Chapter XII: All the Romanovs

“The death of Nicholas II. and his family did not suffice for the Soviet plan of “government” with, or without, Germany. Nothing short of extermination of all the Romanovs could satisfy the enemies of “Belsatzar.” Whenever the _Tsik_ (Central Executive Committee) and the _Chrezvychaika_ (inquisition) laid hands on any of the ex-Tsar’s relatives their fate was sealed. It did not matter where the unfortunate princes might be, or what local authority happened to be ostensibly involved--the _Tsik_ and Yankel Sverdlov, Red Jewish Autocrat of All the Russias, directed the disposal of them.

It is quite useless for the apologists of Soviet rule to insinuate that local bodies may have committed excesses without the knowledge and approval of the Centre; in these murders of Grand Dukes and a Grand Duchess--in all 11 persons of the blood Royal--the hand of the Central Government is clearly apparent. Moreover, they were all slain in cold blood, of deliberate purpose; not like the victims of the holocaust at Perm, because a reign of stark terror had been ordained from Moscow.

It is with mind and hand still atremble after reciting the horrors of the cellar and the woods of Ekaterinburg that I take up this tale of woe, all the more pitiful on account of the utter absence of any pretext for the crime--just sordid murder unrelieved by any shadow of political expediency or provocation.

First, I take the case of the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich; he “disappeared” before the others--about a month before the Tsar--and he was the ostensible heir although he had formally resigned his rights to the people. I have collected all the materials concerning his last days in Perm.

The Tsar’s brother had remained at Gachina, his usual residence, during the early months of Bolshevist rule. There he was arrested in March, 1918, and sent into exile. His secretary, Nicholas Nikolaievich Johnson, and the former Chief of the Gendarmerie at Gachina, Colonel Znamerovsky, were arrested at the same time and transported together with him, guarded by Letts. Perm was their destination, and in that city they resided for the next two months.

Apart from being under surveillance, the exiles enjoyed comparative freedom. The Grand Duke took his walks with his secretary. Although suffering from a chronic complaint (gastric ulcers) which required constant exercise and a special diet, he had no cause to complain of his health while in Perm. The fact was many people sent him dainties, such as sterlets freshly caught out of the Kama, so that his rooms at the Korolevskie Nomera (King’s Inn) were always full of provisions. He felt so well that he seldom had recourse to the medicine for stilling the terrible pains that he suffered during acute attacks of the malady.

Popularity has its drawbacks. The people of Perm did not realise that their attentions to the exile might arouse suspicion among his Red enemies. When things came to such a pass that the Tsar’s brother found himself running the gauntlet of popular ovations, it became necessary to avoid too frequent appearances in the streets. Znamerovsky warned the Grand Duke that the Reds at the suburban Motoviliha arsenal were beginning to grow restive and openly agitating against the liberty allowed to the exiles. So thereafter the familiar figure of Michael Alexandrovich in his shabby grey suit and top boots was seen no more, and he took his exercise under the cover of darkness.

The Grand Duke had left his wife and children at Gachina. Countess Brasova (his morganatic spouse) came to visit her husband in the middle of May. Madame Znamerovskaia had also arrived in Perm. It was a rash step. Countess Brasova had much difficulty in getting away; in fact it was only managed by a stratagem. The komisars were told that if they interfered the matter would be referred to Moscow. This frightened them.

Reaching Moscow on the 22nd or 23rd of May Countess Brasova decided to take a still bolder step to save her husband. Conscious of his complete aloofness from politics, she imagined that personal intercession with the Red chieftains would move them to let him go. Of course it was an illusion excusable only in a distracted wife. I mention it because Lenin himself intervened in the matter. It was the lofty idealist of Sovietdom that absolutely refused to permit the departure of Michael, and thereby assumed responsibility for what happened.

Madame Znamerovskaia did not leave Perm. She was there when her husband was shot and later shared his fate. But I am anticipating.

Unbeknown to any member of the family or even to N. N. Jackson, Colonel Znamerovsky had conceived a plan of escape which he intended to put into practice, fearing that the Motoviliha workmen might be goaded into violence. I am in possession of the details of this plan, and I can state most positively--in the light of subsequent events--that it was not carried out, nor even attempted.

On the 13th June a telegram reached Gachina from Perm, announcing that “our general favourite and Johnny had been removed by whom and whither unknown.” This message was supposed to have come from Znamerovsky--it could have come only from him. The first feeling was one of unmixed joy; then doubts began to arise, and no small anxiety as to the probable repression that would at once fall upon the household at Gachina. Surely enough soon afterwards Countess Brasova was arrested by Uritsky, the bloodstained Komisar of Petrograd, who himself was assassinated two months later by another Jew. After innumerable tribulations, she managed to escape with her children out of Russia.

What had happened in Perm? A despatch from Mr. Alston, the British Acting High Commissioner, reported from Vladivostok, February 13, 1919:--“Mr. T. has just arrived here.... When at Perm he says he lived in the same hotel with Grand Duke Michael and Mr. Johnson, his secretary, who was a Russian. At two a. m. on or about the 16th June he saw four of the Perm militzia or police take them off, and he is convinced that they were killed.”

Later, it became possible to obtain the evidence of eye-witnesses, which corroborated and amplified Mr. Alston’s despatch. The Grand Duke had two servants with him in Perm, Borunov and Chelyshev. They lived in an adjoining room. Mr. Johnson lived upstairs. Chelyshev escaped and gave the following version:--

At about the date above mentioned (12th to 16th June--he was hazy on this point) he was asleep one night when three men in soldiers’ dress, fully armed, entered his room, woke him up and roughly ordered him to lead them to Michael Romanov. In vain he protested that the Grand Duke was asleep. They threatened him with the Chrezvychaika. He had to comply. He first woke Mr. Johnson. Then he led the way to the Grand Duke’s room. He was asleep. Chelyshev roused him and explained the reason. The Grand Duke looked at the armed men.

One of them said: “We have orders to take you--orders from the Sovdep.” The Grand Duke replied: “I shall not come unless you show me a paper.” One of the men then stepped forward and, laying his hand roughly on the Grand Duke’s shoulder, exclaimed: “Oh! these Romanovs! We are fed up with you all!”

Realising that resistance was futile, the Grand Duke rose and dressed himself. Mr. Johnson had also meanwhile made himself ready, and insisted that the men should take him away as well. After some argument they agreed. Chelyshev declares that he also asked to be taken, but that the men refused.

As the soldiers and their prisoners were going out of the room, Chelyshev remembered about the medicine, and, grasping the bottle, followed, calling out: “Please your Highness, take it with you.” He knew that without his medicine the Grand Duke might be subjected to great and needless suffering. The soldiers roughly pushed him aside and, making some brutal remark about the Imperial family, led the prisoners away. From that moment they were lost to view. Many stories of Michael’s escape and of his having been seen at Omsk, at Semipalatinsk, at Chita, at Harbin, etc., have been successively disproved.

Against the version of an escape there are the strongest evidences:--The Grand Duke would never have been a party to any attempt to evade his gaolers, knowing full well that both the Tsar--for whom his loyalty and affection were proverbial--and his own family would suffer for him. It may be objected that he was removed against his will by friends in disguise; but this theory cannot explain away their refusal to allow him to take with him a remedy necessary to his health and perhaps to his life. There had been plots to procure his escape--so I have reason to believe; but in every case the plans had been betrayed. Colonel Znamerovsky knew this. He would trust nobody with his plan, but obviously it miscarried, for he was himself to go with Michael, and we know that instead of that he was murdered. The shooting of Znamerovsky followed close upon the Grand Duke’s disappearance.

Chelyshev afterwards professed confidence in his master’s escape, but at the time he had no such illusion. In fact, he was convinced then that the Grand Duke had been trapped, for when he had had time to recover from his surprise, he went to the local Soviet and complained that the Grand Duke had been kidnapped. He relates that no attention was paid to him at first but that later some semblance of a search was made and quickly dropped.

Regarding the ultimate disposal of the two prisoners, stories circulate just as numerous and varied as the stories of their escape. I need not cite them. It suffices that the Grand Duke Michael, gentlest of men, to whom all thought of power and even of ambition was repugnant, disappeared to be seen no more.

Perm and its vicinity was destined to witness other tragedies full of horror. Many other members of the Romanov family had been interned there including (1) the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, sainted sister of the Empress, venerated by grateful Muscovites while Alexandra was disliked; (2) the Grand Duke Sergius Mikhailovich former Master of the Ordnance, and quite remote from politics; (3) Prince Igor; (4) Prince Ioan; (5) Prince Constantine, all three brilliant young men, the sons of the late Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich, none of them concerned with political matters; and (6) Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Palei son of the Grand Duke Paul and step-brother of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. This youth of seventeen had given promise of being one of the world’s greatest poets.

Prince Ioan was married to Princess Elena of Serbia, who had come to the Urals to share her husband’s exile. She had been persuaded to go to her country, the Bolshevists hesitating to incarcerate her, and she was at Ekaterinburg when, towards the end of June, she heard that Prince Ioan and the other captives had been put on starvation rations. She decided, come what might, not to leave him behind. Thereupon the Bolshevists arrested her. She was in the prison at Ekaterinburg when the Tsar and his family were murdered. In the same prison were some people who had followed the Imperial household into captivity; young Countess Anastasia Hendrykova, Mlle. Schneider, the Emperor’s valet Volkov. (Prince Dolgoruky and General Tatishchev had “disappeared” earlier.) Of course none of them knew anything about the awful happenings in Ipatiev’s house.

When the Jewish murderers and their accomplices, the German-Magyar “Letts,” had taken wing before the advance of the Whites these prisoners were sent to Perm for future disposal, while they themselves had hurried westward, having helped to accomplish the hellish design of the Jew fiend, Yankel Sverdlov--to exterminate “all the Romanovs.” Orders had already preceded them to Perm and the design had been fully accomplished there. The murder of the Romanovs of Perm took place exactly twenty-four hours after the murder of the family in Ekaterinburg.

Here are the bare facts of this new butchery. The six Romanov prisoners above-mentioned with the Grand Duchess’s companion, the nun Varvara, and S. M. Remes, manager for the princes, were interned in the village school of Alapaevsk, a place in the environs of Perm.

On the night of July 17 (1918) their warders came to tell them the story that Yurovsky had retailed to the Tsar: that there was danger for them, that the enemy (_i.e._, the Czecho-Slovaks) were approaching, and that in the interest of their personal safety they would be removed. It was even confided to them whither they were going, namely to the Siniachkhin Works. All unsuspicious, they at once complied. The programme of the murder was here somewhat different. It was not convenient to carry it out on the premises. The party took their seats in the native _korobs_ (a small tarantass) and were driven north.

When twelve versts (eight miles) out the caravan halted in a wood which contained a number of disused iron-ore mines--one sees the similarity of detail in the murderers’ plan--and here the unfortunates were slain and their bodies thrown down the shafts.

It was a much cruder performance than that of Ekaterinburg. The actual murderers here were simply Russian criminals, escaped convicts who “worked” for the Chrezvychaika, the Red Inquisition. They just slaughtered the victims and got rid of the bodies without so much as rifling their pockets.

Meanwhile at the school certain “precautions” were being taken. A pretended “escape” was staged. The school building and its approaches were “faked” to show evidence of combat between the Red Guards and pretended White Guards, and to give verisimilitude to the performance they took a peasant who happened to be locked up in the local gaol, murdered him and placed his dead body in the school to represent the White “bandits.”

Mr. Preston, the Consul, telegraphed from Ekaterinburg, October 28, 1918, that on the retaking of Alapaevsk by the White troops on September 28, the corpses of the Romanov Princes, the Grand Duchess and their attendants were found sufficiently preserved to be recognised, and that they were buried in the presence of a great concourse of people.

The discovery had been made, thanks to the resource of a local police agent, whose name I do not give for special reasons. _Post mortem_ examination showed that the victims had been bludgeoned to death but must have undergone a prolonged agony before they died. The Grand Duke Sergius was shot through the head, perhaps to put him out of his misery; for the murderers were just butchers who did not seek to torture their victims. There was no refinement of cruelty about them. They were only Russians. It is not true that they threw their victims down the shaft before life was extinct. The autopsy has dispelled that legend. The murderers even exploded hand grenades down the shaft, probably to make assurance doubly sure.

The investigation has clearly established the authorship of these murders. The orders came from Moscow through the same channels that had been used in the murder of the Tsar--namely, from the Jew Sverdlov to the Jew Goloshchekin, and, as usual, the Russian workman Belodorodov acted as the dummy president of the Ekaterinburg Soviet board--the channel through which Moscow acted in the Urals. These orders were carried out by the leading komisars of Perm, among them being the Komisar of Justice Soloviev.

As in the case of the murder at Ekaterinburg, the Bolshevists at Perm followed up their traitorous crime by announcing that there had been a conspiracy. The world was told that the Princes had been kidnapped by bands of White Guards. (When the Whites had to evacuate Perm, General Diterichs arranged to have the bodies of the martyred Princes removed eastward. They rest in a place of safety--at the Russian Cathedral in Peking).

More than half a year later a crime equally abominable was perpetrated at Petrograd. The victims were the Grand Dukes Paul Alexandrovich, Dmitri Constantinovich, Nicholas Mikhailovich (the historian), and George Mikhailovich. They had been imprisoned for some time without any charge being preferred against them. On January 29, 1919, they were removed to the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul, and there on the same day without any investigation or form of trial they were “killed by Red Guards with revolvers”--such is the trite information that is available. But the crime of Ekaterinburg and the slaughter of Alapaevsk give a clue as to the authorship of this atrocity. The last of the Romanovs within the power of the Jew-ruled Soviet had passed away. Perhaps, some day, N. A. Sokolov will be able to investigate the crime of Petrograd.

We now approach the end of this long martyrology. The members of whom I am about to speak form part of the Red Terror ordained by the Soviet to avenge the murder of Uritsky and the attempt on Lenin, which took place about a month after the crime of Ekaterinburg.

I referred above to the transfer of certain prisoners from that city to Perm. Volkov, the Tsar’s valet, has deposed that altogether thirty-six persons travelled in the prison train. Among them were Countess Hendrykova, Mlle. Schneider, and Princess Elena. They all found themselves interned in the same prison in Perm. Here Volkov met Chelyshev, who had also been locked up, and from him heard the account of the abduction of the Grand Duke Michael. They saw the Princess leave. After great difficulty the Siberian Government had managed to rescue her. She did not, of course, know that her husband had been murdered. She thought he had escaped, and went away willingly enough this time.

The Terror had been proclaimed on September 1, 1918. The official _Izvestiya_ declared that the “proletariat (_sic_) will reply ... in a manner that will make the whole _bourgeoisie_ shudder with horror.” The _Krasnaia_ (Red) _Gazeta_ announced:--“We will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds.... Let them drown themselves in their own blood.”[11]

“On the night of September 3rd”--I am quoting Volkov--“we were led out of the prison, eight of us. There were Countess Hendrykova, Mlle. Schneider, and Mme. Znamerovskaia, myself, and four others. We were surrounded by twenty-two armed guards, part Letts, part Magyars.

“We had been told that we were to be transferred to another prison; we carried our small possessions. When we saw that they were leading us out of the town, we realised that our last hour had come. It was terribly hard on the ladies. They dragged themselves along with difficulty in the heavy mud. After several miles, we came to a corduroy road with swamps on either side.” (It was a sewage farm.) “Some of our guards suddenly began offering to carry our bags. I knew that meant that they were going to shoot us directly, so each one wanted to secure his booty beforehand. It was now or never. While they were wrangling over the spoils I made a dash for it.”

Volkov leapt the ditch and was scuttling across the slimy waste when the Magyaro-Letts opened fire. He fell just as the first shot rang out and remained lying. They thought he was dead and moved on. He then made another dash and finally got away. After wandering about for forty-three days, he came into the White zone and was saved.

The frightfully mangled remains of Countess Hendrykova and Mlle. Schneider were discovered by us in the summer of last year and committed to the grave in Perm, in full view of the prison windows where they had been fellow captives of Princess Elena.

“Comrade” Petrovsky’s accusations were undeserved in Perm. The Red Terror ran a full stream of blood in that region. The peasants, being regarded by Bolshevists as the worst kind of _bourgeoisie_, provided the bulk of the “scores of hundreds” of victims. For details of these horrors I would refer the reader to the White Book on Bolshevism issued in April, 1919.

Respecting Count Tatishchev and Prince Dolgoruky, nothing is known as to the manner of their death. According to Volkov, who was in prison with him in Ekaterinburg, Tatishchev was summoned to the office on or about June 8th, and was there informed that, by order of the Soviet, he was to be deported to the province of Ufa. He was thereupon taken away from the prison and seen no more.

Although secret-service investigation among the Reds strengthens the belief that Michael was murdered, it is a fact that no trace of his dead body has been discovered; and it is, therefore, conceivable that he survived. There are many records of wonderful escapes from Red Guard shooting squads. Volkov is an instance. Chelyshev, the other servant, was twice led out to execution, yet in the end reappeared. If the Grand Duke was taken away by Russians, the chances of his escape would be naturally greater. But even admitting this happy contingency, the murderous intention of the Soviet rulers remains unaffected.

Prince Dolgoruky remained some time in the Ekaterinburg House of Detention. He was frequently in communication with the worthy Mr. Preston, trying to relieve the sufferings of the captives in Ipatiev’s house. Probably this hastened his end. We know that the British Consul was threatened with death if he “interfered” any more. Dolgoruky disappeared like his senior, the Count. Their memories, like the memories of Hendrykova and Schneider, will live through the ages as of those who have been “faithful unto death.”