Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [115]
Now in 1918, during the triumph of the new Time of Troubles—how he wished he could live in a monastery.
The spiritual master in Tobolsk was Archbishop Hermogen. Once he had been a jealous admirer of Rasputin, but when he became Rasputin’s sworn enemy he had been persecuted and sent into exile. For all those oppressions, the new authorities had appointed him archbishop of Tobolsk, and he had become the family’s hope and support: the Lord’s slave Hermogen had forgotten his oppressions and was prepared to serve God’s anointed.
Hermogen greeted their idea with enthusiasm.
Volkov was sent to the mother superior. A new building was under construction at the monastery, and the mother superior joyfully prepared to receive the family. But this idyllic change of fate was not destined to be.
RISKY AFFAIRS
In September Vasily Pankratov, a commissar of the Provisional Government, arrived, and the idea was buried then and there.
“1 September. A new commissar arrived from the Provisional Government, Pankratov. He settled in the suite’s house with his assistant, some disheveled ensign who looks like a worker or a poor teacher. He will be censor of our correspondence.”
The “suite’s house”—that was the pretty name he gave to the merchant Kornilov’s home. There, opposite Freedom House, lived the suite—Tatishchev, Dolgorukov, Dr. Botkin, and Botkin’s daughter, who would later describe all that had gone on.
Commissar Pankratov had been sent to Tobolsk in the evolution of that same striking game that Kerensky had dreamed up: Pankratov had served fourteen years—the greater part of Nicholas’s reign—in the infamous Schlusselburg Fortress. So Kerensky sent him to guard Nicholas himself.
In all this Alix saw one and the same thing: the world had been stood on its head—a convict was guarding God’s anointed. She did not favor the strange man in the big fur cap with so much as a glance. He saw the contemptuous disdain on her face when he stopped in to return letters, the letters that she had written to Anya and that this revolutionary had now read (dared read!).
This correspondence was her life.
——
In Petrograd Anya, who had been released from the Fortress of Peter and Paul, was feverishly beginning to gather funds to free the family. It is ridiculous, but in this whole enormous empire, Anya was probably the only true conspirator trying to free the tsar’s family. Back in August Anya had sent one of the empress’s young ladies-in-waiting, Rita Khitrovo—a friend of Nastya Gendrikova and Grand Duchess Olga—to Tobolsk with some letters. Anya was furiously energetic, as ever, but she was an inexperienced conspirator. She explained to Rita the importance of the letters. Young Rita caught fire: the romantic aureole of the conspirator turned her head. Her imagination started working, and soon utterly trusting Rita was telling her friend about a certain organization. They were going to save the family! But then Rita’s friend told.… And then….
Nicholas’s diary:
“18 August.… In the morning Rita Khitrovo appeared on the street, having come from Petrograd, and spent some time with Nastenka Gendrikova. This was enough that in the evening they conducted a search of her room. The Devil knows what this is!…
“19 August.… Nastenka has lost the right to walk in the street for several days, and poor Rita Khitrovo has to go back with the evening steamer.”
She did not simply “go back.” She was taken to Petrograd for interrogation. The charges were the gravest; they were looking for a “Cossack organization.” Naturally, they did not find one, but Rita did not betray Anya.
Anya would manage to quit perilous Petrograd: Vyrubova was deported. She took the train from Petrograd to Finland. Soldiers and sailors surrounded the train at Helsingfors, Finland. Someone had spread a rumor that there were grand dukes on the train.
“Give us the grand dukes!”
“Give us the Romanovs!” the furious crowd