Beloborodov dispatched an urgent coded telegram to Lenin’s aide Vladimir Gorbunov at 9 p.m. on 17 July 1918. It consisted of a single sentence: ‘Tell Sverdlov the entire family suffered the same fate as its head, officially the family will perish in evacuation.’1 According to I. I. Radzinski’s later account, one of Sverdlov’s secretaries – a certain Vinogradskaya – told him that the news took Sverdlov by surprise.2
Next day Sverdlov brought the Ekaterinburg telegram to the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets, where he gained approval for what the Urals leadership had done, and Sverdlov, Sosnovski and Avanesov received the task of drafting an announcement. The plan was to pretend that only Nicholas had been executed. Sverdlov also aimed to publish a series of documents on the Romanovs, including Nicholas’s diary.3 Later that day he delivered the news to a Sovnarkom meeting chaired by Lenin and attended by Trotsky. Sovnarkom merely took note of the news of Nicholas’s execution and endorsed the decision, which was attributed to the ‘Ekaterinburg Soviet’.4 This was the origin of the official Soviet line that the initiative for the killing had come exclusively from the Urals city rather than Moscow and that the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks had acted wholly in reaction to the military threat from the ‘Czechoslovak gangs’. Allegedly, moreover, the other Romanovs in the Ipatev house had been taken to a place of safety. The history of the big lie had begun, with Sverdlov its principal author.5
The rationale for the Soviet refusal to reveal just how many Romanovs had been killed remained a secret, and no document has yet emerged as to why Sverdlov and Lenin adopted this approach. It is probable that they were aware that the execution of the five Romanov children would cause widespread revulsion at home and abroad. Foreign policy considerations are also likely. The communist leadership in Moscow had to obviate any pretext for a German military intervention. As Alexandra was a princess of Hesse by birth, the Germans had frequently enquired about both her safety and that of her offspring, and Kaiser Wilhelm was quite capable of telling his commanders and diplomats to prioritize the rescue of living Romanovs as well as becoming enraged if he learned that they had been done away with. Better, Lenin and Sverdlov must surely have thought, to make everyone think that only one adult male had perished in the Ipatev house.
After conducting Moscow business, Sverdlov held a conversation with Beloborodov by Hughes telegraph.6 Sverdlov knew that extraordinary events were happening in the Urals, and asked the regional leadership to supply the latest information. What had happened at Alapaevsk? What had the Cheka been up to? Beloborodov could not or would not always provide full answers. He insisted that all was not lost in Ekaterinburg. Perhaps he was trying to prove he had the true fighting spirit of a true Bolshevik leader. All but the Red forces, he reported, had already been evacuated. The Urals Bolsheviks were going to defend the city. Sverdlov gave permission for Beloborodov to publish the Central Executive Committee’s decision; he urged Beloborodov to hold on and promised to send military reinforcements – or at least some hundreds of Petrograd and Moscow workers who would conduct propaganda for the cause. He reminded Beloborodov that what happened in the rear was just as important as the coming conflict at the front.7
Beloborodov must have regarded the promise and advice as less than impressive at a moment when trains of fearsome Czechoslovaks were about to advance on Ekaterinburg. If Sverdlov had been able to dispatch an army of weapons-drilled, disciplined troops, it might have been a different matter. But as People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, Trotsky was concentrating the Red Army’s forces in the Volga region in the front against Komuch. The only consolation that Sverdlov could offer was that war with Germany was no longer likely and that the Germans were no longer insisting on sending one of their army battalions to Moscow, as they had demanded after the assassination of Mirbach.
Fears about the military situation reached a high pitch in Ekaterinburg. Security was maintained as usual at the Ipatev house, and it was not until the afternoon of 17 July 1918 that Filipp Proskuryakov and his fellow guards were told they were free to go off on their own and relax in the city. Yurovski, Nikulin and Medvedev supervised the collection of Romanov possessions. This continued for two whole days after the executions. Those who did the work were calm, and some thought they were tipsy as they packed the suitcases for removal. The guards saw no reason to keep their hands off items of value. Mikhail Letemin took possession of a dog called Jack, which had rather attached itself to him. By the night of 18 July it was decided that the tasks were completed and Pavel Medvedev told the guards about the Ural leadership’s plans for the detachment: they were all to leave Ekaterinburg.8 They were going to be an obvious target for the anti-Bolshevik forces, and half the detachment had departed by the end of the day.9 If any proof was needed that Beloborodov had no serious intention of fighting for the city, his order to transport reliable troops out of the range of danger provided it. ‘Soviet power’ was coming to a pitiful end.
The suitcases were brought from the Ipatev house and loaded on to a train. Then Yurovski departed with the Latvian personnel.10 He had to send a telegram to Beloborodov from Bisert railway station on 20 July explaining that, in his hurry to vacate the Ipatev house, he had left 2,000 rubles on the table; he asked for someone to pick it up for him.11
Before they departed the Urals, the leadership felt it prudent to make an announcement at a large public meeting. On 19 July, a vast crowd turned up at the Opera House on Glavny Prospekt to hear Goloshchëkin. Seeking to quash the rumours about the Romanovs, Goloshchëkin gave a fiery speech celebrating the execution of Nicholas the Bloody. Following the version of events concocted in agreement with Sverdlov, he claimed that the rest of the Romanov captives had been removed to another place for their own safety; he also stuck to the story that the decision had been taken by the Urals communists alone – he was protecting Moscow against any suggestion about its complicity. Many in the audience were dissatisfied with Goloshchëkin’s report, and they shouted out: ‘Show us his body!’12 But this was the only occasion of public excitement. People in Ekaterinburg had too many problems of their own to bother themselves with the fate of the Romanovs.13
The guard detachment’s departure was part of the plan that Beloborodov had devised for the evacuation of Soviet officials, Bolsheviks and Red Army units. As trains arrived in the city, they picked up people and cargo and then returned in a westerly direction. The sole avenue of escape by rail was to Perm. Officials and militants received priority. Many wives and children were included in the travelling groups because of fear that the Czechoslovaks would wreak vengeance on them in the absence of their menfolk. Each of these women was issued with 300 rubles for subsistence.14 (Not everyone received a place in the contingent, and some of the abandoned families were to be quickly arrested and interrogated.) Beloborodov planned to gather up all the available human and material resources that would be crucial for Sovnarkom’s eventual military response. This involved ransacking the banks for cash and the pharmacies for medical supplies.15 Everything that could be of future use to the Soviet authorities was piled on to carts and taken to the railway station. The anti-Bolsheviks were meant to inherit a dearth of useful facilities.
A few guards remained on site until 21 July, when the residence reverted to the possession of its previous owner.16 The Bolsheviks were alive to the possibility that people in Ekaterinburg might create a disturbance if it was revealed how many of the imperial family had been killed.17 The slight difficulty was that Yurovski, only two days before the killings, had requested the monastery nuns to bring eggs and milk for the Romanovs. He had also handed over a note from one of the Romanov daughters who had asked for more sewing thread. The nuns turned up on 17 July, just hours after the slaughter. They noticed an unfamiliar car outside but thought nothing of it. What was unusual was the reluctance of anyone to come to the door. When a guard eventually appeared, they asked: ‘Where’s Yurovski?’ They were told that he was still taking his breakfast. After a further delay, another guard came out and announced: ‘They don’t need more milk. They’re ill. Just wait a bit.’ He too disappeared and as the nuns strained to listen, they overheard someone asking, ‘What should be said to them?’ When the door opened again, yet another guard ordered: ‘Do you know what, don’t bring things any longer. Go away!’18
This was a remarkable incident. No one in Ekaterinburg would have rejected a nourishing meal at a time of growing food shortages. It could only mean that the people in the residence did not expect to be there for long. But if the sisters worked out that a murder had taken place, they had the sense not to say anything to the guards. One person who suspected what had happened was Evgenia Poppel, who was Nikolai Ipatev’s sister-in-law. Poppel had been keeping an eye on events at Voznesenski Prospekt and on 22 July, after discovering that the last of the Bolsheviks had vacated the premises, she sent a coded telegram to her brother-in-law: ‘The occupant has left.’19
Conditions in the city prison had changed when commissars ordered those hostages who had a trade, especially tailors or cobblers, to do useful work. They freed many of the petty criminals and then even some of the hostages. But the detainees from the Romanov retinue were denied such treatment. The time came when the Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee started to transfer prisoners westward – the idea was to prevent them from falling into the hands of the anti-Bolshevik forces. The tutors Anastasia Gendrikova and Ekaterina Shneider were among those moved, along with Alexei Volkov, leaving Volkov’s fellow valet Terenti Chemodurov behind in jail. When they asked about the destination, one of the soldiers said it was Moscow. Volkov feared that they were really about to be executed. Once they were outside the prison, he whispered to Gendrikova and Shneider to make a run for it. Both of them refused: they were ill and anyway did not appreciate the danger of the situation. Volkov loyally stayed with them and in fact the little party was delivered from Ekaterinburg to the prison in Perm.20
It took until 23 July before Ural’skii rabochii, the Bolshevik Party’s regional newspaper, announced the murder. In accordance with the official line, only Nicholas’s death was mentioned. Safarov’s editorial bluntly declared: ‘He lived too long, enjoying the indulgence of the revolution, like a crowned murderer.’ The decision was ascribed to the Urals Regional Soviet. Safarov declared that the Provisional Government had been filled with monarchists and their sympathizers. The October Revolution had made a start in crystallizing the changes that would improve the lot of working people. But dangers had mounted. The Czechoslovak revolt along the Trans-Siberian Railway had served to unleash pogroms by the same Black Hundreds who had slaughtered Jews in the empire’s western borderlands before the Great War. General Alexeev was gathering an armed force to bring back the Romanov monarchy. Safarov expressed alarm about Milyukov’s attempt to seek assistance from the Kaiser. In this situation, he declared, Nicholas’s life had to be forfeited. Admittedly there had been no judicial process. But Safarov took pride in the Bolshevik willingness to do the necessary thing to preserve the changes made by Sovnarkom since the removal of the Provisional Government.21
On the same day, the Third Army’s report to Red Army commander-in-chief I. I. Vatsetis in Kazan was grim. No fresh forces were available to stem the enemy’s advance on Ekaterinburg. Kuzino was in grave danger.22 There had until then been only a tiny chance of external assistance to the Urals leadership. When Vatsetis removed all hope, Red Ekaterinburg was doomed.