen Yakovlev waited for his detachment of 250 men. For the first time in the whole journey he breathed a sigh of relief. He did not know that both Ural detachments had a very different mission. They were supposed to follow only as far as the train: the worst awaited him ahead—on the railway.
The train stood ready for departure.
TRAIN CHASE
The family occupied a separate train car.
In the central compartment were Yakovlev and Avdeyev. The compartment to the right of them had Nicholas and Alix, the one to the left Marie and Anna Demidova.
As soon as the family were settled in their compartments, Yakovlev and his telegraphist went to the telegraph post and his direct line.
Avdeyev tried to leave the car right after him, but Yakovlev’s sharpshooters would not let him out. Yakovlev made contact with Moscow.
His message to Sverdlov: “The route remains the old one or have you changed it? Inform Tyumen immediately.”
A short while later the ribbon spewed out an answer from Moscow: “The old route. Report whether taking Cargo or not? Sverdlov.”
Yakovlev reported: “Taking Cargo.”
Yakovlev returned to the train, which got under way. Having ridden as far as the nearest fork, Yakovlev gave an order to couple on a new engine and change direction. Very quickly Avdeyev realized the train was not going to Ekaterinburg. Its lights extinguished, the train moved off to the east—toward Omsk.
“Where is the train going?” the Uralite demanded.
Yakovlev explained that he had learned that a Ural detachment was preparing to attack them en route for the purpose of destroying the family. He was afraid to take the family to Ekaterinburg via the old route and had decided to take a roundabout route to Ekaterinburg—through Omsk.
Avdeyev did not believe him, of course. He realized they were not taking the family to Ekaterinburg. But where then?
The morning of April 28. The family was waking up.
Nicholas’s diary:
“Everyone got a sound sleep. We have guessed by the names of the stations that we are going in the direction of Omsk. We have begun trying to guess where they will take us after Omsk. Moscow or Vladivostok? The commissars, of course, have not been saying anything. Marie often went to see the riflemen—their compartment is at the end of the car.… At the stations we covered the windows, since due to the holiday there were a lot of people. After a cold bite to eat and tea we went to bed early.”
But Marie did not find anything out from the sharpshooters, and Yakovlev was not explaining anything.
That night, while they lay sleeping, the main events flared up.
Yakovlev was rushing to Omsk but without knowing the most important thing: informed by Sverdlov as to the true purpose of the secret mission, Goloshchekin had made peace with the Omsk Bolsheviks. As always, a province was reconciled by its dislike for the capital. While Yakovlev, triumphant, was on his way to Omsk, telegrams were already flying from Ekaterinburg.
To Moscow: “28 April. Ekaterinburg. Your Commissar Yakovlev has taken Romanov to Tyumen stop Put him on a train comma Set out toward Ekat[erinburg] stop Went one stage comma changed direction comma went back stop Now the train with Nicholas is near Omsk stop Why this was done we do not know stop We consider this action treasonous stop According to your letter of 9 April Nicholas should be in Ekaterinburg stop What does this mean? In keeping with the decision passed by the Party’s Regional Soviet and Regional Committee instructions have been given to detain Yakovlev and the train no matter what, to arrest him and take him and Nicholas to Ekaterinburg.”
Simultaneously, telegrams were going to Omsk and other points declaring Yakovlev outside the law.
“Moscow. Sverdlov.… Having discussed the conduct of Commissar Yakovlev, by unanimous decision we deem it a direct betrayal of the revolution. The desire to take the former tsar beyond the limits of the revolutionary Urals for some unknown purpose in contradiction to the precise instruction of the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee is an act placing Commissar Yakovlev outside the ranks of revolutionaries. The Ural Regional Soviet proposes that all Soviet revolutionary organizations, especially the Omsk Soviet of Deputies, take the most extreme measures, including the use of force, to stop the train.”
Soon after, Yakovlev was brought one of these Ural telegrams. He found out that his train was supposed to be stopped in Omsk and he himself arrested.
Yakovlev lost his self-possession. He burst into Avdeyev’s compartment and screamed at the smiling Uralite: “What, have all of you there gone out of your minds?” But it was too late.
The train was approaching Omsk, where a detachment of Red Guards was waiting.
Yakovlev went “for the bank.” Not far from Omsk, he stopped the train, uncoupled the engine, and set out in the night with his telegraphist into the inferno—to Omsk.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“As soon as the train stopped [in Omsk] and we got out on the platform, we were surrounded by a dense mass of people.”
He stood alone amid the furious armed crowd, which was electrified by rumors of the traitor to the revolution. He was on the brink of death, but that had already happened many times in his life.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“I announced, shouting over the crowd: ‘I am Special Commissar Yakovlev of the Central Executive Committee! I need to see the Chairman of the Omsk Soviet!’”
And now, for the first time on this trip, he was lucky.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“The chairman of the Omsk Soviet turned out to be my friend Kosarev.… I recognized my old comrade, whom I had once been together with in the party school in Italy. I sketched out the events to him in general terms and asked him to go with me to the telegraph post: there we would contact Sverdlov. From whom I would first of all receive further instructions and secondly, Kosarev would understand that I was acting on instruction from the center.… As we raced to the telegraph post, we saw armed detachments everywhere.”
So he managed to convince his old friend, but.… At the telegraph office Yakovlev learned he had risked his life for nothing. By that time the long telegraph conversation between Ekaterinburg and Moscow had ended.
Goloshchekin had to be energetic.
And he was. Till the end. A threatening telegram followed from the Uralites: “In his letter of 9 April, Comrade Sverdlov said that Romanov would be transferred to Ekaterinburg and put under the responsibility of the Regional Soviet. Seeing that today the train is slipping away from the Urals for reasons unknown to us … we have informed Sverdlov. His reply greatly amazed us. It turns out Yakovlev is driving the train to the East in accordance with his instruction, and he asks that no obstacles be put in Yakovlev’s way….
“Our only solution to the current predicament is to send instructions to Yakovlev in Omsk to turn the train back to Ekaterinburg, otherwise the conflict could take on acute forms, for we feel that Nicholas does not need to wander the roads of Siberia but should be in Ekaterinburg under strict watch.”
Yes, they had stuck it out. Now Sverdlov could give in.
Moscow agreed, of course, “on condition that everything is done for the safety of the Romanovs,” that the “appropriate guarantees” are given. The guarantees were given immediately.
So when Yakovlev sat his telegraphist down, Sverdlov’s instructions arrived from Moscow: “Return to Tyumen immediately. Have come to an agreement with the Uralites. They have taken measures and given guarantees.”
Yakovlev was dumbfounded: so it had all been in vain. He began a long telegraph conversation with Moscow. He reported information that gave Sverdlov sufficient grounds for refusing Ekaterinburg: “Without question I shall obey all orders from the Center. I will take the Baggage wherever you say. But I consider it my duty to warn the Sovnarkom once more that the danger is quite justified.… There is one more consideration: if you send the baggage to Simsky District [in Ufa Province, Yakovlev’s home], then you are always free to take him to Moscow or wherever you like. If the Baggage is taken according to the first route [Ekaterinburg], then I doubt you will ever be able to drag it out of there.… Just as I doubt the Baggage will always be completely safe. So, we warn you for the last time and unburden ourselves of any moral responsibility for future consequences.”
To Yakovlev’s astonishment Sverdlov was deaf: Moscow’s decision stood. Yakovlev must take the family to Ekaterinburg.
——
Yakovlev returned to the train on the same engine. The train started back.
Nicholas’s diary:
“16 [29] April. This morning we noticed we were going back. It turned out they wouldn’t let us enter Omsk, so we were a little freer, we even took two walks: first alongside the train, and then rather far into a field, with Yakovlev himself. Everyone was in a cheerful mood.”
Nicholas was in a cheerful mood because he still did not know the true reason for the train’s turning around.
From Matveyev’s Notes:
“We said the turning around was due to damage to one of the bridges.”
Nicholas continued to believe they were going to Moscow. Their wild journey continued, but this meant he would have his beloved walk. “With Yakovlev himself,” he recorded in his diary, not without a grin.
They walked alongside the train. And they talked. About what? Power? The mob? Revolution? Or Nicholas’s favorite theme—people quarrel, they irritate one another, when all around is the marvelous, wise life of the trees, green spaces, the sky and its timeless clouds?
Thus ended the last tsar’s last walk in freedom.
When Nicholas awoke in the morning he understood everything. He could tell by the names of the stations that they were approaching Ekaterinburg.
Yakovlev ordered the curtains lowered: he had no doubt how they would be met by the capital of the Red Urals. Nor did the tsar. An amazing scene took place in the train on their approach to the town. Matveyev saw Nicholas go into Matveyev’s compartment and walk out soon after, chewing on some black bread. When he saw Matveyev, Nicholas was flustered.
From Matveyev’s Notes:
“ ‘Pardon me, Peter Matveyevich, I broke off a piece of your black bread without your permission.’ I offered Romanov a white roll the men had bought at one of the stations since I knew that the crust of bread lying on the table was incredibly dry, I had been planning to throw it to the dogs at the station.”
The Emperor of All the Russias was gnawing on a crust of black bread intended for the dogs?
No, there is another altogether unsentimental interpretation to that scene.
From Matveyev’s Notes:
“I looked at Romanov and saw he was very agitated and chewing the dry crust more out of agitation than anything else.”
Yes, the closer they got to Ekaterinburg, the more agitated he became. He did not want to frighten Alix and was probably reassuring her. But he told Matveyev the truth.
From Matveyev’s Notes:
“Nicholas said, ‘I would go anywhere at all but the Urals.… Judging from the papers, the Urals are harshly against me.’”
He was still hoping that the “good riflemen” from the old guard would undertake something.
At 8:40 in the morning, the train stopped among the countless tracks of the Ekaterinburg’s main station. The train was standing a few tracks from the nearest platform. From behind the lowered curtains the tsar saw that, despite the early hour, the platform was filled with a restless crowd.
Early on the morning of April 30, a driver from the Ural Soviet’s garage was ordered to take a car to the house belonging to the engineer Ipatiev, at the corner of Ascension Avenue and Ascension Lane. Very recently, at the order of the Ural Soviet, Ipatiev had been told to vacate the premises within forty-eight hours. The house was surrounded by a high fence. A guard was posted. Soon after, an astonishing rumor spread through the town: the tsar’s family would be living in that guarded house.
An immense crowd was standing by it.
Ural Commissar Goloshchekin himself walked out through the gates of the Ipatiev house as the automobile drove up. He ordered the driver, Feodor Samokhvalov, to take him to Ekaterinburg’s main train station, where Goloshchekin ordered him to wait while he ran off somewhere, then returned and ordered Samokhvalov to drive to Ekaterinburg’s freight station.
All this was Goloshchekin’s sly maneuver to get the crowd by the house to disperse.
From the memoirs of Housing Commissar Zhilinsky (kept in the Sverdlovsk Party Archive):
“We decided to trick the people and send cars to the main station and from there continue to the freight station, where we were to pick up the Romanovs. That was what we did. Everyone followed the cars to the main station.”
THE FINAL STRUGGLE
The crowd was indignant.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“The air was filled with an unimaginable din, threatening shouts were heard time and again.… The disorderly crowd had begun to advance on our men.… The guard standing on the platform was not making much of an effort to hold back the press of people.
“ ‘Bring the Romanovs out, and let me spit in his face….’
“ ‘Get out the machine guns….’
“That had an effect. The crowd recoiled. Threatening shouts flew in my direction.”
At the same time the train sent by the Stationmaster advanced on the crowd. The crowd rushed back—and a long line of comrades walled off the raging crowd from the train.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“Curses and shouts were heard … and while the crowd was making its way through the buffer of a freight train … we got under way and disappeared among the countless tracks of the Ekaterinburg station. Fifteen minutes later we were in complete safety at the freight station.”
From Nicholas’s diary:
“17 [30] April. Tuesday. Another marvelous warm day. At 8.40 we arrived in Ekaterinburg. Stopped for about 3 hours at one station, where there was powerful ferment between the local commissars and ours.”
And not a word about the raging crowd! The tsar did not want to describe his crazed former subjects.
A meeting had been arranged at the freight station.
Forty Red Guards immediately uncoupled the train.
On the platform stood three leaders of the Ural Soviet:
Twenty-seven years old, blue-eyed, wearing a large white fur cap—Comrade Alexander Beloborodov. A former electrical repairman, now chairman of the Soviet, or, as he liked to refer to himself, head of the revolutionary government of the Red Urals;
Comrade Filipp (Isai) Goloshchekin—leader of the Ural Bolsheviks;
And yet another influential member of the Soviet—Comrade Boris Ditkovsky, son of a tsarist officer, educated in Petersburg, student at the Military School, graduate of the University of Geneva, brilliant mining engineer.
All were very decisive men.
At that moment the sharpshooters of the old guard rebelled. They had realized what lay in store for the Romanovs. The sharpshooters stood in the doors of the train car and would not let anyone in. Yakovlev attempted to use this last opportunity to his advantage. The commissar was not one to give up until he had reached the end of his rope. Yakovlev demanded to be put in contact with Moscow.
All this went on for an hour and a half. The troika was tired. The three decisive men were sick of waiting.
They announced that if they were not allowed into the car immediately, the Red Guard would open fire on the train. Only then did Yakovlev placate the sharpshooters.
All eight sharpshooters were disarmed, and by evening they were sitting in the Ekaterinburg jail, whence Yakovlev freed them with great difficulty.
Beloborodov entered the train car. After exchanging dry greetings with the plenipotentiary, he sat down and wrote a receipt (see Appendix). Yakovlev led the family out of the car.
Ten years later the artist V. Pchelin drew a picture for the Sverdlovsk Museum of the Revolution, The Delivery of the Romanovs to the Ural Soviet. That was what it was, a delivery. It was not just chance that “cargo” and “baggage” had been the designations for the powerless family in Yakovlev’s telegrams. The Bolsheviks did receive them like baggage—at a freight station—and signed for them. This was the Ural revolutionaries’ savage humor.
What a picturesque group of the slain it was that day at the Ekaterinburg freight station: Nicholas, his wife and daughter—all would be shot in a little more than two months. But those who were receiving them—Goloshchekin, Beloborodov, Ditkovsky—would also be shot, albeit twenty years later.
They were put into automobiles. In one were Nicholas, the Uralite Avdeyev, now appointed commandant of the Ipatiev house, or the “house of special designation,” as it would be called in all the official papers, and next to Nicholas Comrade Beloborodov. The former tsar next to the present ruler of the Urals. In the other car were Comrades Ditkovsky and Goloshchekin, the former Grand Duchess Marie, and the former empress.
Behind them in a truck were the Red Guards. Nicholas, I think, appreciated this ironic smile of fate. It was all just like in the good old days: the leaders of the province met him at the station and an escort of soldiers accompanied him to the house.
Nicholas’s diary:
“The train went to the other, freight station. After an hour and a half wait we left the train. Yakovlev handed us over to the district commissar and the three of us got in an auto and drove down the deserted streets to the Ipatiev house, which had been made ready for us.”
Alix’s diary:
“At 3 were told to get out of the train. Yakovlev had to give us over to the Ural Soviet. Their Chief took us 3 in an open motor, and a truck with soldiers … followed.”
Thus they parted. Comrade Yakovlev and the former tsar. But the Uralites were serious people. They obviously continued to have the most serious intentions with respect to the cunning commissar. Sverdlov was forced to intervene. A telegram arrived addressed to Beloborodov and Goloshchekin: “Everything Yakovlev does is a direct execution of my order…. Give Yakovlev your complete confidence. Sverdlov.”
Goloshchekin understood the signal—and momentarily placated the zealous Uralites. On the evening of April 30, the Ural Soviet heard Yakovlev’s report. The Soviet passed a resolution “rehabilitating” the plenipotentiary.
WHO WAS HE?
Yakovlev’s life took an astonishing turn after this.
Late in May on the Volga, in the southern Urals, and in Siberia, an uprising of the Czech Legion ignited against the Bolsheviks. To fight them, an eastern front was created, led by former tsarist officer and Socialist Revolutionary M. Muraviev. Ordered to command one of those armies in the area of Ufa and Orenburg was Yakovlev.
But on July 10 Muraviev mutinied against the Bolsheviks and was murdered while under arrest in Kazan.
Then Yakovlev quit the front and returned secretly to his native Ufa, now freed of Bolsheviks, where he declared that he had “overcome the idea of bolshevism” and went over to the White Army.
He directed an appeal to the soldiers of the Red Army:
“With this letter I appeal to you, the rank-and-file soldiers, not your irresponsible leaders who through their tyranny are deciding the fates of our poor, lacerated homeland.… The people are grumbling, protesting, thrashing about in their death throes. Here and there rebellions are flaring up.… A terrible civil slaughter is in progress—and there is not one free citizen in Russia left who can be certain of tomorrow.… As in the final days of autocracy … when ominous specters of the end of popular patience were in the air, now too everything is flaring up against Soviet power, and it will collapse, crushing all of you with its weight.… Former Commander-in-Chief of the Bolshevik Ural-Orenburg Front V. Yakovlev.”
Further followed an altogether astonishing finale: having gone over to the Whites, Yakovlev was hastily shot in a White Guard counterintelligence cellar. Such was the well-known version of the death of the Central Executive Committee plenipotentiary cited in so many works.
We have to get used to it, though: the people in our story have a tendency to get resurrected. “Yakovlev shot by the Whites” turned out to have survived! A certain investigator into particularly important matters, Major N. Leshkin, who had access to secret documents (a new type of historian for us Russians) published extracts from the secret “Yakovlev case.”
It turns out that Yakovlev survived happily in China in the 1920s under the name Stoyanovich. There had been no execution. In 1919 Yakovlev had simply fled Russia for Harbin. In 1927, though, he decided to return to the Soviet Union. Naturally, he would fall in the hands of the same organization he himself had once helped found. After a prolonged investigation, he was convicted. Only his revolutionary services saved him from a firing squad. He was sent to the terrible Solovetsky camp and the White Sea—Baltic Canal.
In his article, however, Leshkin cites some surprising statements from an old Chekist who in 1929, “while Myachin was being tried as Stoyanovich, was at the Higher Courses in Moscow and heard the following story from Artur Artuzov, the head of Soviet intelligence:
“ ‘In the Civil War there were victims who for the good of the cause soiled their name with treason.… For instance, Kostya Myachin went over to Kolchak with the approval of the Cheka. He retreated to China, where he accomplished a great deal as Stoyanovich.This is not the time to speak of this, as it would shed unwanted light on our agents. He was a model resident. They began to wise up to him. Stoyanovich was forced to return. Now he has been convicted, but that was necessary. Soon we will vindicate and reward him.”
Indeed, in two years Yakovlev received early release for “selfless labor on the White Sea—Baltic Canal.”
So, was there no treason? Was there no crime? Was he a true Bolshevik and loyal Chekist, Kostya Myachin? But in the terrible year 1937, at the height of Stalinist repressions, when Yakovlev was driven out of every job he got, he would write a desperate letter to Stalin that included this sentence:
“How can I be allowed to be punished again for the same crime?”
So, there was a crime! And for that he was punished?
More confusion—this mysterious man with three names. Who was he really? A loyal Bolshevik, a model Chekist … or …?
A gambler who played complicated double games all his life, who willingly entered into the most incredible adventures, who after his secret mission became thoroughly disenchanted with the Bolsheviks. He realized that high ideals had been replaced by a shameless struggle for power. When he went over to the Whites, though, he soon saw that they did not believe the former Red commissar and hated him. His wife tells in her memoirs how often he did not sleep at night, how he was constantly exclaiming, tormented: “What have I done?”
Then this fantastic man devised a new twist in his fate: he fled the Whites for China, where he became an adviser to the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen and, evidently, made contact with Soviet intelligence.
Thus he attempted to earn the right to return to his homeland. He was wrong, though: he had been too prominent a figure, and too many of his enemies remained in the homeland. They had not forgiven his betrayal. When he found himself in the camps, he wrote endless requests to the government for his release, mentioning his services to the revolution. That was when he created his memoirs, The Romanovs’ Last Trip. Written in the camps, they were nothing more than another attempt to cite his services. By then Trotsky had been sent out of the country and Trotskyism had been routed, however, and Yakovlev, of course, was afraid to write that the chief purpose of his mission had been to bring the tsar’s family to Moscow to the trial Lev Trotsky had dreamed of. Instead he repeated the lie that had once confused the Uralites: from the very outset he had been taking the tsar to Ekaterinburg. Oh well, Sverdlov was long since in his grave, and there was no one to refute him, and he did not know that in the Urals his former companion Matveyev would write the following in his Notes: “Yakovlev … called me in and asked me a question: Had I ever had to execute secret military instructions. Once he received my affirmative answer, Yakovlev told me that he had been assigned the task of transferring the former tsar to Moscow.”
Of course, Yakovlev’s memoirs contain no reply to the most important question: When did he “overcome the idea of bolshevism”? If that happened after he went to get the tsar, then everything is clear.
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.