Read Online Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport - Free Book Online
Authors: Helen Rappaport
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if we want to?’ People tried to get the guards to take in presents and letters for the family and were all turned away, though one or two guards occasionally relented and allowed the curious to take a quick look inside the palisade. Others anxious to see the Imperial Family approached the house from a different direction – congregating at the bottom of Voznesensky Lane, near the Iset Pond. Here, in the centre of town, you could just make out the balcony overlooking the garden at the back of the Ipatiev House. A man in uniform was often seen standingthere. Word got round that it was the Tsar. Some thought they had caught a glimpse of him. But the rumours were false; the man on the balcony was only one of the guards. Yet still people came. One of the reasons for the construction of the second, higher palisade had been the discovery that when the Tsar took a turn on the swing in the garden, his booted legs flew up over the palisade and could be seen by the curious outside. That did not stop two young schoolboys, the Telezhnikov brothers, who were caught by the guards outside the Ipatiev House trying to take photographs and hauled off to the offices of the Cheka for a severe warning.
Although the lack of physical exercise was hugely stressful to him personally, Nicholas and his family had by now become long inured to isolation – an isolation that had for many years been largely self-imposed. They had always preferred their own company to anybody else’s, including that of most of their Romanov relatives. The life of a prisoner was, as it turned out, nothing new to Nicholas, for he had already observed to Chief Marshal of the Imperial Court Count Benckendorff, during his confinement at the Alexander Palace, that he was hardly less free now than formerly, adding, as he reached for the cigarette that was the ready prop in moments of stress: ‘For have I not been a prisoner all my life?’
Whilst he might still be in denial about the true nature of his imprisonment and his ultimate fate, on the morning of 4 July, the former Tsar of Russia would begin, finally, to discover what captivity in the Urals really entailed.
2
‘The Dark Gentleman’
THURSDAY 4 JULY 1918
‘T oday there was a change of commandant’, Nicholas noted with surprise in his diary on 4 July. That afternoon the Romanovs had had an unexpected visitor: Aleksandr Beloborodov, chair of the Ural Regional Soviet, had arrived when they were taking their modest lunch. Commandant Avdeev, he announced, had been dismissed and would not be returning. Nor, as they soon discovered, would his vulgar, drunken assistant Moshkin. Whilst they would not miss Moshkin, who had taken pleasure in humiliating them in the evenings after Avdeev had gone home off duty, the Romanovs felt a pang of regret at the loss of the disorderly Avdeev. For all his drinking, his swaggering in front of his subordinates and his occasionally crass behaviour, he had been fundamentally considerate, even kind. He’d made sure they had their own samovar so that the guards didn’t take all the hot water for tea; he’d stretched the rules on their time allowed outside in the garden. The Romanovs had grown used to him and at times Nicholas had even found him endearing. The family had sensed his conflicted feelings towards them, and a certain reluctant compassion. They knew what to expect.
The Tsar’s response was sympathetic: ‘I am sorry for Avdeev, but it was his own fault as he did nothing to keep his men from stealing things out of our trunks in the shed.’ Naively, Nicholas thought the shake-up was down to the constant pilfering by the guards from the family’s goods in the outhouse that Avdeev had turned a blind eye to, if not colluded in. But there were other, far more sinister reasons for the changeover of which Nicholas could not be aware.
In recent weeks the Ural Regional Soviet had been thrown into a state of increasing paranoia by evidence of monarchist and other
Although the lack of physical exercise was hugely stressful to him personally, Nicholas and his family had by now become long inured to isolation – an isolation that had for many years been largely self-imposed. They had always preferred their own company to anybody else’s, including that of most of their Romanov relatives. The life of a prisoner was, as it turned out, nothing new to Nicholas, for he had already observed to Chief Marshal of the Imperial Court Count Benckendorff, during his confinement at the Alexander Palace, that he was hardly less free now than formerly, adding, as he reached for the cigarette that was the ready prop in moments of stress: ‘For have I not been a prisoner all my life?’
Whilst he might still be in denial about the true nature of his imprisonment and his ultimate fate, on the morning of 4 July, the former Tsar of Russia would begin, finally, to discover what captivity in the Urals really entailed.
2
‘The Dark Gentleman’
THURSDAY 4 JULY 1918
‘T oday there was a change of commandant’, Nicholas noted with surprise in his diary on 4 July. That afternoon the Romanovs had had an unexpected visitor: Aleksandr Beloborodov, chair of the Ural Regional Soviet, had arrived when they were taking their modest lunch. Commandant Avdeev, he announced, had been dismissed and would not be returning. Nor, as they soon discovered, would his vulgar, drunken assistant Moshkin. Whilst they would not miss Moshkin, who had taken pleasure in humiliating them in the evenings after Avdeev had gone home off duty, the Romanovs felt a pang of regret at the loss of the disorderly Avdeev. For all his drinking, his swaggering in front of his subordinates and his occasionally crass behaviour, he had been fundamentally considerate, even kind. He’d made sure they had their own samovar so that the guards didn’t take all the hot water for tea; he’d stretched the rules on their time allowed outside in the garden. The Romanovs had grown used to him and at times Nicholas had even found him endearing. The family had sensed his conflicted feelings towards them, and a certain reluctant compassion. They knew what to expect.
The Tsar’s response was sympathetic: ‘I am sorry for Avdeev, but it was his own fault as he did nothing to keep his men from stealing things out of our trunks in the shed.’ Naively, Nicholas thought the shake-up was down to the constant pilfering by the guards from the family’s goods in the outhouse that Avdeev had turned a blind eye to, if not colluded in. But there were other, far more sinister reasons for the changeover of which Nicholas could not be aware.
In recent weeks the Ural Regional Soviet had been thrown into a state of increasing paranoia by evidence of monarchist and other
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