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What hatred! Yes, Blok was right: the future of the tsar’s family could have been read then, during the period of the Provisional Government.

The Helsingfors Soviet arrested Anya and sent her to the Polar Star, which had been seized by revolutionary sailors. She was put into the hold, which was teeming with parasites. She was led along the spat-upon, butt-strewn deck to be questioned in the same drawing room where once she had played four hands on the piano with the tsaritsa. In Petrograd her mother went to see Trotsky, the leader of the powerful Petrograd Soviet, who alone could influence the Baltic sailors—“the pride and glory of the Russian revolution.” Trotsky honored her request, and the “pride and glory” released Anya. Once again she was in Petrograd, and once again she corresponded with the tsaritsa.

Alix’s diary:

“Sept. 7th.… I heard that Ania was taken with the others on her way to Sweden, seized at Helsingfors and ended up on the Polar Star.”

Alix’s elegiac letters to Anya:

“My dear.… Yes, the past is over, I thank God for all I had & was given—& will live in my memories, which no one can take away. My youth is over.… My near and dear are all far far away.… & am surrounded by their photographs and possessions … a robe, slippers, a saucer, an ikon.… I would love to send you something, but fear it would be lost….

“You know I am with you in my heart & soul, I share all your sufferings & pray for you fervently.… The weather is changeable: frost & sun, then it melts & dims.… Terribly boring for those who like long walks & cant have them.… How time flies.… Soon will be 9 months since I said goodbye to so many … & you are alone in your suffering & loneliness.… All are generally healthy excepting for slight colds & my knee & wrist swell, tho’ thank God, without any great suffering. My heart has hurt me lately. I read much & live in the past, so full of rich & precious memories.… Dont lose heart, I wish I could send you something tasty.

“… I left all the albums in a trunk & am sad without them, but its better that way because it would be painful to look & remember.… I drive things away, they destroy me, all too fresh in my memory….

“I remember Novgorod & the terrible 17th.… Russia too suffers for this, all must suffer for this, what they have done, but no one understands.”

(The “17th”—the day of Rasputin’s murder. She was certain that “no one understands”: the country had had a revolution in punishment for the “17th.”)

After writing about her murdered spiritual pastor, she told Anya about the country’s captive pastor—the tsar, who was devoted: “He is absolutely stunning, such fortitude of spirit, tho’ he suffers endlessly for his country.… How old I am, but I feel like the country’s mother & suffer as if for my own child and love my Homeland despite all the horrors & sins.… Despite its black ingratitude to the sovereign which tears at my heart.… Lord have mercy on Russia and save her.”

——

Anya’s indomitable energy. The lesson of Trotsky’s might did not pass unappreciated. She continued to improve her ties with the new world, this time with the famous “stormy petrel of the revolution”—the writer Maxim Gorky.

Poor Alix with her firm principles could not understand Anya’s new acquaintances, and she branded Gorky in her letters. But Anya knew: new times, new names. And those new names could come in handy in her risky affairs.

Anya did not for one second abandon the “tsar’s family, abandoned by all”; she acted. She waited impatiently for news from a certain Boris Soloviev, whom she had sent to Tobolsk immediately after the family.

THE LITTLE MAN

At Freedom House it was the era of Commissar Pankratov. “The little man,” as Nicholas mockingly referred to him.

“You yourself have experienced much. You have the ability to fulfill your mission with dignity and nobility, as befits a revolutionary. You and the guard entrusted to you will be guarding and protecting the former tsar and his family until the Constituent Assembly decides his fate.” These were Kerensky’s parting words to Pankratov the revolutionary,