The question was how to rescue them, and the best hope of that might well prove to be Michael. On June 27, two weeks after his ‘escape’, The Times in London had reported rumours that ‘he is at the head of an anti-revolution movement in Turkestan’ and that ‘he had issued a manifesto to the Russian people…leaving the decision as to the form of government to be adopted by the Duma which was to be convoked’.
This seemed to re-affirm Michael’s manifesto on becoming emperor: that it was for the Russian people to decide its status, and that if he was to be emperor it was to be as a constitutional monarch not an autocrat. That being so, its authenticity seemed real enough. A week later, the newspaper had him ‘at the head of the Siberian revolt’.2
On that same day, July 3, 1918, von Mirbach in Moscow advised Berlin that of all the Romanovs who might be restored to the throne the most popular was Michael, and that there was no support for ex-Tsar Nicholas whose cause he judged to be hopeless.
Of more immediate concern to von Mirbach was the news that Michael was not only leading the Siberian revolt but that he remained an ally of Britain and France and had published a ‘manifesto’ calling on all former Tsarist officers to support him. ‘Effect of Michael Aleksandrovich’s support for Entente on generals and officers, including those of groups who lean towards us, considerable according to impressions here. Groups here have shown themselves noticeably more restrained towards us during the last week.’3
A few days later came further confirmation to Berlin that Michael was the only possible candidate for the throne of a restored monarchy. For the Germans their evidence of that, in part, was the reaction of the people in Petrograd to news reports that Nicholas had been killed.
This wholly false story, spread by the Ural Soviet at the same time as they were announcing Michael’s ‘escape’, was that while being evacuated by special train from Ekaterinburg because of the threat posed by advancing Czechs, Nicholas had become involved in a furious row with one of his guards, and the soldier had then killed him with a bayonet thrust. The object of all this was to test both public and foreign reaction to the death of Nicholas, while covering up the real murder of Michael.
The result from the Bolshevik standpoint was encouraging, as the German despatch from Petrograd to Prince Henry confirmed just over three weeks later. The report, passed on by Henry to the Kaiser, stated that although the ‘murder’ of Nicholas on the train was widely believed,
…the effect of this news on the masses was scarcely perceptible. Even the Russian church, whose interest can only be bound up with the imperial family, did not react in any way. Although the rumour was not retracted for almost two weeks, a requiem mass did not take place anywhere. This notoriously proved that the ex-Tsar has lost all sympathy from the people.
Grand Duke Michael is a different matter. The newspapers which carried the news of his flight and his alleged manifesto in Siberia were read feverishly and he is seen as the only possible source of deliverance from the unbearable circumstances. The famous Russian writers Kuprin and Amfiteatrov even attempted to publish a newspaper article about the Grand Duke, in which His Imperial Highness was characterised as the only Romanov not to have been discredited in any way. Both were, of course, immediately arrested.
The report, largely confirming Cromie’s assessment of German intentions, concluded: ‘only the restoration of the monarchy in Russia with German assistance… will guarantee Germany an alliance with Russia and the maintenance and support of German interests in East Europe’. What was needed was that ‘a general Church Congress, presided over by the Patriarch, offers the Grand Duke the crown’.4
Here, it seemed, was proof that the Kremlin’s dead-and-alive strategy was paying off. They had given the Germans an emperor for their planned monarchy but one who was set to go to war with them, while denying them the possibility that they could credibly find an alternative. If the Bolshevik leadership had been able to read the German diplomatic cables they would have been well pleased with themselves. The threat of a German-led counter revolution was real enough, but muddying the waters was better than going back to war with them, as the Socialist Revolutionaries wanted to do — they would murder the German ambassador von Mirbach on July 16.
What was more, the Bolshevik ‘escape’ story continued to be accepted at face value by the world at large. The man they had buried in a wood outside Perm was alive and well and in Siberia. Everyone knew that, because it said so in the newspapers.
But the newspapers were printing only what seemed to be credible reports from a number of sources. A Japanese diplomatic despatch to Tokyo was picked up by the British military attaché, who promptly cabled London on July 8, 1918 that ‘a counter-revolutionary movement headed by Grand Duke Michael has started in Omsk…’ 5 Four days later even a Moscow newspaper was reporting Michael’s reappearance. ‘Rumour has spread here’, said a report from Vyatka, ‘that the former Grand Duke Michael Romanov is in Omsk and has taken command of the Siberian insurgents. There are claims that he has issued a manifesto to the people calling for the overthrow of Soviet power and promising to convene Assemblies of the Land to resolve the question of what regime there should be in Russia.’6 The stories about Michael even reached Persia where Dimitri recorded in his diary the rumours that ‘Misha is advancing on Moscow with Cossacks and has been proclaimed Emperor’.7 The adage that a lie if repeated often enough becomes the truth was working well for the Kremlin.
What continued to trouble Berlin, however, were the reports that support for them was slipping away among the monarchists. As the German military attaché in Moscow observed on July 17, if Michael was leading a pro-Allied force ‘then this would place Russian officers of a monarchist tendency in a difficult position’.8 However, the hopeful news on July 17,1918, was that ‘General Brusilov, formerly supreme commander, has therefore sent a lieutenant-commander to the Grand Duke to prevent him aligning himself with the Entente’.9 Nothing more would be heard of that, but next day came other news which, while not of any political significance in the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, was not only to be believed but true.
It came in the form of a brief announcement by Comrade Sverdlov during a meeting of the Council of the People’s Commissars in the Kremlin that ‘at Ekaterinburg, by a decision of the Regional Soviet, Nicholas has been shot’. That was all, and after that, with no further comment, Lenin directed the comrades to continue their discussion of the draft of a new public-health law.10 Unlike Michael, the Kremlin did not care if the world knew that Nicholas was dead, because they knew the world did not care either.
FIVE days earlier, on Friday July 12, Goloshchekin, the special envoy sent to Moscow to find out what the Kremlin wanted to do with the Romanovs in captivity, returned to Ekaterinburg to report that the answer was that the Ural Regional Soviet could do whatever it thought best. The situation was critical. Advancing Whites and Czechs were now so close that the city could fall in three days. The decision was quickly made and brutally simple: they would kill the whole family, and then next day they would kill the six Romanovs held in Alapaevsk. The executioner in the Ipatev House was to be Yacob Yurovsky, a local photographer turned secret policeman. He and a picked squad of other Cheka men would shoot Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, after which their bodies would be taken away, burned, and the remains hidden from any chance of discovery.