The Urals leadership did not regard the Ipatev house as suitable for most of the retainers who arrived with Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria Nikolaevna. A personal search of Dolgorukov by the Cheka produced a number of suspicious items. It was found that he was carrying a large sum of money as well as two maps of Siberia which highlighted all the waterway routes. This was enough to prompt his dispatch to the Ekaterinburg prison.1 Tatishchev suffered the same treatment on no such pretext. The fact was that the communists desired to strip the Romanovs of the support of anyone with military or political experience. They also imprisoned Fëdor Gorshkov after Nicholas approved his release from service on grounds of ill-health.2
There was a simultaneous tightening of control back in Tobolsk, where the soviet chairman, Pavel Khokhryakov, conducted a campaign of political repression. He was Ekaterinburg’s chief emissary to the town, and the Urals Regional Executive Committee’s growing influence was confirmed when messages at last reached Tobolsk that Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria had been delivered into its hands. The secret was first revealed on 3 May when Kobylinski at Freedom House received a telegram from Pavel Matveev, who reported on the convoy’s adventurous journey. Until then it had been assumed that Moscow was the destination.3 Now all roads seemed to lead to Ekaterinburg and Khokhryakov was left as the sole man in charge when Moscow designated him by telegram as Yakovlev’s successor as its Freedom House commissar – and he paid frequent visits of supervision.4 Tobolsk as a whole felt the weight of his authority. On 28 April 1918, he ordered the arrest of Bishop Germogen before transporting him to the Urals.5 Germogen was a tireless opponent of the October Revolution and was implicated in the fitful attempts to rescue the Romanovs. Tobolsk had hardly any native Bolsheviks and there was widespread anti-Bolshevik sentiment in the populace. Khokhryakov aimed to make it secure for Sovnarkom and he was taking no chances: every enemy of ‘soviet power’ was to be rounded up and either imprisoned or shot.
As part of his security campaign he conducted a thorough search of Baroness Buxhoeveden and her possessions. The composition of the troops continued to change as some were demobbed and others, including Latvians, arrived for service.6 Khokhryakov intensified the process, dispensing with what remained of the contingent left behind by Yakovlev and replacing it with his Red Guards from Ekaterinburg.7 He also called on the Urals leadership to send Rodionov, a Left Socialist-Revolutionary and Regional Soviet Executive Committee member, to Tobolsk and take day-to-day control at Freedom House because the commandant appointed by Yakovlev had taken to drink and was no longer dependable.8
Rodionov, like Khokhryakov himself a few weeks earlier, avoided travelling via Tyumen in case of trouble.9 Arriving in Tobolsk on 6 May, he brought a letter and fresh orders from Beloborodov, who told him that eight of the troops under Yakovlev had been taken into custody because of a mere temporary misunderstanding – he added that everything had been resolved and that they had parted friends. This was an exaggeration of their feelings. Presumably Beloborodov was aware that many of Matveev’s comrades remained in Tobolsk and were capable of causing trouble. Beloborodov, having won the struggle with Yakovlev over Nicholas’s detention, aimed to keep everything in order in Tobolsk. But he also wanted Bolshevism to triumph and instructed Khokhryakov as the Tobolsk Soviet chairman to levy a special financial ‘contribution’ from the middle classes and deal ruthlessly with every sign of counter-revolution. Khokhryakov was to continue his repressive campaign and send all serious troublemakers to Ekaterinburg.10 As it happened, Yakovlev’s escort officers, Nabokov and Matveev, arrived from Ekaterinburg on 8 May 1918 along with five comrades.11 They were inconsequential in the eyes of Khokhryakov and Rodionov, and the fact that they had been on good terms with Yakovlev no longer counted in their favour. Yakovlev too was history.
Rodionov was fit, slim and young with military experience and an abrupt manner. The members of the imperial family and retinue anticipated his arrival with trepidation, but not everyone found him as severe as they expected. Tatishchev recognized him as someone who had served abroad at the same time as him before the Great War. He mentioned this to Rodionov and asked for his help. According to Gilliard, Rodionov replied: ‘I know that you’re a good person. You were never contemptuous towards people. I’m ready to help you as much as I can in your current situation.’ Tatishchev replied: ‘I’ve only got one request and I’d be grateful if you could fulfil it: it is that you won’t separate me from the Sovereign and that I’m allowed to stay with him whatever may happen.’ Rodionov, though, could give no such promise. As he explained, he was merely a member of the Regional Committee and was not a free agent. He was willing to be courteous but was not going to make unauthorized concessions.12
Kobylinski’s authority was already spent – after a fuss made by the troops he even lost the right to enter Freedom House. He began to get the restrictions lifted after appeal to Khokhryakov, but Rodionov’s arrival switched everything back. On 11 May he relieved Kobylinski of his responsibilities – and this time there was no reversal of the decision. Rodionov ordered his Latvian troops to bar his entry to the residence. Kobylinski’s health worsened under the strain and he took to his bed.13 The turnover of the old personnel continued. On 17 May 1918 Rodionov dismissed the entire existing guard detachment, replacing it with the force he had brought from Ekaterinburg.14 In the same days he set about tightening the routines for guarding the Romanovs. Rodionov was concerned about the rumours of plots to rescue them, and he ordered them to sleep with their bedroom doors ajar at night. The Romanov daughters were naturally alarmed about this, but when Alexei Volkov objected on their behalf, Rodionov replied: ‘My soldiers aren’t going to walk past the open doors. But if you don’t comply with my demand, I have full authority to shoot to kill on the spot.’ Severity was gradually replacing civility.15
The stern treatment increased. Klementi Nagorny, the loyal ex-sailor employed to look after Alexei, was searched at Freedom House on his return from town and found to be carrying a letter to the tsarevich from Dr Derevenko’s son. Rodionov told Khokhryakov that this proved the need for a further tightening of conditions. He also confiscated a dagger which had been left with Alexei. When nuns visited Freedom House, the detachment took pleasure in frisking them, and Rodionov placed a guard in the room during religious services. Olga could stand it no longer and said that if she had known in advance, she would have preferred the priest not to come.16
It had always been the intention that the young Romanovs who remained in Tobolsk would join their parents as soon as Alexei’s health improved. Alexandra sent a message to Tobolsk asking her people to bring as many of the family valuables as possible when they came to Ekaterinburg. She put this in code, referring to her jewels as medicines.17 In the meantime, dinners at Freedom House continued to follow the settled routine. The menu remained of decent quality – and the Romanov table was even supplied with roast beef.18 The family’s daily requirements were never neglected. Alexei was on the mend and by mid-May, to his sisters’ delight, he was feeling a good deal better.19 The instinct of Tatishchev and Gilliard was to postpone the departure to Ekaterinburg for as long as possible; they felt with some justification that everybody would be safer in Tobolsk. But the three Romanov daughters badly wanted to rejoin their parents, and neither Tatishchev nor Gilliard felt justified in preventing this.20
The second Romanov party departed from Tobolsk in the steamer Rus at eleven o’clock on 20 May 1918.21 On board were Olga, Tatyana, Anastasia and Alexei, accompanied by the twenty-six retainers who had stayed behind when Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria departed. Kobylinski remained in Tobolsk. Strictly speaking, as Kerensky’s appointee, he did not belong to the retinue, but he had looked after the Romanovs as best he could and was much valued by them, and only illness prevented him from joining them.22 Rodionov was in charge. He locked Alexei and Nagorny into their cabin – this seemed harsh when he saw no point in doing the same to Alexei’s sisters and Alexei was hardly in sprightly shape.23 Two days later they docked in Tyumen. Rasputin’s daughter Maria happened to be at the harbour at the time buying tickets to sail north to Pokrovskoe. She noticed Alexei and Anastasia Gendrikova, his tutor, looking at her through a window of the steamer, and although they had no contact, she recorded: ‘They were like angels.’24 The Romanovs were under strict supervision while being escorted to the railway station, where they took the waiting train to Ekaterinburg. A fourth-class carriage had been reserved for them.25
They reached Ekaterinburg by train at two in the morning of 23 May 1918. For the next seven hours the engine pulled them backwards and forwards between the city’s two railway stations. This railway carousel was designed to ensure that no crowd gathered to attend the scene.26 Alexei and his three sisters were the first ones decanted from the train after nine o’clock and taken to the Ipatev house. Tatyana carried her pet dog.27 When the Bolsheviks returned to the train at around midday, they took Tatishchev, Gendrikova and her fellow tutor Ekaterina Shneider from their carriage. Then they returned to remove the cook Kharitonov, the servant Sednëv, the valet Volkov and the servant Trupp. Sophie Buxhoeveden, perhaps feeling abandoned, moved into the same carriage as Gilliard and others. Eventually, Rodionov told all those of the retinue who remained on board that they ‘weren’t needed’ and were ‘free’ – the order was then announced that they were required to leave the province altogether and indeed to go back to Tyumen.28 The guards’ duty book at the Ipatev house recorded the arrival of Olga, Tatyana, Anastasia and their brother Alexei together with the handful of retainers they had brought from Tobolsk. Nicholas’s family was reunited.29