Nicholas and Alexandra

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Siberia

IF the train which Kerensky provided for the Tsar’s journey to Siberia was not of Imperial quality, it was nevertheless a luxurious vehicle for the transfer of prisoners. It consisted of comfortable wagon-lits of the International Sleeping Car Company, a restaurant car stocked with wines from the Imperial cellar, and baggage compartments filled with favorite rugs, pictures and knickknacks from the palace. In their portable jewel chests, the Empress and her daughters brought personal gems worth at least a million roubles ($500,000). In addition to the ladies and gentlemen of their suite, the Imperial family was accompanied to Siberia by two valets, six chambermaids, ten footmen, three cooks, four assistant cooks, a butler, a wine steward, a nurse, a clerk, a barber and two pet spaniels. Colonel Kobylinsky also rode aboard the Tsar’s train, while most of his 330 soldiers followed on a second train.

The train routine deferred entirely to the established habits of the Imperial family: breakfast at eight, morning coffee at ten, lunch at one, tea at five and dinner at eight. Between six and seven every evening, the train came to a stop in open country so that Nicholas and the children could walk the dogs for half an hour along the track. Alexandra did not attempt these excursions. She sat fanning herself in the heat by an open window and was delighted one afternoon when a soldier reached up and handed her a cornflower.

For four days, the train rolled eastward, clicking monotonously over the rails through the heat and dust of European Russia. The passengers saw no one. At every village, the station was surrounded by troops, the blinds in the coaches were drawn and no one was permitted to show himself at the window. Only once was the train forced to halt by curious local officials. At Perm, on the edge of the Urals, a tall, white-bearded man entered Kobylinsky’s compartment, introduced himself as head of the railroad workmen in that district and said that the comrades wanted to know who was on the train. Kobylinsky produced his paper bearing Kerensky’s signature, and the workers immediately stood aside.

On the evening of the third day, as the train was crossing the Urals, the air grew noticeably cooler. East of this low range of forested hills lay the beginnings of the Siberian steppe. From the windows of the puffing, rattling train, the Empress and her children saw for the first time the meadowland stretching to the horizon. In late afternoon, the immense dome of sky overhead turned bright crimson and gold as the last rays of sunset glowed on the white trunks of the birches and the green stems of marsh grasses.

Near midnight on August 17, the train crawled slowly into Tyumen on the Tura River. At a dock across from the station, the river steamer Rus was waiting. Tobolsk lay two hundred miles to the northeast, a two-day journey on the Tura and Tobol rivers. Nicholas spent the voyage pacing the steamer’s upper deck and staring at the villages scattered along the bare river shores. One of these villages was Pokrovskoe, Rasputin’s home. As Pokrovskoe glided past, the family gathered on deck to look. They saw a prosperous village with flowers in the windowboxes and cows and pigs in the barnyards. Rasputin’s house was unmistakable: two stories tall, it loomed above the simple peasant huts. The passengers were fascinated to see this remote but famous hamlet. Long before, Rasputin had predicted to the Empress that one day she would visit his village. He had not foretold the circumstances, and the family accepted this glimpse as a fulfillment of the prophecy.

Before sunset on the afternoon of the second day, the boat rounded a bend in the river and the passengers saw the silhouette of the old Tobolsk fortress and the onion bulbs of the city’s churches. At dusk, the steamer docked at the wharf of the West Siberian Steamship and Trading Company, and Kobylinsky went ashore to inspect the governor’s house, where the prisoners would live. He found the house dilapidated and bare of furnishings. The following morning, postponing the family’s occupancy, he hired painters and paperers and bought furniture and a piano from stores and private families in Tobolsk. Electricians were summoned to improve the wiring, and plumbers came to install bathtubs. During the eight days it took to refurbish the house, the family lived aboard the Rus. To break the monotony, the steamer made afternoon excursions along the river, stopping so that Nicholas and the children could walk along the bank. Finally, on August 26, the house was ready, and at eight in the morning the Tsar, the Tsarevich and three of the Grand Duchesses walked from the dock to the house along a road lined with soldiers. Alexandra and Tatiana followed in a carriage.

Tobolsk, where the Tsar and his family were to live for the next eight months, lay at the juncture of the Tobol and the mighty Irtysh River. Once it had been an important trading center for fish and furs, a link with the Arctic, which lay farther north. But the builders of the Trans-Siberian Railroad had by-passed Tobolsk, going two hundred miles to the south, through Tyumen. In 1917, Tobolsk was, as Kerensky described it, “a backwater.” Its twenty thousand people still lived mostly from trade with the north. In the summer, all transport moved by river steamer; in the winter, when the rivers were frozen, people traveled in sledges along the river ice or paths cut through the snow along the banks. The town itself was a sprawl of whitewashed churches, wooden commercial buildings and log houses scattered along streets thick with dust in the summer. In spring and fall, the dust turned to thick, syrupy mud, and the wooden planks laid down as sidewalks often sank out of sight.

The governor’s house, a big, white, two-story structure fringed on each side with second-floor balconies, was the largest residence in town. Still, it was not large enough for the Imperial entourage. The family itself filled up the mansion’s second floor, with the four Grand Duchesses sharing a corner room and Nagorny sleeping in a room next to Alexis. Gilliard lived downstairs off the big central drawing room in what had been the governor’s study. The remainder of the household lived across the street in a house commandeered from a merchant named Kornilov.

At first, Kobylinsky posted no guards inside the governor’s house and allowed the family considerable freedom of movement. On their first morning in Tobolsk, they all walked across the street to see how the suite was settling into the Kornilov house. The soldiers immediately objected to this degree of freedom for prisoners, and Kobylinsky reluctantly authorized the building of a high wooden fence around the house, enclosing a section of a small side street which ran beside the house. Inside this muddy, treeless compound, the family took all its exercise. The suite, on the other hand, was permitted to come and go freely, and when Sidney Gibbs, the Tsarevich’s English tutor, arrived from Petrograd, he had no difficulty entering the house and joining the family. Several of the Empress’s maids took apartments in town, and Dr. Botkin was even allowed to establish a small medical practice in Tobolsk.

Evening prayer services were held in a corner of the downstairs drawing room which was decorated with icons and lamps. A local priest came in to conduct these prayers, but because there was no consecrated altar he was unable to offer Mass. On September 21, Kobylinsky arranged for the family to begin attending a private early Mass at a nearby church. On these occasions, two lines of soldiers formed in the public garden which lay between the house and the church. As the Imperial family walked between the two lines, people standing behind the soldiers crossed themselves and some dropped to their knees.

As Kerensky had suspected, the people of Tobolsk remained strongly attached to both the symbol and the person of the Tsar. Walking past the governor’s house, they removed their caps and crossed themselves. When the Empress appeared to sit in her window, they bowed to her. The soldiers repeatedly had to intervene and break up clusters of people who gathered in the muddy street whenever the Grand Duchesses came out on a balcony. Merchants openly sent gifts of food, nuns from the local convent brought sugar and cakes, and peasant farmers arrived regularly with butter and eggs.

Removed from the inflammatory atmosphere of Petrograd, Colonel Kobylinsky managed to restore some discipline in his men. The soldiers, watching the once august and unapproachable personages walking a few feet away, were surprised to find them a simple, united family. Although the men of the 2nd Regiment remained hostile, the soldiers of the 1st and 4th Regiments warmed, especially to the children. The Grand Duchesses talked often to these men, asking them about their villages and families. Marie quickly learned the names of all the wives and children. To many of the men, Alexis remained “the Heir,” an object of special respect and affection. When one favorite section of the 4th Regiment was on duty, Alexis and his father sometimes slipped quietly into the guardhouse to play games with these men.

Kobylinsky remained in sole authority until late in September, when two civilian commissars arrived to take charge of the captives, although Kobylinsky was ordered to keep his command of the military guard. The two commissars, Vasily Pankratov and his deputy, Alexander Nikolsky, both were Social Revolutionaries who had spent years in exile in Siberia. Although they were friends, Pankratov and Nikolsky were opposite in character. Pankratov, a small, earnest man with bushy hair and thick glasses, presented himself formally upon arrival to the Tsar.

“Not wishing to infringe the rules of politeness,” he wrote, “I requested the valet of the former Tsar to report my arrival and to state that I wished to see his master.…

“ ‘Good morning,’ said Nicholas Alexandrovich, stretching out his hand. ‘Did you have a good journey?’

“ ‘Thank you, yes,’ I replied, grasping his hand.

“ ‘How is Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky?’ asked the former Tsar.…”

Pankratov asked whether Nicholas was in need of anything.

“ ‘Could you allow me to saw wood?… I like that kind of work.’

“ ‘Perhaps you would like to have a carpenter’s shop? It is more interesting work.’

“ ‘No, just see that they bring some logs into the yard and give me a saw,’ replied Nicholas Alexandrovich.

“ ‘Tomorrow it shall be done.’

“ ‘May I correspond with my relatives?’

“ ‘Certainly. Have you enough books?’

“ ‘Plenty, but why do we not receive our foreign journals; is this forbidden?’

“ ‘Probably it is the fault of the post. I shall make enquiries.’ ”

Pankratov pitied the Tsar and was genuinely fond of the children. Alexis’s illness disturbed him, and he sometimes sat, just as Rasputin had done, and spun long stories of his years in Siberia. Once, entering the guardhouse, he was astonished to discover Nicholas and his children sitting and talking to the guards. The Tsar graciously asked Pankratov to sit and join them at the table, but Pankratov, disconcerted by this scene, excused himself and fled.

Nikolsky, tall, with a broad face and thick, uncombed hair, felt differently about the captive family. Rough and unmannered, he bitterly blamed the Tsar personally for his imprisonment and tried in petty ways to even the score. He burst into rooms without knocking and spoke to the prisoners without removing his cap. He liked to offer his hand in apparent innocence and then, seizing the hand proffered in return, squeeze with his bony fingers until his victim winced with pain. As soon as he arrived, Nikolsky announced that the entire Imperial party would have to be photographed for identification. Kobylinsky objected, saying the sentries already knew everyone by sight. Nikolsky flew into a rage, shouting, “We were once ordered by the police to have our pictures taken, full face and profile, and so now their pictures shall be taken.” As the pictures were being taken, Alexis peeped to watch, which brought another bellow from the angry Nikolsky. The Tsarevich, who had never been yelled at before, retreated in astonishment. Later, a case of wine for the family arrived from Petrograd. Its appearance in Tobolsk fired a passionate debate among the soldiers on the issue of pampering prisoners. The soldier who accompanied the case from Petrograd declared that it had been packed not only with Kerensky’s permission but in Kerensky’s presence. Dr. Derevenko pleaded that if the alcohol was not to be given to the Imperial family, he be allowed to take it for use in the city hospital. The arguments were useless; Nikolsky sternly saw his duty. Without being opened, the bottles were dropped into the river.

As old, doctinaire Social Revolutionaries, both Pankratov and Nikolsky believed it their duty to assist the political education of the soldiers. Unfortunately, said Kobylinsky, who watched these proceedings with apprehension, “the result of these lectures was that the soldiers were converted [not to Social Revolutionary principles] but to Bolshevism.” There were more complaints about pay and food.

Nevertheless, the family was not markedly affected. They had endured worse treatment at Tsarskoe Selo, and they remained unafraid and hopeful for the future. All of the survivors remarked that, despite the narrow confinement, the peaceful autumn months in Tobolsk were not wholly unpleasant.

In October, the long Siberian winter descended from the Arctic upon Tobolsk. At noon, the sun still shone brightly, but by mid-afternoon the light had faded, and in the gathering darkness, crisp, heavy frosts formed on the ground. As the days grew shorter, Nicholas’s greatest privation was lack of news. Despite Pankratov’s assurances, the mail did not arrive regularly, and he depended for information on the blend of rumor and fact which drifted into Tobolsk and appeared in the local newspapers. It was through this medium that he morosely followed the rapid crumbling of Kerensky and the Provisional Government.

Ironically, Kerensky himself had assisted in making this tragedy inevitable. Despite the government’s narrow triumph over the July Uprising, General Kornilov, now Commander-in-Chief of the Army, concluded that the government was too weak to resist the growing power of the Bolsheviks. Accordingly, at the end of August, Kornilov ordered a cavalry corps to occupy Petrograd and disperse the Soviet. He proposed to replace the Provisional Government with a military dictatorship, keeping Kerensky in the Cabinet but assuming the dominant role himself. Kerensky, as strongly socialist as he was anti-Bolshevik, resisted Kornilov’s Rightist coup by what seemed to him the only means available: he appealed to the Soviet for help. The Bolsheviks responded enthusiastically and began forming the workers into Red Guard battalions. Meanwhile, as part of the arrangement, Kerensky released Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders.

As it happened, Kornilov’s threat evaporated quickly; his cavalrymen immediately began to fraternize with the militia sent to oppose them. Kerensky then asked the Red Guards to return the weapons they had been issued, and they refused. In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority within the Petrograd Soviet. From Finland, Lenin urged an immediate lunge for supreme power: “History will not forgive us if we do not take power now … to delay is a crime.” On October 23, Lenin, in disguise, slipped back into Petrograd to attend a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee, which voted 10 to 2 that “insurrection is inevitable and the time fully ripe.”

On November 6, the Bolsheviks struck. That day, the cruiser Aurora, flying the red flag, anchored in the Neva opposite the Winter Palace. Armed Bolshevik squads occupied the railway stations, bridges, banks, telephone exchanges, post office and other public buildings. There was no bloodshed. The next morning, November 7, Kerensky left the Winter Palace in an open Pierce-Arrow touring car accompanied by another car flying the American flag. Passing unmolested through streets filled with Bolshevik soldiers, he drove south to try to raise help from the army. The remaining ministers of the Provisional Government remained in the Malachite Hall of the Winter Palace, protected by a women’s battalion and a troop of cadets. Sitting around a green baize table, filling the ashtrays with cigarette butts, the ministers covered their scratch pads with abstract doodles and drafts of pathetic last-minute proclamations: “The Provisional Government appeals to all classes to support the Provisional Government—” At nine p.m., the Aurora fired a single blank shell, and at ten, the women’s battalion surrendered. At eleven, another thirty or forty shells whistled across the river from the batteries in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Only two shells hit the palace, slightly damaging the plaster. Nevertheless, at 2:10 a.m. on November 8, the ministers gave up.

This skirmish was the Bolshevik November Revolution, later magnified in Communist mythology into an epic of struggle and heroism. In fact, life in the capital was largely undisturbed. Restaurants, stores and cinemas on the Nevsky Prospect remained open. Streetcars moved as usual through most of the city, and the ballet performed at the Maryinsky Theatre. On the afternoon of the 7th, Sir George Buchanan walked in the vicinity of the Winter Palace and found “the aspect of the quay was more or less normal.” Nevertheless, this flick of Lenin’s finger was all that was necessary to finish Kerensky. Unsuccessful in raising help, Kerensky never returned to Petrograd. In May, after months in hiding, he appeared secretly in Moscow, where Bruce Lockhart issued him a false visa identifying him as a Siberian soldier being repatriated home. Three days later, Kerensky left Murmansk to begin fifty years of restless exile. Trotsky later, in exile himself, scornfully wrote Kerensky’s political epitaph: “Kerensky was not a revolutionist; he merely hung around the revolution.… He had no theoretical preparation, no political schooling, no ability to think, no political will. The place of these qualities was occupied by a nimble susceptibility, an inflammable temperament, and that kind of eloquence which operates neither upon mind or will but upon the nerves.” Nevertheless, when Kerensky left, he carried with him the vanishing dream of a humane, liberal, democratic Russia.

From distant Tobolsk, Nicholas followed these events with keen interest. He blamed Kerensky for the collapse of the army in the July offensive and for not accepting Kornilov’s help in routing the Bolsheviks. At first, he could not believe that Lenin and Trotsky were as formidable as they seemed; to him, they appeared as outright German agents sent to Russia to corrupt the army and overthrow the government. When these two men whom he regarded as unsavory blackguards and traitors became the rulers of Russia, he was gravely shocked. “I then for the first time heard the Tsar regret his abdication,” said Gilliard. “It now gave him pain to see that his renunciation had been in vain and that by his departure in the interests of his country, he had in reality done her an ill turn. This idea was to haunt him more and more.”

At first, the Bolshevik Revolution had little practical effect on far-off Tobolsk. Officials appointed by the Provisional Government—including Pankratov, Nikolsky and Kobylinsky—remained in office; the banks and lawcourts remained open doing business as before. Inside the governor’s house, the Imperial family had settled into a routine which, although restricted, was almost cozy.

“Lessons begin at nine,” the Empress wrote in December to Anna Vyrubova. “Up at noon for religious lessons with Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexei. I have a German lesson three times a week with Tatiana and once with Marie.… Also I sew, embroider and paint, with spectacles on because my eyes have become too weak to do without them. I read ‘good books’ a great deal, love the Bible, and from time to time read novels. I am so sad because they are allowed no walks except before the house and behind a high fence. But at least they have fresh air, and we are grateful for anything. He [Nicholas] is simply marvelous. Such meekness while all the time suffering intensely for the country.… The others are all good and brave and uncomplaining, and Alexei is an angel. He and I dine a deux and generally lunch so.

“… One by one all earthly things slip away, houses and possessions ruined, friends vanished. One lives from day to day. But God is in all, and nature never changes. I can see all around me churches … and hills, the lovely world. Volkov [her attendant] wheels me in my chair to church across the street … some of the people bow and bless us but others don’t dare.… I feel old, oh, so old, but I am still the mother of this country, and I suffer its pains as my own child’s pains and I love it in spite of all its sins and horrors. No one can tear a child from its mother’s heart and neither can you tear away one’s country, although Russia’s black ingratitude to the Emperor breaks my heart. Not that it is the whole country though. God have mercy and save Russia.”

A few days later, she wrote again to Anna: “It is bright sunshine and everything glitters with hoarfrost. There are such moonlight nights, it must be ideal on the hills. But my poor unfortunates can only pace up and down the narrow yard.… I am knitting stockings for the small one [Alexis]. He asks for a pair as all his are in holes.… I make everything now. Father’s [the Tsar’s] trousers are torn and darned, the girls’ under-linen in rags.… I have grown quite grey. Anastasia, to her despair is now very fat, as Marie was, round and fat to the waist, with short legs. I do hope she will grow. Olga and Tatiana are both thin.”

In December, the full force of the Siberian winter hit Tobolsk. The thermometer dropped to 68 degress below zero Fahrenheit, the rivers were frozen solid, and no walls or windows could keep out the icy chill. The girls’ corner bedroom became, in Gilliard’s words, “a real ice house.” A fire burned all day in the drawing-room grate, but the temperature inside the house remained 44 degrees. Sitting near the fire, the Empress shivered and suffered from chilblains, with her fingers so stiff she could hardly move her knitting needles.

For Alexis, the winter weather and the family coziness were an exhilarating treat. “Today there are 29 degrees of frost, a strong wind and sunshine,” he wrote cheerfully to Anna. “We walked and I went on skees in the yard. Yesterday, I acted with Tatiana and … [Gilliard] a French piece. We are now preparing another piece. We have a few good soldiers with whom I play games in their rooms.… It is time to go to lunch.… Alexis.”

Through the winter, the Tsarevich was lively and in excellent health. Despite the cold, he went out every morning, dressed in boots, overcoat and cap, with his father. Usually his sisters, in gray capes and red and blue angora caps, came too. While the Tsar walked back and forth with his fast military step from one side of the yard to the other with his daughters hurrying to keep up, Alexis wandered through the sheds attached to the house, collecting old nails and pieces of string. “You never know when they might be useful,” he explained. After lunch, he lay on a sofa while Gilliard read to him. Afterward, he went out again to join his father and sisters in the yard. When he returned, he had his history lesson from his father. At four, tea was served, and afterward, Anastasia wrote to Anna, “We often sit in the windows looking at the people passing and this gives us distraction.”

For the four Grand Duchesses, all active and healthy young women—that winter Olga was twenty-two, Tatiana twenty, Marie eighteen and Anastasia sixteen—life in the governor’s house was acutely boring. To provide them with entertainment, Gilliard and Gibbs began directing them in scenes from plays. Soon, everybody was eager to participate. Both Nicholas and Alexandra carefully wrote out formal programs, and the Tsar acted the title role of Smirnov in Chekov’s The Bear. Alexis gleefully joined in, accepting any part, overjoyed to put on a beard and speak in a hoarse basso. Only Dr. Botkin categorically refused to take part on stage, pleading that spectators also were essential. Taking Botkin’s reluctance as a challenge, Alexis purposefully set himself to overcome it. After dinner one night, he approached the doctor and said in a serious tone, “I want to talk to you about something, Eugene Sergeievich.” Taking Botkin’s arm, the boy walked him back and forth through the room, arguing that the part in question was that of an old country doctor and that only Botkin could supply the necessary realism. Botkin broke down and agreed.

After dinner, the little group all huddled near the fire, drinking tea, coffee and hot chocolate, trying to keep warm. Nicholas read aloud while the others played quiet games and the grand duchesses did needlework. “In this atmosphere of family peace,” said Gilliard, “we passed the long winter evenings, lost in the immensity of distant Siberia.”

At Christmas, the group became especially intimate. “The children were filled with delight. We now felt part of one large family,” recalled Gilliard. The Empress and her daughters presented to the suite and servants the gifts on which they had been working for many weeks: knitted waistcoats and painted ribbons for use as bookmarks. On Christmas morning, the family crossed the public garden for early Mass. At the end of the service, the priest offered the prayer for the health and long life of the Imperial family which had been dropped from the Orthodox service after the abdication. Hearing it, the soldiers became angry and thereafter refused the family permission to go to church. This was a great hardship, especially for Alexandra. At the same time, soldiers of the guard were posted inside the house, ostensibly to make certain that the same prayer was not uttered again. Their presence led to closer surveillance and stricter supervision.

One night after the inside watch had been established, the guard on duty reported, “at about 11 p.m.… I heard an extraordinary noise upstairs where the Romanovs lived. It was some family holiday with them, and dinner had lasted until far into the evening. Finally the noise grew louder, and soon a cheerful company, consisting of the Romanov family and their suite in evening dress came down the staircase. Nicholas headed the procession in Cossack uniform with a colonel’s epaulets and a Circassian dagger at his belt. The whole company went into the room of Gibbs, the tutor, where they made merry until 2 a.m.” In the morning, the guard reported the incident and the soldiers grumbled, “They have weapons. They must be searched.” Kobylinsky went to Nicholas and obtained the dagger.

The same minor episode led to the affair of the epaulets. As the meaning of the Bolshevik Revolution penetrated through to Tobolsk, the soldiers of the 2nd Regiment became increasingly hostile. They elected a Soldiers’ Committee which encroached increasingly on Kobylinsky’s authority. Soon after Nicholas was seen wearing epaulets, the Soldiers’ Committee voted 100–85 to forbid all officers, including the Tsar, to wear epaulets. At first, Nicholas refused to comply. He had been awarded his colonel’s epaulets by his father and he had never taken a higher rank, even as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army. Kobylinsky did what he could to override the order, telling the soldiers that Nicholas could not be humiliated in that manner, that even if he no longer was Tsar he remained the cousin of the King of England and the Emperor of Germany. The soldiers brushed Kobylinsky rudely aside, threatening violence. “After dinner,” Gilliard wrote, “General Tatishchev and Prince Dolgoruky came to beg the Tsar to remove his epaulets in order to avoid a hostile demonstration by the soldiers. At first it seemed as though the Tsar would refuse but after exchanging a look and a few words with the Empress, he recovered his self control and yielded for the sake of his family. He continued nevertheless to wear epaulets in his room and when he went out, concealed them from the soldiers under a Caucasian cloak.”

To the faithful Kobylinsky, the affair of the epaulets seemed a final blow. “I felt I could bear it no more,” he said. “I knew that I had absolutely lost all control of the men and I fully realized my impotence. I … begged the Emperor to receive me … and I said to him, Tour Majesty, all authority is fast slipping out of my hands.… I cannot be useful to you any more, so I wish to resign.… My nerves are strained. I am exhausted.’ The Emperor put his arm on my shoulder, his eyes filled with tears. He replied: ‘I implore you to remain. Eugene Stepanovich, remain for my sake, for the sake of my wife and for the sake of my children. You must stand by us.’ … Then he embraced me.… I resolved to remain.”

Kobylinsky’s decision was fortunate, for on February 8, the Soldiers’ Committee decided that Pankratov and Nikolsky must reign. Simultaneously, the Bolshevik government issued an order demobilizing all older soldiers of the Imperial Army. “All the old soldiers (the most friendly) are to leave us,” Gilliard wrote in his diary on February 13. “The Tsar seems very depressed at this prospect; the change may have disastrous results for us.” Two days later, he added: “A certain number of soldiers have already left. They came secretly to take leave of the Tsar and his family.”

Their effort to say goodbye to the men of the 4th Regiment of Sharpshooters cost the family heavily. In January, amid the heavy snows, Nicholas and his family had begun to pile up a “snow mountain” in the courtyard. For ten days they worked, shoveling snow and carrying water from the kitchen to pour on the snow and freeze it into a small toboggan run. Everybody helped—Dolgoruky, Gilliard, the servants and even members of the guard. Often they had to run from the kitchen to pour the water before it froze solid in the bucket. When it was finished, the children were delighted. A number of wild games were developed by Alexis, Anastasia and Marie, involving pell-mell racing down the slide and tumbling and wrestling in the snow, all accompanied by shrieks of laughter. Then, early in March, Nicholas and Alexandra used the hill to stand on in order to see over the stockade and watch the departure of the 4th Regiment. The Soldiers’ Committee immediately declared that the Tsar and the Empress, exposed in this manner, might be shot from the street, an event for which they would be held responsible. The committee ordered that the hill be demolished. The following day, Gilliard wrote in his diary, “The soldiers with a hang-dog look, began to destroy the snow mountain with picks. The children are disconsolate.”

The new guards sent from the regimental depots at Tsarskoe Selo were younger men, strongly affected by the currents of revolutionary excitement. Many enjoyed offering little insults to the captives. On a pair of swings used by the Grand Duchesses, they carved obscene words into the wooden seats. Alexis spotted them first, but before he could study them Nicholas arrived and removed the seats. Thereafter, the soldiers amused themselves by drawing lewd pictures and inscriptions on the fence where the girls could not avoid seeing them.

Through the winter, Kobylinsky’s increasing difficulty with the soldiers had stemmed as much from problems of pay as those of politics. He had arrived in Tobolsk entrusted by the Provisional Government with a large sum of money out of which to pay the expenses of the Tsar’s table and household. The soldiers were to be paid from separate funds to be forwarded later. When the Provisional Government was replaced by the Bolsheviks, the sums promised by Kerensky stopped coming and Kobylinsky had to pay the soldiers from his original sum. When it was gone, he and General Tatishchev twice visited the local District Commissioner and each time borrowed fifteen thousand roubles. Meanwhile, in Petrograd, Count Benckendorff visited government offices pleading for money to maintain the Tsar and his family. As news of the Tsar’s circumstances spread, offers of money began to flow in. One foreign ambassador anonymously offered enough to keep the Tsar’s household for six months. A prominent Russian quietly offered even more. Eventually, Benckendorff collected two hundred thousand roubles, which was sent to Tobolsk. Unhappily, it fell into other hands and never reached the Imperial family.

In Tobolsk, meanwhile, the captives were living on credit which soon began to wear thin. Just as the cook announced that he was no longer welcome or trusted in the local stores, a strongly monarchist Tobolsk merchant advanced another twenty thousand roubles. Finally, the matter was settled by a telegram which announced that, as of March 1, “Nicholas Romanov and his family must be put on soldier’s rations and that each member of the family will receive 600 roubles per month drawn from the interest of their personal estate.” As the family consisted of seven, that meant 4,200 roubles a month to support the entire household. Nicholas, facing the novel task of drawing up a family budget, asked for help. “The Tsar said jokingly that since everyone is appointing committees, he is going to appoint one to look after the welfare of his own community,” said Gilliard. “It is to consist of General Tatishchev, Prince Dolgoruky, and myself. We held a ‘sitting’ this afternoon and came to the conclusion that the personnel must be reduced. This is a wrench; we shall have to dismiss ten servants, several of whom have their families with them in Tobolsk. When we informed Their Majesties we could see the grief it caused them. They must part with servants whose very devotion will reduce them to beggary.”

The new self-imposed regime was harsh. As of the following morning, butter and coffee were excluded as luxuries. Soon, the townspeople, hearing of the situation, began to send packages of eggs, sweetmeats and delicacies which the Empress referred to as little “gifts from Heaven.” Musing over the nature of the Russian people, she wrote, “The strange thing about the Russian character is that it can so suddenly change to evil, cruelty and unreason and as suddenly change back again.”

At times, it seemed to the exiles in Tobolsk that they were living on a separate planet—remote, forgotten, beyond all help. “To-day is Carnival Sunday,” wrote Gilliard on March 17. “Everyone is merry. The sledges pass to and fro under our windows; sound of bells, mouth-organs, and singing.… The children wistfully watch the fun.… Their Majesties still cherish hope that among their loyal friends some may be found to attempt their release. Never was the situation more favourable for escape, for there is as yet no representative of the Bolshevik Government at Tobolsk. With the complicity of Colonel Kobylinsky, already on our side, it would be easy to trick the insolent but careless vigilance of our guards. All that is required is the organized and resolute efforts of a few bold spirits outside.”