Monarchist organizations had been astonished and demoralized by the fall of the dynasty, and the tide of events in the year 1917 moved in a direction entirely opposite to their purposes. They recognized that any attempt at rescuing the Romanovs from the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo would have been suicidal because of the large local garrison that was full of soldiers who hated Nikolashka. The Petrograd Soviet would have mobilized them to catch and arrest the family and their liberators. No group of conspirators was readying itself to make a move. Monarchism was an idea and not yet a movement.
The transfer of the Romanovs to Tobolsk, followed by the October Revolution, had stirred a handful of monarchists out of their months of passivity. But although they itched to do something decisive, it was never clear how they imagined that they would carry out a rescue of the imperial family. The risks were enormous. If ever they penetrated Freedom House, the guard detachment would resist and there would be much bloodshed. Pursuit, furthermore, would be inevitable in the event that the rescuers managed to make off with the imperial family. There was no chance of using river transport north to the Arctic Ocean or south to Tyumen until the spring thaw. In the winter months the sole travel option was by horse-drawn carriage or sleigh. If the party took the roads to either Tyumen or Omsk, Red forces would easily intercept them as soon as the Tobolsk Soviet raised the alarm about what was happening. The other possibility was for any rescue party to head for the forests across the river to the west of the town, but if they were to take this option, they would still have to decide where to go next. Cities and towns were full of enemies. Escape from Freedom House would be just the start of the difficulties.
The most active figure in the monarchy’s cause after the February Revolution was Nikolai E. Markov, widely known as Markov-II, who had headed the Union of the Russian People before 1917 and had been a Duma deputy since 1907. Bulky of girth and long-haired, he cut a striking figure. A virulent anti-Semite, he jokingly used ‘Goy’ as his pseudonym in newspaper articles. Markov-II was a fanatical believer in autocracy, and his chief criticism of Nicholas in power was that he yielded too many times to liberal political opinion; he refused to accept that the February Revolution was irreversible. He saw Nicholas’s rescue and restoration to power as an urgent requirement.
The banker and sugar manufacturer Karl Yaroshinski seems to have supplied a sum of 175,000 rubles for the schemes that were being concocted by monarchist groups.1 Yaroshinski was a dynamic financier who accrued a vast fortune in time of war. He owned the controlling shares in five big banks and became acquainted with the imperial family through his funding of the convalescent hospitals where Alexandra and her daughters worked as nurses until the February Revolution.2 When Kerensky became minister-chairman, Yaroshinski approached him with a projected initiative for the restoration of the country’s depleted finances. He offered to provide assistance from his own resources, doubtless with an eye to making a future profit for himself while doing his best for Russia. Kerensky passed on the project for scrutiny in the Ministry of Finances, which quickly rejected it – and Yaroshinski disappeared from public view.3 When the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, he allowed Markov-II to bend his ear about his schemes to liberate the Romanovs.
Markov-II had written to the empress in the Tsarskoe Selo days using Alexandra’s confidante Yulia Den as a courier. When the Romanovs were transferred to Tobolsk, he sent a trusted officer from the Crimean Regiment to seek them out with a view to organizing a rescue. His hope was to involve Anna Vyrubova but she declined to cooperate with him and objected to the fact that Markov-II had already sent an army officer to west Siberia. Vyrubova thought Markov-II was complicating her own efforts to secure the release of the Romanovs; and Boris Solovëv, who headed her operation based in Tyumen, took steps that prevented Markov-II’s emissary from moving on to Tobolsk.4
Solovëv, an army officer, was twenty-eight years old in 1918 and had the reputation of being a fervent monarchist. A tempestuous man, he had come close to physical blows with the Provisional Government’s deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Pëtr Palchinski, who annoyed him by talking of the arbitrariness of rule under Nicholas II.5 Rather than return to his regiment, he began to work for Yaroshinski, whom he and others persuaded to subsidize a mission to Tobolsk.6 Solovëv, however, was not just a professed enthusiast for the defunct monarchy but also a past follower of Grigori Rasputin. Through his acquaintance with Rasputin he courted and married his daughter Matrëna. For Nicholas and Alexandra, this was a wonderful recommendation. Many Russian monarchists still felt very differently about Rasputin; but in the political disruptions of 1917, when few were bold enough to speak up for Nicholas, Solovëv had gained some acceptance as a man who had the Romanovs’ interests at heart. He also had the military training to carry out hazardous projects which daunted former members of the imperial court. Young and energetic, Solovëv appeared ready to sacrifice his personal security for the salvation of Nicholas and his family.
On 20 January 1918 he left Petrograd on a journey to Tobolsk that took him via Ekaterinburg and Tyumen with baggage containing money, chocolate, perfumes, linen and presents from people who knew the Romanovs; he also took three packets of letters from Anna Vyrubova and Vladimir and Evgenia Voeikov – the Voeikovs had belonged to the imperial retinue before the February Revolution, he as court commandant and she as a lady-in-waiting.7 Solovëv carefully disguised his identity and while in Tyumen lived under the alias Stanislav Korzhenevski.8
He was later to claim that he passed the money he had received for the Romanovs to the valet Alexei Volkov who handed it over to the empress.9 Pleased by the gift, she started a correspondence with Solovëv.10 Volkov brought out a message from her advising him to liaise with Father Alexei Vasilev.11 It was probably to Solovëv that Alexandra made the following request on 6 February 1918: ‘Let me know what you think about our situation. Our common desire is to achieve the possibility of living quietly, like an ordinary family, outside politics, fighting and intrigues. Write frankly because I will accept your letter with belief in your sincerity.’12 Solovëv refused to show undue optimism: ‘I’m deeply grateful for your expression of feelings and trust . . . Generally, the situation is very difficult and could become critical. I am convinced that what is needed is assistance from devoted friends, or a miracle, so that all may end well and that your desire for a quiet life may be fulfilled. Your sincerely devoted B[oris].’13
Around this time, Solovëv decided to walk past Freedom House in the daylight hours. As he had intended, he was spotted by the Romanovs – Anastasia, Maria and Tatyana were standing by a window at that moment and looking down on the street. The empress wrote him a note which a maid passed on to him. His previous message to her had been obscure about the prospects of rescue and Alexandra could see no hope of escape except by divine intervention:
You have confirmed my fears: I thank you for your honesty and courage. Friends are either somewhere distant and unknown or else they do not exist, and I pray tirelessly to the Lord and put my hopes in Him alone. You talk of a miracle, but isn’t it a miracle that the Lord has sent you here to us. May God keep you – gratefully, A.14
Alexandra had never met Solovëv but followed her instincts and placed her trust in him. She was desperate. Solovëv was one of the few people outside the court retinue who had succeeded in breaking the cordon around the family’s life and circumstances. In her eyes, he was the perfect knight, willing to sacrifice himself for the dynastic cause and the Christian faith.
A number of people in Tobolsk and elsewhere judged Solovëv less benignly. Even his wife objected to him. It was always a difficult marriage and Matrëna suffered frequent beatings.15 She also complained about his attitude to money. In her diary on 2 March 1918 she mentioned Yaroshinski as one of her husband’s financial donors: ‘I know how much money that Yeroshinski [sic] gave to Borya [i.e. Boris] but he doesn’t want to give me any money. He believes that his money belongs to him alone and my money is his as well.’16 Solovëv was almost certainly pocketing some of the funds being sent to relieve or rescue the Romanovs. He seems to have delivered only 35,000 rubles, a small proportion of Yaroshinski’s 175,000 rubles, to the empress.17 In later years Yaroshinski testified that he had had no direct dealings with Solovëv. Yaroshinski, of course, may not have been privy to knowledge of the exact chain of financial transfers after the money left Petrograd; and it is not known whether it was transferred in a lump sum or in separate tranches. Even so, he was regarded as a swindler by those of the imperial family’s well-wishers who observed at close range the operation that he and Father Alexei Vasilev established in Tobolsk.
Solovëv was not a man who liked to be crossed. He was also devious, and whenever any of his military recruits challenged his authority, he covertly denounced them on spurious grounds to the Tobolsk Soviet, which was happy to take them into custody.18 Tatyana Botkina despised him and had no higher opinion of Vasilev, a man of the cloth who seemed more interested in making money than in achieving freedom for the Romanovs; she surmised that Vasilev probably also manoeuvred so as to leave himself in a good enough light to benefit if ever Nicholas returned to the throne.19
It was usual for Solovëv and Vasilev to exaggerate the size and potential of their ‘organization’ – and Vasilev, a heavy drinker, talked in his cups of a plan to liberate the family.20 The two of them claimed to have infiltrated 300 ex-officers into Tobolsk. While accepting that some such recruits existed in the town, Tatyana Botkina questioned whether there really were as many well-trained men as Solovëv and Vasilev reported.21 In her opinion, Solovëv and Vasilev were no better than liars and fantasists. When she encountered one of their recruits, he told about how he had arrived in Tyumen and was living disguised as a manual labourer.22 Botkina thought it significant that he never reached Tobolsk, and she concluded that the imperial family’s hopes were being artificially boosted. It was her belief that Count Yakov Rostovtsev was the only financial backer who successfully enabled one of his men to travel north from Tyumen and transmit 80,000 roubles to Dolgorukov via Dr Botkin. (This appears to have been the sum of money that Dolgorukov would take with him to Ekaterinburg in April.) The Botkins also became acquainted with an active monarchist who lived for several months in Tobolsk; but it turned out that he belonged to a group that had completely omitted to formulate a serious plan to rescue the Romanovs.23 Indeed, there was a growing suspicion that Solovëv was not merely a swindler but an agent working for the Germans. Proof was unforthcoming until 1919 when he was found in possession of German intelligence papers, and Botkina came to the conclusion that he had been aiming to destroy the imperial family.24
Nor did Solovëv or Vasilev make a good impression on a young ensign, Konstantin Melnik, who stayed in Tobolsk in September 1917 and again in May 1918. He formed the opinion that their ‘organization’ was a sham. As far as he could see, they held back much of the money intended for the Romanovs and did nothing to arrange for their liberation. Reportedly, Vasilev asked for and received 14,000 rubles for purposes that were not disclosed to Melnik, but Melnik felt sure that Vasilev was up to no good.25
Sergei Markov was another young member of the armed forces who put himself at Markov-II’s disposal in service of the monarchist cause. In the last days before the abdication, he had inveigled his way into the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo and asked the empress how he could help her.26 As a proud officer in the Crimean Cavalry, he regarded the mutinies in the February Revolution as treason.27 Markov set off for Tobolsk in March 1918 under the false identity of a merchant by name of Marchenko to formulate a proper rescue plan.28 He ignored a warning from his group’s leader, Markov-II, that funds were very stretched for any such venture. In Tyumen he searched out Solovëv, who had already established contact with the Romanovs. Everything that he heard from Solovëv convinced him that he could pull off his assignment. By a relay of horse-drawn sleighs he arrived in Tobolsk and took rooms in an almost empty hotel close to the centre, where Bolsheviks were his main co-residents. While they worked for the destruction of private commerce in Russia, he pretended to be a simple trader: he had to be careful about how he behaved.29
Markov quietly introduced himself to Sophie Buxhoeveden and showed her the packages he had brought from Petrograd. Buxhoeveden passed them to the valet Volkov, who took them into Freedom House.30 Markov introduced himself to the local diocesan, Bishop Germogen, the day after attending a church service and explained his purposes in Tobolsk. Germogen told him: ‘God will reward you for this.’31 Markov also contacted Father Alexei at the Abalak monastery, who had the Romanov servant Kirpichnikov lodging with him.32
Kirpichnikov was one of the lowliest figures in the entourage; he skivvied in the kitchen and looked after the pigs that the Romanovs bought after coming to Tobolsk. (He kept pigs of his own and marked out a piece of the yard for them.) A dishevelled man of exceptional strength, he was loved for his loyalty, but the residents hated the fact that he cooked for the family and the animals using the same pots and pans. Kirpichnikov was oblivious of what other people thought, but some days the smell became quite overpowering, and the Romanovs and their retinue fled upstairs to the first-floor rooms, closing the doors behind them. Gibbes, a fastidious man, could not bear to stay in Freedom House when Kirpichnikov was preparing food for the pigs – rather than put up with the pungent fumes, he would claim to be suffering from the flu and take to his room, sitting for whole wintry days with the windows open. But the guard detachment soldiers trusted Kirpichnikov, and he was able to bring letters and sweets into Freedom House for the Romanovs.33
The empress had vivid memories of Markov and responded gaily to his letter and books. She sent him a gift through Father Alexei: ‘To Little M., many thanks from the Chief and a present from their Highnesses, a big ivory pipe.’ The priest explained that Alexandra had not known what to give him but hoped that he would remember her whenever he lit up.34 Alexandra soon also indicated her concerns for Markov’s safety, since he was likely to be recognized by both Kobylinski and Bitner who had seen him in Tsarskoe Selo and might decide to inform on him. Although Kobylinski was helpful to the Romanovs, he was one of the Provisional Government’s appointees and ultimately – in Alexandra’s opinion – not to be trusted. Her advice to Markov was to return to Solovëv, who by then was living in Pokrovskoe.35 But caution was alien to Markov. Having swapped messages with the empress, he strolled for a while outside Freedom House so that the Romanovs might see him. By chance Alexandra, standing at the balcony, spotted him. On 25 March 1918 she wrote in her diary: ‘Saw my ex-Crimean Markov pass and Shtein too.’36
Yet this was as near as Markov got to a rescue attempt. Bishop Germogen was not surprised because he had already concluded that monarchism in Russia remained poorly organized, having been blown to the winds by the revolution that had swept the Romanovs from power.37 Markov was bold, even brazen, but he could do no more than prance about in the street outside Freedom House.
Irritated by the inactivity of fellow monarchists, Markov continually planned for the liberation of the Romanovs. As he saw it, there were several possibilities. One was to assemble as many cavalry officers as Markov-II could make available and move them at top speed to Tobolsk. He reasoned that the town’s geographical isolation would work in his favour, and he counted on help from monarchists based in Tyumen. There were also sympathizers in the Red armed forces whom Markov thought he could organize to carry out a raid on Freedom House. Another idea was to foment a fictitious peasant uprising against the Bolsheviks outside Tobolsk and exploit the ensuing emergency by bringing an armed force into the town and taking charge of the imperial family. Markov believed he could prepare for this by enabling monarchists to desert the Red Army and slip into hiding in Tobolsk until the critical moment. The point was to concentrate a decisive armed core near Freedom House.38
Nicholas, too, was looking for reasons to stay optimistic. He had a strong instinct that Kobylinski wished him well and put on a display of severity when under the eyes of the detachment guards.39 The two of them got on well, for which Nicholas gave thanks in his diary: ‘Kobylinski is my best friend.’40 Tatyana Botkina surmised that support for the Romanovs was much more widely felt in Tobolsk than anyone dared to show; she told intimates of her confidence that Nicholas would find plenty of soldiers and ferrymen to help him if ever he undertook a practical attempt to escape captivity.41 There was even a rumour that a group of riflemen under Ensign Malyshev had let Kobylinski know that if a rescue mission were to be organized while they were on guard duty, they would not intervene.42 Alexandra drew on such suggestions, assuring family and retinue that the Freedom House detachment contained NCOs who were quietly sympathetic towards Nicholas and harboured a sense of guilt for what had been done to him. She pointed to the fact that they were secretly continuing to leave gifts of unleavened bread or flowers for the family.43
How, indeed, was this to be explained if everyone hated the Romanovs? But Alexandra was overlooking the fact that the former empire was a divided society and that many millions of citizens continued to detest Nicholas the Bloody or, at best, were indifferent to his fate. It was natural for the family to try to comfort itself with the idea that they were loved by most ordinary Russians. But their thoughts were out of touch with reality in revolutionary Russia.