The Resurrection of the Romanovs (12 page)

Even meals, ran the narrative that emerged at the beginning of the 1920s, were conceived to denigrate the imperial family. Avdayev forced the Romanovs and their retainers to dine together, at a table covered with “a greasy oil-cloth.” The prisoners lacked plates and silver and were forced to dine “with wooden spoons out of one common dish,” Wilton reported.
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The food was “very bad,” brought in “from a cheap lunch room,” and “always” served late, if at all.
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Soldiers crowded around the table, helping themselves to the sparse food with their “dirty hands” as they spat on the floor, their “greasy elbows” thrust into the faces of the imperial family.
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Two generations would pass before these horror stories were revealed as clumsy and inaccurate fabrications, repeated and recycled by a stream of voices that embellished and amended them in misguided attempts to enhance the aura of the Romanovs as martyrs. Avdayev never brutalized or humiliated the prisoners; the guards never entered the rooms where the imperial family lived and never ate with them; they never forced the grand duchesses to sing, and never escorted them to the bathroom; the Romanovs had plentiful china and silver during their meals, which were only rarely served late, and they certainly never endured the humiliation of lewd soldiers spitting and sharing their table.
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There were, to be sure, unpleasant moments and uncomfortable situations, and for the Romanovs life within the Ipatiev House was a stark change from their indulgent confinement in the Alexander Palace and even their months of fairly comfortable captivity at Tobolsk. Food, it was true, was sometimes less than appetizing; a few soldiers scrawled obscene verses and pornographic drawings of the empress and Rasputin in places where the prisoners could not help but see them; and exercise was confined to a daily turn in the small, enclosed garden under the watchful eyes of armed sentries.
30
More than anything, though, it was not humiliation or discomfort that marked the lives of the prisoners but rather a terrible uncertainty as soldiers in the Red and White armies waged Russia’s Civil War and the fighting edged ever closer to a nervous Ekaterinburg.

Life for the prisoners was monotonous. They generally rose between eight and nine and assembled in the comfortably furnished drawing room for prayers. After breakfast they usually took the first of two daily walks in the garden, though the time and duration varied depending on the weather and occasionally on the mood of their jailers. Alexei was still unable to walk, and had to be carried outside by his father, while Alexandra rarely joined her family in this exercise; Anastasia and her sisters alternated their walks so that their mother was not left alone. Between meals and walks, the imperial family read or played cards; Alexei played with his tin soldiers; and the grand duchesses did needlework. In the evenings, after dinner, Nicholas read aloud to his family and Botkin; occasionally they sang hymns. Although they took their meals with the Romanovs, the remaining servants were generally not asked to join them, and by eleven everyone had usually retired for the evening.
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There were few deviations or diversions. Hoping to occupy their time, the grand duchesses asked Ivan Kharitonov for lessons in baking bread; their results, thought Alexandra, were “excellent.”
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The grand duchesses also helped Anna Demidova in caring for their rooms, but their penchant for changing towels and the linens on their beds every day soon caused problems. Laundry from the Ipatiev House was collected and washed each week by a local labor union, but the Ural Regional Soviet balked at the enormous bill resulting from this incessant washing, and dispatched Alexander Beloborodov, its chairman, to personally lecture the grand duchesses on the need for economies. Clothing could still be sent out, but the young women would have to do the ordinary household laundry themselves. “After all,” he told them, “a little work never hurt anyone.” They were agreeable to this, but explained that they did not know how to do laundry. Avdayev went off to the local library in search of an instruction manual but could find nothing useful; he finally hired a man named Andreyev from a local factory who, christened with the absurd title of “Comrade Laundry Teacher to the House of Special Purpose,” came to the prison to give the grand duchesses lessons in washing towels and sheets.
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Time passed slowly, the weeks marked with a string of family birthdays. Nicholas II turned fifty in the Ipatiev House; Alexandra, forty-six; Tatiana, twenty-one; Marie, nineteen; and, on June 18, Anastasia seventeen. It was a beautiful, warm Tuesday; the grand duchesses served their bread at lunch, and just after three that afternoon all of the family went into the garden for an hour. It was, Alexandra recorded in her diary, “very hot,” though the air was scented with lilac and honeysuckle. That evening came a welcome surprise: with Avdayev’s permission, nuns from a nearby convent began regular deliveries of milk, cream, and eggs for the prisoners.
34

Seventeen found Anastasia, as one of her jailers recounted, “very attractive” and “very fat. She had rosy cheeks, and a quite lovely face and features.” Of all the prisoners, she seemed “best adjusted to their position.”
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One guard deemed her “very friendly and full of life,” while another termed her “a very charming devil! She was mischievous and, I think, rarely tired. She was lively, and was fond of performing comic mimes with the dogs, as though they were performing in a circus.”
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In time, these men sympathized with their prisoners, and the lines between captors and captives faded as the beautiful grand duchesses gave them smiles, teased them, shared stories of their former lives, and even showed them their photograph albums. “There were long conversations,” remembered one guard, “in which they spoke of their hopes for the future and talked about living in England one day.” Innocent flirtations developed, and several of the soldiers spent their off-duty hours making and hanging a wooden swing for the grand duchesses in the garden. At night, when off duty, some of the soldiers even confessed that they “would not mind so much if they were allowed to escape.”
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Escape, in fact, was very much on the minds of the Romanovs as the summer of 1918 began. In early June, acting on orders from the Ural Regional Soviet, Bolshevik authorities in the town of Perm secretly executed Nicholas II’s brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, publicly claiming that he had escaped with the help of White Army officers. Just a week later, the imperial family in Ekaterinburg received the first of four letters, smuggled into the Ipatiev House and written in French, that promised their freedom.
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They replied with details of their living arrangements, moved Alexei into the bedroom shared by his parents, and secretly spent several anxious nights fully dressed in their darkened rooms, awaiting a rescue that never came.
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“The days passed and nothing happened,” Nicholas confided in his diary. “The waiting and the uncertainty were very upsetting.”
40

Unknown to the Romanovs, the letters had been written by the Ekaterinburg Cheka in an effort to trap them in circumstances that could then be used to justify their execution. In anticipation of this, on July 4, the Ural Regional Soviet fired the lax and indulgent Avdayev and replaced him with a new commandant named Yakov Yurovsky; over the next few days, the old guards who had grown friendly with the prisoners were barred from duty within the Ipatiev House, replaced by a contingent of more reliable men.
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Yurovsky forced the Romanovs to hand over any visible jewelry—watches, necklaces, bracelets, and rings—that they wore; he allowed Anastasia and her sisters to each keep a single gold bracelet each that they had been given by their parents and that they could not remove. He also changed the time of the prisoners’ daily roll call, put a halt to the petty thievery of their belongings by the guards, and covered the only open window with a heavy grate.
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On Sunday, July 14, Yurovsky allowed two priests to celebrate a service for the prisoners at the Ipatiev House. They found the Romanovs and their retainers gathered in the drawing room, where a makeshift altar had been prepared. One of the priests, Ioann Storozhev, later recalled that Anastasia had worn a black skirt and white blouse, and had stood next to her father throughout the service, as Yurovsky watched from a corner of the room.

It seemed to me that on this occasion, Nicholas Alexandrovich and all of his daughters were—I won’t say in depressed spirits—but they gave the impression just the same of being exhausted. . . . According to the liturgy of the service it was customary at a certain point to read the prayer
Who Resteth with the Saints
. On this occasion, for some reason, the Deacon, instead of reading this prayer, began to sing it, and I as well, somewhat embarrassed by this departure from the ritual. But we had scarcely begun to sing when I heard the members of the Romanov family, standing behind me, fall on their knees. After the service everyone kissed the Holy Cross. . . . As I went out, I passed very close to the former Grand Duchesses and heard the scarcely audible words, “Thank you.”
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Early the following morning, two nuns arrived from a local convent, bringing provisions for the prisoners; Yurovsky passed along a note from one of the grand duchesses, asking for some thread.
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At ten-thirty, four women from the Ekaterinburg Union of Professional Housemaids arrived to clean the prisoners’ rooms. The Romanovs were playing cards at the dining room table when they arrived. One woman, Maria Starodumova, recalled that they were all “gay. The Grand Duchesses were laughing. There was no trace of sadness.”
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After greeting the women with “friendly smiles,” said Eudokia Semyonovna, “the Grand Duchesses got up and went with us four into their bedroom to move their beds for us. As I remember it, they were neither in the least scared, nor in the least worried. Their eyes shone brightly with fun and high spirits, their short hair was tumbled and in disorder, their cheeks were rosy like apples. They did not dress like Grand Duchesses, but wore short dresses of black, with white blouses underneath and a bit of décolletage showed. The commandant Yurovsky was a snooper. For some time, he stood listening at the open door and would look in to glare at us when we exchanged jokes and pleasantries with the young Grand Duchesses. We were all cautious, and spoke in low voices after that. At one time, when Yurovsky withdrew his head from the room, the smallest Grand Duchess, Anastasia, turned to the doorway and made such a face at him that we all laughed, then she put out her tongue and thumbed her nose at his back.”
46

Tuesday, July 16, 1918, dawned overcast and humid in Ekaterinburg; by afternoon, the gray clouds had disappeared, replaced by a baking sun.
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At seven that morning, the nuns arrived and left their provisions for the prisoners, and the day passed as usual.
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Between three and four that afternoon, the prisoners took their walk in the garden; Alexandra remained inside with Tatiana. Then, at eight o’clock, as the prisoners were eating dinner, Yurovsky entered and told the young kitchen boy Leonid Sednev that he was to go join his uncle Ivan, who had been removed from the Ipatiev House six weeks earlier and who, unknown to the prisoners, had been executed. At ten-thirty, the Romanovs went to bed.
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The White Army was fewer than twenty miles away, and everyone knew that the Bolsheviks would lose Ekaterinburg to them within a few days.
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Through a single, open window in the bedroom shared by Nicholas, Alexandra, and Alexei, the prisoners could hear the distant echo of approaching artillery, a sound that must have beckoned to them with thoughts of freedom as, one by one, lights were extinguished and the dark July night overtook the Ipatiev House.

At a little after two the following afternoon, guard Anatoly Yakimov reported for duty at the Ipatiev House. He recalled, “The door leading from the anteroom into the rooms which had been occupied by the Imperial Family was closed as before, but there was no one in the rooms. This was obvious. No sound came from there. Before, when the Imperial Family lived there, there were always sounds of life in their rooms: voices, steps. At this time there was no life there. Only their little dog stood in the anteroom, at the door to the rooms where the Imperial Family had lived, waiting to be let in. I well remember thinking at the time: You are waiting in vain.”
51

In vain, Yakimov said, because he had been told that just twelve hours earlier, the imperial family had been executed in the basement of the Ipatiev House. This same evening, the Ural Regional Soviet also ordered the execution of several Romanovs held prisoner in the Siberian town of Alapayevsk. Empress Alexandra’s sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, known as Ella, who had founded an order of nursing sisters after the 1905 assassination of her husband, Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich, and five other members of the family were taken into a forest and thrown alive down an abandoned mine shaft. Yet ironically, the same Bolsheviks who deemed it politically expedient to kill the Romanovs were also responsible for the myth of their survival.

Just three days after the rumored carnage in Ekaterinburg, and with an irony fitting their later canonization by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Romanovs rose again from their presumed graves, resurrected in deceptive announcements by Soviet officials. The Bolsheviks admitted only to the execution of Nicholas II; the empress and Alexei, it was said, had been sent away from Ekaterinburg, while there was no mention of the grand duchesses. The Soviet government would not deviate from this position until the 1920s; it was meant not only to confuse the White Army but also to protect the reputation of the Soviet regime. Lenin was only too aware of how the world would view word of the slaughter of the empress and her innocent children.