THE BURIAL OF THE TSAR
The beautiful little village of Kopchiki is situated about a dozen miles
to the north-east of Ekaterinburg and close to a magnificent forest.
Despite the vicinity of the railway, Kopchiki was, in the middle of the
year 1918, a comparatively secluded place, for it only contained a small
number of inhabitants, and the forest, formerly frequented by miners,
who had driven about a dozen shafts into the ground at various points,
had been left entirely to the hares, foxes, and wolves. Early on the
morning of July 17 in that year Kopchiki Wood presented an appearance of
primeval calm. The sun shone down the glorious forest glades, the hares
ran about among the trees, and there was not a soul in sight. Suddenly
there was a disturbance, trifling probably in the opinion of the elders
among the forest animals who remembered the days when miners used to
come, but really of supreme and permanent importance, for it meant that
Kopchiki Forest would henceforward be one of the tragic places of the
world. This disturbance was caused by the appearance of five carts and
one motor-lorry, the former filled with Red soldiers and some kind of
baggage wrapped in white blankets, the latter containing also soldiers,
five civilians, and two barrels. Instead of continuing straight on to
the village, this strange procession turned off the road and on to the
grass, for there was no side-track, and entered the beautiful sunlit
recesses of the forest. The heavy lorry stuck fast, however, in a swamp
near the road; and, after several ineffectual attempts to dislodge it,
the civilian passengers got out and led the carts further into the wood,
until they reached a birch-tree, on which the following words were
carved: “Mining Mechanic I. A. Fesenko, 11th July, 1918.” Close by this
tree was a disused shaft, known locally as the “Isetsky Mine,” about
fifteen feet deep, with water and mud at the bottom. Near the tree the
five civilians consulted together: their names were Yurovsky, Goloshokin,
Lovatnykh, Nicholas Partin, and Alexander Kostusov. Meanwhile, in
obedience to Yurovsky’s orders, the soldiers moved outwards into the
forest in a circle, with ever-widening intervals between each man, until
they halted at a distance of about 500 yards from the marked tree. Their
object was to prevent any intrusion, but none took place, though the
villagers soon became aware of their presence. The first peasant to
notice that something mysterious was taking place in the wood was Andrew
Sheremetievsky, who, while on his way into Ekaterinburg, was stopped
on the road by the soldiers who were trying to extricate the lorry,
and turned back, with fierce injunctions not, on peril of his life, to
venture out of his village till the Reds had gone away. Andrew, on his
return, told the other villagers, with the result that several of the
bolder spirits amongst them crept cautiously for some distance into
the forest, but, seeing that sentries had been posted there, returned
promptly to their houses. The curiosity of the whole village was now
roused to the highest pitch, but their fear of the Red Guards was greater
than their inquisitiveness, more especially as they knew that they
had made themselves liable to terrible punishment at the hands of the
Bolsheviks for sheltering in their hamlet a Tsarist officer, Captain
Pometkovsky, who was living amongst them dressed as a _muzhik_ with the
object of getting in touch with the Imperial Family in Ekaterinburg.
Feeling sure that this strange invasion of their forest was connected in
some way with the presence of Pometkovsky, they urged that officer to
flee, but he refused, pointing out that the Reds could not possibly have
come on account of him, as, if they had, they would have marched straight
to the village. The peasants remained awake all that night in a state of
great trepidation, for the wiping out of villages by both Reds and Whites
is unfortunately a common incident of the present Civil War in Russia.
They did not go outside their houses, but they could see from their
doors the reflection in the heavens of a great fire which the Bolsheviks
had kindled in Kopchiki Wood. Many were the speculations in which they
indulged as to what unholy rites the Terrorists could be engaged on at
that hour of the night, most of the villagers being inclined to believe
that it was human sacrifice, a practice to which the Russian _muzhik_
believes the Jews to be peculiarly addicted. How near they came to the
truth!
Next day the soldiers were still in the forest, but, though their
curiosity increased daily, the villagers made no further effort to
ascertain what they were doing there. On July 19 a peasant boy reported
that the Reds had all gone, whereupon Captain Pometkovsky, accompanied
by Andrew Sheremetievsky, Michael Alferov, and several other peasants,
walked down the road to the point where the lorry had stuck, and found
that all the soldiers had indeed disappeared. Seeing that, from the
above-mentioned point, a freshly trampled path had been made by the
Reds into the forest, the peasants followed it up until they came to
the marked tree, the Isetsky Mine, and, two paces from the mine, a very
large pile of ashes, evidently, judging by the _débris_ that had been
left unconsumed, the remains of a burnt-out fire of sticks, boards, and
branches of trees. There seemed to be nothing very mysterious in all
this. The fire had doubtless been used for cooking food, though certainly
it must have been a huge fire. Captain Pometkovsky first examined the
inscription on the tree: there was nothing suspicious in it. Then he
turned again to the fire. Siberians light small fires for boiling kettles
of water, but never fires of such dimensions as that. And why should they
have come out from Ekaterinburg, where they had all the kitchens they
wanted, in order to light such an enormous bonfire with great secrecy in
a lonely wood? They had evidently been burning something. Pometkovsky
at once sprang forward and began scattering the ashes with his stick,
and the peasants, who had been looking in astonishment at the fire from
the beginning, helped him vigorously. A moment later Alferov picked up,
from the blackened ground underneath the ashes, a Maltese Cross set with
green stones, and handed it to the officer, who grew pale as he examined
it, for it was a decoration that could only have been worn by a high
personage in the Imperial service. And, for Pometkovsky, there was only
one such personage in Ekaterinburg. “Good God!” gasped the officer. “_Did
they burn him alive?_”
By the time he had recovered himself the peasants had found a number
of other things, four corset steels, a brass buckle, burnt slippers,
buttons, dress fasteners, and four beads, all indicative of the fact that
women had been burnt there as well as men. “God Almighty!” exclaimed
Pometkovsky, turning a ghastly face to heaven, “Merciful Christ! Can they
have burned the whole family alive?”
The peasants heard him, but, though they did not fully understand,
they felt they were in the presence of a horror beyond conception,
and continued their gruesome search in tense silence, broken only by
whispers. The next place for them to examine was obviously the shaft,
whose mouth, fringed with recently disturbed weeds, gaped black in the
sunlight. One of the peasants was lowered by means of a rope into the
mine, but the discoveries he made were not important, being, to quote his
own story, “floating sticks, pieces of bark, boards, fresh pine-needles,
and a spade.” Then the surrounding ground claimed examination, and a
close search revealed further evidence of crime. Under a pile of ashes
and half-burnt sticks close to the shaft, and evidently thrown over
there from the main pile, they found a lady’s handbag, old and charred.
Eighty-four feet from the shaft they found burnt rags, bits of lace,
and “some sort of bright, black fragments.” Whether or not these latter
were precious objects that had been melted by the heat of the fire I do
not know. Captain Pometkovsky discovered, however, an object which was
undoubtedly precious, and which confirmed his worst suspicions. It was
described, not very clearly, by the peasants as “a very dirty stone, the
colour of water,” and they added, still less clearly, that “it was of
considerable size, with a flat centre and with a white setting, in which
there were a number of small, sparkling stones.” These stones, I may say,
were afterwards examined by an expert jeweller, who declared them to be
“diamonds of great value, worth at least one thousand pounds sterling.”
Not far from the spot where Captain Pometkovsky found this beautiful but
terrible piece of evidence, the peasants picked up “two small and dirty
fragments” of ornaments set with “emeralds and pearls, also a torn piece
of dress material with a strong smell of paraffin.”
Here ends the testimony of the peasants of Kopchiki. These humble men,
all of them Imperialists, not in an active and modern but in a passive
and mediæval sense, went back to their work filled with a great sorrow
for “Nicholas Our Tsar,” to whom, judging from the grief of Captain
Pometkovsky, some evil had apparently befallen. That burnt patch in
the forest they regard with superstitious awe, for though two springs
have passed since then, the grass refuses to grow on it, all the roots
having, as will be seen hereafter, been destroyed by the sulphuric acid
which the Reds poured over the corpses, but the _muzhiks_ refuse to
accept this explanation, and maintain that the place is under a curse.
They kept none of the jewels that they found, but it is doubtful if the
same can be said of the peasants from other villages and of the workmen
from the Isetsky factory, who, having heard wonderful stories of this
amazing pile of ashes, came to examine it for themselves and found more
jewels in it. There are in Russia to-day, as a result of the Ippatievsky
tragedy, Commissars, Red soldiers, and peasants, with Crown Jewels worth
an Emperor’s ransom in their possession, but without the possibility
of disposing of those treasures either inside or outside Russia. And I
might here remark that there are also many Russians with hidden hoards of
valuables from other sources, which for a long time past they have been
trying to smuggle out of the country. One man whom I know, and who is
at present starving, has concealed in a secret place over nine hundred
thousand pounds’ worth of money and valuables, without which he will not
go abroad, and which he can never take with him, for I happened to learn,
after I was arrested a few months ago in Moscow by the Extraordinary
Commission, that the eye of that terrible organization is fixed on this
man. All the romances that I have read since I was a child pale into
insignificance before the tragic romances of present-day Russia.
It may be asked how this jewelry came to be in the ashes. The answer
is furnished by M. Peter Gialliard, the Tsarevich’s French tutor,
who has testified before a Court of Enquiry that, at Tobolsk, “the
Empress concealed her jewelry in the hats, buttons, and dresses of the
Grand Duchesses and the members of her household.” And, according to a
Bolshevik authority, the cushions which the Imperial party had brought
down into the cellar with them, where they became so soaked with blood
that Yurovsky insisted on their being thrown into the lorry with the
corpses, were found to be stuffed with diamonds and paper money of very
high denominations.
The following is a list of the objects that were discovered when, later
on, a more systematic investigation was conducted by order of Admiral
Kolchak:
Several strips of cloth from a petticoat; more steel parts of ladies’
corsets; a number of brooches and pearl earrings; pearls, diamonds,
and other precious stones; and Dr. Botkin’s false teeth. A small
decoration belonging to the Emperor was found in the presence of an
officer of General Knox’s Mission who knew the Emperor personally, and
who identified the decoration as belonging to him. This officer also
saw in the wood the skeleton of the Grand Duchess Tatiana’s dog with a
bullet-hole through the skull, and he heard that the dead body of the
sailor Derevenko who attended on the Crown Prince had also been found in
the wood.
The following human remains were found: (1) Several small, charred bones
and a piece of the lower part of a human spine; (2) a finger which the
Bolsheviks are supposed to have cut off in order to remove a ring and to
have then thrown aside.
These meagre relics are all that is left of the mighty Romanovs; and, as
such, they were given solemn burial. The finger was supposed to be that
of the doctor, and afterwards to be that of the Empress; but, as a matter
of fact, neither it nor the bones could be identified, and, if I may say
so reverently—and God forbid that I should treat this awful subject with
anything but reverence—they may all have belonged to the cook or the
housemaid. The bones of the very humblest among the Tsar’s menials may
thus, in the event of a successful Reaction, be buried with the Russian
Emperors in the fortress church of Saints Peter and Paul, while the
steels from a servant-girl’s stays, buttons from her clothes, and strips
from her petticoat may be enshrined in gold and regarded with almost
religious veneration by generations of restored Romanovs. And they will
deserve this veneration.
To give now, from the Bolshevik side, a description of how the bodies
were disposed of. Accompanied by the Reds whom I have already mentioned,
they were first brought to the Isetsky factory,[1] where the corpses were
transferred into carts. From the Isetsky factory the carts set out along
with one motor-lorry carrying Yurovsky, Goloshokin, Lovatnykh, Partin,
Kostusov, some soldiers, and the two barrels of petrol. The other lorries
remained in the factory till 5 o’clock the following morning, July 18,
when one lorry returned to town with a number of prominent Bolsheviks
who had walked from Ekaterinburg to Isetsky during the night of July 17
in order to learn how the work was progressing, and who were accompanied
back to town by the lorry which had brought Yurovsky to Kopchiki and
which now carried to Ekaterinburg four of Yurovsky’s companions and
a number of Red soldiers, as well as two empty petrol barrels. The
chauffeur of that lorry had left word at Isetsky that Yurovsky wanted
the lorry which had carried the dead bodies—“the one with the blood on
it”—to be sent on immediately and without fail to Kopchiki as he wanted
it for his own use. On July 18, during the course of the day, most of the
soldiers who had gone to Kopchiki arrived at Isetsky in carts and went
from that place to Ekaterinburg in two other lorries. Early on July 19
Yurovsky himself returned to Ekaterinburg along with Goloshokin and the
remainder of the soldiers, all of them travelling in that blood-stained
lorry—wherein the principal murderer was particularly anxious to travel
as he wanted to see with his own eyes that all traces of blood were
removed from it before it was sent back to the garage.
To return, however, to the journey with the bodies from Isetsky to
Kopchiki, Yurovsky was in such a state of nerves that he could not decide
where to bury the bodies. He stopped once on the way and even had the
bodies removed from the carts, only to come to the decision, immediately
afterwards, that the place was too exposed. After he reached the Isetsky
Mine in Kopchiki Wood, he wanted to go further into the forest, but, as
time was being lost and the soldiers were becoming impatient, Goloshokin
finally insisted on the cremation being carried out at the Isetsky Mine.
A pile of wood was then collected and the bodies were placed on it, that
of the Tsar being on the top. The carcass of the dog was thrown down by
a soldier into some bushes, and was afterwards discovered and identified
by a former domestic of the Imperial family. Yurovsky then made one
soldier fill with sulphuric acid a jug which he had brought, while
another uncovered the anointed head of Nicholas, once Autocrat of all the
Russias, Ruler of the Russian Church, Holy Orthodox Tsar, exposing the
ashy face, the glassy eyes, the hair and beard stiff with blood. Bending
gently down like a priest in the act of performing a solemn religious
rite, Yurovsky carefully pressed the lip of the jug against that cold
brow, slightly tilted the bottom of the vessel upwards, and then poured
the burning and obliterating liquid over the dead man’s features.
Had this frightful scene been presented to the Emperor in the days of his
greatness, when he followed with intense interest all attempts of wizards
to unveil the future by unlawful and forbidden means, had a seer warned
him as Lochiel was warned in the Scots poem, he would, like Lochiel,
have scoffed at the prophecy. The seer might have said: “I see a mighty
forest and a man lying in a blood-stained shroud on a pile of wood. He
is very white and still, but his features are hidden from me. And I see
a Jew bending over him with a vessel, while a circle of Russian soldiers
look on with a strange indifference. Is that Jew some Good Samaritan with
refreshing drink? Is he going to pour precious ointment or cold, reviving
water on that pallid brow? Good God! No! The fiery liquid that he pours
out burns the fizzling flesh. It is a Black Baptism of Hell. And, lo!
before the features are obliterated for ever, that face is revealed to
me. O Tsar! O Father! that face is thine!”
[Illustration: ROUGH PLAN SHOWING POSITION OF VERKH ISETSKY FACTORY AND
KOPCHIKI VILLAGE
_Drawn from Memory_]
Yurovsky left the obliteration of the other faces to one of the soldiers;
and, when this revolting part of the ghastly work was done, the two
barrels of petrol, which had been brought from the lorry in a cart,
were emptied over the corpses, soaking their clothes, and wetting the
ground and the funeral pyre. A soldier suggested that they should burn
the barrels as well, but, with the shopkeeper’s instinctive dislike for
waste, Yurovsky declined this suggestion and said that he would return
the barrels to Ekaterinburg.
Everybody then stood back and the pile was lighted, the flames shooting
up to a height of twenty feet. After the corpses had been all but
consumed, Yurovsky noticed that one blackened and grinning skull was
distinguished from the others by a callosity due to the wound which the
Emperor had received in Japan; and, fearing that this would lead to
subsequent identification, he smashed the skull to pieces with a spade
and threw the fragments back on the fire, where they were entirely
reduced to ashes. Before treating the other skeletons in the same way the
soldiers made themselves some tea, for it was now late in the afternoon,
and none of the party had had anything to eat that day. In order to boil
their kettle, they removed from the fire with a spade a pile of burning
and unburnt sticks among which a lady’s handbag was afterwards found.
They drank vodka as well as tea, ate bread, and then the soldiers who
had had their tea relieved those who were on guard in order that they
also should eat. After that the whole party lay down on the ground to
rest and smoke, and some of them fell asleep. Night was coming on when
they resumed their ghastly labours by piling fresh fuel on the fire in
order to consume some bones which still remained; and several of the
soldiers who went to collect wood were scared on more than one occasion
by dogs and prowling nocturnal animals probably attracted to the spot by
the smell of burning flesh. By the red flames of this mysterious fire in
the forest, Yurovsky moved about ceaselessly, like a restless fiend by
the fires of Hell, his left hand in a sling, and his right constantly
occupied in picking up bones, jewelry, human teeth, trinkets, bits of
cloth, and buttons, all of which he threw into the flames. Noticing that
one of the objects which the chief murderer threw away glowed like a
ruby, Lovatnykh began to assist him in his search, and Partin, Kostusov,
the chauffeur, and several of the others soon did the same. Becoming
very interested in the work, they even raked the ashes and the heart of
the fire, ostensibly for the purpose of finding bones to destroy, but
really with a different object in view, for the pockets of all of them
were soon bulging with precious stones. Neither Yurovsky nor Goloshokin
noticed anything, however; the former being like a man moving about in an
hypnotic trance, and the latter being asleep.
About 3 o’clock in the morning the fire had burnt itself out, after
having apparently effaced every trace of the great crime; and Lovatnykh
as well as the other diamond-gatherers expressed a strong desire to go
home, the chauffeur asserting that his machine, which had by this time
been extricated from the bog, was in need of immediate repairs. Yurovsky,
still like a man in a trance, agreed, but then, as if struck by a sudden
thought, asked the chauffeur if it was his lorry that had brought the
bodies from Ekaterinburg. When the chauffeur answered in the negative,
Yurovsky said: “Oh, yes, I remember. It was Lovatnykh’s. Then tell
Lovatnykh to bring his lorry here. No other. The one with the blood on
it.”
Accordingly, at about 3 o’clock in the morning, Lovatnykh, Partin,
Kostusov, and as many of the soldiers as the lorry would hold, went
to Isetsky, while Yurovsky, Goloshokin, and the rest of the soldiers
remained behind owing to Yurovsky’s determination to stay in the forest
all next day in order to see by daylight whether any traces of the bodies
still existed. As a matter of fact, he was there till the following
night, and even then Goloshokin had to drag him away from the unhallowed
spot, which seemed to have a horrible fascination for him. During the
daytime he lighted the fire again in order to burn several pieces of
cloth, a slipper, and other things which he discovered; and, towards
nightfall, he and his companions began shovelling the ashes down the
shaft and scattering them about in the forest. Yurovsky found at the last
moment many human teeth, with which he walked long distances into the
forest in order to conceal them in the brushwood or to cast them into
far-off shafts, where they still lie. Then they all left together in
Lovatnykh’s lorry, “the one with the blood on it.”
Peter Alexeivich Lenov, manager of the Bolshevik garage in Ekaterinburg,
has testified that two of the lorries which he supplied on the order
of Yurovsky, given through Gorbunov, returned to the garage on the
morning of July 18, and that in them were the empty petrol barrels.
Two of them returned later the same day, and the last returned in the
following circumstances. Gorbunov ordered it to go to the Amerikansky
Dom, a large hotel near the Roman Catholic church, which was the H.Q.
of the Extraordinary Commission, as it became, later, the H.Q. of the
Czechs. Lukhanov the chauffeur and Labashev his assistant were sent
straight home, and a new chauffeur from the Amerikansky Dom brought the
motor-lorry to the garage. There Lenov saw at once that it had been
recently scoured with sand and washed with water. Curious to know why
this had been done he examined the machine closely, and found distinct
traces of blood on it. He does not seem to have ever met Lukhanov or
Labashev again. These men were probably sent away from Ekaterinburg as
they knew too much, and great secrecy had been observed in preventing
the identification of the bodies. Only one chauffeur, Lukhanov, had been
allowed to enter the courtyard of the Ippatievsky house, and he only saw
bodies wrapped in white blankets being put into his lorry. The other
chauffeurs had waited outside. Similar secrecy had been observed at the
Isetsky factory, where the chauffeurs were separated from one another and
guards placed over them, but it was impossible, of course, to prevent
most of them, and especially Lovatnykh and the man who drove to Kopchiki,
from learning everything.
Before returning to Ekaterinburg to describe what was going on there
all this time, I shall stop half-way, at the Isetsky factory, in order
to give an account of a terrible scene which took place there during
the night of July 17. But, first of all, I must introduce to the reader
Comrade Prokofy Kukhtenkov, a Red soldier, one of the few Red soldiers
whose hands are not red with blood.
Prokofy had been one of the guards at Ippatievsky in May, 1918, but had
been allowed to retire from military service in the same month, and had
been given the post of secretary and manager in the Red Workmen’s Club
at the Verkh Isetsky Factory. At 4 a.m. on the morning of July 18 a
number of prominent Bolsheviks from Ekaterinburg came to the Club, roused
Prokofy from his bed, and asked him to prepare the samovar and make tea
for them. They were:
1. The President of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen’s
and Soldiers’ Deputies, Sergius Pavlov Mamyshkin.
2. The Military Commissar, Peter Ermakov.
3. Alexander Kostusov.
4. Basil Lovatnykh.
5. Nicholas Partin.
6. Alexander Krivtsov.
Three of these, Lovatnykh, Partin, and Kostusov, had just taken part in
the cremation and the others had come out from Ekaterinburg to see how
things had gone. Kukhtenkov was unaware of this at the time, but his
curiosity was excited by the wild appearance of Lovatnykh, Partin, and
Kostusov, by the fact that so many of the leading Bolsheviks had met in
such an out-of-the-way place, and by their evident desire to keep their
conversation from reaching the ears of the Club secretary. They went into
the Committee-room of the Club, where they would not be likely to be
disturbed by other visitors, and when Prokofy brought them the samovar
he found, to use his own words, that “they were secretly discussing
something.” Krivtsov was eagerly questioning the three men who had come
back from Kopchiki Wood. Partin and Lovatnykh were answering him. The
Club secretary overheard the words: “They were thirteen in all[2]—the
thirteenth was the doctor.” Then they conversed in low tones for a while,
glancing suspiciously from time to time at Prokofy, who was pretending
to be very busy at the other end of the room; but finally, being afraid
that the secretary overheard them after all, they rose from the table,
went out into the garden, and continued their conversation there. Prokofy
“being,” as he said himself, “interested in their conversation,” followed
them unnoticed, on all fours, through the long grass and the shrubs. Then
he heard distinctly the following extraordinary sentences:
KOSTUSOV: This is the second time that we have had all this bother. We
buried them yesterday, and we buried them again to-day.
(_Partin then speaks callously and brutally, boasting of what he had
done._)
LOVATNYKH: When we came ... they were still warm. I myself ... I can now
die happy, for I have....
KRIVTSOV: How were they dressed?
PARTIN: Oh, they were all dressed in civilian clothes, and in their
dresses were sewn jewels and diamonds.
MAMYSHKIN: How many did you say there were?
LOVATNYKH: I told you before that there were thirteen. The doctor was the
thirteenth.
ERMAKOV: Were they pretty?
PARTIN: There was not a pretty face among them.
A MAN (_whom Prokofy could not identify from his voice_): You cannot find
beauty in the dead.
From the subsequent conversation Prokofy gathered that they had been
buried in two places. First they were buried in one place beyond
Ekaterinburg, and then taken up and buried in another place, where it
was not stated. As a matter of fact, however, they were not buried the
first time, but only taken out of the carts, and on the second occasion
they were cremated. One of the speakers enumerated the names of the Tsar,
the Tsarina, the Tsarevich, the Grand Duchesses and Madame Vyrobova (?).
He could not catch the names of the others, but the list ended with the
phrase which had already been used: “The thirteenth was the doctor.”
According to Prokofy all the Bolsheviks who took part in this strange
conclave fled from Ekaterinburg before it was taken by the Czechs.
Metvietev was the next to flee, then Yurovsky and Goloshokin. But I am
anticipating events and must now return to Ippatievsky House, where
Metvietev, who had been left in charge by Yurovsky, was entrusted with
the work of destroying all trace of the crime in the villa itself. It
was a hard, nay, an impossible task, for not only had gallons of blood
congealed on the floor, but large quantities of blood had dripped through
the bullet-holes as well as through the interstices in the planks and
soaked into the ground beneath, where it was afterwards examined and
identified as human. Metvietev had the cellar floor covered with clay
and sand taken from the garden, and then he had all this clay and sand
removed after it had soaked up all the blood. Finally he had the floor of
the cellar washed thoroughly with water. When I reached Ekaterinburg two
months later, the hole from which the sand was taken could still be seen,
and the small quantities of soil which yet remained in the corners of the
cellar corresponded exactly to the soil which composed the ground where
the hole had been made.
While Metvietev was supervising this work in the cellar, the soldiers
upstairs were, by his orders, collecting into the dining-room all the
effects of the deceased. Among those engaged on this task were two
brothers, both Red soldiers, Kouzma Ivanovich Letemin and Michael
Ivanovich Letemin. On ripping open a cushion with his bayonet, Kouzma
found it stuffed with banknotes of high denominations and also with
diamonds. This amazing discovery led at once to a wild scene of looting.
The ikons which the Emperor always carried about with him and which he
had inherited from his grandfather were found to be studded with precious
stones, which were all removed, the pictures being then thrown away
and subsequently shot, along with a number of other objects which were
regarded as valueless, into a rubbish-pit in the courtyard. They were
afterwards found there by the Whites, and with them were found the Tsar’s
epaulettes, a little flag of his regiment which he always carried about
with him, and a number of unimportant letters of the Tsarina. Some of
those letters were in English, and were addressed from Ekaterinburg to
the Crown Prince in Tobolsk. In one of them she went into such minute
details about the way to wear a certain ikon as to indicate that, though
she only entered the Greek Church on the occasion of her marriage, she
had become, at the time of her death, what even religious Russians
would regard as a distinctly superstitious votary of it. She frequently
referred to herself pathetically in those letters as “an old, old woman.”
A homely touch is lent to the tragedy by the evidence of two Russian
charwomen, Staroduma and Vassa Dryagina, who turned up at Ippatievsky on
July 19 to get paid for having washed the floors there on July 15, the
day before the tragedy. The town was then in a state of excitement on
account of the further advance of the Czechs, and such of the murderers
as were not trying to repose after their debauch of Imperial blood
were dispatching to Perm as many trains full of gold and platinum as
they possibly could before the time came for them to run. Staroduma
and Vassa took as a rule no interest in high politics: the murder of
Emperors and the disappearance of dynasties left them cold. But even as
the drummer-boy in the novel comes for a moment into the cyclonic orbit
of Napoleon, so do these two old charwomen hobble rapidly across that
gory stage in Ekaterinburg which will be a theme for so many writers yet
unborn and a subject for so many future painters. Having heard rumours to
the effect that the Imperial Family had been sent away and that Yurovsky
had fled, they decided not to wait as usual till the end of the month
for payment, but to go at once for their money. They knocked in vain,
however, at the door of Ippatievsky, then tried the door and found that
it was locked. The sentry who ordinarily stood there was absent; but
there were some Red soldiers standing close by, and to these Staroduma
and Vassa spoke of the money that was owing them, and of the necessity
of their getting it at once owing to the price of bread having gone up,
and to the fact that they had, between them, eleven small children to
feed. The soldiers said that the house was empty, as “everybody had been
taken away to Perm”; and so Staroduma and Vassa Dryagina both disappear,
grumbling, from history.
Meanwhile the Bolshevik leaders, who were all suffering from a reaction
of fright after the terrible deed they had done, began feverishly to
circulate reports to the effect that the Imperial Family had all been
sent to Perm. They feared a rising in the town if the truth got about.
They feared that they might be cut off and captured by the Czechs. They
feared that such of their own Red soldiers as were Russian might revolt
against them. Consequently the word went forth from the Amerikansky Dom:
“Say that the Tsar and his family have all left for Perm.”
Despite the fact that, in the absence of Goloshokin, Yurovsky, and
the other Red leaders on July 17, the local Bolshevik newspaper had
imprudently come out with an “extra” announcing the “execution” of
“Nicholas Romanov,” this rumour that the Tsar had simply been sent to
Perm was vigorously circulated by the Communists in various ingenious
ways. Knowing that a barber is the most talkative of human beings,
Gulyaev, the Bolshevik Commissar at the railway station, went on July 16
into the shop of Feodor Ivanov, a “tonsorial artist,” as he describes
himself, whose little shop still stands, with Feodor inside it, close to
the railway station, and found it as usual pretty full of customers, some
reading the newspapers and smoking, some being professionally attended to
by Feodor and his boy-assistant. After exchanging the usual greeting with
the barber, of whom he was an old customer, Gulyaev complained that he
was getting very much work to do during those last few days.
“What sort of work is it?” asked Feodor.
“Well, for one thing, we are sending off Nicholas Romanov and his family
to-day,” replied the Commissar in a casual tone.
He did not say where the ex-Tsar was being sent to, and the barber did
not like to ask him “as there were people in the shop,” although, as
a matter of fact, it was mostly for the benefit of those people that
Gulyaev was speaking.
The curiosity of Feodor having been aroused to the highest pitch, he took
an opportunity, later on, of getting the Commissar aside, where he could
not be overheard, and asking him if the Tsar had already been sent.
“He cannot have been sent from this station,” quoth the barber, “for I
have seen every train that went out for the last two days.”
“Oh,” replied Gulyaev, “he was sent from station No. 2”—the old
Ekaterinburg station, situated at some distance from the present one.
The loquacious barber hungered for more information on the subject, but
Gulyaev, who is not an imaginative man, could not think of anything else
to add. “He gave no particulars,” said the barber, who promised to keep
the matter quiet as the Commissar hurried off, rather afraid that Feodor
would keep it quiet. He had no reason for fear on that score, however,
and the tale was all over the town before evening. Some people who heard
this and similar stories not only believed them but passed them on with
amplifications of their own, and even averred in some cases that they had
actually seen the Imperial train.
These rumours, spread by the Bolsheviks, made very difficult the
subsequent work of investigation, and carried the investigators off on
side issues which always proved in the end to be blind alleys, leading
nowhere. But it is extraordinary to what an extent they misled for a long
time the royal and imperial relatives of the murdered Emperor. Even when
I was in Copenhagen on my way from Moscow in June, 1920, I was told that
the Tsar’s mother still believed implicitly in these unfounded tales, and
I was asked to write a statement which put an end, alas! to all her hopes.
Alexander Samoilov, a conductor on the Omsk railway, said that he asked
Alexander Varakovshev, a soldier of the Red Army who occupied part of the
flat in which he lived at Ekaterinburg, if there was any truth in the
rumours that the Tsar had been shot. Varakovshev replied that there was
no truth in those rumours, which had been circulated, he said, by “that
dog Goloshokin.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Varakovshev, “Nicholas Romanov as well as his
wife have been put in irons and taken to the station to be sent to Perm.”
“What!” exclaimed Samoilov. “Is that really true? Can I see them?”
According to Samoilov’s story Varakovshev then accompanied him to the
railway station, where he showed him a train made up of first and second
class carriages, and standing on the fifth or sixth track.
One of the carriages had black blinds which were drawn down, and the
carriage itself was surrounded by Red soldiers. “In that very carriage,”
said Varakovshev impressively, “is the man Nicholas Romanov and his wife.”
That carriage, as a matter of fact, was the one in which Countess
Gendrikova, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress, as well as Prince Dolgoruki
and Count Tatishchev, who had both been in the suite of the Emperor, were
afterwards sent off to Perm, where they were all murdered three weeks
later along with the Grand Duke Michael.
Only two members of the Imperial party were left alive—the Tsar’s valet,
who was taken to Perm (and probably murdered there), and a little boy of
thirteen who assisted the cook. This boy was driven from Ippatievsky by
Yurovsky just before the murder, and though at the time the boy probably
thought it very cruel treatment, it was the only act of kindness which
the Reds showed on this occasion. On July 17 the soldier Kouzma Ivanovich
Letemin, of whom I have already spoken, entered the guard-house opposite
Ippatievsky and went into the room occupied by Metvietev, who was working
at the time in the cellar of Ippatievsky. He found in the room two
soldiers and this little boy, whose presence in that house astonished
him, for he knew that the lad belonged to the Tsar’s household, and was
never, therefore, allowed to leave Ippatievsky. Turning to one of his
comrades, Kouzma asked, “What is the meaning of this? Why is this boy
here?” The soldier to whom he put the question “brushed it aside with a
wave of his hand, and said nothing”—to use Kouzma’s own expression—but
another soldier called Streokin, who had been on duty during the night,
told him that “the Tsar, together with his wife and children, his
footman, his cook and the ladies-in-waiting were shot last night in the
lower room of Ippatievsky,” adding afterwards that “the Tsar was shot by
Yurovsky.”
Kouzma maintained that this was the first news he heard of the murder as
he had not been on guard during the night; and he seems, after this, to
have immediately gone to Ippatievsky and started looting the murdered
Emperor’s belongings.
The boy, I was told, is a very simple peasant lad who knows nothing of
what happened except what he heard the soldiers say. He is now living in
the Tsar’s former palace of Tsarskoe Selo, which has been converted into
an orphanage, where he is being carefully brought up as a Communist with
an intense hatred of Christianity and the middle classes. The mercy that
spared him was therefore the mercy of a demon who saves the body in order
that he may ruin the soul.
Before I leave the subject of the murder and go on to give some details
of the life the Tsar and his family led before their assassination, I
should like to say that, though the death of Nicholas the Second and his
wife and children at Ekaterinburg on the night of July 16, 1918, is as
well authenticated as the death of King Charles the First of England,
there are minor discrepancies in the evidence.
Anatoly Yakimov, a soldier of the Red Army who was on guard at
Ippatievsky on the night of the 10th of July, said that “Nicholas
Romanov, all his family, his doctor, the ladies-in-waiting, and the
Imperial servants were killed that night. Towards 1 o’clock they were
awakened and asked to go downstairs. The former Emperor and his son were
killed first. The others were only wounded at first and had to be shot at
again. They were also pierced with bayonets and struck with the butt-ends
of rifles.” The rest of his evidence corresponds to what I have given
elsewhere save that he says it was the Grand Duchess Anastasia who fell
in a faint, and not Tatiana. “The shooting was done by Lettish soldiers,
by some Red Russian soldiers, and by five of the leading Bolsheviks.
There was much blood” (on the floor). Another soldier, Streokin, says
that “the killing was done by Yurovsky, some Lett soldiers and Metvietev,
the Sergeant of the Guard.” Streokin was on duty at Post No. 4 on the
night of July 16 and witnessed the massacre. According to Yakimov the
motor-cars went off with the bodies at 6 a.m. on the morning of the 17th
of July, but it is improbable that they went so late. They probably
went off at about 3 a.m. A Russian soldier’s ideas of time are seldom
accurate.
Now for a few facts which I gathered in Ekaterinburg as to the treatment
meted out to the Tsar and his family by their jailers during the first
two weeks of July.
During those two weeks the Imperial party were badly treated by the
Reds, who used to come into the dining-room, put their fingers on the
Empress’s food and eat from her plate, saying, “There is too much here
for you.” The Red soldiers used also to sit in the dining-room, often in
an intoxicated condition, while the prisoners were having their food,
and used to tell disgusting stories. A priest whom I afterwards met said
Mass in the house every Sunday, but only on the understanding that he
would never speak to any of the prisoners. This priest said that the
Emperor was always very calm and that all the family prayed very much
and very fervently. They were not allowed to confess, but presumably the
priest gave them each time he said Mass a general absolution which was,
in the circumstances, of equal efficacy to the absolution given in the
confessional.
According to this clergyman, the Emperor had changed very much, having
become very thin. His beard too had grown rather long; and this, combined
with his pallor, gave him the appearance of a man who had had a long
illness. He trimmed his beard a few days before his death.
The Tsarevich could not stand owing to his lameness, which was evidently
getting worse. He sat all the time during Mass and always looked very
ill. “He looked,” said the priest, “like a child who could not possibly
live long.” According to other accounts the Crown Prince had got over his
illness and even his lameness at the time of his murder.
The Commissars told the priest that, if ever he spoke to the Emperor
or made any sign to him, he himself as well as the Tsar and all his
family would be shot. He always said Mass, therefore, under most
trying conditions, for the various signs and movements of the hands
which are prescribed in the rubrics of the Mass might easily have been
misinterpreted by the Jewish Commandant who was always present, always
watching intently, and who knew nothing of Christian ceremonies. The last
time this priest said Mass was two days before the Emperor was murdered,
and this was also the last occasion on which he saw the family. As he was
leaving the room, after Mass, the four Grand Duchesses were standing near
the door, and one of them said: “Thank you, Father, for saying Mass.”
These were the first and the last words he heard from any of the family;
and, though they were few and unobjectionable and remained, moreover,
unanswered, they brought down Yurovsky’s wrath on the poor clergyman.
“Why did you let these people talk to you?” growled the Commissar; “they
had no right to do so.”
Several of the Red soldiers always attended Mass as well as Yurovsky, but
it was to curse and jeer, not to pray; and in the first place, of course,
to keep a sharp watch.
They used to laugh at the Tsar for attending the service, and the
clergyman heard them asking him on one occasion: “Why do you want to
have all this nonsensical rigmarole? Your God won’t help you.” On other
occasions they mocked at all religion, but the Emperor never answered
them or took any notice of what they said. They used to sneer at the
priest during the service.
Some nuns from a neighbouring convent were allowed to bring milk to the
Imperial Family, and certain members of the Tsar’s suite sent letters
with these nuns, but those letters never reached their destination.
The members of the Imperial Family never had an opportunity to get a
bath, though baths were very desirable owing to the heat of the weather,
for June and July are always hot months in Ekaterinburg. When they asked
for water, dirty water was brought to them and they could not use it.
When he first came to Ekaterinburg the Tsar was much better treated, and
I was also able to collect some information in Ekaterinburg about those
happier days.
In conversation, I was told, he never expressed any regret for the
past, but was apparently quite convinced that everything which he had
done during his reign was perfectly right, that he had been right in
summoning the Duma, right in the way he had treated the Duma, and right
in abdicating. The only exercise he got was in a very small garden,
where he sometimes walked and sometimes sawed wood with a saw mounted on
a wooden frame. I saw a photograph of him engaged in this work; and I
walked in the garden, which was no larger than that attached to many a
poor man’s house in Battersea.
The different Commissars who had charge of the ex-Emperor were much
impressed by his politeness and formality. Whenever a new Commissar
appeared in the house the ex-Tsar always introduced him to the members
of his family as if he were still Emperor and were presenting an
ambassador. The scene would be one for a great painter—the small darksome
dining-room, so different from the spacious halls of Tsarskoe Selo; the
plain deal table with a pile of unwashed plates, cups, and saucers on
it, but no tablecloth; the shaggy Bolshevik envoy, standing half awed,
half defiant, in the centre of the room in muddy high boots; the Emperor
in faded uniform and with the courtly manners which had become natural
to him during fifty years passed in Imperial courts and twenty-three
years passed as the most powerful autocrat on earth; the pale nervous
Empress who had been the immediate cause of all this ruin sitting half
frightened, half indignant, holding her little son by the hand; the
daughters, clustered together, wholly frightened, in the background.
THE OPINION OF ONE OF THE TSAR’S JAILERS ON THE TSAR AND THE ROMANOV
FAMILY.
It has not often occurred in recent history that a monarch born in
the purple has been subjected for months together to the unrestrained
scrutiny of an ordinary working man of strong republican sympathies and
in a position to speak openly of all that he has seen, or that a rough
and half-educated miner has found himself in a position to see at close
quarters the intimate, everyday life of a very exclusive Court. I, for
one, cannot recollect a similar instance even during the last few years
of runaway Royalties and escaped Emperors. The last Tsar of Russia was
watched over, however, in Tobolsk by a revolutionary Commissar called V.
S. Pankratov, and I propose to give here the result of his observations.
Pankratov was, as will be seen, naïve, prejudiced, and often grossly
unjust; and if it is very evident that he could not speak quite freely
owing to the strong feeling against Nicholas the Second that prevails
among the Revolutionists in Russia, it must be borne in mind that few
people can speak or write with perfect freedom in any part of the world
at the present critical stage of human history.
The story of Pankratov is very piquant; and, like the self-confident,
semi-educated workman that he is, he misses altogether the greatness
of the tragedy and, while coarsely criticizing the Imperial Family
for their attention to minutiæ, gets lost amid a mass of unimportant
minutiæ himself. His narrow-mindedness and illiberality are shown by
the fact that he gives us, unconsciously it is true, more about his own
character than about the character of the illustrious persons of whom
he had charge. He seems to have studied some selections from Pushkin
and Lermontov as well as two standard Russian histories at school. In
later life, he evidently read some stories by Chekhov and committed to
memory some poems by the democratic poet Nekrasov. He apparently thinks,
however, that this exiguous amount of scholarship fits him to pass
judgment on the educational qualifications of the Tsar and his children,
who were, as a matter of fact, highly cultured. Those children seem,
however, to have been unable to refrain from having their little joke at
the expense of the horny-handed and dogmatic miner, and one can hardly
blame them, for the temptation must have been irresistible.
In some places Pankratov is glaringly and, I am afraid, consciously
unjust, as, for example, where he attacks Mr. Gibbs, the Tsaritsa’s
English tutor, a Cambridge graduate whom I happen to have met and whose
scholarship, industry, and high character need no testimonial from
me. If he is utterly wrong in this matter, as I know he is wrong, his
evidence with regard to other matters is of little value save that it
gives the Russian revolutionary workman’s view of the Imperial Family,
which, after all, it is important that we should know. Pankratov, it
will be seen, found his intellectual level among the lower servants
of the Imperial household, including the sailor Derevenko, on whom he
makes a long and violent attack. Derevenko was undoubtedly an ignorant
man, but, in point of character, he was far above the Commissar, and
his unselfish devotion to the little Tsarevich is one of the few bright
spots in the whole sordid tragedy. The Commissar accuses Derevenko of
having been animated by purely selfish motives in the efforts he made to
join the Crown Prince. Well, the old sailor seems to have succeeded in
those efforts, and the only reward he got was death. Colonel Rodzianko,
a Russian officer attached to General Knox’s staff, tells me that
Derevenko’s body was found in Kopchiki Wood with a bullet-hole in the
head. The other members of the Tsar’s suite also deserve some credit for
having allied their fortunes to those of their fallen master when they
might very easily have gone abroad and lived comfortably to this day.
Russian history is full of dramatic situations, but I do not think that
we can find in it any more dramatic situation than that of this workman
philosophizing, wrongly as a rule, but sometimes not inaptly, about those
cloaked and belted figures which have, up to the present, played such
a great part in the history of man, those mysterious beings who wear
crowns and sit on thrones and are brought up in a manner so different
from other mortals. Much of the glamour that surrounded them has been
destroyed by the Great War, and for the last half-century there has been
a strong tendency in European historical literature to minimize the
influence which Kings have had in the past, but there can be no denying
the fascination they have exercised from the earliest times over the
imagination of mankind, and in particular over the imagination of our own
Shakespeare.
But it is now time to let Comrade Pankratov speak for himself.
_Commissar Pankratov’s Statement._
I found the tutors in the Romanov family incompetent and
ignorant; and, when we provided the children with a plain,
sensible female teacher, she was astonished at their ignorance
and asked: “_How_ on earth have these children been brought up?”
Alexis, a lad of fourteen, who, according to Russian law, would
have reached maturity in two years and become automatically,
in case of his father’s death, Autocrat of All Russia, did
not know the simplest arithmetic. When I asked him where the
Volga was, he said: “Volga, Volga. What joke is that you
are trying to make?” He knew absolutely nothing of Russian
history, absolutely nothing of geography, and nothing at all
of literature. No wonder the new teacher said to me: “_How_ on
earth have these children been brought up?”
She questioned them about Pushkin. Now, even in working men’s
families the children who attend school know about Pushkin,
but these Romanov children had not got the faintest idea of
him. She read them a piece out of Lermontov’s “Demon”: they
had never heard it in their lives before, and did not know who
Lermontov was. Then she asked them about the poet Nekrasov.
They were astonished to hear that there was a Russian poet of
that name. Well, when she told me this, I could not restrain
myself any longer. “I am going to read to them,” said I,
“Nekrasov’s ‘Russian Women’ and ‘Moroz Krasny Nos.’” Now you
know, I suppose, that “Russian Women” gives a description
of the wives of the Dekabrists, aristocrats but our first
revolutionists; and that the other is a poetical description
of scenes from Russian peasant life. Well, then, one evening I
read them “Moroz Krasny Nos,” and I can assure you that they
were absolutely delighted with it. “How is it,” they asked me,
“that nobody ever told us before that there was such a poet in
Russian literature?” Next I read them “Russian Women,” and they
were amazed at the beauty of it.
I was with the children every day: I asked them about all sorts
of things: I talked to each of them individually; and they
were astonished at everything I said, for they had lived an
unnatural life like hermits and knew nothing about the world.
Now, I have travelled a great deal; and, in order to get them
to talk, I told them a lot about Siberia, of which they knew
absolutely nothing. They were surprised at every word I said,
though I told them nothing that every child in Siberia does
not know. I told them about the climate, the different races
that inhabit this country, and so forth; and I told them all
this in the presence of Nicholas himself, who had travelled
a good deal in Siberia, and was even, according to his own
account, in Tobolsk, but “only passing through.” In order to
find out how much he really knew about Russia generally, I
often conversed with him about Russian history, and discovered
that he did not know much about it. In fact, his knowledge of
Russian history was distinctly bad, and was mostly taken from
the historian Ilovaisky. I questioned him about his own private
estates—Cabinet lands or Crown domains they used to call them,
if I mistake not—in Nerchinsky district, in Kuznetzk, in Omsk
Province, and in the Altai Mountains, where I had myself worked
as a prospector.
Now you know that in the Kuznetsky basin there is an unlimited
supply of the best coal. Well, when I told him about this, and
about the great mineral wealth of that district, and about
the way the local peasantry lived, he was amazed, for he had
only “passed through” those estates of his also. I must admit
that in those districts the peasants live pretty well: I only
wish that our own peasants were as comfortable. They have a
splendid soil, magnificent forests, and they only lack one
thing—education. In all that enormous _uyezd_ (district) there
are only from ten to fifteen schools, and there is general
illiteracy. The whole district is run by Germans or by their
agents, and they have the entire control in their hands. As
it would not be to the advantage of these Germans for the
villagers to be educated, absolutely nothing is done for
education. When I was last there myself, in 1915, I saw several
schools that had been burnt down ten years earlier and which
nobody had taken the trouble to rebuild.
But to return to the subject of the ex-Tsar’s family, I also
spoke to them about foreign parts, for you know that they
have often been abroad. I asked them if they had been in the
museums, picture galleries, etc., in the strange countries they
had visited, but—would you believe me?—they had never been in
one of them. Why, they were never once in their lives inside
the doors of a public museum or picture gallery even here in
Russia. There are, as you may know, some rare pictures in the
Winter Palace. I asked the children if they had ever seen them,
and it turned out that they had not and didn’t even know that
the Winter Palace belonged to them.
I asked them what they read, and found that it was mostly
English and French novels. They knew nothing of Russian
history. Olga and Maria had not even begun to read Russian
history. In order to excite in them an interest for general
knowledge, I told them about the Polar Sea and the Sea of
Okhotsk, where I had been myself. This interested them, but it
was clear that their teachers had never spoken to them about
this and had taken no pains whatever with their education.
The more I got to know them, the more I saw that their minds
were absolutely empty of all useful knowledge, and that their
schooling had been shamefully neglected.
Pankratov was horrified at all this and conjured up a picture of these
Imperial children, whose father was the wealthiest man and the most
powerful autocrat on earth, unable, owing to fear of kidnappers or
assassins, to see works of art which were accessible to the very poorest
children in Petrograd, and displayed in one of the Tsar’s own palaces
which was open to the public.
There may be an element of truth in this picture, but on the whole it
is false, for the Tsarevich was a clever and well-educated boy, as his
notebooks, which were found and are now preserved by members of his
family in this country, amply testify. He was certainly only joking when
he pretended not to know where the Volga was; and the Grand Duchess
Tatiana was also joking when she affected ignorance of the best-known
Russian poets, for she herself was a poetess of some talent, and her
compositions, which are at present in England, are said to show a
considerable acquaintance with Russian literature.
As for the children having never been in the Winter Palace, and being
ignorant of the fact that it belonged to them, I am doubtful of this,
though it is possible that some of them were never in the Hermitage,
though that famous picture gallery is connected with the Winter Palace by
a bridge.
Nothing could persuade Pankratov, however, that the Imperial children
were not badly educated, and he asked how it could be otherwise
considering the inefficient teachers they had—Petrov, an aged man “who
was nearly always asleep”; Kendrikova, a young lady of the Court who was
supposed to teach the Tsarevich arithmetic and geography, but who was
herself a woman of no ability; “Countess Schneider, an old Court lady
of sixty, who taught Russian grammar, though she herself spoke Russian
badly and had the most grotesque ideas about Russia; Gialliard, who
taught French, but, like all the foreigners who found themselves in the
same position, thought of nothing but earning enough money to return
to Switzerland and live there like a lord.” It never struck Pankratov
apparently that there were worlds in which the Grand Duchesses were at
home and in which he was a comparative stranger. One was the world of
music, for several of the Tsar’s daughters were accomplished musicians.
The Emperor himself, according to the same hostile authority, taught his
little boy history; but the Commissar complains that he used only the
compilations of Ilovaisky and Bogdanov, and that he imagined Russian
history to be simply a list of Tsars and wars. “He did not understand
the life of the Russian people, and had no clear idea in his mind of the
different periods in the growth of the Muscovite race.”
Of Dr. Botkin, the Tsar’s medical attendant, he said that “he was the son
of a famous savant known all over Europe, but he did not take after his
father. He was an honorary General metamorphosed into a typical courtier.
He had got all the tricks of an Imperial court; he would never say
anything that his master did not want him to say, and he knew well how to
flatter and how to gain adroitly little favours for himself.”
Of the faithful old sailor who had long attended on the Tsarevich,
Pankratov said:
In addition to these, Alexis had in attendance on him a man
whom he called “Uncle”—I mean the sailor Derevenko, a cunning,
churlish, and even insolent bluejacket who regarded himself as
the boy’s tutor. This sailor was half educated, as I concluded
after reading the letters he sent me requesting permission to
join Alexis. Greedy and sly, he of course did all he could to
gain all the material advantages possible from his privileged
position. When the Imperial Family were sent to Tobolsk they
were allowed to bring with them any attendants whom they liked.
The people I have just mentioned were selected, and Alexandra
Feodorovna, the Empress, told Kerensky that Derevenko was a
most disinterested man and had attended on Alexis for nearly
ten years. Before the Imperial party left, however, Derevenko
handed in to Colonel Kobylinsky, commandant of the ex-Tsar’s
train, a claim for 700 roubles which he had paid for boots
supplied to Alexis during the month of July. The Colonel
returned the account to him without comment. The sailor said he
would speak to Alexandra Feodorovna, but the Colonel said he
did not care whom Derevenko spoke to, and that, furthermore,
he would not be taken to Tobolsk. On hearing of this Alexandra
Feodorovna complained, almost with tears in her eyes, that,
though she had been given the right to choose her own servants,
this concession had already been annulled. “Are you convinced
that Derevenko has not swindled you?” asked the Colonel;
and when Alexandra replied that she knew Derevenko to be a
thoroughly honest man, he told her about the preposterous claim
for 700 roubles, and added that a man who began his connection
with their party by making such a claim could on no account be
allowed to travel with them to Tobolsk.
The Imperial Family was very angry at this imposition on the
part of Derevenko: nevertheless, a few days later, Alexandra
Feodorovna again began asking that the sailor should be
allowed to accompany them, but her request was refused and they
left without him. Though thus left behind, Derevenko did not
lose hope, but continued sending letters to the Romanov family.
These letters all came into my hands.
To what an extent all these “faithful” retainers fooled and
deceived the Romanovs, who maintained no discipline whatever
over them, is shown by the following incident: Alexis fell
sick, and a doctor called Derevenko—not Derevenko the sailor,
but a very good doctor of the same name who attended on the
Romanovs and at the same time looked after all the rest of us
when we required his services—well, this doctor ordered a bath
to be prepared for the boy in the evening. When evening came
Alexis waited for his bath, but was told that something had
gone wrong with the heating apparatus, and that, consequently,
it could not be got ready. But the boy’s teacher told me next
morning that Madame Tattelberg had used the bath and that
Alexis had complained to her, the teacher, saying: “Tell me,
Klavdiya Mikhailovna, why they deceive us? Vladimir Nikolaevich
(the doctor) told me that there would be a bath ready for me.
In the evening they said that something had gone wrong and
that it could not be got ready, and now I find that Madame
Tattelberg has gone and washed herself in it.”
As soon as I heard this, I took measures to prevent any such
thing happening again. In the same way all the servants,
flunkeys, etc., did whatever they liked, and nobody had
any control over them. They tried to steal food, and after
breakfast, dinner, and supper every one of them brought away
a parcel of food with him from the table. I had to stop this
practice, of course, and they were very surprised when I did
so, for they had never been treated in that way before. They
even tried to steal the plates, and when a plate disappeared
they said that it had been broken. All the loss fell on the
Romanovs, who paid for all this out of their own private purse,
but nevertheless I could not allow this robbery to go on.
In conversation with the Romanovs, I tried to ascertain
how each of them accommodated himself to his new position.
Everything was certainly very new to them. Olga and Maria
often told me that the life they were leading in Siberia was
healthier and more useful than the life they had led at Court.
They said they were glad that all etiquette had been done away
with so far as they were concerned, and that now they lived
their own lives. They were pleased with their new teacher.
Their former life was arranged so. In the morning they got up
and their maids-of-honour dressed them in the manner required
that day by the etiquette of the Court, each bow being fastened
in exactly such and such a manner and not a hundredth part of
an inch otherwise. For dinner they had to put on other dresses;
and if they were to receive visitors or to go out anywhere,
they had once more to change their dresses. Literally all their
time was wasted on these fiddle-faddles, so that you can guess
how little time was left to them for work and self-improvement.
This reminds me of a Little Russian anecdote, rather witty,
and with a hidden meaning. A soldier once came to me in Little
Russia in a clean _rubashka_ (shirt, belted and worn as a
coat), and boasted that soldiers change their _rubashki_ once a
week.
“And what about officers?” I asked.
“Officers three times a week and Generals every day,” was the
reply.
“And the Tsar?” I asked.
“The Tsar,” promptly replied the soldier, “undresses and
dresses, undresses and dresses.”
This anecdote has a profound meaning and a deep significance.
Just imagine to yourself how a family develops when it is
constantly surrounded by such incompetents as all these
Kendrikovas, Count Tatishchevs, Schneiders, and so on; and half
the day being dressed like dolls by _valets-de-chambre_ and
maids-of-honour who can think of nothing but costumes. Judging
by the letters of the Romanovs to those maids-of-honour whom
they permitted to be most intimate with them, the latter had no
other occupation in life than to look after bows and flounces,
lingerie and dish-cloths. I read all those letters and never
came across anything serious or striking in any of them.
The Romanov girls told me that in their former life at Court
they frequently held what they called receptions in honour of
somebody’s birthday or name-day or something of that kind; and
every time these days came round they had to dress and smile
at people. Though there were any number of tutors for the
children, the children studied as a rule very little. Their
father Nicholas, though a man of very limited capacity, and in
fact, I must say, an ignorant man, might himself have taught
his children, but unfortunately he was a heavy drinker.
But now I must come back to my description of the life led by
the Romanovs in Tobolsk. After coffee in the morning they used
to walk in the courtyard or play skittles. To give Nicholas
his due he was very strong physically and a splendid hand at
skittles. His opponent was usually Prince Dolgoruki, a very
powerful man too, but Nicholas beat him every time. Then
Dolgoruki’s place would be taken by Count Tatishchev, but he
was not so good a player as Dolgoruki, and was beaten in no
time. After that the children began to play and then Gialliard.
Nicholas tired them all out, and was himself as fresh at the
end of the game as when he started. When they went walking the
children marched after him like soldiers, Nicholas going first.
If one fell out another would take his place. Finally all would
fall out, but Nicholas never. They also sawed wood, at which
Nicholas was best of all. It is necessary to have practice at
this work.
Of Alexandra Feodorovna I must say that she kept terribly to
herself, rarely walked even with the children, and spent most
of her time airing clothes, making crochet-work for _ikons_,
or reading the Holy Books. The children walked either with
their father or by themselves. At 10 o’clock all went to have
breakfast, and after that they began again to play skittles
or saw wood. In this manner the whole day passed; and in the
evening they collected together in the common hall where one of
them read aloud while the others listened. Alexandra Feodorovna
generally knitted. It was the children who told me this, for I
did not care to disturb them by joining their company myself at
this time. I asked the children what kind of books were read
generally—was it anything in the style of Chekhov or Nekrasov?
It seems that while this reading went on some of them slept,
others dozed, and others talked to one another. I was told this
by Dr. Botkin, who had to pass the evening with them as a rule,
but was generally the first to fall asleep. And this is what
they called “reading aloud.”
Now I am going to tell you of their piety. Mass used at first
to be said for the ex-Tsar’s family in the hall, which was
about the largest room in the house. They invited a priest
to say Mass for them, and four monks to sing in the choir.
Alexandra Feodorovna used to make all the arrangements herself.
She embroidered the altar-linen, she put up the ornaments, she
placed the _ikons_ and the flowers in their proper places.
It was a parade service. All ranged themselves according to
their rank, the _valets-de-chambre_ nearer to the members of
the suite, and so on down to the cook’s humblest assistant.
Nicholas occupied the first place; next to him was his wife;
then Alexis; then the daughters arranged according to age, and
so on. It was interesting to see how all these grand people
prayed like automata, keeping their eyes all the time on
Alexandra Feodorovna. When she knelt down, all knelt down. When
she stood up, all stood up. It was terrible to see how strict
they were about precedence even at the _Miropomazanie_.[3]
God help Alexandra Feodorovna’s _valet-de-chambre_ if he went
up to the altar for the _Miropomazanie_ before Nicholas’s
_valet-de-chambre_!
I paid particular attention to this point, for it greatly
amused me, and it was typical of the worship of minutiæ which
prevailed in the Romanov family. Alexandra Feodorovna never
went to the _Miropomazanie_ before Nicholas. After her, Alexis
had to go, and so on. Little things like these filled their
whole lives. Every time that Mass was said they all tried to
wear something new, and that also was a waste of time.
Now from what I have said you can form an idea of what that
family was like. First of all it was surrounded by stupid
and ignorant people who were only looking out for their own
personal advantage. There was not a gifted person in the whole
crowd.
The foregoing gives one a clue to the state of things which brought about
the Russian Revolution. It has always been the misfortune of the Tsars
that most of their subjects have regarded them as more than human, one
section looking upon them as gods, another section looking upon them as
demons. This misfortune threatens to follow the unfortunate Nicholas the
Second even into his grave. Some of his followers, frank Imperialists,
have already evolved a legend according to which his death was due to
his refusal to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and they persuaded the
world to believe that his dying words were a declaration that he gave
his life for Russia, though not a single witness has borne testimony to
that effect. They have also put into his mouth long speeches expressive
of his loyalty to the Entente, though it is doubtful if he ever made
such speeches, which were in any case unnecessary, as his loyalty to the
Entente was never for a moment in doubt.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The full name is Verkh (Upper) Isetsky Factory.
[2] I can only account for eleven who were shot in the cellar. Two others
may have been taken out in the lorries and killed in Kopchiki Wood.
Several soldiers say that Madame Vyrobova was shot in the cellar.
[3] Being signed with the sign of the cross in holy oil on eves of
festivals.