On 13 July, Sovnarkom sharpened its measures against the Romanovs by laying down that all property belonging to Nicholas and his family was to become the ‘legacy’ of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. This was to include everything that they owned in Russia and abroad. The decree covered everyone named as a family member in the official genealogical book; it was signed by Lenin and his chief-of-staff Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich.1 This was kept a secret for several days even though Romanov lands had already been seized through Lenin’s Land Decree in the October Revolution, and no Soviet official had been inhibited about confiscating other items of the family’s property. It is just possible that Lenin, being aware that the imperial family was about to be executed, wanted to place such seizures on a proper legal foundation. He may have also discussed drastic action in the previous week with Goloshchëkin in Moscow or possibly with Beloborodov by the Hughes apparatus. And perhaps he aimed to preclude any Romanovs who found sanctuary abroad from lodging any claim to Nicholas’s property. Lenin was the ultimate legal nihilist and thought constitutions were a ‘bourgeois scam’. But he was also a trained lawyer who could see the point of making it difficult for anyone, either in Russia or abroad, to disrupt the affairs of government.
In the second week of July, Lenin and Sverdlov were preoccupied by the Mirbach assassination and the Moscow and Yaroslavl uprisings, and the likelihood is that the capital’s leadership had not yet come to a definitive decision on the Romanovs. One thing alone was clear: Moscow at that time was no longer feasible as a place of trial for the former emperor.
But there is another interpretation. The commissar responsible for food-supplies, Pëtr Voikov – according to a memoir published in the West by the defector G. Z. Besedovskii – later asserted that the Urals regional leadership’s new policy had once reflected a difference of opinion with Moscow. But Voikov added that Moscow itself was divided, and that whereas Lenin stayed minded to preserve Nicholas’s life as a bargaining chip in talks with the Germans, Sverdlov and Krestinski supported the men of the Urals. But supposedly Lenin switched his stance in the capital when he heard of the imminent attack by the Czechoslovak Legion. The Central Committee did, however, warn that the deaths of Alexandra and the Romanov children had to be kept absolutely secret at a time when the German authorities were talking about giving them asylum and there was still an acute fear of irritating Berlin after Mirbach’s assassination.2 This is an entirely credible theory, but it is also completely unprovable. What is more, Voikov might well have been parroting the soon-to-be-agreed official line that the ultimate decision was taken unilaterally in Ekaterinburg. Another possibility is that Lenin and Sverdlov sent Goloshchëkin on his way with a number of approved possibilities while leaving the ultimate choice to the Regional Executive Committee.
Although documentation is slender about Lenin’s culpability for the exact decision at this stage, he was certainly responsible for making it easy to proceed with the executions. Throughout the summer, he chided any Bolsheviks he suspected of lacking the necessary mercilessness towards the enemies of the October Revolution. He was creating and endorsing an environment of violence. He had a chance to halt the killings in the Urals after hearing about how Myasnikov had done away with Mikhail Romanov, but in fact he refrained from making any comment of disapproval. Indeed, it is quite possible that Lenin did provide Goloshchëkin with his secret sanction for the same action to be taken against the detainees in the Ipatev house.3
On 12 July, after Goloshchëkin returned from his Moscow negotiations, the regional soviet met to consider its own prospects. According to Executive Committee member Pavel Bykov’s account a few years later, the first big question put to the military command was simply how long Ekaterinburg could hold out.4 The answer was obvious. Czechoslovak forces were overrunning every city they reached. Chelyabinsk had become their military hub in the Urals until they decided to send regiments to the Volga region to link up with the People’s Army of Komuch while dispatching others under a Russian commander, Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Voitsekhovski, against Ekaterinburg.5 The Urals communist leadership recognized that the city’s defences were inadequate and that the Red forces remained inferior to the new enemy in discipline and experience. This sealed the fate of the captive Romanovs. Any idea of putting them on trial in Ekaterinburg or anywhere else was unrealistic. ‘Soviet power’ was under threat of extinction throughout the region, and indeed Ekaterinburg and Perm were the only large centres of population still under Bolshevik rule. Rather than move the family westward, the Executive Committee resolved to execute them. This was thought better than to run the risk that the imperial family might fall into the hands of the counter-revolutionaries, and anyhow the Executive Committee contained several individuals who had wanted to kill them much earlier than summer 1918.6
An unidentified man had turned up at the house on 9 July 1918. When asked to move on, he responded with verbal abuse. The guards escorted him to Cheka headquarters.7 In the worsening military situation, no chances were being taken. Nerves were stretched to breaking point. Another odd event that happened in those days was the trip made around town by Dr Arkhipov, whose residence had been spared being requisitioned by Bolsheviks. Arkhipov went to every store where he thought he might find sulphuric acid. Apparently he was shopping for 400 liquid pounds of it – a vast amount for the average doctor, and its lethal purpose was to become obvious only in retrospect.8
On 14 July 1918 Goloshchëkin went for a walk with Anuchin, his deputy and the district military commissar in the Urals leadership. Safarov joined them. This was how the Bolsheviks had always met to confer before 1917 when they wanted to avoid the prying eyes of landladies and police, and such was the emergency hanging over Ekaterinburg that the local leaders sought relief from sitting in committee rooms. As they knew, it could be their last chance before fighting began in the approaches to their city. The three men agreed on the urgent requirement to execute all the Romanovs. Others in the group rejected the proposal. Among them was Regional Soviet Executive Committee member Nikolai Ufimtsev, for whom it made more sense to kill only Alexandra – he argued that she bore a special personal guilt for Romanov misrule. Essentially Ufimtsev assumed that the uxorious Nicholas lacked a mind of his own; he also disapproved of any suggestion of slaughtering the young Romanovs. The group of Bolsheviks returned to the city without having resolved the question about who should be killed. Murder was on the leadership’s agenda in Ekaterinburg, but the list of intended victims had yet to be established.9
On 16 July Yurovski arrived at the Ipatev house at eight in the morning and was joined by Beloborodov. After inspecting the building, they departed for further meetings, leaving Nikulin in charge until Yurovski’s return that evening.10 Beloborodov had made his decision to have the executions carried out as soon as sanction arrived from Moscow.
The Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee met later that day in the American Hotel – the Cheka’s regional headquarters – to hear Goloshchëkin’s account of his Moscow trip. Goloshchëkin by then was living there with the Chekist leadership.11 Some of those present at the session expressed disappointment at his failure to obtain Sverdlov’s unequivocal sanction to kill the Romanov family. Safarov pointedly asked Goloshchëkin how long he expected Ekaterinburg to hold out against the Czechoslovak advance.12 But how and where should the killings take place and who should be killed? After some debate it was resolved to carry out the task inside the Ipatev house. This meant slaughtering not only the imperial family but also the doctor, cook, lackey, serving maid and kitchen devil who attended them. The rationale was brutal: they had thrown in their lot with the Romanovs and now they had to face the consequences.13
But how should the killings be organized? Beloborodov’s proposal was to stage a fictitious escape attempt by the Romanovs while the Cheka transported them to woods on the city’s outskirts and did them to death. Nicholas himself was to be kept behind. The idea was to carry out a public execution of him after the text of the charges against him had been read out. Goloshchëkin spoke against the proposal on practical grounds; he could not see how it would be possible to put on a credible attempt at escape. His preference was simply to convey the family to the woods, shoot them and throw the bodies down some mineshafts. He wanted to accompany this with a brazen announcement that the Romanovs had been moved to a place of greater security. Voikov had another idea, which was to take the Romanov family to the river, weigh them down and drown them.14 In the end it was Goloshchëkin’s ideas that broadly commended themselves. His plan had the advantage of simplicity as well as being the easiest to disguise from prying eyes.
Yurovski, who was ordered to put it into effect, went back to Voznesenski Prospekt and made arrangements. He told Pavel Medvedev, who was conducting the detachment’s routine management, to announce to the guards on duty the plan to execute the imperial family.15 He also gave an instruction to transfer the young servant boy from the building to the Popov house, where Red Army soldiers were billeted – Yurovski as a fighter for the working class apparently decided that the lad’s life should be spared. He also instructed Medvedev to remove all the guards’ revolvers. When Medvedev handed them over, Yurovski explained: ‘Today we’re going to shoot the entire family.’ Yurovski had decided to use a select inner group for the firing squad and wanted the best weapons available to him. He told Medvedev to tell the guards not to get agitated when they heard gunfire. He was brisk, concise and committed.16
Moscow had to be informed about Ekaterinburg’s intentions, and Goloshchëkin and Safarov sent a joint telegram to Zinoviev in Petrograd on 16 July 1918. At the time this had become the surest way to send messages to Moscow, and Zinoviev was meant to relay the contents to Sverdlov, with a copy for Lenin. (Obviously Lenin’s order for the Regional Executive Committee to be able to communicate directly with him by cable had not been realized.) The fact that Goloshchëkin and Safarov rather than Beloborodov signed the telegram was of no importance. The city was about to be attacked and the ruling group were dividing their tasks as they got ready for evacuation. The Urals leadership wanted endorsement from Lenin and Sverdlov to kill the Romanovs. Zinoviev immediately recognized the importance of the contents and transmitted his own telegram with the following comment on the contents of the telegram from Ekaterinburg: ‘Inform Moscow that the trial agreed with Filipp [Goloshchëkin] cannot because of military circumstances be delayed. If your opinions are negative, please inform with the utmost urgency: Goloshchëkin and Safarov. Contact Ekaterinburg yourselves: Zinoviev.’17
The telegram from Petrograd was registered as having arrived in Moscow at 9.22 p.m. on 16 July 1918 – or 11.22 p.m. in the Urals time zone.18 The contents make no sense except in some agreed code. Just as Sverdlov and Yakovlev in April had referred to the travelling Romanovs as ‘the baggage’, Goloshchëkin and Safarov were presumably avoiding a word like ‘execution’ in favour of the more innocuous ‘trial’. No Bolshevik leader could ignore the possibility of a Soviet defeat in the civil war, and if any of them happened to be captured by the enemy, pity would be in short measure if their communications showed complicity in the plan to liquidate the Romanovs. The Bolsheviks were anyway wary about popular opinion and did not want to incur disapprobation for killing Nicholas or, more especially, his blameless children. And in the years before the February Revolution they had been masters of coded messages and encryption. After the October Revolution, when they gained control of the telegraph network, they prudently declined to abandon such precautions. Whatever else, Goloshchëkin and Safarov knew that Lenin and Sverdlov would know what they meant since they had agreed how to cable each other.
In the Ipatev house, the firing squad was kept at the ready throughout this time. But Yurovski could do nothing before the Executive Committee leadership heard from the capital and empowered him to proceed.19 This makes a mockery of the notion that the Urals leadership acted on its own initiative and only informed the Moscow leadership afterwards.
In Moscow there was a spasm of action as Lenin and Sverdlov conferred before handing a message to one of Lenin’s bodyguards, A. I. Akimov, who took it by motorbike to the central telegraph building on Sverdlov’s orders. Sverdlov told him to act with unusual discretion and bring back the copy and tape of the telegram. When the telegraph operator refused to comply, Akimov pulled out a revolver. Akimov then returned to the Kremlin and resumed his guard duties. The telegram was dispatched to Ekaterinburg by the same roundabout route via Petrograd and then Perm.20 No trace of it has ever come to light. There is therefore still no verification that Lenin and Sverdlov ordered the death of Nicholas and his family. This was deliberate. The Sovnarkom, Soviet Central Executive Committee and Party Central Committee records were kept as clear as possible of anything that might pin the blame on the Bolshevik leadership in Moscow. In the decades since July 1918 there have been those who denied that the Bolshevik central leadership knew anything about the decision to execute the Romanovs in the Ipatev house. Indeed, it is a belief that continues to be held by many of Lenin’s admirers to this day.21