The Last Tsar (64 page)

They gave up the entire space of the tiny room of execution to the eleven unfortunates, who raced around in that cell while the twelve sharpshooters, sorting out their victims, fired continuously from the mouth of the double doors, giving those in front gunpowder burns.

Hands holding revolvers poked through the doorway.

The son of Chekist Medvedev: “My father had a gunpowder burn on his neck, and Yurovsky burned his finger.” (Yes, they were both in the first row!)

Yurovsky: “A[lexe]i, three of his sisters, the lady-in-waiting [as he referred to Demidova], and Botkin were still alive. They had to be finished off. This amazed the com[mandant] since we had aimed straight for the heart. It was also surprising that the bullets from the revolvers bounced off for some reason and ricocheted, jumping around the room like hail.”

So the tsar was down, felled by the first shots, felled by them all. The tsaritsa was down, too, killed in her chair, and the swarthy servant Trupp, who collapsed right after his master. And Botkin and the cook Kharitonov. But the girls were still alive. It was bizarre how the bullets bounced off them. Bullets flew around the room. Demidova was dashing about the tiny room wailing.… She shielded herself with a pillow, into which they emptied bullet after bullet.

The detachment kept firing, almost hysterically. Through the gun
smoke the light was barely visible. The prostrate figures lay in pools of blood, and on the floor the boy stretched his arm out through the smoke, shielding himself from the bullets. Nikulin, in horror, not understanding what was going on, fired at him, and fired, and fired.

Yurovsky: “My assistant spent an entire clip of bullets.” (The strange vitality of the heir must probably be put down to my assistant’s poor mastery of his weapon and his inevitable nerves evoked by his long ordeal with the armored daughters.)

Then the commandant stepped into the fierce, acrid smoke.

Yurovsky: “The remaining bullets of the one loaded clip for the Colt, as well as the loaded Mauser, went to finish off Nicholas’s daughters and the strange vitality of the heir.”

He put an end to that “vitality” with two shots. So he believed. And the boy fell quiet.

Kabanov: “The tsar’s two youngest daughters, pressed up against the wall, were squatting, covering their heads with their arms, and then two men fired at their heads.… Alexei was lying on the floor, and they fired at him, too. The lady-in-waiting [Demidova] was lying on the floor still alive. Then I ran into the execution room and shouted to stop the firing and finish off those still alive with bayonets. One of the comrades began plunging the bayonet of his American Winchester into her chest. The bayonet was like a dagger, but it was dull and would not penetrate. She grabbed the bayonet with both hands and began screaming. Later they got her with their rifle butts.”

Now all eleven were on the floor—barely visible through the smoke.

Pavel Medvedev: “The blood was gushing out … the heir was still alive—and moaning. Yurovsky walked over to him and shot him two or three times at point-blank range. The heir fell still. The scene made me want to vomit.”

Strekotin: “The smoke was blocking out the electric lamp. The shooting was halted. The doors of the room were opened for the smoke to disperse. They started picking up the bodies.”

They had to get them out as quickly as possible. This truck had to be on its way while the July night still hung over the town. Quickly, hastily, they turned the bodies over, checking pulses. They were in a hurry. The light barely shone through all the gun smoke.

Yurovsky: “The whole procedure, including the checking [feeling pulses and so on] took about twenty minutes.”

The bodies had to be carried through all the downstairs rooms to the front entrance, where the truck was waiting with the driver Lyukhanov.

Pavel Medvedev got the idea of carrying them out on sheets, so as not to drip blood in the rooms. He went upstairs, to the family’s rooms. After he collected the sheets in the grand duchesses’ room he grabbed a cover and wiped his hands, which were spattered with the tsar’s blood—and threw it into the corner. That was the cover they later found—from his, Medvedev’s, bloody fingers.

Pavel Medvedev: “We took the bodies out on stretchers made from sheets stretched between shafts taken off the cart in the courtyard.”

Strekotin: “The tsar’s body was carried out first. The bodies were carried out to the truck.”

On the bottom of the truck they laid a cloth, which had been in the storeroom covering the family’s belongings. Now it was protecting the floor of the truck from the tsar’s blood.

The tsar was carried out first in the wide marital sheet. They carried out the head of the family, Then they brought his daughters.

Strekotin: “When they laid one of the daughters on the stretcher, she cried out and covered her face with her arm. The others [the daughters] also turned out to be alive. We couldn’t shoot anymore—with the open doors the shots could have been heard on the street. According to the comrades in the detachment, the shots had been heard at all the posts.”

When the slain grand duchess rose up with a shout on the sheet—and her sisters rustled on the floor—horror gripped the detachment.

At that point they still did not know the reason for their “strange vitality,” as Yurovsky put it. It seemed to them that heaven itself was against them. Again the Chekists did not err. Ermakov set the example. He had no fear of heaven.

Strekotin: “Ermakov took my bayonet from me and started stabbing everyone dead who had turned out to be alive.”

Yurovsky: “When they tried to stab one of the girls with a bayonet, the point just would not go through her corset.”

The Livadia Palace, the children’s balls, the luxury of the Winter Palace, the anticipation of love—it all came to an end on a dirty floor, to the panting of a former convict. In impossible pain from a dull bayonet—it all came to an end.

——

Remember: When they were carrying her out to the truck, the shot young woman turned out to be alive, as did the other daughters—even though they had checked their pulses!

It is easy enough to write that they “checked,” but how could they really have checked—in that smoke, in that horror, in that fever amid the pools of blood?

Again they were carrying bodies to the truck. Before carrying them out, they collected the jewels and precious objects. As it says in Sokolov’s inquiry, Strekotin immediately began searching those lying there and removing jewels.

Naturally enough, though, Strekotin did not write about his own efforts.

Strekotin: “While the bodies were being removed, several of our comrades began removing various items from the bodies, like watches, rings, bracelets, cigarette cases, other things. When Comrade Yurovsky was informed of this he hurried back downstairs. We were already carrying out the last body. Comrade Yurovsky stopped us and suggested we voluntarily give back the various items we had taken from the bodies. Some gave it all back, some just part, and some nothing at all.”

Yurovsky: “Then they started carrying the bodies out and loading them into the truck, which was spread with a cloth (so the blood would not flow). At this point the stealing began: I had to have three reliable comrades guard the bodies while the carrying was going on. Under threat of execution, everything stolen was returned (a gold watch, a cigarette case with diamonds, etc).”

The son of Chekist Medvedev: “When they were removing the jewels from the dead Romanovs in the Ipatiev house, a watch disappeared instantly. They also managed to remove the watch from the dead Botkin. Yurovsky said: ‘We are going out now, and in three minutes we’ll be back. The watch had better be here.’ And he went out of the room with my father. Three minutes later he was back. And the watch was there. Yurovsky took great pains to see that nothing was stolen. When the tsar fell, his forage cap rolled into a corner. One of the guards carrying out the bodies took the tsar’s cap.… Yurovsky immediately pointed it out to my father with a nod of his head. The cap fit my father. It turned out to be a perfectly ordinary cap, no initials. My father took the cockade off but left the cap. We had the cockade in our house for a long time. As a child I used to
play with it. Then something happened to it in all our moves. I was already in school when we had a play and I played a policeman with that cockade.”

Now the tsar’s family was lying in the truck covered with a tarpaulin. Someone found the tiny dead dog—one of the grand duchesses was hugging it … she had been lying on the floor with the dog. The dog’s body was tossed into the truck—it could guard the tsar’s family.

Yurovsky: “The com[mandant] had been instructed only to carry out the sentence. Getting rid of the bodies and moving them was the job of Comrade Ermakov (a worker from the Upper Isetsk plant, a former political prisoner). He was supposed to come with the truck and was let in at the password ‘chimney sweep.’ The truck’s lateness made the com[mandant] doubt Ermakov’s thoroughness, so the com[mandant] decided to watch over the entire operation himself. At about three o’clock they left for the site Ermakov was supposed to have prepared, past the Upper Isetsk factory. First they were supposed to go by truck and after a certain point on horses (since the truck could go no farther; the site chosen was an abandoned mine).”

Yurovsky and Ermakov would end up spending two full days together with the bodies.

Yurovsky recorded the burial of the tsar’s family in great detail, perhaps concealing an almost fantastic story. But let us break off here. We will return yet again to the terrible truck.

The gates of the house opened and in the advancing dawn the truck drove out onto Ascension Avenue.

Strekotin: “When the bodies had been carried out and the car had left, only then was our shift taken off duty.”

H
e called me himself and asked to meet with me. I heard his trembling old man’s voice and naturally said: “I can come see you myself.” But he immediately replied—as did many of those people of his age and generation who called me—“But why? I will come to you myself.” Then he laughed. “You mustn’t think that. No, I’m not afraid of anyone. It’s others who were afraid of me. It’s just I’m an old soldier, and I like to walk.”

Here he is sitting in my room.

He slaps his knee and laughs, pointing to his odd trousers: once green wide trousers with piping that have lost all their color and shape.

“These trousers belonged to Nicholas. I got them in 1945—in Czechoslovakia. At that time they belonged to a former legionary.… In 1918 he bought them in Ekaterinburg. He had a lot of things that were supposedly from the tsar’s family.” He chuckles. “No, naturally, I don’t believe altogether that these are the trousers of the last emperor, but it’s still something from the era. I like the trousers and allow myself this masquerade sometimes.… Right now about the matter that interests you.… I worked in a certain ‘serious institution’ [as the organs of state security have long been called in Russia] for many years.… I was living in Sverdlovsk then.…
For quite a while … no, not through my work … just for myself … I was obsessed with your theme.… Or rather, I was interested in
one question
, which came up a long time ago, before you were ever born—and I’ve been searching for the answer to it all my life. It began with an acquaintanceship—I was rather well acquainted with Peter Zakharovich Ermakov. He was a complicated man. Or rather, simple. His hands itched to kill. For his revolutionary ardor he was called Comrade Mauser. In tsarist times he killed a provocateur in a most original manner—you’ll never guess. He sawed off his head. According to an Ekaterinburg legend, when they decided to deform
their
bodies, he went to the pharmacy for a supply of sulfuric acid. The chemist was rather doubtful: Ermakov was asking for quite a lot. Peter Zakharovich was about to try to convince him, but he never did—his reflexes went into action and he fired. By the way, do you know that Ermakov told all and sundry that it was he who had killed the last tsar? And how Yurovsky reacted to that?”

That was something I knew very well.

Beginning in 1921, Yurovsky lived in Moscow, where he worked in the State Depository.

The son of Chekist Medvedev: “They often met in our apartment—all the former regicides who had now moved to Moscow.”

Yes, soon after the execution they went to Moscow for their promotions. Beloborodov would become Dzerzhinsky’s deputy in the Cheka, Goloshchekin would occupy very important posts. The masters of Ekaterinburg became the boyars of the Kremlin. Here Chekist Mikhail Medvedev proved more modest. He did not go for the brass ring but ended his life a humble colonel, a teacher in a police academy. That was why he survived. The Kremlin boyars would all perish.

But then, in the 1920s, they were all alive—and young. They loved the hospitality at Medvedev’s welcoming home. Goloshchekin, Nikulin, and of course Yurovsky came.

The son of Chekist Medvedev: “My father often made fun of his arrogance: of course he killed Nicholas. By the way, my father once proposed an experiment to me. My father had a whole collection of weapons—a Mauser, a Colt, and a Browning. So he proposed we experiment to see which of us could fire faster. From which gun. My father and I did this experiment. Naturally, the Browning fired first.
First
—just as it had then. Yurovsky never disputed that with my father. Moreover, he once told my father: ‘Hey, you didn’t let me finish reading—you started shooting! But when I was reading Nicholas the
resolution the second time, I wanted to add that this was revenge for executing revolutionaries.’”