Commissar Vasili Yakovlev was in fact the pseudonym of Konstantin Myachin, a friend and comrade of Sverdlov since their years spent working together for the Bolsheviks before the Great War. Yakovlev and Sverdlov used the Russian familiar form of ‘you’ with each other – and Sverdlov knew Yakovlev as ‘Anton’, yet another of his aliases.1 Yakovlev was dark-eyed, thin and muscular. He trimmed his moustache in the English fashion and attracted attention by constantly flicking back his bushy hair. His jerky way of talking left no doubt that he expected to be obeyed: he had a commanding presence.2
Although he did not belong to the Urals communist elite that formed in the year after Nicholas’s fall from power, Yakovlev had known the Urals since childhood. Born in 1886 and raised in Orenburg province, Yakovlev had crammed a multitude of experiences into his short life. He briefly attended parochial school until being apprenticed first to a watchmaker and then to a cobbler. He ran away from the harsh working conditions and made a new life for himself as a fitter in a metallurgical factory, where he joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party and aligned himself with the Bolshevik faction. He became a valued militant in the Urals combat groups that Bolsheviks organized to assault political authorities as well as to carry out robberies – the Bolsheviks had no scruples about increasing their factional treasury by such means. Tough and confident, Yakovlev was supremely calm in the face of danger. There was hardly a Urals town where he did not operate as an armed Bolshevik ‘expropriator’ at a time when Lenin sought finance for the faction’s political purposes. Yakovlev’s last heist took place in 1909 in an attack on the Miass postal agency to the west of Chelyabinsk.3
The robberies helped to pay for the party school that the novelist Maxim Gorky was organizing on the island of Capri off the south Italian coast. Yakovlev himself took refuge abroad to escape pursuit by Russian police. With no private means to fall back on, he got a job as an electrician, working in Liège and Brussels, where he learned French while remaining in touch with the party. Not until after the February 1917 Revolution was it safe for him to return to Russia. (Like Lenin, he did this under the auspices of the German authorities.) He headed for Ufa and found employment at the Sim Works in the Urals while he promoted the Bolshevik cause. The Ufa Soviet sent him as one of the delegates to the Second Congress of Soviets in Petrograd in the autumn. He stayed there to help with the founding of the Cheka before putting in a request to go back to the Urals for some recuperation after his exertions. The central authorities suggested that he should become the military commissar in Ekaterinburg. On arrival he found that someone else, none other than Filipp Goloshchëkin, was already in post. A brief dispute ensued and, rather than prolong it, Yakovlev went back to Ufa where he made a huge collection of grain for transport to starving Petrograd – and Ufa in return received finance and weaponry.4
He moved to Moscow when the capital was transferred from Petrograd, and Sverdlov asked him to take personal charge of the delivery of the Romanovs to the Urals.5 Sverdlov thought that Yakovlev exactly the man to sort out the disarray in Tobolsk. Yakovlev had a shell of revolutionary toughness; he was also already one of the godfathers of the Soviet security service. Sverdlov, knowing that tempers were running high, selected an individual who knew the Urals well and had no reason to indulge the same Ekaterinburg leaders who had given him a frosty reception only a few weeks earlier. Sverdlov had confidence in Yakovlev’s capacity to navigate the stormy wrangles at both destinations.
Despite Sverdlov’s allocation of troops from Moscow, Yakovlev had to make arrangements of his own to complete his military detachment. He made first for his native Ufa, where he knew people whom he could trust. Goloshchëkin of the Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee was there at the time and the two of them talked at length about Yakovlev’s mission and achieved a degree of mutual confidence: it made sense for Yakovlev to obtain Ekaterinburg’s cooperation. From Ufa he travelled on to Chelyabinsk and picked up volunteers for a mounted unit at the nearby Minyar plant. He initiated nobody into his exact purposes as he led the detachment via Chelyabinsk to Ekaterinburg, where he held discussions with the Urals leaders before heading by train for Tyumen. By then he had told his men about the plan and the excitement mounted. The Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee sent word to Tobolsk ordering its people to submit to Yakovlev’s authority. Everything proceeded harmoniously as Alexander Avdeev came down from Tobolsk to meet him in Tyumen and accompany him on the last leg of the trip north.
Yakovlev brought his own telegraph operator and nurse – both apparently from Ufa like Yakovlev himself. If an awkward situation arose, he needed to have reliable contact with the capital, and he foresaw that there might be times when medical assistance was unavailable. Together with Galkin the telegraph operator, whom he used as a kind of adjutant, he was ready to impose himself at his destination.
On reaching Tobolsk with his contingent in the evening of 22 April, he learned of the trouble caused by Dutsman, Demyanov and Zaslavski. This added urgency to his need to assume personal control. He put the word out to the Ekaterinburg and Omsk forces in town that he would tolerate no interference and immediately spoke to the soldiers’ committee. Then he called a general meeting of the entire guard detachment. Brandishing his mandates signed by Lenin, Sverdlov and Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets V. A. Avanesov, he made it clear that he – and nobody else – was charged with full authority to deal with the Romanovs. He revealed that he had already promised the soldiers’ committee that he would resolve the payment grievances within the next day or two. Then he spoke about terms of service. With the demobilization of the old army, Yakovlev said, every soldier in the detachment was free to go or stay. He asked that the process should be an orderly one. He claimed that tensions with the other armed detachments in Tobolsk had been resolved. He had told them what he wanted, and he expected to be obeyed.6
Pavel Matveev in the chair gave his support and described the many difficulties that had faced the guard detachment after Pankratov’s departure. Dutsman, Demyanov and Zaslavski had caused nothing but trouble, frequently issuing direct physical threats.7 Zaslavski, who was present at the meeting, tried to shift the blame on to Demyanov; he defended his own actions as having been entirely in accordance with the Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee’s instruction to improve security at Freedom House at a time when the Tobolsk Soviet appeared hopelessly divided. Degtyarëv bridled at this picture and accused Zaslavski of introducing an atmosphere of conspiracy. He gave his own assurance that the local garrison would desist from using force.8 Yakovlev was winning the debate. When Matveev raised the festering grievance about the non-payment of wages, Yakovlev thanked the troops for their valour and loyalty and promised to tackle the wages question as a matter of urgency. Matveev thanked him for his helpful attitude and looked forward to a lessening of tensions in Tobolsk.9
The Romanovs were kept waiting in suspense. The daughters feared yet another search and consigned their letters to the flames in case Yakovlev found something in them that would cause trouble (although quite a lot of their correspondence has survived). Maria and Anastasia even burned their diaries.10 Tension mounted when Yakovlev sent word of his intention to come to Freedom House next day at 11 a.m.11
In fact, he turned up half an hour early, accompanied by Galkin the telegraphist as well as Kobylinski, Matveev, Avdeev and an unnamed duty officer. Alexandra was not ready to see them but Yakovlev went ahead and explained his intentions to Nicholas and three of his daughters. They were relieved by Yakovlev’s smile and courteous manner as he enquired whether they had any complaints about the guard detachment or the premises. Nicholas was his usual affable self and replied that the troops were giving him no cause for concern. Yakovlev indicated a need to conduct a comprehensive search of the building before taking any further decisions. A brief moment of unease occurred when Yakovlev asked to see Alexei. Nicholas fended off the request by saying that his son was very poorly. Yakovlev firmly repeated his demand. The daughters said nothing as they watched and listened to the dispute. Eventually Nicholas agreed to Yakovlev entering the room where Alexei was lying. This enabled Yakovlev to confirm that the boy appeared mortally ill; he recorded his conclusion that the disease was the result of a genetic inheritance from the Hesse side of the family.12
Yakovlev returned to see Alexandra thirty minutes later, when he also took another look at Alexei.13 Neither Nicholas nor Alexandra was much impressed by the new Bolshevik commissar, but they agreed that he could have been a lot worse. He was patently no ruffian and his politeness was undeniable. Alexandra expressed pleasant surprise: ‘There’s no problem: he spoke gently with me.’14 Gibbes even thought him a decent sort of fellow.15 Mundel, a senior adjutant who had followed the Romanovs from Tsarskoe Selo, judged him to be an intellectual in his thinking and demeanour, noting his frequent use of French phrases, and Kobylinski offered the same verdict.16
Nevertheless, Yakovlev declined to be gentle on the detainees, introducing a number of petty restrictions on their daily routines. He also ordered a narrowing of their diet. Until he arrived, the Romanovs and their retainers had a three-course dinner in the evenings. When Yakovlev cut out sugar from their diet, they could no longer look forward to a pudding course.17 He may have acted out of an instinctive sense that the Romanovs had to recognize that he alone was in charge at Freedom House. Or perhaps he simply felt that they had been indulged for too long at a time when most Russians were suffering growing material hardship. In any case, his main concern was not with the Romanov diet but with the military situation in Tobolsk. In the first two full days after his arrival, he worked feverishly to secure control – and he knew that the Ekaterinburg and Omsk Red Guard detachments contained resentful elements. He had his own armed contingent and had won over the guard detachment at Freedom House. But if he wanted to avoid an armed clash in the town, he had to convince everybody that he was a genuine revolutionary radical. Force alone was not enough.
Some people, however, proved unpersuadable. Among them was Semën Zaslavski, who plainly had malign intentions towards the Romanovs, even though he pretended otherwise.18 Orders from Moscow were to keep the family safe. Zaslavski behaved as if he had no need to obey Sovnarkom or the Central Committee. He was not acting independently: as was to become clear many decades later, he was following the secret course of action that the Urals leadership had approved. Although they preferred to see Nicholas in Ekaterinburg than in Tobolsk, they gave calm consideration to the idea of killing him in transit if ‘suitable conditions’ were to arise.19 Zaslavski was under instructions to carry out this plan on the leadership’s behalf. His lack of discretion meant that everyone in the town had an inkling about what he was up to.20 He even suggested to Yakovlev that he should avoid sitting next to Nicholas when Yakovlev took the Romanovs south to Tyumen. He could hardly have dropped a clearer hint that an armed attempt was going to be made to shoot the emperor.21
Yakovlev was sufficiently alarmed to instruct Avdeev, Zaslavski’s own comrade from Ekaterinburg, to take Zaslavski into custody. Avdeev duly complied and Yakovlev was pleased to have won the trial of strength. But it was only a temporary victory; for Avdeev quickly sent a man to release Zaslavski, who promptly left the town. And nobody knew what Zaslavski might try to do next.22