As the months passed, Nicholas tried to keep abreast of events and began again to receive the London Times and the Paris Journal des Débats while Alexandra read the London Daily Graphic.1 His entourage continued to pass on anything they discovered on trips into town. Tobolsk, like every place in the country, was awash with talk and rumour, and people had their opinions about Sovnarkom. But precise information was in short supply. The Soviet remained, as had been the case since the February Revolution, in the hands of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. While industrial cities in Russia were succumbing to the Bolshevik political advance, Tobolsk stayed the same as it had been under the Provisional Government, and although Kerensky had fallen from power, his appointees continued to exercise authority there. Pankratov and Kobylinski in particular were under no threat of replacement. Sovnarkom had far too many crises to resolve in Petrograd to bother itself with a quiet provincial outpost such as Tobolsk. So long as the Romanovs were kept under firm control and there appeared no danger of their trying to escape, Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership saw no point in making changes to the guarding personnel. For the first time in his life, Nicholas was of no great interest to the Russian government.
On hearing on 31 November 1917 that the Bolsheviks had signed a truce with the Germans, he wrote in his diary: ‘I in no way expected such a nightmare. How did those Bolshevik scoundrels have the foulness to fulfil their sworn dream of proposing to conclude a peace with the enemy without asking the opinion of the people – and at a time when a big swathe of the country is occupied by the foe?’2 He rarely overheated the language in this fashion in things he wrote for himself. Perhaps he was hoping that people would one day read his words.
Sovnarkom was determined to end the fighting on the Eastern Front and set about demobilizing the old Russian Army. Troops in the older age cohorts were the first to receive their papers to return to their homes and families, but the Freedom House detachment could not safely be reduced in number. The replacements for the demobbed veterans tended to be younger and more impatient, and the revolutionary militants in the town were finding them easier to manipulate.3 Discipline was ever harder to achieve. When the Romanovs built a snow mountain in the garden, the men on guard took it down on the grounds that someone might shoot a weapon at them from the street – and the soldiers would be held to blame.4 Pankratov and Kobylinski could never take obedience for granted: it always had to be negotiated. As he had done in Tsarskoe Selo, Nicholas tried to get to know the troops. He especially liked and enjoyed talking to Ensign Tur and Sergeant Grishchenko. He played chess with some of the other soldiers. As the contingent’s personnel changed, it was not unknown for departing soldiers to creep upstairs and kiss his hand in farewell.5 But the departures disconcerted him, and when he asked about who was going to be guarding the family next, no one in the detachment could answer him.6
The men of the detachment in Tobolsk were unhappy about being kept on to guard the Romanovs and continually asked why they were being required to stay with their regiments. Meanwhile, other men arrived from the German and Austrian fronts and prowled the streets; soon there were 2,000 of them. Their ill-discipline became notorious. The sight of greatcoats scared many residents and agitated the authorities in charge of security at Freedom House, for these troops talked of wanting to spill blood. The physical security of the Romanovs was put in growing jeopardy for the first time since the transfer from Tsarskoe Selo. People sent threatening letters to Nicholas, which Pankratov and his assistants intercepted and burned. Pornographic messages arriving for the Romanov daughters were dealt with likewise. When the imperial retinue complained about the rigours of confinement, it was pointed out to them that only the ‘detachment of special purpose’ stood between them and a possible violent attack. Pankratov spelled this out in unambiguous terms to Dr Botkin and asked him to impress it on Nicholas for the good of the entire family.7
In myriad ways, great and small, the Romanovs were put on notice that they could no longer count on privileged treatment. Nicholas received a ration card that recorded his full name and address and noted his social status as ‘ex-Emperor’ (eks-Imperator). Even he had to have such a card to buy staples such as flour, cooking oil, salt, candles, sugar, soap, groats and oats. Card holders were allowed to make purchases either at the official town store or from the Self-Awareness Cooperative.8
Nicholas was appalled by the unrest that had continued in every Russian city since his abdication. The Romanovs were never in much danger from the citizens of Tobolsk, and Kobylinski was probably right in claiming that many people were pleased to see them but were too frightened to show this in public.9 In fact there were plenty of people who were delighted to see them on their way to church and some residents even sent delicacies from their own kitchens as a token of their best wishes. Freedom House was never short of treats in the last months of 1917.10 But the tension was mounting even in Tobolsk, especially among soldiers and ex-soldiers. Nicholas observed these developments with anxiety. Whereas he despised democratic institutions and procedures, he surprised himself by beginning to pin his hopes on the long-awaited Constituent Assembly. He frequently asked Pankratov when it would meet in Petrograd. Unfortunately, Pankratov had no better idea than anyone else.11
Letters to and from the Romanovs continued to be examined before being passed on, and the imperial family took steps to protect their confidentiality. Alexandra sometimes gave messages for Anna Vyrubova written in Church Slavonic to a former medical orderly at Tsarskoe Selo named Zhuk.12 She also used Sydney Gibbes and the maid, Anna Utkina, to take correspondence to the post office.13 Anastasia got her friend Ekaterina Zborovskaya to write to the Romanov servant Anna Demidova, the idea being Demidova would be under less stringent scrutiny. Anastasia also sent off some of her own letters without submitting them to Pankratov.14 She made little attempt to conceal from the outside world where the Romanovs were being confined – earlier, she had even written to Zborovskaya naming Governor’s House, indicating the rooms they occupied and including a photo of the building as seen from the road.15 She could hardly have done more to explain the practical requirements for a rescue attempt – the Romanovs were trying to keep all their options open.
Nicholas appreciated the ways that Pankratov contained the troubles that arose from the guard detachment. This was an uphill task and both Pankratov and Kobylinski were disconcerted by the decline in discipline and order. Soldiers frequently complained about the standard of canteen cooking. They noticed that the Romanovs often left meat on their plates – and they did not see why ‘Nikolashka’, as they called the emperor, should receive such indulgence. They objected to having to sleep on boards whereas he had a comfortable bed. They were also upset about the fact that they were paid less well than they had been before coming to Tobolsk. When the financial guarantees given to them in August 1917 were rendered obsolete by the October Revolution, they threatened to go out and rob the local shops. Kobylinski prudently increased their pay and improved their meals.16 Although this calmed things down for a while, the resentment soon returned. Some of the soldiers just for fun carved lewd words on to the swings used by the Romanov daughters.17
Meanwhile, political agitation was on the increase in the detachment as the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had always been active, experienced a challenge from a veteran political exile called Pisarevski who edited the Social-Democratic newspaper Rabochaya pravda and was chairman of the Tobolsk Soviet. Kobylinski, failing to appreciate that the Bolshevik–Menshevik split meant little in Tobolsk, wrongly designated him an out-and-out Bolshevik. Pisarevski gave credence to stories that the Romanovs were trying to escape. Politics in the region were in turmoil, and the Bolshevik-led West Siberian Regional Soviet Executive Committee in Omsk repeatedly demanded that the imperial family should be consigned to prison. Tobolsk itself had yet to fall under the exclusive power of the soviets and still had the provincial governor appointed by the Provisional Government. Pisarevski, if not a Bolshevik, was sympathetic to Sovnarkom and took it upon himself to assert ‘soviet power’. He went to Freedom House to demand to see the emperor after hearing a story to the effect that he had fled or escaped the night before. This was pure fantasy – as Pankratov firmly pointed out, all the Romanovs in Tobolsk had attended church that morning.18
Pisarevski, however, refused to give up. Although he accepted that the Romanovs were still in place, he was convinced that Pankratov was not to be trusted. In one of his discourses to the detachment, he denounced him as a ‘counter-revolutionary’.19
Olga and Tatyana went down with fever on 14 January – New Year’s Day in the old Russian calendar. The doctors suspected German measles and the family walked to Mass at the Church of the Annunciation without the two young women. The diagnosis was confirmed next day even though they both felt somewhat better twenty-four hours later. Alexei caught the infection on 16 January, as did Maria twenty-four hours later. Nicholas was stoical about this turn of events. He was much more shaken by growing signs of rudeness in the 2nd Riflemen’s Regiment – the troops of the 4th Regiment appeared more agreeable.20 They were calling for a daily vodka and a pay rise, and such were the worries about the potential for disobedience that the authorities promised to increase their salary to 400 rubles a month.21
News came from Petrograd that Sovnarkom had abruptly closed down the Constituent Assembly on 19 January. Elections had duly taken place in November and the result was a drastic disappointment for the Bolshevik and Left Socialist-Revolutionary coalition, which polled no more than a quarter of the votes. The Socialist-Revolutionaries won more seats than any rival party. Bolsheviks pointed out that the candidates’ lists had been drawn up before the organizational breakaway of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. This meant that the Socialist-Revolutionaries were better represented in the Assembly than they deserved. It was also the case that Sovnarkom’s decrees on peace and land had yet to register their full impact before the ballot was completed. Nonetheless, these were freely contested elections on the basis of universal adult suffrage – and they had happened under supervision by Soviet officials. When the Constituent Assembly met on 18 January, the Socialist-Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov claimed the right to form a government, and a public demonstration was arranged in support. Next day Sovnarkom ordered the termination of the proceedings. This was done by sailors from the Kronstadt naval base whose anarchist leader, Anatoli Zheleznyakov, brusquely announced: ‘The guard is tired!’
Lacking the troops and weapons to resist, Chernov and other Socialist-Revolutionary leaders decamped to Samara in the Volga region and established an alternative government styled as the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (or Komuch in its Russian acronym). As they set up an administration and assembled their own People’s Army, they aimed to seize power from Sovnarkom and reclaim the rights of elected Assembly deputies. From Samara they and their forces spread out to other Volga cities. Chernov chased out the Bolsheviks before realizing his plan to advance on the Russian capital. In the first months of 1918 this was the main threat to ‘soviet power’, a threat that was headed by socialists who challenged the legitimacy of the October Revolution.
As Pankratov was aware, such a sequence of events undermined his entire standing at Freedom House in Tobolsk. He had agreed to be commissar only until such time as the Constituent Assembly met in the capital. Sovnarkom had dispersed the Assembly and abolished all bodies associated with the Provisional Government. Since it had been Kerensky who appointed him, Pankratov concluded that his duties and usefulness were at their end.22 His logic was confirmed when the Tobolsk deputies to the Assembly returned from Petrograd. Inside the guard detachment, moves were initiated to elect new commanders as well as a new soldiers’ committee. The Soviet authorities in the capital gave their own stimulus. They had never felt complacent about Tobolsk since it was almost a town without Bolsheviks. This was why they empowered the West Siberian Regional Soviet Executive Committee in Omsk to oversee the situation. Omsk was formally in charge of the whole region inside the Soviet organizational hierarchy and Sovnarkom was asking it to bring the town under regular control with particular attention to Freedom House.
But in revolutionary conditions nothing could ever be quite so simple. Some of the detachment’s units were all too eager to see the back of Pankratov whereas others hoped to persuade him to stay on. This sharp dispute, however, only strengthened Pankratov’s determination. It was time, he believed, to leave.23
He therefore handed over his resignation to the soldiers’ committee on 24 January 1918, stating that he knew that there would be more trouble if he stayed. Committee chairman Kireev confirmed his agreement with Pankratov’s reasoning in an official affidavit.24 Pankratov had spent most of his life subject to the arbitrary will of authority. If anything untoward happened to the imperial family, he wanted proof that it was not his fault. As soon as he had resigned, he went to take his leave of Nicholas.25 Both he and Nicholas knew the consequences would be unhelpful for the Romanovs. Nicholas wrote confidentially and in English to his mother: ‘The man who was over us has at last been removed away by our soldiers. We have only got our dear colonel [Kobylinski], who came here with us. He does not read our letters nor those that we get from you; he always brings them himself to pretend before others that things go on as they used to.’26 This was less than crystal-clear English, perhaps because it was meant to keep the contents secret from prying Bolsheviks if they happened to intercept the letter. Probably Nicholas also wanted to lay down a suitable record for posterity.
It was a day of raucous change as the soldiers’ committee flexed its authority by ordering Sophie Buxhoeveden out of the Kornilov house.27 Buxhoeveden was unpopular with the troops. A bout of appendicitis had originally prevented her from accompanying the Romanovs to Tobolsk. After her operation, she made the trip alone on a train that was full of unruly soldiers, some of whom wandered down the corridors of her carriage shouting ‘Death to the bourgeois!’ When she presented herself in Tobolsk on 5 January 1918, the guard unit on duty for a while refused to let her in. Apparently the troops objected to her fine apparel, especially her grey overcoat.28 She had no choice but to move into lodgings with a Miss Mather, a friend of her mother’s in the town.29
The soldiers’ committee also lost no time in ordering Pankratov and Nikolski out of the Kornilov house.30 The two men were flummoxed by this peremptory behaviour. Tatyana Botkina overheard Nikolski saying: ‘We never thought that we’d be leaving before you did.’ Nikolski was carrying a small suitcase and wearing a ‘grandiose, shaggy black high hat that made him look more than ever like a robber’. He was not in a good mood. When asked where he and Pankratov were heading, he replied: ‘We don’t know. We’ll be looking for some little corner to tend to our feelings of resentment!’31 Pankratov and Nikolski stayed in Tobolsk for another month before making for Chita, where they arrived in March 1918.32 The Romanovs put a brave face on the situation. They appreciated the fact that there was more light in the Tobolsk winter than they had had in Tsarskoe Selo, and Alexei built tunnels in the snow and played at crawling through them.33 All they could do was hope for the best.
On 28 January, Ensign Pavel Matveev and the leader of the soldiers’ committee, Kireev, an NCO in the 1st Riflemen’s Regiment, decided to impose the guard detachment’s authority on the situation. Kireev moved his bed into Freedom House itself and set himself up in comfort in the meeting room there. This disturbed and affronted the Romanovs. Their bow-legged stoker Georgi, known to everyone as Zhorzhik, loosed a volley of curses at Kireev and threatened to throw both him and his bed out on to the street. The real power, however, lay with the soldiers. For them, Kireev had broken with the democratic spirit of the times. If they had to rough it in the adjacent garrison, why should he be any different?34 They replaced him with Matveev alone, who took a room across the road at the Kornilov house and put up a sign that said: ‘Quaters of comrade Pavel Matveevich Matveev’. Someone must have pointed out that he had misspelled the word ‘quarters’, and soon a modest sign appeared stating simply ‘Citizen P. M. Matveev’. Later, when he secured promotion, he tried to improve his education by buying a globe and some books and by taking lessons with local teachers.35
The guard detachment sought guidance from Moscow and sent a telegram requesting the dispatch of a Bolshevik commissar. Meanwhile it placed additional restrictions on the family’s right to take the air unsupervised. The soldiers themselves soon grew tired with enforcing the order, and the Romanovs were formally permitted to exercise for two hours twice a week without military surveillance.36 But attendance at church was banned at the same time and the family was no longer permitted its walks to the Church of the Annunciation.37 The Romanovs knew that the conditions of their captivity were likely to worsen, and the entire family shared a sense of growing danger.38