These were precautionary measures, for the Bolshevik leadership had not as yet decided what to do with the ex-Tsar and his relatives. In 1911 Lenin had written that “it was necessary to behead at least one hundred Romanovs.”8 Such mass execution, however, would be dangerous, because of the strong monarchist sentiments of the village. One possibility was to try Nicholas before a Revolutionary Tribunal. Isaac Steinberg, who as Commissar of Justice at the time was in a position to know, writes that such a trial was under consideration in February 1918 to prevent a restoration of the monarchy—tacit admission that one year after his universally welcomed abdication, the unpopular Nicholas appealed to enough Russians to worry the Bolsheviks. According to Steinberg, at a meeting of the Central Executive Committee, Spiridonova opposed a trial on the grounds that Nicholas would be lynched en route from Tobolsk. Lenin decided that it was still too early for legal proceedings against the ex-Tsar but ordered that materials for them be gathered.†
In the middle of April, the Russian press carried reports of an impending trial of “Nicholas Romanov.” This, it was said, would be the first of a series of trials of prominent figures of the old regime which Krylenko was readying as head of the Supreme Investigatory Commission. The ex-Tsar would be charged with only those “crimes” which he had committed as constitutional ruler—that is, after October 17, 1905. Among them would be the so-called coup d’état of June 3, 1907, which had violated the Fundamental Laws by arbitrarily changing the electoral law; the improper expenditure of national resources through the “reserved” part of the budget; and other abuses of authority.9 But on April 22 the press reported a denial by Krylenko that Nicholas would be tried. According to Krylenko, the rumors were due to a misunderstanding: the government really meant to try an agent provocateur by the name of Romanov.10
The fact that Tobolsk had no railroad saved it from being immediately caught up in the revolutionary turmoil, for at this time the “Revolution” was spread mainly by gangs of armed men traveling by train. This explains why as late as February 1918 Tobolsk had no Communist Party cell and its soviet remained under the control of SRs and Mensheviks.
Tobolsk’s isolation ended in March when the Bolsheviks of nearby Ekaterinburg and Omsk evinced an interest in its royal residents. In February, Ekaterinburg held a Congress of Soviets of the Ural Region at which it elected a five-man Presidium controlled by the Bolsheviks. Its chairman, the twenty-six-year-old Alexander Beloborodov, a locksmith or electrician by profession, had been Bolshevik deputy to the Constituent Assembly.* But the most influential member of the Presidium, by virtue of his intimate friendship with Sverdlov, was Isai Goloshchekin, the Military Commissar of the Ural Region. Born in Vitebsk in 1876 in a Jewish family, Goloshchekin had joined Lenin in 1903 and became a member of the Central Committee in 1912. Goloshchekin also served as member of the Ekaterinburg Cheka. He and Beloborodov were to play critical roles in the destiny of the Imperial family.
Our knowledge of the political situation in Ekaterinburg in the spring and summer of 1918 derives almost entirely from a single Communist source, the accounts of P. M. Bykov, which also provide the earliest Soviet version of the Ekaterinburg tragedy.† The Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks were annoyed by the comforts the ex-Tsar was enjoying in Tobolsk and alarmed by the degree of freedom allowed him and his entourage. They feared that with the coming of the spring thaws the Imperial family would flee.11 At the time persistent rumors circulated in the Urals that all sorts of suspicious individuals were assembling in and around Tobolsk.* Some of the Ekaterinburg Communists were extremists who hated Nicholas II—“Nicholas the Bloody”—with genuine passion because of the persecutions they had suffered at the hands of his police. But all of them were afraid of a restoration of the monarchy: not so much out of any abstract political considerations as from fear for their lives. They reasoned as did Robespierre when he pleaded in 1793 before the Convention for a sentence of death to be passed on Louis XVI: “If the king is not guilty, then those who have dethroned him are.”12 They wished the Romanovs out of the way as quickly and expeditiously as possible: and to make certain the ex-Tsar would not get away, they wanted him under their own control, in Ekaterinburg. To this end, in March-April 1918 they contacted Sverdlov.
Omsk had similar ideas, but it lacked connections in Moscow and in the end lost out.
The Ural Regional Soviet in Ekaterinburg discussed the Imperial family as early as February 1918, at which time some deputies expressed fears that by May, when the ice melted on the rivers, the Romanovs would either escape or be abducted. In early March the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks requested from Sverdlov permission to remove the Imperial family.13 A similar request came from Omsk.
To leave nothing to chance, Ekaterinburg dispatched on March 16 to Tobolsk a secret mission to investigate conditions there. After the mission had returned and delivered its report, Ekaterinburg sent an armed detachment to Tobolsk to lay the groundwork for the transfer of the Romanov family. It also posted patrols along possible routes of escape. Upon reaching Tobolsk on March 28, this detachment discovered that it had been preceded by a group of armed Communists sent by Omsk for the same purpose. The Omsk group, which had arrived two days earlier, had dispersed the city Duma and evicted the SRs and Mensheviks from the local soviet. The two groups disputed who was in charge. Being the weaker, the Ekaterinburg detachment had to retreat, but it returned on April 13 with reinforcements led by the Bolshevik S. S. Zaslavskii and took charge. Zaslavskii demanded that the Imperial family be incarcerated.14 To this end, cells were readied in the local prison.15
These events disrupted the calm which the Imperial family had been enjoying until then. Alexandra noted in her diary on March 28/April 10 that she “sewed up” jewels with the help of the children.† Although no evidence has come to light that the Imperial family made plans to escape, and all alleged plots toward this end by sympathizers turned out to be empty talk, an oppressive sense that they were captives rather than exiles overcame the Imperial household. Any possibility, however remote and unreal, of escaping from the Bolsheviks now vanished.16
At the end of March, Goloshchekin left for Moscow. He reported to Sverdlov on the situation in Tobolsk, warning of the need for urgent measures to prevent the Imperial family’s escape. Approximately at the same time—the first week of April—the Presidium of the CEC in Moscow also heard a report on the situation in Tobolsk from a representative of the local guard. According to an account given to the CEC by Sverdlov on May 9, this information persuaded the government to authorize the transfer of the ex-Tsar to Ekaterinburg. This explanation, however, is a post facto attempt to justify events which unfolded contrary to the government’s intentions. For it is known that on April 1 the Presidium resolved “if possible” to bring the Romanovs to Moscow.17
On April 22, there appeared in Tobolsk Vasilii Vasilevich Iakovlev, an emissary from Moscow. Long a mysterious figure, suspected even of being an English agent, he has recently been identified as an old Bolshevik whose real name was Konstantin Miachin. Born in 1886 near Orenburg, he had joined the Social-Democratic Party in 1905 and taken part in many Bolshevik armed robberies (“expropriations”). In 1911 he emigrated under false identity (Iakovlev) and worked in Belgium as an electrician. He returned to Russia after the February Revolution. In October 1917 he served on the Military-Revolutionary Committee and was a delegate to the Second Congress of Soviets. In December 1917 he was appointed to the Collegium of the Cheka. He participated in the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly.18 In other words, he was a tried and trusted Bolshevik.