The Romanovs bore their confinement, discomforts, and indignities with remarkable serenity. Avdeev thought that Nicholas did not behave like a prisoner at all, displaying “natural gaiety.” Bykov, the Communist historian of these events, speaks with irritation of Nicholas’s “idiotic indifference to the events occurring around him.”47 The behavior of the ex-Tsar and his family, however, was due not to indifference but to a sense of decorum and a fatalism rooted in religious faith. We shall, of course, never know what went on in the minds of the prisoners, behind the façade of Nicholas’s “natural gaiety,” Alexandra’s hauteur, and the children’s irrepressible spirits, for they confided in no one: Nicholas’s and Alexandra’s diaries for the period are logs rather than intimate journals. But an unexpected insight into their inner feelings is provided by the discovery among their belongings of a poem called “Prayer.” It was written by S. S. Bekhteev, a brother of Zinaida Tolstoy, a close friend of Alexandra’s, in October 1917 and sent to Tobolsk with a dedication to Olga and Tatiana. In the papers of the Imperial family, two copies of this poem were found, one in the hand of Alexandra, the other in that of Olga. It read:
Give patience, Lord, to us Thy children
In these dark, stormy days to bear
The persecution of our people,
The tortures falling to our share.
Give strength, Just God, to us who need it,
The persecutors to forgive,
Our heavy, painful cross to carry
And Thy great meekness to achieve.
When we are plundered and insulted,
In days of mutinous unrest,
We turn for help to Thee, Christ-Savior,
That we may stand the bitter test.
Lord of the world, God of Creation,
Give us Thy blessing through our prayer,
Give peace of heart to us, O Master,
This hour of deadly dread to bear.
And on the threshold of the grave
Breathe power divine into our clay
That we, Thy children, may find strength
In meekness for our foes to pray.48
In the spring of 1918, when they had confined Nicholas and his family in Ekaterinburg and the rest of the Romanov clan in other towns of Perm province, the Bolsheviks were placing them in what appeared to be a safe area: far away from the German front and the White Army, in the midst of a Bolshevik stronghold. But the situation in this territory changed dramatically with the outbreak of the Czech rebellion. By the middle of June, the Czechs controlled Omsk, Cheliabinsk, and Samara. Their military operations endangered the province of Perm, located directly north of these cities, and placed the Romanovs close to a battlefront where the Bolsheviks were in retreat.
What was to be done with them? In June, Trotsky still favored a spectacular triaclass="underline"
During one of my brief visits to Moscow—I believe it was a few weeks before the execution of the Romanovs—I remarked in passing to the Politburo that, considering the bad situation in the Urals, one should speed up the Tsar’s trial. I proposed an open court that would unfold a picture of the entire reign (peasant policy, labor, nationalities, culture, the two wars, etc.). The proceedings of the trial would be broadcast nationwide by radio; in the volosti, accounts of the proceedings would be read and commented upon daily. Lenin replied to the effect that this would be very good if it were feasible. But … there might not be time enough.… No debate took place, since I did not insist on my proposal, being absorbed in different work. And in the Politburo there were only three or four of us: Lenin, myself, Sverdlov … Kamenev, as I recall, was not present. At that time Lenin was rather gloomy and had no confidence that we would succeed in building an army …49
By June 1918 the idea of a trial had ceased to be realistic. There exists convincing evidence that shortly after the outbreak of the Czech uprising, Lenin authorized the Cheka to make preparations for the execution of all the Romanovs in Perm province, using for pretext the device of contrived “escapes.” On his instructions, the Cheka arranged for elaborate provocations in the three towns where members of the Romanov family were then either confined or living under surveillance: Perm, Ekaterinburg, and Alapaevsk. In Perm and Alapaevsk the plan succeeded; in Ekaterinburg it was abandoned.
A rehearsal for the massacre of Nicholas and his family was staged in Perm, the place of exile of Grand Duke Michael.50 On his arrival in Perm in March, in the company of his secretary, the Englishman Nicholas Johnson, Michael was placed in jail. He was soon released, however, and allowed to take up residence, along with Johnson, a servant, and a chauffeur, in a hotel, where he lived in relative comfort and freedom. Although under Cheka surveillance, had he wished to escape he could have done so without difficulty, for he was permitted to move freely about town. But like the other Romanovs he displayed utter passivity. His wife visited him during the Easter holidays, but at his request returned to Petrograd, from where she eventually escaped and made her way to England.
On the night of June 12–13, five armed men drove up in a troika at Michael’s hotel.51 They awoke the Grand Duke and told him to dress and follow them. Michael asked for their credentials. When they could not produce any, he demanded to see the head of the local Cheka. At this point (as Michael’s valet later told a fellow prisoner before being himself executed), the visitors lost patience and threatened to resort to force. One of them whispered something in the ear of either Michael or Johnson which seems to overcome their doubts. It is almost certain that they posed as monarchists on a rescue mission. Michael dressed and, accompanied by Johnson, entered the visitors’ vehicle parked in front of the hotel.
The troika sped away in the direction of the industrial settlement of Motovilikha. Out of town, it turned into the woods and stopped. The two passengers were told to step out, and as they did so, they were cut down by bullets, probably shot in the back, as was the Cheka’s custom at the time. Their bodies were burned in a nearby smelting furnace.
Immediately after the murder, the Bolshevik authorities in Perm informed Petrograd and cities in the area that Michael had escaped and a search was underway. Simultaneously, they spread rumors that the Grand Duke had been abducted by monarchists.52
The local newspaper, Permskie Izvestiia, carried the following report of the incident:
During the night of May 31 [June 12] an organized band of White Guardists with forged mandates appeared at the hotel inhabited by Michael Romanov and his secretary, Johnson, abducted them, and took them to an unknown destination. A search party sent out that night found no trace. The searches continue.53
This was a tissue of lies. Michael and Johnson in fact had been abducted not by “White Guardists” but by the Cheka, headed by G. I. Miasnikov, an ex-locksmith and professional revolutionary, chairman of the Motivilikha Soviet. His four accomplices were pro-Bolshevik workers from the same town. Since the myth of a “White Guard” plot could not be sustained once the remains of Michael and Johnson had been located by the Sokolov commission the next year, the subsequent official Communist version has claimed that Miasnikov and his accomplices had acted on their own, without authorization either from Moscow or from the local soviet—a version which must strain the credulity of even the most credulous.*
On June 17, newspapers in Moscow and Petrograd carried reports of Michael’s “disappearance,”† Concurrently rumors spread that Nicholas had been killed by a Red Army soldier who had broken into Ipatev’s house.54 These rumors could have originated spontaneously, but it is much more likely that they were intentionally floated by the Bolsheviks to test the reaction of both the Russian public and foreign governments to the killing of Nicholas, preparations for which were underway. What gives credence to this hypothesis is the extraordinary behavior of Lenin. On June 18, he gave an interview to the daily Nashe slovo in which he said that while he could confirm reports of Michael’s escape, his government was unable to determine whether the ex-Tsar was dead or alive.55 It was most unusual for Lenin to give an interview to Nashe slovo, a liberal newspaper and as critical of the Bolshevik regime as the conditions permitted, with which the Bolsheviks normally had no dealings. Equally curious was his pleading ignorance about the fate of the ex-Tsar, since the government could readily establish the facts of the case: as late as June 22, the Press Bureau of the Sovnarkom stated that it still did not know the fate of Nicholas, although it admitted to maintaining daily communication with Ekaterinburg.56 This behavior of the government lends strong support to the hypothesis that Moscow spread these rumors to test the public reactions to the projected murder of the ex-Tsar.‡