The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

22. DEATH IN THE WOODS

ONCE the weekend decision to kill Michael had been confirmed, Myasnikov acted with considerable speed. His first task was to recruit an execution squad. ‘I needed hard men who had suffered from the autocracy…men who were prepared to bite through someone’s throat with their teeth. I needed men who could hold their tongues, who trusted me more than they did themselves, and were ready to do anything if I told them it was necessary in the interests of the revolution.’¹

The four men who met this criteria were all from the Motovilikha arsenal.

Nikolai Zhuzhgov, aged 39, and a friend of Myasnikov for many years, was a member of the Perm Cheka and also assistant chief of the Motovilikha militia. A small man, with sunken eyes, he had spent seven years in labour camps, some of that time with fellow prisoner Myasnikov.

Vasily Ivanchenko, aged 44, was head of the Perm militia and a deputy in the local Soviet; in 1906 he had been given a 15-year prison sentence for the murder of two Cossacks, and like Myasnikov he had been freed in the February revolution.

Andrei Markov, aged 36, was the Perm ‘commissar for nationalisation’ and worked as a foreman in one of the Motovilikha workshops. A thickset man, he again had spent some time in prison with Myasnikov, who regarded him as someone who could be relied upon to do whatever he was told.

The fourth member of the death squad was Ivan Kolpashchikov, a powerfully-built man with a curiously squeaky high-pitched voice, and like the others a veteran of the prison camps; when not working at the Motovilikha arsenal, he served as a Red Guard.²

On Wednesday evening, June 12, Myasnikov called the four men to a meeting in the projection room of the cinema in Motovilikha. There he set out the reasons why Michael had to be killed. If ‘His Imperial Majesty’ is not dealt with, then ‘tomorrow he may not be here, tomorrow he may be standing at the head of the massed forces of the counter-revolution.’

But there was something very important that they had to understand. Nobody was to know about it. The official story was to be that Michael had escaped, for then Lenin and the Bolshevik leaders would not have to defend themselves against ‘the bourgeois governments’ and ‘we will not compromise them’.³

The four men having vowed silence, Myasnikov then told them that in order to ensure secrecy the murder would have to take place that night; Michael would be seized from his hotel room, taken to a wood and shot. As cover for the abduction, he would be presented with a forged order, and told that he was being ‘evacuated for security reasons’ because of the threat posed by advancing ‘Whites’. On the morrow it would be announced that he had escaped, and his entourage would be arrested for complicity and shot.

The time was now 9.30 p.m. The abduction was set for midnight. The chosen execution spot was a wood near a place called Malaya Yazovaya, not far beyond Motovilikha. If all went according to plan, ‘His Imperial Majesty’ had four hours to live.

AT the beginning of June, in accordance with an order from Moscow, the clocks in Bolshevik Russia had been advanced by two hours. It was a fuel-saving device, and accordingly it did not become dark in Perm on June 12 until after eleven o‘clock. On that date, darkness lasted for six hours and 13 minutes, so that with sunset at 10.52 p.m., sunrise would be at 5.05 a.m.⁴ The distance between the hotel and the wood was six-and-a-half miles (10.5 km), and by horse-drawn carriage, travelling slowly over bad roads in darkness, the journey would take about an hour. There would be no difficulty in finding the wood for it was well known to Bolsheviks as a favoured meeting place in the days when they held illegal gatherings there.⁵ Allowing an hour or so for digging a grave, the execution squad would be back in Motovilikha long before dawn.

There was a great deal to do. Myasnikov telephoned the arsenal and arranged horses for the two phaetons to be used in the abduction. At ten o’ clock they were ready and he and the four-man death squad set off for Perm’s Cheka offices.⁶

On arrival Myasnikov drafted ‘the order’ intended to fool Michael into thinking it was official. The wording was that In view of the approach of the front, Comrade Nikolai Zhuzhgov is hereby instructed to evacuate Citizen Michael Romanov to Central Russia. The order was to be triple-signed, ostensibly by the Cheka chairman Malkov, the Cheka secretary, and by Myasnikov as head of the counter-revolutionary department. Myasnikov signed for himself; Markov and Kolpashchikov forged the two other signatories.⁷

During Markov’s typing of the document Myasnikov later claimed that they were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Malkov and of Sorokin, chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee. He would say that they saw what was being written, guessed its purpose and appeared ‘confused and frightened’; he had to swear them to silence.⁸ That was untrue, though it is its own evidence that even seventeen years later, in 1935, when Myasnikov set down his account of events in the hope of gaining favour in Stalin’s Russia,⁹ he still felt bound to cover up the role of some of those involved. Malkov, Sorokin, and the other local Bolshevik leaders were wholly complicit in the decision ‘to shoot Michael Romanov immediately in complete secrecy’. Myasnikov was their agent.

What is therefore more probable is that Malkov feigned surprise when he walked into the Cheka offices, for officially he did not know anything about the plot, given that his role was to pretend afterwards that Michael had escaped. In the meantime he stayed where he was, and would no nothing more until he received a telephone call from Myasnikov to confirm that Michael had been successfully abducted and taken to his death.

At 11.45 p.m. Myasnikov and his men were ready to leave. Marching out of the Cheka offices, with Zhuzhgov folding the typewritten order and thrusting it into his pocket, fifteen minutes later their two phaetons clattered into Siberia Street and stopped outside the Korolev Rooms. While Ivanchenko and Kolpashchikov turned the carriages round so that they would be facing in the right direction for the abduction, Zhuzhgov went to the hotel entrance and banged hard on the door. A Red Guard opened it, then stood back as Zhuzhgov flourished his order and pushed his way inside.¹⁰

MICHAEL had spent that Wednesday much as any other day, walking in the town and strolling by the river. However, most probably he went to Ekaterinskaya Street at some point to look at an apartment he had agreed to rent from his friends the Tupitsins, for Johnson had an appointment with them that day to conclude negotiations.¹¹

Certainly he was back in the hotel by 6 p.m. for his old friend Colonel Znamerovsky joined him then and stayed with him until 9 p.m.¹²

Michael may well have then returned to his letter to Natasha, which he had started the previous day; the first pages, beginning as always with My darling, beloved Natasha, would be on his writing desk. At midnight he was in his dressing gown, talking to Johnson, when his valet Chelyshev interrupted him to tell him that his bath was waiting for him.¹³

What happened then in the Korolev Rooms chiefly depends on the evidence of four men. They are the accounts subsequently provided by Myasnikov and squad member Markov, as well as the statements of Michael’s valet Chelyshev, who was present throughout the scene, and of a witness called Krumnis, a guest in the hotel. On the main points they broadly agree.

Krumnis was playing cards in the hotel when he heard raised voices in the hallway. He went out to find three armed men standing in the office of Ilya Sapozhnikov, the hotel commissar. Myasnikov, Zhuzhgov and Kolpashchikov were telling the commissar that they had orders to evacuate Michael. The commissar insisted that he should first telephone the Cheka offices for confirmation, but the armed men refused to allow him to do so.¹⁴

Leaving the others in the hallway to continue their argument. Zhuzhgov approached a kitchen maid and asked her to take him to Michael’s room. The girl led him upstairs to Room 18, occupied by Michael’s chauffeur Borunov.¹⁵ Chelyshev was then in Michael’s room and when he came out, followed by Johnson, to find out what the shouting was all about, they found Borunov ‘talking to a man in a soldier’s greatcoat’ who was waving a piece of paper and demanding to know where ‘Michael Romanov lived’. Told it was Room 21, he stepped forward, brandishing a revolver when Chelyshev attempted to bar his way.¹⁶

Pushing past Chelyshev and Johnson, Zhuzhgov marched into Michael’s room and thrust the order into his hands. Michael stood up, read the paper, but refused to comply until he had spoken to the Cheka chairman Malkov. Zhuzhgov, staring up at a man eight inches taller than himself, had a gun and an order but neither seemed to impress Michael, as he continued to demand that he telephoned Malkov.¹⁷

Zhuzhgov left the room and called for help; and Kolpashchikov rushed upstairs to his aid.

Michael still stubbornly refused to go with them, and as the argument went on another of the squad arrived — Markov, who had been waiting outside the hotel, expecting Michael to have been quickly bundled downstairs and into the street.¹⁸

Even with three armed men in the room Michael continued to insist that he telephone Pavel Malkov, unaware that he was in the plot. It was the burly Kolpashchikov who ended the stand-off. Grabbing Michael roughly by the shoulder he snarled, ‘Oh, these Romanovs. We are fed up with you all.’¹⁹

Realising that it was futile to go on, Michael began to get dressed. Johnson insisted that he accompany him, and after a brief discussion between them the three men impatiently agreed. Telling Michael that his effects would be sent on afterwards, the men pushed Michael out of the room.

As they were leaving, Chelyshev remembered about Michael’s medicine and ran forward, holding out the bottle. ‘Please, Your Highness, take it with you’, he called out.²⁰ The men roughly shoved him aside as they hauled Michael onto the stairway, motioning Johnson to follow.

Downstairs, Krumnis watched as three armed men and their prisoners came towards him in the hall. Michael and Johnson, he remembered, ‘were dressed in the everyday suits that they usually wore when they went out walking. They did not have coats with them, but carried sticks in their hands.’ He did not notice ‘any particular agitation on their faces.’²¹

Myasnikov, who had stayed in the lobby, led the way into the street. Chelyshev, watching from the balcony, saw Michael ‘violently pushed’ into the first phaeton²². Zhuzhgov clambered in after him, with Ivanchenko on the reins. Johnson climbed into the second phaeton, with the two other members of the squad. Because they had not allowed for Johnson’s inclusion there was no room now for Myasnikov in the three-seater phaetons. Nevertheless he told them to go ahead — ‘I will catch you up. If I don’t, then wait for me at Motovilikha.’²³

As the two carriages clipped away towards the Siberian Highway, Malkov and Sorokin came running up from the Cheka offices and then went with Myasnikov into the militia office next door to the hotel, where they went over the plan they would put into operation as soon as they had telephone confirmation that Michael was dead. They would then circulate the story of his escape, and arrest his servants and associates.²⁴ That done, Myasnikov ordered a militia carriage to take him to Motovilikha. Going at a fast trot he caught up with the others just as they arrived at the militia offices there. Zhuzhgov climbed down and came over to him. Yes, they had spades. No, there was no need for Myasnikov to follow, they could manage on their own.²⁵

Myasnikov stood in the darkness and watched as the two phaetons set off and disappeared into the darkness. Satisfied that this was the end of Michael he then went into the militia offices and telephoned Malkov at the Perm Cheka. Malkov told him that the escape story would now be circulated, search parties organised, and telegrams sent out to the world at large to say that Michael Romanov had been abducted by counter-revolutionaries.²⁶

By this time the phaetons had reached the paraffin stores some three miles beyond Motovilikha. Michael had sat silently on the journey to Motovilikha but when they moved off again he had begun to question Zhuzhgov about their destination. The first place that came into Zhuzhgov’s head was Mogilev, adding quickly that they were heading for a railway crossing to be put on a train there to avoid the attention they would have had in ‘a busy station’.²⁷

It was not a reassuring answer: Mogilev was 1,400 miles to the west, and the carriages were heading east. Michael made no comment, but he ‘didn’t seem frightened’, said Zhuzhgov afterwards.

Six hundred yards past the paraffin stores²⁸ the carriages slowed and then stopped as they reached the wood selected for the execution. Michael and Johnson were told to get out, and then led into the wood. To the obvious question of why, Zhuzhgov roughly replied that it was a short cut to the railway crossing. They did not go far before stopping, and pushing Michael and Johnson aside.

What followed was cold-blooded murder. There were no explanations, no ceremony, no macabre ritual of a last cigarette and blindfold. Zhuzhgov simply lifted his Browning and aimed it at Michael, standing a few feet away, and simultaneously Markov shot Johnson, but only wounding him. Zhuzhgov’s gun either misfired or he missed for Michael, knowing that he was about to die, ran forward his arms out wide, ‘begging to say goodbye to his secretary’.²⁹ As he did so Zhuzhgov fired again but because he was using home-made bullets his gun jammed, as did Kolpashchikov’s gun as he attempted to fire a second bullet at the staggering Johnson. With Michael still moving forward with his arms outstretched he was shot in the head at close range. Markov later boasted that he did so; Zhuzhgov claimed that when Michael fell he ‘pulled Johnson, who had been shot by Ivanchenko, down with him. I went up to them. They were still moving. I put my Browning to Michael’s temple and shot him. Ivanchenko did the same to Johnson’.³⁰

The time was approximately 2 a.m. on Thursday June 13.

With four men armed with the axes and spades taken from the carriages ‘it didn’t take very long’³¹ to dig the single grave into which they then threw the bodies. Before burying Michael and Johnson their bodies were stripped of all their clothes and possessions, which were put into the phaetons and taken back to Motovilikha, seemingly as proof that they were dead. They had been told not to touch personal effects but the temptation of trophies proved too much for them. From Michael’s pockets they took a watch, a cigar case, a penknife and a tobacco tin.³² Johnson’s pockets yielded among other things a handsome silver watch which Markov kept for himself and which he would go on wearing for the rest of his life. ³³

At Motovilikha the killers took the bloodied clothes, poured kerosene over them and set them on fire. Myasnikov, lighting a cigarette, looked at his watch. It was 4 a.m.³⁴

No one would ever find the graves.

THE first telegrams from the Perm Cheka announcing the ‘escape’ of Michael Romanov had already been despatched. Malkov telephoned Myasnikov at 2.20 a.m. to confirm that he had cabled the Soviet of People’s Commissars at Moscow, for the attention of Trotsky and Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka supremo. A copy was also sent to Petrograd and to the Ural Soviet and the regional head of Cheka in Ekaterinburg. The message read: Last night Michael Romanov and Johnson were abducted by persons unknown in military uniform. Search as yet unsuccessful, most energetic measures taken.³⁵

That was code for Michael is dead. No alarm bells sounded in the Kremlin, as would have been the case if Michael had actually escaped and was on his way to lead the ‘Whites’. No vengeful tribunal descended on Perm to exact punishment for those charged with Michael’s security. No one demanded an accounting by the local leadership, or the arrest of those whose negligence had permitted the rescue. There was no enquiry, no scapegoat, no consequence.

Moreover, the ‘energetic measures’ to find the ‘escaped Michael’ involved no more than despatching token search parties, sent out everywhere except the road to Motovilikha and beyond. What the Cheka did do, and promptly, was to arrest Chelyshev and Borunov as ‘accomplices’.³⁶ Chelyshev would later recount what had happened in the Korolev Rooms to a fellow prisoner, Aleksandr Volkov, a former valet in the Tsarskoe Selo household. He told him he was in no doubt that Michael had not been rescued by friends but abducted by enemies.³⁷

Nevertheless, the story of the ‘escape’ was spread so convincingly that most ordinary people accepted it as fact. In the local Soviet newspaper, the Perm Izvestiya, Michael was said to have been abducted ‘soon after midnight’ by ‘three unidentified armed men in military uniform…Orders were immediately given for Romanov’s arrest and mounted militia units were despatched along all highways, but no traces were found.’³⁸

Many of Perm’s townspeople saw ‘the hand of God’ in Michael’s disappearance. Prayers led by the archbishop were said for him in the cathedral, ‘for the health of God’s servant Michael’; rumour had it that he would reappear at the head of an army and restore order.³⁹

One of the few who wondered if all was as it seemed to be was Krumnis in the Korolev Rooms. He noted that ‘everything about the escape seemed strange, all the more so because there were no house searches’.⁴⁰ The sister of the senior Cheka man Lukoyanov, so recently promoted to Ekaterinburg, admitted that the news ‘had been received rather strangely at the Cheka; they weren’t particularly worried’.⁴¹

The telegram to them apart, Moscow had full details of the murder shortly afterwards. According to Myasnikov, a local Bolshevik leader, M. P. Turkin, was immediately sent to the Kremlin to report on what had happened to Yacob Sverdlov, President of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and so powerful he was known as the ‘Red Tsar’. Sverdlov was said to be ‘very, very pleased’; he then telephoned Lenin, ‘who was also very pleased’.⁴²

However, there is independent evidence that Turkin was indeed in Moscow at that time, for he is listed as a delegate to the All-Russian Congress held there at the beginning of July, and presided over by Sverdlov.⁴³ Moreover, shortly after the murder, Myasnikov went to Ekaterinburg, to a meeting of the Ural Regional Soviet at the Hotel Amerika on Pokrovsky Prospekt. Those present were the leaders of the Ural Soviet, headed by Myasnikov’s old Perm friend, Beloborodov. The purpose of the meeting was to draw up a resolution for the execution of their Romanov prisoners. Although they knew Michael was already dead, his name was included as one of those the Regional Soviet ‘considers it indispensable to execute…’ However, the resolution recognised that ‘for reasons of foreign policy’ it might be necessary to keep that ‘absolutely secret’.⁴⁴

The meeting also agreed that the Ural Soviet should send immediately two envoys to Moscow to obtain the endorsement of the Bolshevik leadership for their decision. The first envoy was a very senior figure in the ranks of the Ural Soviet: secretary and war commissar Filipp Goloshchenkin; the other was a man with no position at all — Myasnikov, who it was said was carrying ‘a personal report’ for Lenin. The two envoys were instructed to return ‘not later than July 15’.⁴⁵

The man who had been Emperor Michael II was dead. Now the question was how best to deal with the other Romanovs in the custody of the Ural Soviet. Five weeks after the murder of Michael, the world would have the answer to that.