Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [118]
But the colonel had changed greatly since then. He did try to do his duty, but … Nicholas’s strange charm … his gentleness and delicacy, and those charming little girls, and the empress, so helpless in her arrogance. That was the colonel’s portrait of the family, and more and more he was beginning to feel responsible for their fate.
“I have given you what is most precious, Your Excellency, my honor.” He had every right to say that to Nicholas.
The colonel began to feel close to Nicholas and his family. Thus, in that quiet town, where the sole military force were those 330 riflemen guarding the family, their commander was heart and soul on the side of the tsar—a strange puzzle.
The head of the guard was for the tsar. The riflemen received endless gifts from the family. Dr. Botkin’s daughter wrote very specifically: “During those months [from August to the October Revolution], the family could have escaped. The guard most definitely would have helped them.”
Quiet Tobolsk, the influence of the mighty Archbishop Hermogen—everything ought to have facilitated an escape.
Clearly Kerensky had sent them to Tobolsk with the secret intention of creating the conditions for their liberation (as if their flight would have simplified his life). That was why he chose the quiet and very good-hearted Pankratov to watch over the family.
Nonetheless, they did not flee. Why?
THE TSARIST CACHE
Kobylinsky’s deputy in the guard was a certain Captain Aksyuta, who ran the affairs of the entire detachment—quite a noteworthy individual. Two years later, in the heat of the Civil War, in the bloody year 1919, a White officer, Count Mstislav Gudovich, was traveling through the unimportant town of Eisk, where he saw a familiar face, that of Captain Aksyuta, whom the count had known during his service at Tsarskoe Selo.
Aksyuta invited him to spend the night in his home and all night he told the count stories about life with the tsar’s family in Tobolsk. Aksyuta described in detail the whole story of the tsar’s family’s departure from Tobolsk as well, and how before their departure they gave things to Captain Aksyuta: the tsaritsa a pearl necklace and diamonds; the sovereign his saber. Aksyuta hid these things on the outskirts of Tobolsk. Only two people knew about the cache: he himself and General Denikin, whom he had told at the inquiry. (Aksyuta was arrested upon his return from Tobolsk and accused of bolshevism, but he was released when they did not find him guilty of anything.)
By the way, we can verify these nighttime stories of Aksyuta’s through the tsar’s diary.
Like Prince Dolgorukov and Pierre Gilliard, the tsar, of course, would have taken along the pride of any soldier—his saber. In April 1918, shortly before the tsar’s departure from Tobolsk, the house was searched, and the tsar recorded the results of that search in his diary:
“This morning the commandant, a commission of officers, and two riflemen walked around a part of our quarters, the result of this ‘search’ being the confiscation of sabers from Valya and Gilliard and a dagger from me.”
So they did not take his saber away. Evidently someone had warned him of the search beforehand and he had given it to that someone—evidently Captain Aksyuta—for safekeeping.
But the little southern town of Eisk was hopelessly distant from Tobolsk, lost in the expanses of Siberia, and in the bloody jumble of the Civil War neither of the two initiated was likely to have been able to reach the hiding place. So in all likelihood the tsar’s saber and the tsaritsa’s jewels are still buried there somewhere.
We can trust Aksyuta’s testimony. That is why his answer to the very important question Gudovich asked him is so interesting: “Why didn’t you give the sovereign a chance to escape?”
Aksyuta answered that he and Colonel Kobylinsky did have a plan to free the sovereign, but the tsar