Leonid’s Story Yekaterinburg, Russia. July, 1918
Smoke drifted across the naked light bulb. Leonid Pavlovich Kiselyov, one of the Russian soldiers tasked with the execution of the Romanovs and their retinue, realised the ‘procedure’, as Yurovsky had phrased it, was becoming a bloody shambles. They’d been shooting at the civilians, who stood and sat just feet away, for several minutes and yet only Nikolai and Alexandra were dead. Maria Romanova had been wounded, but not fatally. Leonid had seen the intoxicated Peter Ermakov shoot her in the thigh as she’d scurried towards the room’s rear doors.
But, that aside, the condemned prisoners appeared astonishingly, almost supernaturally, uninjured. Alexei remained bolt upright in his armchair, a pale picture of horror and bewilderment. His sisters were screaming. Jemmy, Anastasia’s pet dog, barked incessantly. Eugene Botkin, the Romanovs’ doctor and Nikolai’s close friend, was yelling something – Leonid could not hear what exactly – before a bullet to his forehead finally silenced the physician.
And, of course, the noise of sustained gunfire in the confines of this small semi-basement was immense. Shattering.
Grey-white smoke from the hot barrels of the sidearms filled the room and when he inhaled, Leonid could taste the sharp chemical tang of cordite and feel its caustic burn at the back of his throat. Visibility was further worsened by a heavy snowfall of dust from the plaster ceiling, loosened by the reverberation of the shooting. And yet Leonid could see that Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei were all clearly alive.
Before they’d entered the room, every member of the firing squad had been given rough instructions as to whom they should kill. Each soldier had nodded his compliance, as if agreeing to a minor matter such as manual labour, which was perhaps all that murder had become in Russia after so many years of warfare. But here, in this smoke-filled messy hell, the majority of them had opted to spend their ammunition on the adults. Even now, even here, the prospect of gunning down terrified young women was too unholy for most of the men.
Yet that didn’t explain everything. Ermakov and a couple of the other drunken assassins had taken plenty of shots at the Romanovas who remained relatively unscathed. Leonid felt sure it was simply an illusion born of the smoke and chaos, or his own mind playing tricks on him, but it looked, once or twice, as if bullets were ricocheting off the girls and zinging into the surrounding brickwork.
He felt certain of one thing, though. Something remarkable was happening. The twelve gunmen were becoming panicked. Leonid looked across to Yurovsky, who by now had switched from his Colt to a Mauser. All across Russia, there was a scarcity of bread, Leonid briefly reflected, but there was never any shortage of guns. The commandant seemed on the verge of issuing an order, but before he could bellow any instructions, a burly soldier dashed into the room, shouting for the firing to stop.
Leonid recognised Alexey Kabanov, as had Nikolai many weeks earlier. He’d seen the former Tzar spot Kabanov whilst walking in the gardens. ‘You served in my cavalry regiment, did you not?’ Nikolai had asked. Kabanov confirmed he had, and this reply, overheard by Yurovsky, had singled him out as one to watch. A man who might harbour a secret allegiance to the prisoner. But now, the anguish on Kabanov’s face was not caused by the sight of his former commander’s corpse.
‘The gunfire can be heard from outside!’ he called across to Yurovsky. This came as no surprise to Leonid, who imagined it could probably be heard on the other side of Russia.
Yurovsky raised his hand and the firing died out. The noise of gunfire was replaced by worse: the sound of sobbing and wailing of the prisoners. Leonid could also hear the muffle of guards racing around in the rooms above, doubtless rattled by the unexpected shooting below them.
The young soldier to Leonid’s right was staring at the miraculous survivors of the onslaught. Without taking his eyes from them, he murmured, ‘They are divine! God Himself protects them!’
Before Leonid could reply, the flustered Kabanov continued, ‘The whole neighbourhood is waking!’
Yurovsky didn’t speak a word, but his expression said, Well, what would you have me do, comrade?
Kabanov said, ‘Kill them using your bayonets! Much quieter.’ He glanced at Alexei and his sisters. ‘And quicker.’
Again, Yurovsky didn’t open his mouth. He simply shrugged and swished his hand in front of his face; an irritated and impatient command to bludgeon to death a line of petrified young people and their friends. Appalled, Leonid hung back. The maniacal Peter Ermakov and a handful of his comrades felt no such disinclination.
Leonid suspected the next few minutes would define his life, and he was quite correct. Just not at all in the way he anticipated.