Chapter XIV: By Order of the “tsik”

The murderers of the Romanovs have been unmasked in the preceding chapters, but not all of them. The parts played by Yurovsky and Goloshchekin are apparent. They were confidential agents of Yankel Sverdlov, the Red Tsar. Other very important personages remained in the background; they were the Komisars Safarov, Voikov and Syromolotov.

I give here a complete list of the names or cognomens of the so-called “judges”: (1) Beloborodov, (2) Goloshchekin, (3) Sakovich, (4) Voikov, (5) Bykov, (6) Syromolotov, (7) Safarov, (8) Ukraintsev, (9) Kiselev, (10) Vainer, (11) Hotimsky, (12) Vorobiev, (13) Andronokov, (14) Andreiev, (15) Simashko, (16) Avdeiev, (17) Kariakin, (18) Zhilinsky, (19) Chufarov, (20) Yurovsky, (21) Efremov, (22) Anuchin. The above formed the Oblastnoy Sovdep (Regional Council of Deputies), _i.e._, the representatives for the whole of the Ural region. The Board was composed of five members, Beloborodov, the Russian “dummy,” as President, and Goloshchekin, Safarov, Voikov and Syromolotov, all four Jews, as members. The “_Chrezvychaika_” (inquisition) was “run” by Goloshchekin, Yurovsky, Efremov, Chustkevich and three other Jews.

These “inner circles” are the men who “tried” the Tsar and condemned him to death, in other words, assumed the duty of carrying out Sverdlov’s orders. They sent “compromising” documents to Moscow afterwards: letters alleged to have been surreptitiously exchanged between the Tsar and officers outside. They are rank forgeries. One of them alludes to “five windows” facing the square, whereas the Tsar’s quarters comprised only two windows on that side, and if the alleged plotters had succeeded in penetrating the double barriers, scaling the house and entering as directed, they would have jumped into a veritable hornet’s nest. Besides, how could they hope to escape the machine-gunner on the roof?

This mockery of a trial has been perpetuated by the “fakes” of sensation-seekers and imaginative writers. One enterprising foreigner cabled thousands of words from Ekaterinburg not long after the murder, describing the aeroplanes that hovered over the city--presumably to carry off the Tsar--and the dropping of bombs, etc., all of which was, of course, rank nonsense; but he also gave a wonderful account by “the Tsar’s faithful servant,” whose name had never been heard of, who told with a wealth of detail how the Tsar was fetched away “for trial” and how he came back and took an affecting leave of his wife and children before being shot all alone.... There are pages and pages of this stuff, and it is all absolute twaddle, but none the less mischievous.

There was no trial of any sort whatsoever. The person named Sakovich in the above list was found in Ekaterinburg afterwards. He admits that he was in the room when Goloshchekin and his friends were talking to Yurovsky just before the murder, but he did not even pay attention to what they said, as the conversation was of such a banal character. No trial--therefore no verdicts, judgments or other such like formulæ, and no reading of any papers to the Tsar before the family was sent to its last account. This so-called “paper” is an invention inspired by the murderers, to fit in with the Moscow story of an intended trial. The only “paper” concocted by the murderers was the “Decision” as to the “execution.” At the Soviet headquarters in Ekaterinburg numerous drafts of this document were afterwards discovered and figure in the _dossier_. They show how troubled the murderers were to invent an appropriate lie for approval by Moscow.

Why was the Tsar moved from Tobolsk and why was he not brought to Moscow, as Yakovlev had been instructed? It is absurd on the face of it to hint that the Ural Regional Sovdep was overriding the decisions of Moscow. We have just seen that the virtual rulers of the Ural were Yankel Sverdlov’s fellow-Jews and associates, even subordinates.

An answer is offered by the Soviet organ, of the 4th May, 1918. It explains that it was “owing to alleged indications of efforts being made by local peasants and by Monarchist groups to promote escape.” We trace here the handiwork of Soloviev and Vasiliev. And it adds: “The regional Soviet of the Urals are charged with surveillance over the Imperial family” (_The London Times_, May 6, 1918).

But while this answer goes a certain way, and definitely involves the responsibility of the Moscow government for all that happened in the Urals, it by no means tells the whole truth. The inside history of Yakovlev’s mission has been explained. Yakovlev was the agent of Sverdlov. But Sverdlov as president of the Tsik[13] was over the foreign as well as the domestic affairs of Sovietdom, being in fact Prime Minister. Now Sverdlov had been a paid agent of Germany and was still in the closest touch and relationship with Mirbach. The Tsar’s own definition of Yakovlev’s mission was unquestionably right, in substance, if not in detail: to obtain his endorsement of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

The Soviet organs published long accounts of Yakovlev’s journey. In these he is falsely described as the representative of the Sovnarkom, i.e., of Lenin’s parliament. That was merely to cover up the tracks. Yakovlev is quoted as speaking of Nicholas Romanov as a pleasant enough person, but of “extraordinarily limited intellect.” He was not clever enough to realise the advantages that were offered to him.

The Germans, of course, were extremely displeased by this _contretemps_, more especially as it came in conjunction with the failure of their plan to nobble the Russian _intelligentzia_ and with their aid to set up the “new government” that Ludendorff craved. One of Mirbach’s chief assistants, a Dr. Ritzler, then remarked to one of these Russians that “the Bolsheviks were still necessary.” A few months later the Red terror avenged the slight inflicted upon the German associates of Sverdlov.

Voikov, the Jew, boasted to his “lady” friends in Ekaterinburg after the murder that “the world will never know what we did with the bodies.” It was his accomplices that suggested to the remorse-stricken Fesenko that the “cinders were not there.” The insolent confidence in the superiority of their “precautions” displayed by Voikov is characteristic of his race.

The murderers invented another story in Perm, of which I have not yet spoken. Their agents gave information that one of the Grand Duchesses had been seen in the city and that she had been shot during the Terror some months after the “execution”

“FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH”

The above group was taken at Tobolsk during the captivity. All
except M. Pierre Gilliard, the French tutor (in the centre), died
for their loyalty to the Imperial family. Countess Hendrikova is
seated on the right with Mlle. Schneider by her side. Their mangled
bodies were found outside Perm. Count Tatishchev (left) and Prince
Dolgoruky (right) “disappeared” at Ekaterinburg. Two bodies,
supposed to be theirs, were found outside the city, one bearing
documents of “citizen Dolgorukov.”
]

THE FAULTS OF THE EARLIER INQUIRY

N. A. Sokolov, pointing to the wall of Ipatiev’s house, calls
attention to a serious omission made by his predecessor. General
Diterichs (seated) listens. The other auditor is M. Magnitsky,
Prokuror (Public Prosecutor) of the Ekaterinburg Court. Photograph
taken in the garden, beside the terrace.
]

AT THE GANINA MINE

On the left, Mr. Sydney Gibbes, the Tsarevich’s tutor; on the
right, looking down the shaft, Mr. Robert Wilton, “The London
Times” Special Correspondent. At the bottom of this shaft was a
false floor beneath which the ashes of the victims were cunningly
concealed. The bodies had been cut up near the shaft and burned on
two pyres, one next to this spot.
]

THE PYRE AT THE BIRCH TREE

N. A. Sokolov, General Domontovich and his A. D. C. pose at the
limits of the larger pyre, where most of the bodies and clothing
were cremated. Alongside stands the tree with the tell-tale
inscription.
]

THE HAND OF THE RED JEW MURDERERS

The above is a facsimile of the original message filed at the
Ekaterinburg telegraph office by the local Soviet chiefs to the
Moscow Tsik (Centr. Ex. Committee) on July 4, 1918, twelve days
before the murder. In it, Beloborodov, the Russian “dummy”
president, informs Sverdlov through Goloschekin that Syromolotov is
hastening to Moscow to take final instructions for the “affair” and
that the Russian Guards have been replaced by “others”, i.e. by
German soldiers.
]

at Ekaterinburg. They were quite positive about it. They even pointed out the place where “Anastasia” had been buried. The bodies--there were many--were exhumed; the only one that was a young woman’s was unmistakably identified by the local police as that of “Nastia Vorovka” (the thief Nastia)--a well-known criminal.

The Komisar Safarov, afterwards editor of the official “Izvestiya,” wrote an article on the “execution” which figures in the _dossier_ as an interesting sidelight on the motives of the crime and its methods. It is only fair that the accused should speak for themselves. I here give a plain, unvarnished rendering of this “defence”:

“In the places seized by the Czecho-Slovaks and bands of
White-guards in Siberia and the Southern Ural, authority has fallen
into the hands of Black-hundred pogromists composed of purest
Monarchists by profession. The real intentions of the White-guards
of the Quadruple Entente are made plain by the mere fact that at
the head of them all, as supreme war-lord, stands the Tsar’s
general Alexeiev, the most devoted servant of Nicholas the
Sanguinary, himself a convinced blood-shedder (palách)....

“Around Nicholas all the time was spread an artful network of
conspiracies. One of them was discovered during the transit from
Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg.” (Safarov here suggests that Yakovlev was
a traitor, and passes over in silence the whole history of the
interrupted journey. This compels the inference, which is borne out
by scores of direct evidences that the Tsik, i.e., Sverdlov,
deliberately sent the Romanovs into a death-trap.) Safarov
continues: “Another plot was discovered just before the execution
of Nicholas. The participants in the last conspiracy to deliver the
murderer of workmen and peasants out of a peasant-workman’s prison
clearly identified their hopes with the hope that the Red capital
of the Ural would be occupied by Czecho-Slovak-Whiteguard
pogromists.

“General Alexeiev wanted to bring over into his Stavka (G.H.Q.) his
own Tsar.” (The General had long been dead when Safarov wrote this
article.) “His calculations have not been justified. The people’s
assizes (_narodny sud_) have judged the All-Russian murderer and
anticipated the plans of the counter-revolution. The will of the
Revolution has been accomplished although many of the formal
aspects of _bourgeois_ legal procedure were infringed, and the
traditional, historical ceremonial of the execution of ‘crowned
personages’ was not observed. The peasant-workingman’s authority
here also expressed itself in a form of extreme democratism;[14]
it made no difference for the All-Russian murderer and had him shot
just like an ordinary robber (_razboinik_). Nicholas the Sanguinary
is no more, and the workmen and peasants may with full right say to
their enemies: You played your stake on the Imperial crown. You
have lost. Take your change--an empty crowned head.”

The Russian peasants at Ekaterinburg looked at the matter differently. They caught Vaganov, one of the regicides, and killed him on the spot. It was very distressful to the Investigating Magistrate, but he could not prosecute the peasants; there were too many of them, and they would not have understood. It had appeared to them the right thing to do, to slay the Russian who had laid hands upon the Tsar.

But Safarov eludes issues he himself raises. Why not have sent the Tsar for trial to the capital, to Moscow? Surely, that was the place where the “will of the Revolution” could have been properly displayed! All these wonderful conspiracies of which he speaks made it all the more necessary to send him there and save the Ural Soviet from all responsibility. The approach of the Whites should have caused the local chieftains not to delay one single day. Why not? Because Sverdlov had already sent for Syromolotov to arrange the murder....

The cynical references to “_bourgeois_ legal procedure” and to “historical ceremonial” will, it is to be hoped, put an end for ever to the legend of a “trial.”

Yankel Sverdlov conversed with his agents in Ekaterinburg over the direct wire before and after the murder, giving directions when necessary. They forgot to destroy all evidence of these conversations. When the investigation was confided to experienced and fearless hands, one of the first measures taken was to thoroughly overhaul the records of the Telegraph Office. It yielded astonishing results. I give some of the documents in this and the following chapters.

Here is the record of a conversation between the Red Tsar and, apparently, Beloborodov, the former in Moscow, the latter in Ekaterinburg. This record was written in pencil on the backs of telegram blanks. There are six such blanks. The writing is evidently of one and the same person. It consists of questions asked by Sverdlov and answers thereto. The record was made obviously on the 20th July, three days after the murder. Here it is, textually translated:--

“What is heard with you?

“The position on the front is somewhat better than it appeared yesterday. It is ascertained that the opponent has denuded all fronts and flung all his forces on Ekaterinburg. Can we hold Ekaterinburg long? It is difficult to say. We are taking all measures to hold it. Everything superfluous has been evacuated from Ekaterinburg. Yesterday a courier left with the documents that interest you. Communicate the decision of the Tsik, and may we acquaint the population by means of the text that you know?

“At a meeting of the Tsik presidium on the 18th it was decided (_postanovleno_) to recognise the decision of the Ur. Reg. Sovdep as regular (_pravilnym_). You may publish your own text. With us yesterday, in all the newspapers was inserted a corresponding announcement. I have this instant sent for the exact text and will communicate it to you (_tebié_, _i.e._, to thee. Sverdlov is speaking to an inferior).

* * * * *

“This moment I shall hand over the exact text of our publication....”

I do not reproduce it. There is no need. The “wireless” printed in _The London Times_ of July 22, 1918, is the exact and accurate translation of the text given in this conversation recorded in Ekaterinburg two days previously. (The Moscow and the Ekaterinburg texts are given in Chapter X.) What better evidence could be found of the genuineness of the above record? It stops there. But it tells us volumes. It is the language of conspirators, of accomplices in a crime, and of a superior whose orders and whose initiative alone count. Yankel Sverdlov assumes his true proportions. He and the Bolshevist Government in which he was omnipotent as president of the Central Executive Committee (Tsik) and virtually chief also of the Red Inquisition are forever identified with the murders that have been described in this work. The courier referred to is Yurovsky. We know that he left on the 19th with the plunder and, it is believed, the “heads.” The Whites were beginning to concentrate their forces. That was four days after the “execution.”

But why all these precautions? If the people are so anxious to try and to punish their late ruler, why resort to all manner of subterfuges, both in committing the “execution” and in acquainting the people of the death of their “oppressor”? The answer is a simple one: Sverdlov and his associates were not sure of the people. The reason of that is equally simple: they were not Russians; they were Jews. They were “internationalists,” repudiating all nationality, yet disguised under Russian names. The Russians in their midst were dupes or dummies. Krassin might come to clear the ground, but Apfelbaum-Kamenev appeared for the serious work. What happened in London in 1920 is comparable in a modest way with the Red mechanism in Russia itself.

Taken according to numbers of population, the Jews represented one in ten; among the komisars that rule Bolshevist Russia they are nine in ten--if anything, the proportion of Jews is still greater.

There has been no intention here to ascribe the murder of the Romanovs to a race vendetta: it is the Jewish organisations in this and other countries that have emphasised this aspect of the Soviet crimes by their persistent attempts to prove that no Jews took part in them. Why do they not follow the example of the bold Rabbi who excommunicated Laiba Braunstein, alias Leo Trotsky, for the abominable crimes that Jew had committed against humanity and against civilisation? Why are they trying to screen the sinister Red Tsar Yankel Sverdlov and his host of Jewish assassins--the Isai Goloshchekins, the Yankel Yurovskys?

They feared the Russian people, they feared the Romanovs because they were Russians, they feared Nicholas Romanov because he had been a Russian Tsar and when he refused to be seduced from his loyalty to his people and to the Allies they resolved that he should die--he and all the Romanovs. This resolve was carried out when the advance of anti-Bolshevist forces gave a reasonable hope of sophisticating the crime and avoiding a just punishment.

And so definite was Jew-ruled Moscow on the necessity of the ex-Tsar’s death that a whole month before the murder, the report persisted that Nicholas II. was dead. On the 21st June the Komisar of the Press, named Stark, telegraphed to the Presidium of the Sovdep at Ekaterinburg: “Urgently inform regarding authenticity reports Nicholas Romanov killed”; on the 23rd, Bonch-Bruevich, the secretary of the Sovnarkom (Council of people’s Commissaries of which Lenin is president), telegraphed to the President of the Ekaterinburg Sovdep (_i.e._, Beloborodov): “Information circulating Moscow alleging former Emperor Nicholas the Second killed. Send any available information.” A certain Boyard arrived in Ekaterinburg on the 9th July and telegraphed to the French Consul in Moscow: “Am staying meanwhile at British Consulate. Reports about Romanov false.”

The Germans knew what they were doing when they sent Lenin’s pack of Jews into Russia. They chose them as agents of destruction. Why? Because the Jews were not Russians and to them the destruction of Russia was all in the way of business, revolutionary or financial. The whole record of Bolshevism in Russia is indelibly impressed with the stamp of alien invasion. The murder of the Tsar, deliberately planned by the Jew Sverdlov (who came to Russia as a paid agent of Germany) and carried out by the Jews, Goloshchekin, Syromolotov, Safarov, Voikov and Yurovsky, is the act not of the Russian people but of this hostile invader.

The Jewish domination in Russia is supported by certain Russians: the “burgess” Ulianov alias Lenin, the “noble” Chicherin, the “dissenter” Bonch-Bruevich. They are all mere screens or dummies behind which the Sverdlovs and the thousand and one Jews of Sovdepia continue their work of destruction; having wrecked and plundered Russia by appealing to the ignorance of the working folk, they are now using their dupes to set up a new tyranny worse than any that the world has known.

Sovietdom has consecrated three heroes to whom monuments have been erected: to Karl Marx, to Judas Iscariot, and to Leo Tolstoi, the three names that are associated with Revolution, Apostacy and Anarchism; two of them Jews.

When the Jew Kanegisser assassinated the Jew Uritsky, the Soviets ordained a Terror throughout the land. Rivers of Russian blood had to wipe away the stain caused by a Jew who dared to oppose the Jewish rulers of unhappy Russia.