Nicholas Ipatev, a retired army engineer, was a well-to-do businessman. He had acquired the house only a few months earlier, and used it partly as residence, partly as business office. It was a two-story stone building, constructed in the late nineteenth century in the ornate style favored by Muscovite boyars which returned to fashion at that time, with unusual luxuries such as hot running water and electric lights. He had furnished only the upper story, which consisted of three bedrooms, dining room, salon, reception room, kitchen, bathroom, and lavatory. The lower story, a semi-basement, was empty. The building had a small garden and several attached structures, one of which was used to store the belongings of the Imperial family. While the train was shuttling between Ekaterinburg and Omsk, workers had constructed a crude palisade to conceal the house from the street and block the inmates’ view. On June 5, another, taller palisade was added.
95. Ipatev’s house—the “House of Special Designation”: The murder occurred in the basement room with the arched-frame window on the lower left.
The house was converted into a high-security prison. The palisades prevented any communication with the outside world; and as if this were not enough, on May 15 the sealed windows were covered with white paint, except for a narrow strip at the top. The prisoners were allowed to send and receive a limited amount of correspondence, mainly with the children, which had to pass through censorship by the Cheka and the soviet, but this privilege was soon withdrawn. Once in a while outsiders were allowed in—priests and charwomen—but conversation with them was forbidden. The guards too had instructions not to speak with the prisoners. For a time newspapers were delivered but that ceased on June 5. Food brought from town—at first from the canteen of the soviet, later from a nearby convent—underwent inspection by the guards. The prisoners’ isolation was complete.
The guard of seventy-five men, all Russians except for two Poles,44 recruited from among local factory workers, was divided into internal and external detachments. They were well paid, receiving 400 rubles a month in addition to food and clothing. The smaller internal detachments lived in Ipatev’s house; the external guard was initially billeted on the lower floor but later moved into a private residence across the street. While on duty, the guards carried revolvers and grenades. Two or three of them manned posts on the upper floor, keeping the prisoners under constant surveillance. Four machine guns defended the house: on the second floor, on the terrace, on the lower floor, and in the attic. Guards were posted outside, protecting the entrances and ensuring that no unauthorized persons came near. Avdeev had overall command. He set up his office and sleeping quarters in the reception room on the upper floor.
96. Ipatev’s house surrounded by a palisade. Photograph taken in the Fall of 1918 by an American soldier.
Nicholas and Alexandra fretted about the children, but their worries came to an end in the morning of May 23 when the three girls and Alexis suddenly appeared. They had traveled by steamer on the Tobolsk River as far as Tiumen, and from there by train. The girls had concealed in their special corsets a total of 8 kilograms of precious stones. On arrival, the guards forbade servants to help them with the luggage.
The Cheka arrested four retainers: Prince Ilia Tatishchev, Nicholas’s adjutant; A. A. Volkov, the Empress’s valet; Princess Anastasia Gendrikova, her maid of honor; and Catherine Schneider, the Court Lectrice. They were taken to the local prison, to join Prince Dolgorukii, who had accompanied Nicholas and Alexandra from Tobolsk. With a solitary exception, they were all to perish. Most of the remaining members of the Imperial suite were told to leave Perm province. Alexis’s personal attendant, K. G. Nagornyi, and the valet Ivan Sednev moved into Ipatev’s residence. Dr. Vladimir Derevenko, Alexis’s physician, received permission to stay in Ekaterinburg as a private citizen. He visited the Tsarevich twice a week, always in the company of Avdeev.
The Tobolsk party had brought a great deal of luggage, which was stored in the garden shed: members of the Imperial family frequently went there to fetch things, accompanied by guards. The guards helped themselves to the contents. When Nagornyi and Sednev protested the thefts, they were arrested (May 28) and sent to prison, where four days later the Cheka killed them. These pilferings caused Nicholas and Alexandra a great deal of anxiety because the baggage included two boxes with their personal correspondence and Nicholas’s diaries.
At the end of May 1918, Ipatev’s residence housed eleven inmates. Nicholas and Alexandra occupied the corner room. Alexis at first shared the bedroom of his sisters, but on June 26, for reasons which will be spelled out, moved in with his parents. The princesses had the middle room, where they slept on folding cots. A. S. Demidova, the lady-in-waiting, was the only prisoner to have a room to herself, next to the terrace. Dr. Botkin occupied the salon. In the kitchen lived the three servants: the cook, Ivan Kharitonov, and his apprentice, a boy named Leonid Sednev (a nephew of the arrested valet), and the valet of the princesses, Aleksei Trup.
The family settled into a monotonous routine. They rose at nine o’clock, took tea at ten. Lunch was served at one, dinner between four and five, tea at seven, supper at nine. They went to sleep at eleven o’clock.45 Except for the meals, the prisoners were confined to their rooms. Life grew so dull that Nicholas began to skip entries in his journal. Much time was spent reading aloud from the Bible and from Russian classics, sometimes by candlelight because of the frequent power failures: Nicholas had his first opportunity to read War and Peace. The family prayed a great deal. They were allowed short walks in the garden, fifteen minutes at most, but no physical exercise, which was very hard on Nicholas. In good weather, Nicholas carried his disabled son into the yard. They played bezique and Russian backgammon, called tricktrack. They were not allowed to attend church, but on Sundays and holidays a priest would hold services in an improvised chapel in the salon, under the watchful eye of the guards.
97. Alexis and Olga on board the ship Rus on their last journey from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg: May 1918.
There exist many lurid stories about the abuse of the Imperial family at the hands of the guards. It is said that the latter entered the rooms occupied by the princesses any time of day or night, helped themselves to the food which the family, at Nicholas’s insistence, shared with their servants at a common table, and even jostled the ex-Tsar. These stories, while not baseless, tend to be exaggerated: the behavior of the commandant and his guards was undoubtedly rude, but no evidence exists of actual maltreatment. Even so, the conditions which the Imperial family endured were exceedingly painful. The guards posted on the second floor amused themselves by accompanying the princesses to the lavatory, demanding to know why they were going there and standing outside until they came out.46 It was not uncommon for obscene drawings and inscriptions to be found in the lavatory and bathroom. A proletarian lad named Faika Safonov amused friends with renditions of obscene ditties under the windows of the Imperial prisoners.