N. Sokolov

“ The sufferings of the Romanovs in Ipatiev’s house were so terrible that it is not seemly to misrepresent them, as some writers have done, in sordid fashion. I have the inventory of the house and its contents, signed by Ipatiev and the Komisars; I have the procès-verbal of Sergeiev’s inspection, made within a fortnight of the murder; lastly, I have the evidence of my own eyes. The house itself contained every comfort and convenience: electric light, excellent stoves, a well appointed bath-room and lavatory, electric bells everywhere, plenty of good and even luxurious furniture. ”

“ Two other commissaries went to Tobolsk to remove the remainder of the family—Tatiana had been left in charge of the invalid and household. Olga, the eldest daughter, did not enjoy her mother’s confidence in the same degree. She took far more interest in literature than in the practical affairs of life, and would hide herself in a corner with a book or tell stories to the soldiers, utterly forgetting domestic trifles. Anastasia, still a child, and rather backward, could be left in Tatiana’s care. ”

“ Alexandra’s eyes were never opened to the fact that Razputin’s prayers did not affect the disease.
It will be argued by those who knew Vyrubova{241} that she was too garrulous to keep a secret, too child-like to conceive or carry out any intrigue, and still less any act affecting the Empress in whose hands she was as wax. To have lived for twenty years in the confidence of such a woman as the Empress presumes the possession of no ordinary faculties, whether of extreme innocence combined with serpent wisdom or of profound guile hidden under an appearance of candour. ”

“ After my abdication, for me and for my son, from the Russian Throne, the power is transferred to the Provisional Government which rose on the initiation of the Duma. God help them to lead Russia on the way of glory and prosperity. God help you also, valiant troops, to hold our native land firmly against the evil enemy. ”

“ The deposition of Pavel Medvedeff, the former workman at the Sissert Factory, reveals a more hardened character than that of Yakimoff. He regards events in the cold light of reason, and offers no comment either of pity or of dislike. As he informed the member of the District Court, the fate of the czar and his family did not “interest” him. But it is worthy of notice that this unemotional workman insists that he took no part whatever in the actual murder, which implies that the tragedy was repugnant even to a man of his type. ”

“ I wish to be quite fair to the Russians, without in any way extenuating the heinousness of the crime of Ekaterinburg.
The ex-Empress was the object of special hatred. She completely dominated her spouse in the imagination of the people, and occupies a place apart in the evidence. Many new facts have been brought to light substantially modifying the current estimate of her life and character. Several trunks full of papers and effects belonging to his victims were taken by Yurovsky to Moscow after the murder. ”

“ Till the age of thirty-four he had lived as an ordinary peasant in his native village of Pokrovskoe, between Tobolsk and Tiumen. He had a wife and three children, a comfortable home, and enough land to feed himself and family. Grishka—to use the familiar diminutive of his Christian name,{244} as is customary in the villages—was a fair type of the Siberian peasant-farmer. They are endowed with an abundance of mother-wit, wield the vernacular with consummate skill, and are fine, upstanding fellows, able to do a day’s work or celebrate a festival equally well. Such was Gregory Razputin. ”

“ On one occasion, wishing to say good-bye to a large number of departing soldiers, the emperor and empress ascended a small hill formed of ice for the amusement of the children. The remaining soldiers, feeling very angry about it, levelled the little hill to the ground, saying that somebody might shoot at the imperial family when they were on the top of the hill, and the guard would be responsible for it. ”

“ At midnight of the 13th August Kerensky came to the palace, assembled the soldiers who had been selected to escort the family, and made them a speech. “You have guarded the Tsar’s family here,” he said, “you also will have to guard them in the new place where they are going by order of the Council of Ministers. Remember, one does not hit a man who is down. Bear yourselves like men, not like cads.”
He then entered the palace. The ex-Tsar’s only brother, the Grand Duke Michael, had been permitted to come to say good-bye. ”

“ I came back and Tatischeff said to me that the following persons were leaving Tobolsk: the emperor, the empress, the Grand Duchess Maria, Botkin, Dolgoruky, Tchemodouroff, Sedneff, the waiter, and Demidova, the maid. When I reported the names to Iakovleff he answered: “It’s all the same to me.” I suppose Iakovleff’s only idea was to get the emperor out of Tobolsk as soon as possible. When he noticed the emperor’s unwillingness to go alone, Iakovleff thought: “That’s all the same to me; let him take whom he likes; but do it quickly.” ”

“ As there was no apparent authority, the local bodies often acted independently; indeed, Lenin encouraged this tendency. Vlast na mestakh (every place its own master) was his motto. Lenin did not rule; the Soviet system was governed by other people, the fellow-passengers who came with him under German auspices. Though he delivered impassioned harangues before the Sovnarkom and received deputations from minor soviets, the real power was elsewhere—in the Tsik and Chrezvychaika; and, just as it had been in the Old Russia, the last word was always with the Police-Okhrana organisation. ”

“ Alexandra had a troika, the others a pair of horses. She beckoned to the Tsar to mount with her, but Yakovlev sent Maria to join her mother, and shared his tarantass with Nicholas.
The roads were terrible. No traveller who has not experienced springtime travel in Russia can have any idea of them. At some places the party had to alight and walk through deep slush. The Empress was better off than the others as she had a stronger team. Yakovlev was hurrying as fast as horseflesh could go. ”

“ The chairman of the soviet said to Kerensky: “I want to let you know, minister, that we elected Ensign Domodziantz to be assistant commandant of the palace.” Kerensky answered: “Yes, I know it, but was it so necessary to elect him; couldn’t you elect somebody else?” However, no changes were made, as Kerensky himself had no power.
It was Domodziantz who told the soldiers not to answer the emperor’s greeting. Of course the soldiers followed his advice, and, of course, it was the soldiers of the second regiment. ”

“ Yakovlev remonstrated: “You must not say that. I have to carry out orders. If you refuse to go, I must either use force or send in my resignation, and then someone else will come who will be less humane. Have no anxiety; I answer for your life with my head. If you do not wish to go alone take anybody you like. Be ready to leave tomorrow at four.” Yakovlev thereupon left without addressing the Empress.
Kobylinsky remained in compliance with a request from the ex-Tsar. Alexandra and Tatishchev and Dolgoruky stood by. “Where do they want to take me?” asked Nicholas. “To Moscow,” was the reply. ”

“ There were eight of the muzhiks standing round the pit examining with awe the finds that they had made:—“Boys,” said one, and he voiced the secret thought of all, “it is just this, they have been burning Nicholas here. That cross can belong only to him. And that buckle, I tell you, is the Tsarevich’s.” They crossed themselves in prayer and silently came away. Needless to say, these honest souls promptly handed over the relics to the White authorities.
On my first visit to the burning-mound, I was attracted by an inscription carved on the giant birch that overhangs one pyre. ”

“ True to his revolutionary principles, he immediately proceeded to indoctrinate the soldiers. Perhaps he feared the personal influence and charm of the ex-Tsar. Pankratov talked with them by the hour on the wonders of the Socialist-Revolutionary programme, and, as so often happened in Russia, the ignorant listeners became not Socialist-Revolutionaries but Bolshevists. Anyhow, they very soon lost all respect for authority in the persons of their commandant and officers, and began to ill-treat the prisoners. They sank so low that even the young grand duchesses suffered insult. ”

“ The diaries and depositions of his daughter Matrena form part of the dossier. Amidst a mass of verbiage one is able to discover here and there precise landmarks of the Razputin history. One sees the “saint” gradually drawn into the multiple cog-wheels of Court intrigue; bound firmly to the family chariot, as his daughters are put to fashionable schools; having to make money for the girls;{246} obliged to remain a peasant in garb and language to please his protectress. But a peasant who is divorced from his normal occupation and has disobeyed the Voice takes to drink. There is no alternative. ”

“ But Safarov eludes issues he himself raises. Why not have sent the Tsar for trial to the capital, to Moscow? Surely, that was the place where the “will of the Revolution” could have been properly displayed! All these wonderful conspiracies of which he speaks made it all the more necessary to send him there and save the Ural Soviet from all responsibility. The approach of the Whites should have caused the local chieftains not to delay one single day. Why not? Because Sverdlov had already sent for Syromolotov to arrange the murder.... ”

“ Proskouriakoff appears to have been a clever, restless youth with a distaste for settled employment, and who probably enlisted in the Workmen’s Guards solely in the spirit of adventure.
His story of the murder of the imperial family is more horrible than the accounts given by the older men. Proskouriakoff’s love of the morbid, and his slightly decadent mentality, is plainly shown in his account of the events of the night, when he was awakened from a drunken sleep and ordered to proceed to that sinister bullet-riddled room on the ground floor of Ipatieff’s house. ”

“ My sympathies were with the Bolsheviki, but I did not believe that the Bolsheviki could build up by their methods of violence a “good” and “just” life. I still believe that a “good” and “just” life will exist only when there are not so many rich and so many poor people as there are at present; and this will only come when all the population are educated to the point where they understand that the life they are leading at present is not the true one. I believed{175} the czar to be the first capitalist who would always play into the hands of capital and not into those of the workmen. ”

“ The Germans had themselves foolishly promoted this reaction by arresting the departure of the Czechs and compelling them to fight. A Siberian Army was quickly springing into existence. It might drive the Red Tsar out of Moscow and thus, instead of an ally or agent there, the Red Kaiser would find himself confronted by a hostile Russia. The war was slowly dragging to its fateful end; every battalion counted. The Entente knew what the assistance of Russia meant, so the Entente went to the aid of the Czechs and Siberians. ”

“ The whole record of Bolshevism in Russia is indelibly impressed with{393} the stamp of alien invasion. The murder of the Tsar, deliberately planned by the Jew Sverdlov (who came to Russia as a paid agent of Germany) and carried out by the Jews, Goloshchekin, Syromolotov, Safarov, Voikov and Yurovsky, is the act not of the Russian people but of this hostile invader.
The Jewish domination in Russia is supported by certain Russians: the “burgess” Ulianov alias Lenin, the “noble” Chicherin, the “dissenter” Bonch-Bruevich. ”

“ Now I realise what a wicked action it was to kill the imperial family and I understand that I was also wrong in washing out the bloodstains resulting from the crime. I am not a Bolshevik and I never was one. All that I did, I did{158} because of my youth and stupidity. If at present I could help in any way to find and get hold of the people who committed the murder, I would spare no effort to do it.
All the workmen that performed duty had Nagan revolvers that were distributed by Medvedeff a few days before the murder. Iourovsky carried a Browning pistol ”

“ She had no liking for art. Maybe it would have been better for her had she been a man. When the emperor and empress left Tobolsk nobody would ever have thought that the Grand Duchess Olga was the senior of the remaining members of the imperial family. If any questions arose it was always Tatiana who was appealed to. ”

“ The Order of the Day to the Armies, in which Nicholas, bidding good-bye to his soldiers, proclaimed his unshaken loyalty to the sacred cause of Russia, and besought them never to lay down their arms to Germany, was suppressed by telegram{254} from the War Office in Petrograd. [6] Evil deeds come back to roost whence they have issued. The people who besmirched the Tsar to please the revolutionaries were themselves punished. One does not undermine the faith of a whole nation without destroying all authority. ”

“ The czar himself was of this type. I often pitied him, for the soldiers frequently permitted themselves to act with rowdy manners, generally in the absence of the imperial family. They often made a number of dirty jokes in reference to the imperial family. Perhaps they were afraid to do it in their presence. And that was the reason why the august family did not realise the danger of their position.
The czar loved Russia and more than once I heard{132} him express his fear of being taken abroad. He did not understand art, but liked nature and hunting extremely. ”

“ Thus all the efforts of Colonel Kobylinsky, the good-hearted commandant, to keep the soldiers out of the house were defeated.
Within a month of their arrival in Tobolsk the exiles were placed under the observation of special emissaries of the Provisional Government: the Komisar Pankratov and his assistant, Nikolsky. The former enjoyed high confidence and renown in revolutionary circles, having spent fifteen years in the Fortress of Schlusselburg and twenty-seven years in exile in Siberia. A typical theorist, dangerous in his teachings, he was personally the best-hearted of men. ”

“ The murder of the Tsar and his family, even after his abdication, may not be regarded as a simple act of vengeance or casual precaution.
In 1917, the Germans had sent Lenin with a horde of Jewish revolutionaries to take possession of Russia. A Red Government, composed of persons selected in Berlin, was now in power; but they were vassals. Count Mirbach, representing the suzerain State, figured in Moscow as the virtual ruler, before whom the apostles of Karl Marx bowed the knee. At the period under review, the Reds had displayed no overt disposition to throw off the German yoke. ”