The Last Tsar (72 page)

An inquiry so enticing to begin but scarcely possible to conclude.

I am leafing through the testimony of the witnesses, and it is like a parade of the characters in our book: N. N. Ipatiev, Evgeny Kobylinsky, Prince Lvov, Alexander Kerensky, Alexander Guchkov, Prince Felix Yusupov, Matryona Rasputin, Gilliard and Gibbes, Tatiana Melnik-Botkina, the tsaritsa’s maid Sasha Tegleva, and so on.

And although historians have quoted much of this testimony many times, there is a kind of magic in authentic documents. Certain fine points, certain details, read completely differently in them.

There is the testimony of Prince Georgy Lvov.

How mocking history is: Prince Lvov, prime minister of the Provisional Government, which overthrew and arrested the last tsar, was himself arrested by the Bolsheviks after the October coup!
Moreover, in 1918 Prince Lvov was in prison in Ekaterinburg very near the house that had been a prison for the tsar he had arrested the year previous. The former prime minister describes his encounter there with his Petersburg acquaintance Prince Dolgorukov, who was being held in the very same prison.

It turns out that, upon his arrival in Ekaterinburg, Dolgorukov was imprisoned by the Chekists, not shot. In prison the loyal Valya (Dolgorukov) was in constant distress over the tsarist money the “commissars” had confiscated from him. Actually, he did not remain distressed for very long; soon he was “sent to Moscow”—shot, in fact, in an open field by one of the characters in our book, Chekist Grigory Nikulin.

In prison, too, Prince Lvov saw the prison commissar Kabanov, brother to yet another character—former tsarist Guardsman and later Chekist Alexei Kabanov, who so distinguished himself on the Ipatiev night.

Here is the testimony of that notorious exposer of provocateurs in the revolutionary movement, V. L. Burtsev, who described one very important character in our book:

“Lenin is a ‘cynic of the spirit’ in the full sense. It is something more than ‘Jesuitry.’ He has decided once and for all that all means are good and everything is permitted.”

Here is another description of a very different character in our story: “At a depth of seven and a half sazhens [52.5 feet] a woman’s corpse was found clothed in a gray rubber cloak, a gray dress, a white cotton bodice, a black shawl on her head, and a cypress and copper cross around her neck….

“Her head and body were covered with many bruises from blows by a blunt instrument, as well as the result of injuries from her fall into the mine shaft.”

This was the beautiful Ella, Alix’s sister. This was how she looked when they excavated the mine shaft at Alapaevsk.

My guest called again.

As always, he started in without preliminaries. And, of course, about the alleged tsarist grave outside Ekaterinburg:

“I forgot to tell you one awful detail. After the grave was opened, the tsarist remains were kept for a time at the Upper Isetsk police
Station, in the building where the policemen took target practice.… So that once again the Romanovs were lying against a wall strewn with bullets.… They showed me a photograph of the tsarist bones and among them was a black cat that had happened to wander onto the firing range.”

Then he added with his familiar chuckle, “Well, as for the two missing corpses, those remains have yet to be found.” He was silent for a moment and then changed topics. “I heard you’ve been out of the country for a long time. I hope you’re up to date on the experts’ latest accomplishments. They really are accomplishments. Computer comparison of skulls and photographs has already established with 90 percent accuracy that two skulls belong to the tsar and tsaritsa. Well, for 100 percent certainty, ‘fragments of the remains,’ or in plain words, pieces of bone from the skeletons, were sent to the English. They have a Center for Criminal Investigations there at the British Ministry for Internal Affairs.” A chuckle. “You’re a frequent visitor abroad now, so you’ll be interested in the results. They’re going to extract DNA from the bones. They want to compare it with the genetic code of one of the presently thriving representatives of the English royal house, who, as you know, are the Romanovs’ closest relatives. They’ve agreed to help out. Well, they didn’t help them when they were alive, so they’ll help out now that they’re dead. It looks like the question of just who is in the grave is going to be decided once and for all very soon.” Again he jumped to a different topic “By the way, you would be interested in two more finds: some of Nicholas’s hair was found in Moscow; and in Ekaterinburg, in the archives of the former KGB, they declassified a very interesting file on the tsarist diamonds. I’ve always said that the jewels were one of the reasons the tsar’s family was executed. As it turned out, though, even after the death of their unlucky owners the stones continued to kill people.”

I had known all this. I had known that the remains had been sent to the country where the family had been so happy at the end of the last century. I was well informed about the work of the Moscow team of experts and had even helped them get in touch with the grandson of Dr. Botkin, Konstantin Melnik, who was living in Paris.

And I had already seen a certain file in the former Archives of the October Revolution (which has abashedly changed its name to the Russian State Archives), a file with the terrible title “Envelope with a crown and the inscription ‘Anichkov Palace’” (archive 640, list 2, file 14). Inside the file, indeed, lay a small envelope with “Anichkov Palace” printed on it and an embossed crown. But there was one more
inscription on the envelope, this handwritten, and in English: “Nicky hair when three years old.” And a signature: “Alix.” Actually, even without the signature it would have been easy to recognize the elegant handwriting of the last tsaritsa.

Evidently, immediately after the wedding, when Alix and Nicky were first living with the dowager empress at Anichkov Palace, his mother had given Alix this little envelope, and punctilious Alix had written it all down on the spot.

The envelope holds little Nicky’s golden curls, which you can see in that first photograph of him as a baby.

For this reason I was not listening very closely to that part of my guest’s conversation. But when he started talking about the diamonds …

He immediately sensed my agitation and said, derisively as always: “I’ll try to send you the documents. And I’ll call.”

He did send me the documents. But he never called.

Soon after I learned from the newspapers that a blood analysis had been done in England on Prince Philip, consort of the English queen. The DNA of the prince—the grandson of Alix’s sister—proved identical to the DNA taken from the bones of the alleged skeleton of the murdered tsaritsa. The prince’s DNA also matched the genetic code of three other skeletons—the alleged grand duchesses.

Is the story of the tsarist grave over?

I remembered this strange sentence from long ago: “Even opening the grave will not clear up the puzzle for us completely.”

Naturally, I waited impatiently for my guest’s phone call and usual commentaries.

But he never called me again. Actually, I’ve written that about him before. So I continue to await his call.

A few extracts from the file he sent me:

“Materials related to the search for the valuables of the family of the former tsar Nicholas Romanov in three volumes.

“Top secret. Report of the OGPU Economics Department for the Urals on the confiscation of the tsarist valuables …

“After an extensive search on November 20, 1933, in the town of
Tobolsk, the valuables of the tsar’s family were confiscated. While the tsar’s family was staying in Tobolsk, the tsarist family’s valet Chemodurov had turned these valuables over for safekeeping to Druzhinina, mother superior of the Tobolsk Monastery of St. Ivan.”

This was the same monastery where they had so dreamed of living.

“Shortly before her death, Druzhinina gave them to her assistant, the deaconess Marfa Uzhentsova, who hid these valuables in the monastery well, the monastery cemetery, and several other places as well.”

Soon, however, after the monastery’s closing, the monks were driven out, and Marfa evidently had nowhere to hide the tsarist jewels. She tried to figure out what to do to keep them from falling into the hands of the authorities who had killed the tsar and his family.

“In 1924–25, M. Uzhentsova was planning to throw the valuables into the river. She was dissuaded from this step, however, by former Tobolsk fishing industrialist Kornilov, to whom she entrusted the valuables for temporary safekeeping.”

Yes, this was the same Kornilov in whose home the tsar’s suite had been housed during their Tobolsk confinement. Evidently, though, either Marfa consulted with someone about the tsarist jewels or she simply let it slip. The former deaconess did not realize that times had changed and that by then it was no longer prudent to seek other people’s advice.

“Arrested on October 15 of the same year, Uzhentsova admitted to keeping the tsarist valuables and indicated where they were located. No valuables were found in the indicated place.”

She was still trying to save the tsarist diamonds entrusted to her. Evidently, though, they had had her under surveillance for a long time.

“As a result of the secret service’s work, V. M. Kornilov was arrested. V. M. Kornilov, who was apprehended in Tobolsk, revealed the actual location of the valuables.

“On Kornilov’s instruction, valuables were removed in two large glass jars, which had been placed in small wooden receptacles.

“They were dug up in the cellar of Kornilov’s house.”

These fantastic jewels, which had glittered at tsarist balls, had been buried under the floor of the Kornilov house.

There is a photograph in the file of the GPU workers “with the confiscated jewels.”

——

“Appraisal of the valuables.

“In all, 154 objects were confiscated, for a total value of 3,270,693 rubles (gold rubles), 50 kopeks.

“Among the confiscated valuables were:

“1. A diamond brooch (100 carats),

“2. Three hat pins (44 and 36 carats),

“3. A diamond crescent (70 carats) [according to reports, this crescent was a gift to the tsar from the Turkish sultan],

“4. 4 diadems of the tsaritsa, and others.”

This successful operation inaugurated a real hunt for the tsarist diamonds.

First they went after the relatives of everyone connected with the Romanovs’ Tobolsk confinement.

They found and questioned the relatives of the murdered cook Kharitonov, but without success.

They located the widow of Colonel Kobylinsky, who had been shot during the civil war.

They sought her out in the small town of Orekhovo-Zuevo, where the unlucky woman had attempted to hide, living quietly with her fourteen-year-old son Innokenty, and had worked at Karbolit, a local factory.

She told them about the sovereign’s cap and the tsarist jewels, which her husband had brought home to show her and which according to rumors had later been hidden on some isolated squatter’s holding in the taiga. (Captain Aksyuta had told the truth: the tsaritsa’s jewels and the tsar’s cap had been buried in the taiga!)

Through the Kobylinsk Secret Police they picked up the trail of Pechekos’s sister and brother, whom the Kobylinskys had stayed with in 1918 in Tobolsk and who, according to Kobylinskaya, knew about the cache.

First they arrested Anelia Pechekos. Evidently they interrogated her rather zealously, and Pechekos realized she wouldn’t be able to hold out.

“On July 8, 1934, Anelia Vikentievna Pechekos died in prison after swallowing iron objects.”

Her arrested brother threw himself out a window, but survived.

Realizing that these people would rather die than reveal the secret, the secret police decided to release Pechekos from prison and put him under permanent surveillance, which went on for decades and was lifted only after Pechekos’s death.

The searches kept up. They interrogated people who had known the deceased valet Chemodurov. They determined that the old man had died in the house of the barman Grigory Solodukhin, “who according to rumors had amassed great valuables.”

But they couldn’t arrest Solodukhin. In 1920 shortsighted Chekists had shot him.

Nonetheless, they did finally pick up a fresh trail.

They determined that the tsaritsa had instructed Father Alexei (the same priest who had once prayed for “A long life!” for the tsar’s family in Tobolsk) “to carry out and conceal a case containing diamonds and gold objects of not less than one pood [36 pounds].”

And once again they met with failure: Father Alexei had managed to pass away in 1930.

They interrogated his children. But the children didn’t know anything. Father Alexei had safely hidden the tsarist case.

So perhaps even now, buried somewhere in the cellar of an old Tobolsk house, is a brown leather case bearing the tsarist coat of arms and a pood of jewels, and somewhere in the taiga of Siberia still lie the tsar’s cap and the Romanov diamonds.

I’m never going to finish this book!

The letters keep arriving, such as this one from St. Petersburg with information on that strange man Filipp Semyonov, who considered himself Alexei’s savior. Apparently, during the Khrushchev era the alleged tsarevich went straight from prison camp to Leningrad, where he married and later died in 1979. Before his death, his wife had always called him Alexei. As he was dying, he got his wife’s word that she would rebury him alongside the rest of his family. The envelope contained a photograph of him shortly before his death.

Another specter of the Ipatiev house emerging from oblivion.

At the Central Party Archive, I was finally able to read the “Secret statements of Chekist Medvedev-Kudrin on the execution of the tsar’s
family,” which I had heard so much about from his son. One more witness tells the story:

“Yurovsky read the decision to execute. ‘You mean they’re not taking us anywhere?’ Botkin asked. Yurovsky wanted to say something in response, but I was already pulling the trigger. I planted the first bullet in the tsar.… Yurovsky and Ermakov shot Nicholas in the chest as well, almost point-blank.… On my fifth shot Nicholas II toppled back like a sheaf of grass.… There was a woman’s scream, and moaning.… You couldn’t see anything because of the smoke: we were shooting at falling silhouettes we could barely see….