Kobilinsky had been appointed to Tsarskoe Selo by General Kornilov. His chief qualification was as a committed supporter of the February Revolution. But over his time spent with the tsar the colonel had much changed. Nicholas's despair, his gentleness and delicacy; those delightful daughters; and the empress, defenceless in her unhappy arrogance, had together transformed Kobilinsky from the family's jailer to its friend. 'I surrendered to you, Your Highness, that most valuable thing, my honour,' he, entirely rightly, said afterwards to Nicholas.
Thus, in this quiet little town where the only military force is the 330 riflemen guarding the family, their commander becomes close to Nicholas. And the majority of the guard - 'good soldiers' as Nicholas calls them - receive endless presents from the family. And indeed at that time the guard could have helped them escape. Tatiana Botkina, daughter of the doctor Evgeny Botkin, who shared the family's captivity in Tobolsk, remembered 'in these months [that is from August to the October Revolution] the family could have escaped'. But where could they escape to?
Up until the Bolshevik seizure of power, as we have already said, there was no place for the tsar in Russian politics. In fact, the only people contending against the revolutionary power of the Provisional Government were the Jacobin Bolsheviks. The Whites, the movement to rebuild a strong sovereign power, had only just been born. If the tsar fled, all he could do was quit the country. But to do that he would have had to cross half of Russia. Nicholas couldn't risk the lives of those closest to him.
In the middle of November the terrible news reached Tobolsk of the storming of the Winter Palace, the sacking of the palace of the tsar's ancestors, and of the Bolshevik seizure of power. The tsar wrote in his diary on 17 November, 'it is sad to read the description in the newspapers of what happened two weeks ago in Petrograd and Moscow ... This is much worse and more shameful than the events in the time of troubles.'
It was not in vain that Nicholas in Tobolsk had read Quatre-vingt- treize by Victor Hugo, a book about the Jacobins. The tsar understood that that was what had come to power. And as Gilliard subsequently recalled 'Nicholas more and more regretted his abdication'.
The Civil War started. The White movement against Bolshevik power came into existence. Now Nicholas could contemplate fleeing to the Whites. And now the riflemen and their commander could help. But the most important factor was Hermogen. The powerful archbishop had in his control distant monasteries like fortresses, where it would be possible to stop peacefully by, rivers with hidden boats ... all of this could facilitate a successful escape.
But Alexandra hesitates. The whole thing depends on Hermogen. Alexandra cannot entrust the fate of her family to the avowed enemy of Rasputin.
Indeed, how happy it made Alexandra when a certain Boris Soloviev, married to the daughter of Rasputin, appeared in Tobolsk. Soloviev said that he had come to organise their escape. And Alexandra of course saw a great sign in this; the name of the 'Monk', as always, carried her into a familiar world of fantasy. Her Grigory, from beyond the grave, was bringing a 'Mighty Host' in order to help her. She believed in Soloviev with her whole soul. So the normally thrifty Alexandra generously pours out to him royal treasures and money for their liberation. All this time in St Petersburg the empress's friend Vyrubova is working on her behalf. She sends to Tobolsk both money and Sergei Markov, an officer of the Crimean cavalry regiment whose commander had been the empress herself. And again the romantic Alexandra believes this is a sign. The emissary of the Monk and the emissary of the valiant Russian officers had come together! After a regular communication from Soloviev she began to rave about '300 officers who have already gathered,' as Soloviev wrote to her, 'near Tiumen'. And Alexandra even more generously poured out tsarist treasures to Soloviev. In reply Soloviev writes to Alexandra with his notions on 'mobile groups of officers' that had already been set up all along the road from Tobolsk to Tiumen, where the railway started. They would hand the imperial family on from one to another at the time of the escape. He told her that he controlled the telephones of the Bolshevik Soviet itself. The time of liberation was approaching! Alexandra infects Nicholas with her belief. Even the heir's guardian, the sensible Swiss Gilliard, decides 'to hold himself ready for all possible events'.
Indeed, in March 1918 on Freedom Street the bells began to ring as armed men arrived in brave, tinkling troikas with whoops and whistles. Alexandra, looking out of her window, whispered with delight 'what good Russian faces'. They had come. The Mighty Russian Host, the '300 officers' about whom Soloviev, the emissary of the Monk, had just written to her. But in reality what arrived on that day was a detachment of Red Guards from Omsk, sent to establish Bolshevik power in Tobolsk. This was the day when the idyllic period of their detention came to an end. With tinkling, whoops and whistles a new world burst upon Tobolsk. Soon the Bolsheviks were to drown Archbishop Hermogen in the river, and flight from Tobolsk became impossible. In fact, as Tatiana Botkina wrote in her memoirs 'there were no groups of officers to liberate the imperial family'. Soloviev, 'Rasputin's emissary', turned out to be one of the many adventurers in which the revolutionary era was so rich.
Thus Rasputin, even after his death, brought destruction on the imperial family.
But every month of Bolshevik rule made life in the country less and less bearable. As happens with regimes that have seized power by force, everything began to disappear. Food disappeared, and fuel. Winter came. There was no heat in the cities. Apartments were transformed into caves. Broken lanterns didn't burn. The streets at night saw theft and murder. And by degrees people began to think back to the 'accursed tsarist regime'.
And now Bolshevik Russia found itself surrounded in a ring of intervention and revolt. The Civil War was under way.
The White movement was headed by tsarist generals. None of them drew attention to the unpopular tsar. But ... but ... could the tsarist idea rise again from the ashes? Especially since the act of abdication had been cunningly contrived. At the right moment it could be declared illegal. The tsar had no right to abdicate on behalf of his heir. His son did not belong to him. By law Alexis belonged to Russia.
These ideas crossed the Bolsheviks' minds as well. So they decided to speed matters up - to stamp out the smouldering fire. Trotsky, second in command of the revolution, planned to set up a People's Court for the tsar on the model of the courts of the French Revolution. He got Lenin's agreement to transfer the family to Moscow, now the capital of Bolshevik Russia.
Commissar Myachin (whose Bolshevik pseudonym was Yakov- lev) was sent to Tobolsk. His job was to transfer the tsar to Moscow. But transferring the whole family was impossible - the heir was ill. So Moscow ordered Yakovlev to bring the tsar on his own. And despite all protests, leaving the heir in the care of three grand princesses, Yakovlev carried the tsar off to Moscow. The tsaritsa decided to go with her husband, as did their daughter Maria.
But Yakovlev's train was stopped in Omsk. In the Urals there were rumours that he had absolutely no intention of taking the imperial family to Moscow. The Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks agreed with the Omsk Bolsheviks to arrest Yakovlev, shoot him, and to hold the imperial family under strict guard in the capital of the Urals, Ekaterinburg. The commissar was only saved by a telegram from Moscow confirming his mission. But of course Moscow heard about the arguments concerning Yakovlev in Ekaterinburg. He was ordered to hand the family over to the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks, and himself to return to the capital.