The second letter urged the recipients not to worry: their rescue carried no risks whatsoever. It was an astonishing assurance, even if one makes allowance for the desire of the alleged conspirators to allay the fears of the captives, given that they were surrounded by dozens of armed guards. It certainly casts the deepest doubts on its authenticity. It was “absolutely necessary,” the letter went on, that one of the windows be unglued—which indeed had been arranged, two days earlier, by the obliging commandant. Alexis’s inability to walk “complicated matters,” but it was “not too great an inconvenience.”
To this letter Nicholas responded at some length on June 25. He informed the correspondents that two days earlier one of their windows had indeed been opened. It was imperative to save not only them but also Dr. Botkin and the servants: “It would be ignoble for us, even if they do not want to burden us, to leave them behind after their following us into exile voluntarily.” Nicholas then expressed concern over the fate of two boxes stored in the shed, a smaller one, labeled AF No. 9 (i.e., Alexandra Fedorovna No. 9), and a larger one, designated “No. 13 N.A.” (Nicholas Alexandrovich), which contained “old letters and diaries.”
The third letter from the stranger requested additional information. Regrettably, it might not be possible to rescue everyone, he wrote. He promised to provide a “detailed plan of operations” by June 30, and instructed the family to be on the alert for a signal (which he did not describe): as soon as they heard it, they were to barricade the door leading to the hall and descend from the open window by means of a rope which they were somehow to procure.
That night (June 26–27), in anticipation of the promised rescue attempt, Alexis was moved to his parents’ room. The family did not go to sleep. “We spent an anxious night and kept vigil, dressed,” Nicholas noted. But the signal never came. “The waiting and uncertainty were most excruciating.”
What happened to have caused the Cheka to cancel its plan cannot be determined.
On the following night, Nicholas or Alexandra overheard a conversation that made them give up the thought of escape. “We heard in the night,” Alexandra wrote on June 28, “sentry under our rooms, being told quite particularly to watch every movement at our window—they have become again most suspicious since our window is opened.” This seems to have persuaded Nicholas to communicate to his correspondent a tortured note to the effect that he was not prepared to escape although he was not averse to being abducted:
Nous ne voulons et ne pouvons pas FUIRE. Nous pouvons seulement être enlevés par force, comme c’est la force qui nous a emmenés de Tobolsk. Ainsi, ne comptez sur aucune aide active de notre part. Le commandant a beaucoup d’aides, les changent souvent et sont devenu soucieux. Ils gardent notre emprisonnement ainsi nos vies consciencensement et son bien avec nous. Nous ne voulons pas qu’ils souffrent à cause de nous, ni vous pour nous. Surtout au nom de Dieu évitez l’effusion de sang. Renseignez vous sur eux vous même. Une descente de la fenêtre sans escalier est completement impossible. Même descendu on est encore en grand danger à cause de la fenêtre ouverte de la chambre des commandants et la mitrailleuse de l’étage en bas, où l’on pénètre de la cour intérieure. [Crossed out: Renoncez donc à l’idée de nous enlever.] Si vous veillez sur nous, vous pouvez toujours venir nous sauver en cas de danger imminent et réel. Nous ignorons completement ce qui si passe a l’extérieur, ne recevant ni journaux, ni lettres. Depuis qu’on a permi d’ouvrir la fenêtre, la surveillance a augmenté et on défend même de sortir la tête, au risque de recevoir un balle dans la figure.*
At this stage the spurious rescue operation was aborted. The Imperial family received yet another, fourth and final, secret communication, which had to have been written after July 4 because it requested information about the new commandant of Ipatev’s, who replaced Avdeev on that day. It was a crude fabrication of the Cheka, which assured the Imperial family that its friends “D and T”—obviously, Dolgorukii and Tatishchev—had already been “saved,” whereas in fact both had been executed the previous month.
After these experiences, the appearance of Nicholas and the children changed: Sokolov’s witnesses told him they looked “exhausted.”63
Although it has been the undeviating practice of Communist authorities then and since to lay responsibility for the decision to execute the Imperial family on the Ural Regional Soviet, this version, made up to exonerate Lenin, is certainly misleading. It can be established that the final decision to “liquidate” the Romanovs was taken personally by Lenin, most likely at the beginning of July. One could have inferred this fact much from the knowledge that no provincial soviet would have dared to act on a matter of such importance without explicit authorization from the center. Sokolov was convinced of Lenin’s responsibility in 1925, when he published the results of his investigation. But there exists incontrovertible positive evidence to this effect from no less an authority than Trotsky. In 1935, Trotsky read in an émigré newspaper an account of the death of the Imperial family. This prodded his memory and he wrote in his diary:
My next visit to Moscow took place after Ekaterinburg had already fallen [i.e., after July 25]. Speaking with Sverdlov, I asked in passing, “Oh yes, and where is the Tsar?” “Finished,” he replied. “He has been shot.” “And where is the family?” “The family along with him.” “All?” I asked, apparently with a trace of surprise. “All,” Sverdlov replied. “Why?” He awaited my reaction. I made no reply. “And who decided the matter?” I inquired. “We decided it here. Ilich thought that we should not leave the Whites a live banner, especially under the present difficult circumstances …” I asked no more questions and considered the matter closed.64
Sverdlov’s offhand remark undercuts once and for all the official version that Nicholas and his family had been executed on the initiative of the Ekaterinburg authorities to prevent them from either escaping or being captured by the Czechs. The decision fell not in Ekaterinburg but in Moscow, at a time when the Bolshevik regime felt the ground giving way and feared a restoration of the monarchy—a prospect that only a year earlier would have appeared too fantastic to contemplate.*
At the end of June, Goloshchekin, the most powerful Bolshevik in the Urals and a friend of Sverdlov’s, left Ekaterinburg for Moscow. His mission, according to Bykov, was to discuss the fate of the Romanovs with the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets.65 That the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks and Goloshchekin in particular wanted the Romanovs out of the way is well established: hence it can reasonably be deduced that he sought from Moscow authorization to proceed with the execution. Lenin approved this request.
The determination to execute the ex-Tsar, and possibly the rest of his immediate family, seems to have been taken in the first days of July, very likely at the meeting of the Sovnarkom in the evening of July 2. Two facts speak in favor of this hypothesis.
One of the items on the agenda of this Sovnarkom session was the nationalization of the properties of the Romanov family. A commission was appointed to draft a decree to this effect.66 This could hardly have been considered an urgent matter in those critical days, given that all the Romanovs living under Communist rule were either in jail or in exile and their properties had long been taken over by the state or distributed to peasants. It seems likely, therefore, to have been raised in connection with the decision to execute Nicholas. A decree formally nationalizing the properties of the Romanov family was signed into law on July 13, three days before the murder, but in an unusual departure from practice not published until six days later—that is, on the day the news of the murder was made public.67