Nicholas and Alexandra

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Good Russian Men

THE idea of escape grew slowly inside the governor’s house. At first, it had scarcely seemed necessary. Had not Kerensky promised the safety of the Imperial family? Had he not assured them that Tobolsk was intended only as a winter refuge? “From there,” Kerensky wrote later, “we thought it would be possible in the spring of 1918 to send them abroad after all, via Japan. Fate decided otherwise.”

Despite Kerensky’s promises, even before the Bolshevik Revolution there were Russians who were secretly planning to liberate the Imperial family. Both in Moscow and in Petrograd, strong monarchist organizations with substantial funds were anxious to attempt a rescue. The problem was not money but planning, coordination and, above all, clarity of purpose. Nicholas himself raised one serious obstacle whenever the question of escape was mentioned: he insisted that the family not be separated from one another. This increased the logistical problem: an escape involving a number of women and a handicapped boy could not be improvised. It would require horses, food and loyal soldiery. If it was to take place in summer, it would need carriages and boats; if it was planned for winter, there would have to be sledges and possibly a train.

Soon after the Imperial family arrived in Tobolsk, a number of monarchist organizations began sending agents to Siberia. Former officers using assumed names stepped off the train in Tyumen and strode onto the river steamers bound for Tobolsk. Mysterious visitors with fine-combed beards and precise Petrograd accents mingled with the well-to-do merchants and shopkeepers of Tobolsk. They made veiled remarks and vague promises about the Imperial family, then quietly disappeared, accomplishing nothing. It was easy at first to establish contact with the Imperial family. Servants and members of the suite passed freely in and out of the governor’s house, carrying letters, messages and gifts. Only when the couriers attempted deception did the guards object. The clumsiest of these cases, involved Mlle. Margaret Khitrivo, a friend and maid-of-honor of young Grand Duchess Olga. In Petrograd, this girl decided on her own to share the family’s imprisonment. She traveled openly to Tobolsk, carrying a thick wad of letters to the family concealed in a pillow. Upon arrival, she was searched and the letters came tumbling out. They were harmless, but the guards were angered, and thereafter access to the governor’s house became more limited.

The major obstacle to rescue was always lack of leadership. There were too many groups, each jealous of the others. The Dowager Empress Marie, assuming that she should take precedence in arranging the rescue of her son, sent an officer to Bishop Hermogen of Tobolsk, proudly demanding his aid. “My lord,” wrote the Tsar’s, mother, “you bear the name of St. Hermogen who fought for Russia. It is an omen. The hour has come for you to serve the motherland.” An equal claim was made by members of the Petrograd group which had clustered around Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova. Feeling the Empress to be their special patroness, they demanded leadership of the effort to save her. Count Benckendorff and a group of former government officials were active in raising money and interest. Acting independently, each of these groups dissipated its energy in milling about, squabbling over money and arguing who was to have the honor of conducting so glorious an enterprise as the rescue of the Imperial family.

Eventually, a leader seemed to appear in the person of Boris Soloviev. Establishing himself in Tyumen, Soloviev gathered into his hands all the threads of the various rescue enterprises. So clear was his authority that monarchists arriving in Tyumen to assist the Imperial family automatically reported to Soloviev for instructions. His mandate, it appeared, came from the Empress herself. In fact, this was true; Alexandra trusted Soloviev implicitly for what seemed to her an overwhelming, unchallengeable reason: he was the son-in-law of Gregory Rasputin.

Boris Soloviev, the adventurous son of the Treasurer of the Holy Synod, had studied in Berlin and then become private secretary to a German tourist who was traveling to India. Once there, Soloviev left his employer and entered a school of mysticism founded by a Russian woman, Mme. Blavatskaya. For a year, Soloviev trained himself in hypnotism.

During the war, as an officer of a machine-gun regiment, Soloviev managed to avoid serving at the front. In Petrograd, where he was stationed, his background in mysticism provided splendid credentials for entering the occult gatherings which still amused society. In 1915, he became friendly with Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova. At the time, he showed little enthusiasm for their august Imperial patrons. On the second day of the March Revolution, Soloviev led his entire unit to the Tauride Palace to pledge his allegiance to the Duma.

Neither Rasputin’s death, the fall of the Tsar nor Anna’s imprisonment disturbed the faith of those who believed in Rasputin’s mystical powers. During the spring and summer of 1917, groups of fervent admirers continued through spiritualistic prayer meetings and seances to attempt to converse with the departed starets. Soloviev continued to attend these meetings. Maria Rasputin, Gregory’s daughter, was also present and a romance was hastily induced. “I went to Anya’s house last night,” she wrote in her diary. “Daddy spoke to us again.… Why do they all say the same thing: ‘Love Boris—you must love Boris.… I don’t like him at all.’ ”

In August, immediately after the Imperial family was transferred to Tobolsk, Soloviev now acting as agent for this group in Petrograd, went to Siberia to explore the situation. He returned to Petrograd and on October 5, 1917, married Maria Rasputin in the Duma chapel. With Maria, he returned to Siberia and lived for several weeks in her father’s house in Pokrovskoe.

Upon arriving in the region, Soloviev quickly established contact with the Empress through one of her maids, Romanova, who had an apartment in Tobolsk. Through her, he passed on notes and a part of the money with which he had been entrusted. More important, Soloviev used Romanova to raise the captives’ hopes by promising that “Gregory’s family and his friends are active.”

It was impossible, given Soloviev’s family connection, for Alexandra to doubt his word. Confident that plans were proceeding for their liberation, she even passed along to him her choice for the name of the rescue organization which he was building. It was to be “The Brotherhood of St. John of Tobolsk” in honor of the town’s famous saint. Frequently, when her family became gloomy, she cheered them with the reminder that “three hundred faithful officers” of the Brotherhood were disguised in the vicinity, only waiting for Soloviev’s signal.

Before long, however, Soloviev’s behavior began showing odd twists. He left Pokrovskoe and settled not in Tobolsk, where the prisoners were, but in Tyumen, where he could keep watch on the railroad and monitor all contact between Tobolsk and the outside world. In time, his careful scrutiny of every north-bound traveler became unnecessary; those who were involved in anything to do with the Imperial family came straight to him, handed over the money they had brought and asked for instructions. Soloviev operated with ruthless efficiency. He insisted that all agents and funds be channeled through him. When other conservative monarchist groups attempted to operate outside his control, he announced that any additional attempts to contact the Imperial family would jeopardize the efforts which were already going forward. Occasionally, when necessary, Soloviev went so far as to declare that the Empress herself believed that the work of groups other than his was endangering their chance of escape.

In time, of course, the other groups began to ask for evidence of Soloviev’s rescue plans. He replied that he had converted eight regiments of Red soldiers in the area to monarchism. To prove it, he took skeptics to watch the cavalry of the Tyumen garrison at drill. There, just as Soloviev had promised, the officer at the head of the squadron made a prearranged hand signal, indicating his adherence to the plot. When skeptics proved unusually stubborn, Soloviev sent them to Tobolsk to stand in the street near the governor’s house. As arranged through Romanova, a member of the Imperial family would step onto the balcony and make a carefully prescribed gesture.

Despite these persuasive indications, there remained four stubbornly suspicious officers who still did not trust Soloviev. Why, they asked, was he passing his messages through a parlormaid when Dr. Botkin—more intelligent, more devoted and more trusted by the Imperial family—was available? Why, because a single officer responded at drill to Soloviev’s presence, did it follow that eight regiments stood ready to fight for the Tsar? Why did Soloviev continually assure Petrograd and Moscow that no more men should be sent but that they should show their support by advancing more money? The officers put these questions to Soloviev in January after the Bolsheviks had seized control of Tyumen. Immediately, three of the four officers were handed over to the Bolsheviks and shot; the fourth escaped.

Needless to say, no rescue attempts occurred under Soloviev’s command. A few months later, when the Imperial family was moved from Tobolsk, Soloviev was conveniently arrested by the Bolsheviks, held for a few days and then released, thus providing him with a suitable alibi for doing nothing to prevent the transfer. During the civil war, he wandered with his wife through Siberia in the rear of the White armies, eventually reaching Vladivostock. From there, he made his way to Berlin, where he was hailed by unknowing Russians as the man who had tried to save the Imperial family; some of these grateful folk made him the manager of a restaurant.

Subsequently, a number of isolated facts relating to Soloviev came to light. The cavalry officer who supplied hand signals at his squadron’s drill admitted that, of all his men, he alone had had anything to do with Soloviev. A Petrograd banker declared that he had raised 175,000 roubles and given them to Anna Vyrubova for transmission to the Imperial family. Of this sum, Soloviev had delivered only 35,000 roubles. As soon as the Imperial family left Tobolsk, Soloviev hurried there to talk to the maid Romanova; later, Romanova was to marry a Bolshevik commissar. In Vladivostock, Soloviev was arrested by the Whites and found to be in possession of documents indicating that he might be a German agent. However, his reputation as the gallant—if unsuccessful—“savior” of the Imperial family was strong, and he was released.

Soloviev’s motives during his adventure in Tyumen have remained cloudy. He may have been only greedy. Having established an enormously profitable enterprise—in effect, a tollgate at Tyumen for everyone concerned with helping the Imperial family—he may have wished to extract what he could before he was forced to flee. But many believe that his intrigue was far more sinister. Kerensky later wrote, “In the Tobolsk region … the royalists were captained by the traitor Soloviev … who was sent there … to save and protect the family, but who was actually betraying to the Bolsheviks the royalist officers who came to Tobolsk.”

It is possible that Soloviev was working for both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. It may be that his eager acceptance by Rasputin’s devotees, his introduction and marriage to Maria and his mission to Siberia were all arranged by the same shadowy people who lurked around Rasputin before his death. Unquestionably, this marriage was the surest way to gain the Empress’s confidence and persuade her not to seek other avenues of escape. With the Empress convinced that a strong, secret “Brotherhood” operating in the name of Rasputin stood ready to help, she naturally assisted Soloviev in discouraging other monarchists from making conflicting plans. In the end, whatever Soloviev’s motives, the effect was the same. When the moment came for the laboriously constructed, lavishly financed escape machinery to swing into action, it did not do so because it did not exist.

In March, spring brought hope with the first warming rays of the sun. Sitting on her balcony in the sunshine, Alexandra closed her eyes and dreamed of English gardens. As Easter approached, she began to hope that some miraculous resurrection might happen for Russia. “God will not leave it like this,” she wrote to Anna. “He will send wisdom and save Russia I am sure.… The nation is strong and young and soft as wax. Just now it is in bad hands and darkness and anarchy reign. But the King of Glory will come and will save, strengthen, and give wisdom to the people who are now deceived.” Alexandra considered it a sign of this coming transformation that the soldiers changed their rules and allowed her to go frequently to church.

Just at this point, an enemy older than the Bolsheviks rose up to shatter her hopes. Alexis had been well all winter and was filled with energy and high spirits. The destruction of the snow mountain had deprived him of an activity which had absorbed much of his vitality; in its place, he was devising new and reckless games which no one seemed able to inhibit. One of these—riding down the inside stairs on a boat with runners which he had used on the snow mountain—led to calamity. He fell and began to bleed into the groin. The hemorrhage was the worst since Spala five years before. The pain increased rapidly and became excruciating. When it became intolerable, Alexis gasped between his screams, “Mama, I would like to die. I am not afraid of death, but I am so afraid of what they will do to us here.” Alexandra, alone, without Rasputin to come or telegraph or pray, could do nothing. “He is frightfully thin and yellow, reminding me of Spala,” she wrote to Anna. “I sit all day beside him holding his aching legs and I have grown about as thin as he.”

A few days later, in her last letter to Anna Vyrubova, the Empress described Alexis’s progress and mentioned a source of new alarm. “Yesterday for the first time, he smiled and talked with us, even played cards, and slept two hours during the day. He is frightfully thin with enormous eyes, just as Spala. He likes to be read to, eats little.… I am with him the whole day, Tatiana or Mr. Gilliard relieving me at intervals. Mr. Gilliard reads to him tirelessly, or warms his legs with the Fohn apparatus.… A great number of new troops have come from everywhere. A new commissar has arrived from Moscow, a man named Yakovlev and today we shall have to make his acquaintance.… They are always hinting to us that we shall have to travel either very far away or to the center of Siberia.… Just now eleven men have passed on horseback, good faces, mere boys.… They are the guard of the new commissar. Sometimes we see men with the most awful faces.… The atmosphere around us is … electrified. We feel that a storm is approaching, but we know that God is merciful … our souls are at peace. Whatever happens will be through God’s will.”

Alexandra sensed accurately that the political storm was upon them; what she could not know was that her son would never walk again.

The collapse of Kerensky’s government had been even more swift and bloodless than the overthrow of the autocracy. In scarcely more than the passage of a single night, Lenin stood at the helm of the new Soviet state. Nevertheless, his control over the huge territory of Russia was precarious. To consolidate their grip, the Bolsheviks had to have peace—at any price. The price set by the Germans was a terrible one: loss of most of the territory won by Russia since the days of Peter the Great, including Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, the Crimea and most of the Caucasus. Within these four hundred thousand square miles lived sixty million people, more than one third of the population of the empire. Yet Lenin had no choice. “Peace” was the cry which had brought him to power. Russian soldiers, prodded by the Bolsheviks’ own propaganda, were deserting by the millions. A German army was advancing on Petrograd, and the capital was moved to Moscow, but Russian soldiers could not be recalled to arms, least of all by the party which had promised them peace. Therefore, to save the revolution until, as he confidently expected, it spread to Germany itself, Lenin made peace. On March 3, 1918, in the town of Brest-Litovsk, now headquarters of the German Eastern Front, a Bolshevik delegation signed the German treaty. So humiliating were the terms and the German treatment of the Russian delegation that, after observing the ceremony, one Russian general went out and shot himself.

When news of the treaty reached Tobolsk, Nicholas was overwhelmed with grief and shame. It was, as Lenin was well aware, a total rejection of Russian patriotism. Nicholas called it “a disgrace” and “suicide for Russia.” “To think that they called Her Majesty a traitor.” he said bitterly. The Tsar was appalled that the Kaiser, Europe’s most strident spokesman of the monarchical principle, had been willing to deal with the Bolsheviks. “I should never have thought the Emperor William and the German Government could stoop to shake hands with these miserable traitors,” he cried. “But they [the Germans] will get no good from it; it won’t save them from ruin.” Hearing a rumor that the Germans were demanding that the Tsar and his family be handed over to them unharmed, Nicholas called it “either a maneuver to discredit me or an insult.” Defiantly, Alexandra added, “They [the Germans] must never dare to attempt any conversations with Father [Nicholas] or Mother [herself].… After what they have done to the Tsar, I would rather die in Russia than be saved by the Germans.”

Inevitably, once the fighting had ended, both Germans and Russians had more time to think of the Tsar and his family. Nicholas remained a symbol, a human pawn with potential value. To the Kaiser, who was indeed ashamed of his embrace of the Bolsheviks, a pliable Nicholas willing to endorse the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk would have had great value. The Bolsheviks, sensing this German interest, immediately understood that in whatever bargaining and maneuvering lay ahead, the Tsar must be kept beyond the Kaiser’s reach. As the soldiers in Tobolsk and their commander, Kobylinsky, were all still holdovers, from the Kerensky regime, the Bolshevik leaders resolved to place the Imperial family under more reliable guard.

There was another factor which was to influence the fate of the Imperial family. Of all the regional Soviets which had sprung up in Russia, none was more fiercely Bolshevik than that which sat in the Ural Mountain city of Ekaterinburg. For years, the Ural miners and workers, toiling underground or before open blast-furnaces, had maintained a tradition of discontent and rebellion which had earned the area the name of the Red Urals. In 1917, well before the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, the Ekaterinburg Soviet had nationalized the local mines and factories. For a reason quite different from the central government’s, this group of militant Bolsheviks was anxious to lay hands on the Tsar. Once in Ekaterinburg, the Tsar and his family would become not pawns in a game of international politics, but victims in a grim drama of retribution. In March, the Ural Regional Soviet asked permission from Moscow to bring the Imperial family to Ekaterinburg.

Before Moscow could reply, a Bolshevik detachment from the city of Omsk suddenly arrived in Tobolsk. Omsk was the administrative capital of the province of Western Siberia and a rival of Ekaterinburg for supremacy in the regions east of the Urals. Technically, Tobolsk lay within the sway of Omsk, and this band of soldiers had come not to take away the Tsar, but to dissolve the local government and impose Bolshevism on the town. Pathetically, the Imperial family persisted in hoping that the Omsk soldiers were rescuers. The Empress, looking down from her window as they dashed by in troikas festooned with tinkling bells, happily waved and called her daughters to come and look out at “the good Russian men.” Nicholas also was hopeful. “His Majesty tells me he has reason to believe that there are among these men many officers who have enlisted in the ranks,” said Gilliard, who did not share this optimism. “He also asserts, without telling me definitely the source of his information, that there are three hundred officers at Tyumen.”

On April 13, a detachment from Ekaterinburg under a commissar named Zaslavsky finally arrived in Tobolsk. Moscow still had not replied to the request to remove the Tsar from Tobolsk, and without this permission, neither Kobylinsky’s men nor the soldiers from Omsk would allow the family to be taken. Zaslavsky then suggested that they at least be moved to the local prison, where they could be strongly guarded. Kobylinsky refused and Zaslavsky’s men thereupon launched a campaign of propaganda, urging Kobylinsky’s soldiers to ignore the orders of their commandant. It was at this low point that Moscow directly intervened in the form of Commissar Vasily Vaslevich Yakovlev.

From the beginning, an air of mystery attended Yakovlev. The prisoners were aware that someone important was coming from Moscow; there were rumors that it might be Trotsky himself. Instead, on April 22, Yakovlev arrived at the head of 150 horsemen, bringing with him a private telegraph operator through whom he communicated directly with the Kremlin. On his first evening in Tobolsk, he had tea with the Tsar and the Empress, but said nothing about his mission. They noted that he was around thirty-two or thirty-three, tall and muscular with jet-black hair and that, although he was dressed like an ordinary sailor, there was unmistakable evidence of a more cultured background. His language was refined, he addressed Nicholas as “Your Majesty” and greeted Gilliard by saying “Bonjour, Monsieur.” His hands were clean and his fingers long and thin. Despite these observations, the prisoners were not necessarily reassured. “Everyone is restless and distraught,” Gilliard wrote in his diary that night. “The commissar’s arrival is felt to be an evil portent, vague but real.”

On the second morning, April 24, Yakovlev summoned Kobylinsky and showed him documents signed by Jacob Sverdlov, an intimate of Lenin who occupied the key administrative post of President of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. “The first document was addressed to me,” wrote Kobylinsky, “and ordered me to comply without delay with all requests of the Special Commissar Tovarich Yakovlev who had been assigned a mission of great importance. My refusal to execute these orders would result in my being instantly killed. The second document was addressed to the soldiers of our detachment.… It also carried a threat of the same penalty—i.e. courtmartial by a revolutionary tribunal and instant death.”

Kobylinsky did not argue and, at Yakovlev’s request, took him to see Nicholas and Alexis. The Tsarevich was lying in bed, his leg still badly flexed from the recent hemorrhage. The commissar was disturbed by this sight. Later in the day, he returned with an army doctor, who examined Alexis and assured Yakovlev that the boy was seriously ill.

Observing these movements, Gilliard became thoroughly alarmed. “We feel we are forgotten by everyone, abandoned to our own resources and at the mercy of this man. Is it possible that no one will raise a finger to save the Imperial family? Where are those who have remained loyal to the Tsar? Why do they delay?”

On the morning of the 25th, Yakovlev finally revealed his mission to Kobylinsky. He explained that originally he had been assigned by the Central Executive Committee to take the entire Imperial family from Tobolsk. On arriving, his discovery that the Tsarevich was seriously ill had forced a reconsideration. By telegraph, he had been communicating steadily with Moscow. Now, he concluded, “I have received an order to leave the family in Tobolsk and only to take the Emperor away.” He asked to see the Tsar as soon as possible.

“After lunch, at two o’clock,” said Kobylinsky, “Yakovlev and I entered the hall. The Emperor and Empress stood in the middle of the hall, and Yakovlev stopped a little distance away from them and bowed. Then he said, ‘I must tell you that I am the Special Representative of the Moscow Central Executive Committee and my mission is to take all your family away from Tobolsk, but, as your son is ill, I have received a second order which says that you alone must leave.’ The Emperor replied: ‘I refuse to go.’ Upon hearing this Yakovlev said: ‘I beg you not to refuse. I am compelled to execute the order. In case of your refusal I must take you by force or I must resign my position. In the latter case the Committee would probably send a far less scrupulous man to replace me. Be calm, I am responsible with my life for your safety. If you do not want to go alone, you can take with you any people you wish. Be ready, we are leaving tomorrow [morning] at four o’clock.”

Yakovlev bowed again, first to the Tsar, then to the Empress, and left. As soon as he was gone, Nicholas summoned Kobylinsky and asked where he thought Yakovlev intended to take him. Kobylinsky did not know, but Yakovlev had mentioned that the journey would take four or five days; therefore, he assumed the destination was Moscow. Nicholas nodded and, turning to Alexandra, said bitterly, “They want to force me to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But I would rather cut off my right hand than sign such a treaty.” The Empress agreed and, harking back to the abdication, declared emotionally, “I shall also go. If I am not there, they will force him to do something in exactly the same way they did before.”

The news spread quickly through the house. Tatiana, weeping, knocked at Gilliard’s door and asked him to come to her mother. The tutor found the Empress greatly upset. She told him that the Tsar was being taken that night and explained her own painful dilemma:

“The commissar says that no harm will come to the Tsar and that if anyone wishes to accompany him there will be no objection. I can’t let the Tsar go alone. They want to separate him from his family as they did before.… They’re going to try to force his hand by making him anxious about his family. The Tsar is necessary to them; they feel that he alone represents Russia. Together, we shall be in a better position to resist them and I ought to be at his side in the time of trial. But the boy is still so ill. Suppose some complication sets in. Oh, God, what ghastly torture. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. I’ve always felt inspired whenever I had to take a decision and now I can’t think. But God won’t allow the Tsar’s departure; it can’t, it must not be.”

Tatiana, watching her mother, urged her to make a decision. “But, Mother,” she said, “if Father has to go, whatever we say, something must be decided.” Gilliard suggested that if she went with the Tsar, he and the others would take excellent care of Alexis. He pointed out that the Tsarevich was over the worst of the crisis.

“Her Majesty,” he wrote, “was obviously tortured by indecision; she paced up and down the room and went on talking rather to herself than to us. At last she came up to me and said: ‘Yes that will be best; I’ll go with the Tsar. I shall trust Alexis to you.’ A moment later the Tsar came in. The Empress walked towards him saying, ‘It’s all settled. I’ll go with you and Marie will come too.’ The Tsar replied: ‘Very well, if you wish it.’ ” The decision that Marie should accompany the parents had been made by the girls themselves. Hurriedly meeting, they decided that Olga was not well enough, that Tatiana would be needed in Tobolsk to supervise the household and manage Alexis, and that Anastasia was too young to be helpful to their mother, and so Marie was chosen.

Somehow, during this hectic day, General Tatishchev managed to send a telegram to Count Benckendorff’s group in Moscow, pleading for advice: “Doctors demand immediate departure to health resort. Much perturbed by this demand and consider journey undesirable. Please send advice. Extremely difficult position.”

The monarchists in Moscow knew nothing of Yakovlev’s mission and could only reply: “Unfortunately we have no data which could shed light on reason for this demand. Hesitate to give definite opinion since state of health and circumstances of patient unknown. Advise postpone journey if possible, agreeing only if doctors insist.”

Later, a single, last message was received from Tobolsk: “Had to submit to doctors decision.”

During these hours, Yakovlev also was nervous. He had discovered that Zaslavsky, the commissar from Ekaterinburg, had left Tobolsk suddenly that morning. Yakovlev was so worried that he scarcely noticed when Kobylinsky arrived to discuss the departure and the luggage. “It makes no difference to me,” he said distractedly. “All I know is we must leave tomorrow at all costs. There is no time to waste.”

Meanwhile, Alexis, who was still unable to walk, was lying upstairs awaiting the visit his mother had promised to make after lunch. When she did not appear, he began to call, “Mama, Mama!” His shouts rang through the house even as the Tsar and the Empress were talking to Yakovlev. When Alexandra still did not come, Alexis became frightened. Between four and five, she quietly came into his bedroom, her eyes reddened, and explained to him that she and his father were leaving that night.

The entire family spent the rest of the afternoon and evening beside Alexis’s bed. The Empress, with her hope for earthly rescue fading, prayed for help from heaven. As they would have to cross frozen rivers, she prayed for the thaw and the melting of the ice. “I know, I am convinced that the river will overflow tonight, and then our departure must be postponed,” she said. “This will give us time to get out of this terrible position. If a miracle is necessary, I am sure a miracle will take place.”

At 10:30 p.m., the suite went in to join them for evening tea. They found Alexandra sitting on a sofa surrounded by her daughters, their faces swollen from crying. Nicholas and Alexandra both were calm. “This splendid serenity of theirs, this wonderful faith, proved infectious,” said Gilliard. At 11:30 p.m., they came downstairs to say goodbye to the servants in the main hall. Nicholas embraced every man, Alexandra every woman.

From the Kornilov house across the street, those watching from their windows saw the governor’s house and its sheds blazing with lights throughout the night. Near dawn, the clatter of horses and the creak of carriages signaled Yakovlev’s arrival in the courtyard. The vehicles, which had to carry the Tsar and the Empress across two hundred miles of mud and melting snow to Tyumen, were crude, uncomfortable peasant tarantasses, more cart than carriage, lacking both springs and seats. Passengers could only sit or lie on the floor. As cushioning, the servants swept up straw from the pigsty and spread it on the floor of the carts. In the only one which had a roof, a mattress was placed for Alexandra to lie on.

When the family came downstairs, the Empress, seeing Gilliard, begged him to go back up and stay with Alexis. He went up to the boy’s room and found him lying in bed, his face to the wall, weeping uncontrollably. Outside, Yakovlev was infinitely courteous, repeatedly touching the brim of his hat in salute to the Tsar and Empress. Escorting Alexandra to her cart, he insisted that she put on a warmer coat and wrapped her in Botkin’s large fur overcoat while sending for a new wrap for the doctor. Nicholas started to climb into the same cart with his wife, but Yakovlev intervened and insisted that the Tsar ride with him in a separate, open carriage. Marie sat beside her mother, and Prince Dolgoruky, Dr. Botkin, a valet, a maid and a footman were distributed among the other carriages.

When all was ready, the drivers flicked their whips and the carts lurched into motion. The cavalry escort spurred their horses, the procession passed out the gates and down the street. Gilliard, sitting beside Alexis on the Tsarevich’s bed, heard Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia climb slowly up the stairs and pass, sobbing, to their room. The months in Tobolsk were ended. There was no “Brotherhood,” no “good Russian men,” no rescue. Only a boy and his sisters, frightened and utterly alone.

The journey to Tyumen was difficult and exhausting. The cavalcade crossed the river Irtysh on the melting ice with wheels sloshing axle-deep in water. Farther south, reaching the Tobol River, they found the ice beginning to crack. For safety’s sake, the entire party dismounted and crossed the river on foot. They changed horses frequently. The last of these remount stations was Pokrovskoe, and the change was carried out directly beneath the windows of Rasputin’s house. There sat the Tsar and the Empress, prisoners in a caravan of peasant carts, while in the windows above them the family of the man who had done so much to destroy them stood looking down, waving white handkerchiefs. Before the procession moved on, Rasputin’s widow, Praskovie, looked directly at Alexandra and carefully made the sign of the cross.

Fourteen miles north of Tyumen, the little cavalcade was met by another squadron of Red cavalry, who surrounded the carts and escorted them into town. As the horsemen rode alongside, the Empress leaned to look at them, scrutinizing their faces, full of hope that they might be the “good Russian men” who would have been alerted by the news that the Tsar was being moved. Totally oblivious of this pathetic hope, the soldiers escorted the carts into town to the station where a special train was waiting. Yakovlev transferred his prisoners into a first-class coach and then, taking his telegraph operator, installed himself at the station telegraph office. His first message went back to Tobolsk: “Proceeding safely. God bless you. How is the Little One.” It was signed Yakovlev, but those in Tobolsk knew who had written it. Then the commissar began sending a signal to Moscow.

When Yakovlev left the telegraph office some time later, he had made a startling decision. His orders had been to bring the former Tsar and Empress to Moscow. Either during his conversation with the Kremlin or perhaps from what he had learned in Tyumen, he realized that if he took the direct route to Moscow, his train would be stopped in Ekaterinburg and his prisoners removed by the Ural Regional Soviet. Accordingly, to avoid Ekaterinburg, he decided to go eastward rather than westward from Tyumen. Traveling east, they would reach Omsk, where they could join the southern section of the Trans-Siberian track and then double back through Chelyabinsk, Ufa and Samara to Moscow. Returning to the coach, he confided this plan to the captives. At five a.m., with all lights extinguished, the train left Tyumen, headed east for Omsk. Yakovlev did not mention it, but he knew that beyond Omsk lay thousands of miles of clear track to the Pacific.

As soon as the train left Tyumen, Ekaterinburg was informed that Yakovlev was traveling in the wrong direction. A special meeting of the Ural Soviet Presidium was hastily summoned and Yakovlev was proclaimed “a traitor to the revolution” and an outlaw. Desperate telegrams addressed “to all, to all, to all” were sent to every Soviet and party headquarters in the region. At the same time, the Ural Soviet directly contacted the West Siberian Soviet in Omsk, asking that it block Yakovlev. The Omsk Soviet, having received no contrary instructions from Moscow, agreed to do so, and when Yakovlev’s train reached the town of Kulomzino, sixty miles from Omsk, it was surrounded by troops. Yakovlev was told of the telegram declaring him a traitor. Unhitching the engine and one coach of his train, he left the Tsar and Empress behind and proceeded alone into Omsk to argue with the Omsk Soviet. When he failed to convince them, he insisted on contacting Moscow. He talked by telegraph directly to Sverdlov, explaining why he had changed his route. Sverdlov replied that, under the circumstances, there was nothing for Yakovlev to do but give in, take his prisoners to Ekaterinburg and hand them over to the Ural Soviet. Sadly, Yakovlev returned to his engine, rejoined the stranded train and told Nicholas and Alexandra, “I have orders to take you to Ekaterinburg.” “I would have gone anywhere but to the Urals,” said Nicholas. “Judging from the local papers, people there are bitterly hostile to me.”

What should be made of this strange tangle of cross-purposes, murky intrigue and reversed directions? Later, when Yakovlev defected from the Bolsheviks to the Whites, the Bolsheviks charged that Yakovlev’s enterprise had been all along a monarchist escape plot. Failing to break through Omsk to the Pacific—this theory goes—he turned back, but still considered stopping the train and taking the captives with him to hide in the hills. There is no serious evidence of this, and although Yakovlev was sympathetic to the plight of his prisoners, it is much more likely that he was exactly what he said he was: Moscow’s agent, trying to carry out Moscow’s order to bring Nicholas to the capital. When the most direct way was blocked and it looked as if he might lose his prisoners, he tried another way, via Omsk. But he became caught up in a struggle between the far-off Central Committee and the Ural Soviet, and, with the acquiescence of Sverdlov, he finally gave in to superior force.

But if Yakovlev’s motives and objectives seem reasonably clear, those of other parties involved in this intrigue are more blurred and sinister. In addition to the two possible characterizations of Yakovlev already suggested—the monarchist cavalier attempting to save the Imperial couple, and the agent of Moscow bowing to Ekaterinburg’s superior force—there is another role which Yakovlev may have been playing: that of dupe in an evil conspiracy involving the Ural Soviet in Ekaterinburg, the Bolshevik rulers in Moscow, and the German government of Kaiser William.

After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Russia’s withdrawal from the war, it became clear that the Western Allies had completely lost interest in the fate of the Russian Imperial family. The Tsar, who had summoned fifteen million Russians into the trenches, who had sacrificed an army to help save Paris, who had refused even when his country was being broken by war to make a separate peace, now was forgotten, scorned, despised. If the Tsar and his family were to be saved by the intervention of a foreign power, that power could only be Germany. In Russia, the Germans now spoke as conquerors. German troops had moved into the Ukraine to collect the food desperately needed by the Kaiser’s hungry people. The Germans had not occupied Petrograd or Moscow because it was easier to leave the administration of these chaotic areas to the enfeebled Bolsheviks. But, if necessary, German regiments could march on the two cities and scatter Lenin and his lieutenants like dry leaves.

For this reason, a number of Russian conservatives, including Benckendorff and Alexander Trepov, the former Prime Minister, turned for help to Count William Mirbach, the newly appointed German Ambassador. Mirbach’s answer was always the same: “Be calm. I know all about the situation in Tobolsk, and when the time comes, the German Empire will act.” Unsatisfied, Trepov and Count Benckendorff wrote Mirbach a letter, pointing out that Germany alone was in a position to save the Imperial family and warning that if the Tsar and his wife and children died, Kaiser William would be personally responsible.

Quite apart from the question of guilt, the Germans again were anxiously studying their eastern horizon. By injecting the Bolshevik bacillus into Russia, they had destroyed an enemy army. But they had also created a new menace which, they were beginning to sense, might become even more dangerous. Lenin’s openly pronounced goal was world revolution; even now, his creed was exerting a pull on the war-weary soldiers and workers of Germany. With this in mind, the German government had a growing interest in restoring in Russia a monarchy which would crush the Bolsheviks and at the same time be friendly to Germany. Nicholas and Alexandra were known to be bitterly hostile to Germany. But the German government presumed that if it was the Kaiser who saved them and restored them to the throne, the Russian sovereigns would be grateful and submissive to the German will.

To achieve this goal, Mirbach began playing a delicate game. He insisted that Nicholas be brought to Moscow, where he would be within reach of German power. The request had to be made in such a way that the Bolsheviks would not take fright and guess the ultimate purpose, and yet also in a way which made clear that the request was backed by a threat of German military intervention. Sverdlov, apparently agreeing to Mirbach’s demand, deputized Yakovlev to bring Nicholas to Moscow.

Sverdlov, of course, easily saw the German game and the need for thwarting it. He could not simply refuse; German power was too great. What he could do was to arrange secretly with Ekaterinburg, which was eight hundred miles east of Moscow and beyond the German reach, that they should intercept the Tsar and hold him in apparent defiance of the central government. This way, he could appear before Mirbach and say that he deplored the seizure but unfortunately was powerless to prevent it. The central government would appear all the more innocent as the fiercely Bolshevik sentiments of the Ural Soviet were widely known.

Thus, Sverdlov was betraying both the Germans and his own agent Yakovlev, who was not in on Sverdlov’s scheme. With his right: hand, Sverdlov was directing Yakovlev, urging him to skirt Ekaterinburg and bring the Tsar to Moscow; with his left hand, he was closing the net tighter around Yakovlev to ensure that Nicholas would go to Ekaterinburg. Finally, to complete this circle of deception, it is possible that Yakovlev, beginning the game as Sverdlov’s dupe, began to guess what was afoot and actually did attempt to escape with the Tsar to freedom.

In the end, once his train had been stopped, Yakovlev had no choice but to obey Sverdlov. Followed by another train filled with Bolshevik soldiers, he proceeded into Ekaterinburg. There, the train was surrounded by troops, and officials of the Regional Soviet immediately took charge of the captives. Yakovlev wired again to Sverdlov, who confirmed his order to give up the prisoners and return directly to Moscow. That night, at a meeting of the Regional Soviet, Yakovlev’s arrest was demanded. He argued that he had been attempting only to follow orders and bring his charges to Moscow as directed. As this could not be disproved and Yakovlev was still plainly a deputy of Sverdlov, he was allowed to go. Six months later, he deserted to the White Army of Admiral Kolchak.

Mirbach, realizing that he had been outwitted, was furious. Sverdlov was deeply apologetic, wringing his hands and telling the German Ambassador, “What can we do? We have no proper administrative machinery as yet, and must let the local Soviets have their way in many matters. Give Ekaterinburg time to calm down.” But Mirbach, knowing that this game was lost, decided to try another tack. Later, in May, one of the Kaiser’s aides-de-camp appeared in the Crimea, where a scattering of Russian grand dukes had gathered. With him, this officer carried an offer from the Kaiser to proclaim Tsar of all the Russias any member of the Imperial family who would agree to countersign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. When every Romanov present refused, the German emissary even asked for a meeting with Felix Yussoupov. The meeting never took place and Rasputin’s murderer was spared the temptation of visualizing on his own head the Russian Imperial Crown.

Mirbach wasted no more time on Nicholas. When the Russian monarchists came back to him in June, imploring him to save the Tsar from his captors in Ekaterinburg, Mirbach washed his hands, declaring, “The fate of the Russian Emperor is in the hands of his people. Had we been defeated, we would have been treated no better. It is the old, old story—woe to the vanquished!”

Woe indeed! Early in July, Mirbach was assassinated in his Embassy in Moscow. His murderers were two Russian Social-Revolutionaries who were convinced that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had betrayed the revolution to the Germans: “The dictatorship of the proletariat,” they cried, “has become the dictatorship of Mirbach!” Four months later, in November 1918, Germany itself was vanquished.