Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [130]
Then came the February Revolution. The hospital elected him to the Soviet. With Goloshchekin he began to prepare for the Bolshevik seizure of the town. And then—the October Revolution of 1917: the Soviet became the government of the Urals, and he became deputy justice commissar, a common route for Bolshevik leaders. Beginning in early 1918 he worked in the Cheka as chairman of the terrible commission of inquiry under the Revolutionary Tribunal. This was the man: former medic and photographer, now arbiter of human fates in the cruel Ural Cheka—Comrade Yakov Yurovsky.
The Cheka occupied the luxurious American Rooms hotel. Yurovsky settled in the most luxurious—Room 3: mirrors, rugs, the receding luxury of the richest Ural merchants. Downstairs was a famous restaurant where not long before those merchants had boozed it up.
All this—the merchants and the food—vanished in an instant under the new power. But the ravishing smells of that rich restaurant lingered strangely and upset the Chekists.
It was in Room 3 of the “American hotel” that Yurovsky evidently received Feodor Lukoyanov.
I am trying to listen in on their conversation:
He began the conversation, of course, with an exhortation. Like many not very literate people, Comrade Yakov loved to hold forth.
“When Lenin named Felix Dzerzhinsky leader of the Cheka, he said: ‘We need a good proletarian Jacobin for this post.’ … And an educated Jacobin.… That’s the kind of man we are looking for to be chairman of the whole Ural Cheka. As you know, Comrade Finn [the party nom de guerre of Efremov, who was then head of the Cheka] did not complete university.… And I have no education at all.… But in Petrograd professors sit in the government.… You studied at the university, my son [that was what he called all the young Chekists], you even studied law.… That is just what we need for the head of the Cheka … in order to placate our ‘public’ [Yurovsky’s favorite word]. The question about you has been more or less decided.… There’s nothing for you to do in Perm—you’ll become the leader of all the Urals. However, my son, we are going to give you a trial run.… Comrade Filipp [Goloshchekin] is in Moscow right now. He is planning to propose there—in view of the presence in Tobolsk of a monarchist plot—moving the Romanovs here, to Ekaterinburg. Actually, we need proof of the plot.” He fell silent and added distinctly, “That is what you can get for us.… You speak English and German … so you can understand what they’re talking about.… And one more important thing: the jewels. Figure out what and how many they are. Everything must be returned to the working people.”
THE NIGHTMARE OF BREST
Let us return to Tobolsk. While the family’s fate was being decided elsewhere, in the snow-covered quiet house their old monotonous life went on. Only it had become frightening to read the papers.
Nicholas took the Russian papers and foreign magazines (French—with very frivolous cartoons that so intrigued the guard that they reached the tsar only with great delay).
But he received the papers promptly and followed events closely. As before, he considered himself responsible for Russia’s destiny.
The papers told of the Constituent Assembly’s brief fate. The Bolshevik government had also called itself “provisional” and was supposed to rule until the people elected a parliament—a Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks had declared as much in a decree.
In January 1918 the Constituent Assembly was convened, the “first freely elected