The Last Tsar (41 page)

“When Lenin named Felix Dzerzhinsky leader of the Cheka, he said: ‘We need a good proletarian Jacobin for this post.’ … And an educated Jacobin.… That’s the kind of man we are looking for to be chairman of the whole Ural Cheka. As you know, Comrade Finn [the party nom de guerre of Efremov, who was then head of the Cheka] did not complete university.… And I have no education at all.… But in Petrograd professors sit in the government.… You studied at the university, my son [that was what he called all the young Chekists], you even studied law.… That is just what we need for the head of the Cheka … in order to placate our ‘public’ [Yurovsky’s favorite word]. The question about you has been more or less decided.… There’s nothing for you to do in Perm—you’ll become the leader of all the Urals. However, my son, we are going to give you a trial run.… Comrade Filipp [Goloshchekin] is in Moscow right now. He is planning to propose there—in view of the presence in Tobolsk of a monarchist plot—moving the Romanovs here, to Ekaterinburg. Actually, we need proof of the plot.” He fell silent and added distinctly, “That is what you can get for us.… You speak English and German … so you can understand what they’re talking about.… And one more important thing: the jewels.
Figure out what and how many they are. Everything must be returned to the working people.”

Let us return to Tobolsk. While the family’s fate was being decided elsewhere, in the snow-covered quiet house their old monotonous life went on. Only it had become frightening to read the papers.

Nicholas took the Russian papers and foreign magazines (French—with very frivolous cartoons that so intrigued the guard that they reached the tsar only with great delay).

But he received the papers promptly and followed events closely. As before, he considered himself responsible for Russia’s destiny.

The papers told of the Constituent Assembly’s brief fate. The Bolshevik government had also called itself “provisional” and was supposed to rule until the people elected a parliament—a Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks had declared as much in a decree.

In January 1918 the Constituent Assembly was convened, the “first freely elected Russian parliament,” but the Bolsheviks had no intention of ceding power. The Bolshevik government prepared for the opening of the parliament as if for battle. They created a special military headquarters and divided Petrograd into districts; patrols of sailors and soldiers controlled the streets. At the Tauride Palace, where the Constituent Assembly was to convene, the Bolshevik Moisei Uritsky was named commandant. When the Constituent Assembly did convene, sailors from the battleship
Republic
were led into the hall under the command of Zheleznyakov the younger. To them fell the honor of cutting short the history of Russian parliamentarism. At the opening of the first day of sessions, Zheleznyakov the younger approached the chair, banged his fist on the table, and uttered these historic words: “The guard is tired, we cannot protect you anymore. Close down the meeting.”

Thus Lenin rid his government of that extra “provisional.” The power of Bolshevik rule combined in a surprising way with impotence, though. When Uritsky appeared to disperse the Constituent Assembly, he looked very unhappy and very cold. Out on the street, which the Bolshevik sailors were patrolling, the terrible commandant had his fur coat stolen by bandits! And when Lenin, the head of the Sovnarkom, bitterly quit the Constituent Assembly, having prescribed its closing, he discovered that the pockets of his coat had been cleaned out and his automatic pistol stolen! The fact of which the robbed Lenin indignantly informed the robbed Uritsky. This split
between the authorities and the brigandage of the streets did not end in 1917 by any means. In March 1918, when Lenin’s government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, it was still going on. In December 1919, in Sokolniki, Lenin’s wife was waiting for her husband for the children’s New Year’s party, but the leader of the country arrived very confused. En route robbers had stopped his automobile. The evildoers had taken away weapons and papers—from him, the guard, and the driver. They also took the automobile. When the leader of the world proletariat announced to his attackers, “I am Lenin. Here are my documents,” the reply was unexpected: “We don’t care who you are!”

Echoes of these horrors, these lawless anecdotes of this Time of Troubles, reached Nicholas accurately from papers and letters (despite the destruction and chaos, the mails were working). The parliament’s disbanding might still elicit a sarcastic chuckle from the man who had fought with the Duma for so many years, but the actions of the new authorities in February and March 1918 truly shook the former commander-in-chief.

In March the Bolsheviks concluded the Treaty of Brest with the Germans. Russia admitted defeat in war.

Nicholas’s diary (now he kept his diary with double dates, as putting the new style in parentheses):

“12 (25) February. Monday. Today telegrams arrived informing us that the Bolsheviks, or the Sovnarkom, as they call themselves, must agree to a peace on the German government’s humiliating terms in view of the fact that enemy forces are advancing and there is no way to stop them! It is a nightmare!”

This was indeed a nightmare for him, a hallucination. The Baltics, Poland, part of Belorussia, part of the Caucasus—all this was lost to Russia. The empire he had received from his father no longer existed.

Nicholas was a typical Taurus, with all the qualities of that astrological sign. Sluggish, stubborn, and secretive, taciturn, adoring of his children and family. He had been deprived of one Taurean quality, however:
force
—the ability to fall into a frenzy. “Would you please finally get angry, Your Excellency!” one of his ministers pleaded in vain.

Yes, he was a special Taurus, a golden calf, a calf born for sacrifice, Job the Long-Suffering.

That day, though, as he read the report on the Treaty of Brest, he felt the fury of a Taurus.

She would echo him in a letter to Anya: “March 3rd [16th] 1918.… God save Russia & help her.… one great humiliation &
horror.… I cant reconcile myself, cant think about this without a terrible pain in my heart.”

Exactly one year after his renunciation, he cursed all his sacrifices, thousands upon thousands of lives—all in vain.

Lenin had been preparing for the Treaty of Brest for a long time. Only by concluding peace with the Germans could he demobilize the army—a dangerous force—and reinforce the power his party had so easily taken. When the Bolsheviks disbanded the first Russian parliament, Lenin saw his dream before him—the Treaty of Brest, which the Constituent Assembly had never ratified.

Many in the party considered the treaty humiliating. The second most powerful Bolshevik leader, Trotsky, was adamantly opposed. But Lenin broke his opponents by convening a special party congress and, in exhausting debates and votes, won. All this time, his shadow was Yakov Sverdlov, his loyal executor. (When Sverdlov died, Lenin would search feverishly for a “new Sverdlov”—and would find him: Stalin. But this time Lenin miscalculated: the shadow would become independent and in the end would vanquish his master.)

Thus peace was concluded. The former tsar now had plenty of time to ponder events.

A religious man, he consoled himself. He knew it was God’s will. Only with the passage of time, when they could step back from events, when the revolution and the catastrophe that had overtaken Russia had drifted off into oblivion, would the intention of He who creates history be revealed. That was why he would read so attentively Lev Tolstoy’s reflections on history—that “part of
War and Peace
that I had not known before”: “Marie and I have been caught up reading
War and Peace.”

But Alix was incredulous: what about their allies? How could they stand for this? No, she felt something had to happen. Might this horrible peace with the Germans somehow change their fate as well? Alix was right. It was at this time in Moscow that their fate was being decided.

In February in Moscow, the congress’s seventh session, during which the Treaty of Brest was discussed, was attended by the head of the Ural Bolsheviks: Filipp Goloshchekin.

With Lenin, he voted for the Treaty of Brest. Against Trotsky, against those who did not understand the need for a respite. It did not really matter; once they were strong they could repudiate all of it. The Bolsheviks had already established the principle: concluding an agreement, they immediately began to think about how to break it later. “Policy is nothing more than a saving lie—in the name of revolution.”

At the same time, immediately after the Leninists’ victory, Goloshchekin had a conversation with another supporter of the Treaty of Brest, his old friend the chairman of the Central Executive Committee Sverdlov. This conversation concerned, of course, what most upset the Uralites: the transfer of the tsar’s family to Ekaterinburg.

Goloshchekin had the right to a reward for his loyalty to the Leninist line, for his loyalty to the Brest peace. He asked his old friend, the Uralites’ old friend, for his support.

What about Sverdlov? Sverdlov probably sketched out the situation for him: as chairman of the Central Executive Committee he must (and would) insist on the transfer of the tsar’s family to Moscow. That had been the decision: supremely powerful Trotsky was organizing a trial against Nicholas Romanov.

(Sverdlov knew that the “perpetually excited Lev Davydovich” was eager to turn that trial to his own benefit. But did the chairman of the Central Executive Committee need to do anything more for Lev? Yes. Brawls had already broken out between yesterday’s allies, and if previously the formation of factions inside the party had meant a contest of ideas, now it meant a contest of power in the guise of ideas.)

They understood each other virtually without words, Sverdlov and Goloshchekin. Sverdlov would carry out Moscow’s line, but … but if the Urals were sufficiently energetic, the Central Executive Committee would (could) accede.

Having received Sverdlov’s assurance, Goloshchekin reported to the presidium of the Central Executive Committee about the current lack of supervision over the tsar’s family and the threat of a monarchist plot in Tobolsk. He proposed moving the tsar and his family
to Ekaterinburg under the strict supervision of the capital of the Red Urals.

Upon his return to Ekaterinburg Goloshchekin began his own turbulent activities and evidently made contact with the “spy.”

The “spy.” I can picture his first meeting with Matveyev in Freedom House. Lukoyanov would find out that the family had already begun to know great need. Soloviev had extracted huge sums “for the plot,” and now the tsar’s family did not have enough money. The new government of workers and peasants was not about to give them any. Kobylinsky, Tatishchev, and Dolgorukov had gone around to the merchants of Tobolsk borrowing money. At first they gave willingly—they did not expect the new authorities to last—but now they were not giving at all.

The abundant meals in the house continued, however. As before, the empress’s only walk was out to the yard, where the ducks and geese roamed and she carried on entertaining conversations with the chef, Kharitonov. In captivity, food is entertainment. They ate and ate, and the smells of the scraps lingered in the back yard.

But now the aroma had faded: there was no more money. To Matveyev’s delight, the Moscow government had put the family on soldiers’ rations. Nicholas Romanov had been given a soldier’s ration card.

The new, meager meals were served as before by servants in livery. But the servants had begun to rebel, too: no wages.

Nicholas’s diary:

“14 (27) February. We have had to cut our expenditures for food and servants significantly. These last few days we have been busy figuring out the minimum for us to make ends meet….

“15 (28) February. For this reason we must part with many of our people, since we cannot support everyone who is in Tobolsk; this naturally is very hard, but unavoidable.”

Just then the “spy” appeared in the house.

A conversation in Freedom House:

“What can you do?” (This is Matveyev.)

“I’m a carpenter. You can set up a workshop in the building next to the storeroom. Where the Romanov things are kept. That way they’ll be safer.”

He searched the storeroom for the first time late that night. The house was long since asleep. Matveyev brought a great clutch of keys
and began opening the innumerable trunks and suitcases. Just what wasn’t there in those trunks! Multitudes of the odd and useless—you could see they had packed clumsily, in haste. There was a suitcase filled with riding crops, a trunk with tiny children’s booties—evidently for Alexei when he was little. Many dresses and linens. No jewels, of course. Those were kept upstairs. But there was a large brown leather suitcase stuffed with papers, black notebooks covered in a precise handwriting—the tsar’s diary! Lukoyanov immediately sensed how important this brown suitcase would be for him.

Later there was a ball in honor of their departing “people.” The drunken servants made a racket all night long. The family locked themselves in their rooms.

Nicholas’s diary:

“9 (22) March. Today is the anniversary of my arrival at Tsarskoe Selo and my confinement with my family at Alexander Palace. Cannot help but remember this difficult year gone by—and what lies in store for us? All is in God’s hands, all our hopes are on Him.”

Now he could only recall anniversaries of his confinement.

The guard had been changing before his very eyes. After Matveyev’s return, many “good riflemen” were dismissed.

“During my morning walk said goodbye to our best riflemen, who are going home. They are leaving now in the winter unwillingly and would gladly stay on until the opening of navigation.”

From Matveyev’s Notes:

“The rightist diehards got their wolf passports [indicating their political unreliability] in the teeth and were told to clear the hell out.”