*On him see, Granat, XLI, Pt. 1, 26–29. Anti-Semitic monarchists, determined to blame the murder of the Imperial family on Jews, have decided that Beloborodov’s real name was “Weissbart,” for which there exists no evidence whatever.
†Bykov first published under the title “Poslednie dni poslednego tsaria” in N. I. Nikolaev, ed., Rabochaia revoliutsiia na Urale (Ekaterinburg, 1921), 3–26; this text was reprinted in ARR, XVII (1926), 302–16. He was subsequently given access to some unpublished materials, on the basis of which he drew up the official story: Poslednie dni Romanovykh (Sverdlovsk, 1926). The latter book has been translated into English, German, and French. For all its obvious tendentiousness it has value because it makes reference to documents locked up in Communist archives. Bykov was chairman of the Ekaterinburg Soviet after the October coup.
*Report of the Chekist F. Drugov, who says he heard it at the time (fall 1918) from a fellow Chekist, Tarasov-Rodionov: IR, No. 10/303 (February 28, 1931), 10. Drugov’s account, however, loses some of its credibility because he reports having met and talked to Tarasov-Rodionov while traveling on a nonexistent railroad from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg.
†The diaries of the ex-Empress, written in her idiosyncratic English, have never been published in entirety. The American journalist Isaac Don Levine brought out a photographic copy and published extensive excerpts in the Chicago Daily News, June 22–26 and 28, 1920, and in Eyewitness to History (New York, 1963).
*Krasnaia niva, No. 27 (1928), 17. Avdeev in KN, No. 5 (1928), 190, confirms that Iakovlev carried a mandate from Lenin. According to I. Koganitskii (PR, No. 4, 1922, 13) Iakovlev had orders to bring Nicholas to Moscow, which suspicious local Bolsheviks authenticated by communicating with the capital.
†For purposes of security, the communications between Iakovlev and the Kremlin referred to the ex-Tsar and his family as “merchandise.” The official in Moscow told Iakovlev to “bring only the main part of the baggage”: Iakovlev in Ural, No. 7 (1988), 160.
*In October 1918, Iakovlev defected to the Whites and gave an interview to the newspaper Ural’skaia zhizn’; it is reprinted in the monarchist journal RL, No. 1 (1921), 150–53.
*Nicholas’s diaries for 1918 are in KA, No. 1/26 (1928), 110-37.
*According to a recent account by a historian with access to the archives, Iakovlev talked with Sverdlov, who then communicated with Ekaterinburg, requesting “guarantees,” presumably of the safety of the Imperial family. Ekaterinburg is said to have given these guarantees on condition that it be allowed to take charge of the prisoners: Ioffe in Sovetskaia Rossiia, No. 161/9,412 (July 12, 1987), 4.
*A. P. Nenarokov, Vostochnyi front, 1918 (Moscow, 1969), 54, 72, 101. After defecting to the Whites later that year, Iakovlev was arrested by Czech counterintelligence. He fled to China, returned to the Soviet Union, and was arrested. After spending some time in a concentration camp at the Solovetskii Monastery, he was freed, and appointed commandant of an NKVD camp. Sometime later he was rearrested and executed. I owe this information to the Soviet writer, Mr. Vladimir Kashits.
*Bykov, Poslednie dni, 121. Miasnikov later became one of the leaders of the Workers’ Opposition, for which he was expelled from the party in 1921 and arrested in 1923. In 1924 or 1925 he turned up in Paris, where he peddled a manuscript describing Michael’s murder. He is said to have published it in Moscow in 1924 (Za svobodu!, April 1925).
†E.g., NVCh, No. 91 (June 17, 1918), 1. A month later the Press Bureau of the Sovnarkom issued a communiqué that Michael had fled to Omsk and was probably in London: NV, No. 124/148 (July 23, 1918), 3.
‡P. B.[ulygin] in Segodnia (Riga), No. 174 (July 1, 1928), 2–3. Only on June 28 did the Soviet authorities confirm that Nicholas and his family were safe, having allegedly received a wire from Ekaterinburg from the commander in chief of the Northern Urals front, that he had inspected the Ipatev house on June 21 and found its residents alive: NV, No. 104/128 (June 29, 1918), 3. Cf. M. K. Diterikhs, Ubiistvo tsarskoi sem’i i chlenov doma Romanovykh na Urale, I (Vladivostok, 1922), 46–48. The delay of one week in reporting this information is inexplicable except in the context of deliberate dissimulation.
*“The friends sleep no longer and hope that the hour so long awaited has arrived. The revolt of the Czechoslovaks menaces the Bolsheviks ever more seriously. Samara, Cheliabinsk and all of eastern and western Siberia are under the control of the national provisional government. The army of the Slavic friends is eighty kilometers from Ekaterinburg, the soldiers of the Red Army are not resisting effectively. Be attentive to all outside movement, wait and be of good hope. But at the same time, I implore you, be prudent because the Bolsheviks, prior to being defeated, represent for you a real and serious danger. Be ready at all hours, day and night. Make a sketch of your two rooms, the places, the furniture, the beds. Write clearly the hour when all of you go to bed. One of you ought not to sleep between 2 and 3 every night from now on. Answer in a few words, but give, I beg you, all the useful information for your friends outside. Give your reply to the same soldier who transmits to you this note in writing but say not one word.
One who is prepared to die for you
An officer of the Russian army.”
*“from the corner up to the balcony. 5 windows face the street, 2 the square. All the windows are closed, sealed and painted white. The little one is still sick and in bed, and cannot walk at all—every concussion causes him pain. A week ago, because of the anarchists, thought was given to having us moved to Moscow at night. One must risk nothing without being absolutely sure of the result. We are almost all the time under careful observation.”
The four letters smuggled to the Imperial family in late June and early July 1918, with their replies, were first published in Russian in the Moscow daily Vechernye Izvestiia, No. 208 (April 2, 1919), 1–2, and No. 209 (April 3, 1919), 1–2. In November 1919, the Communist historian Michael Pokrovskii provided photographic copies of the originals to Isaac Don Levine, who published them in English translation in the Chicago Daily News, December 18, 1919, and again in his autobiography, Eyewitness to History (New York, 1973), 138–41. Levine adopted the dating and sequence suggested to him by Soviet archivists, which, as can be established from internal evidence, cannot be correct. Letter #2 in his version should be Letter #3, and vice versa; Letter #4, which he dates June 26, had to have been written after July 4. Mrs. Levine kindly allowed me to make copies of her late husband’s materials, and the correspondence appears here in the original French for the first time.
*It has been recently revealed that this and the subsequent letters from alleged monarchist rescuers were drafted by one P. Voikov, a member of the Ural Ispolkom and a graduate of Geneva University, and copied by another Bolshevik with neater handwriting: E. Radzinskii in Ogonëk, No. 2 (1990), 27.