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Exactly one year after his renunciation, he cursed all his sacrifices, thousands upon thousands of lives—all in vain.

Lenin had been preparing for the Treaty of Brest for a long time. Only by concluding peace with the Germans could he demobilize the army—a dangerous force—and reinforce the power his party had so easily taken. When the Bolsheviks disbanded the first Russian parliament, Lenin saw his dream before him—the Treaty of Brest, which the Constituent Assembly had never ratified.

Many in the party considered the treaty humiliating. The second most powerful Bolshevik leader, Trotsky, was adamantly opposed. But Lenin broke his opponents by convening a special party congress and, in exhausting debates and votes, won. All this time, his shadow was Yakov Sverdlov, his loyal executor. (When Sverdlov died, Lenin would search feverishly for a “new Sverdlov”—and would find him: Stalin. But this time Lenin miscalculated: the shadow would become independent and in the end would vanquish his master.)

Thus peace was concluded. The former tsar now had plenty of time to ponder events.

A religious man, he consoled himself. He knew it was God’s will. Only with the passage of time, when they could step back from events, when the revolution and the catastrophe that had overtaken Russia had drifted off into oblivion, would the intention of He who creates history be revealed. That was why he would read so attentively Lev Tolstoy’s reflections on history—that “part of War and Peace that I had not known before”: “Marie and I have been caught up reading War and Peace.”

But Alix was incredulous: what about their allies? How could they stand for this? No, she felt something had to happen. Might this horrible peace with the Germans somehow change their fate as well? Alix was right. It was at this time in Moscow that their fate was being decided.

AN AGREEMENT AMONG OLD FRIENDS

In February in Moscow, the congress’s seventh session, during which the Treaty of Brest was discussed, was attended by the head of the Ural Bolsheviks: Filipp Goloshchekin.

With Lenin, he voted for the Treaty of Brest. Against Trotsky, against those who did not understand the need for a respite. It did not really matter; once they were strong they could repudiate all of it. The Bolsheviks had already established the principle: concluding an agreement, they immediately began to think about how to break it later. “Policy is nothing more than a saving lie—in the name of revolution.”

At the same time, immediately after the Leninists’ victory, Goloshchekin had a conversation with another supporter of the Treaty of Brest, his old friend the chairman of the Central Executive Committee Sverdlov. This conversation concerned, of course, what most upset the Uralites: the transfer of the tsar’s family to Ekaterinburg.

Goloshchekin had the right to a reward for his loyalty to the Leninist line, for his loyalty to the Brest peace. He asked his old friend, the Uralites’ old friend, for his support.

What about Sverdlov? Sverdlov probably sketched out the situation for him: as chairman of the Central Executive Committee he must (and would) insist on the transfer of the tsar’s family to Moscow. That had been the decision: supremely powerful Trotsky was organizing a trial against Nicholas Romanov.

(Sverdlov knew that the “perpetually excited Lev Davydovich” was eager to turn that trial to his own benefit. But did the chairman of the Central Executive Committee need to do anything more for Lev? Yes. Brawls had already broken out between yesterday’s allies, and if previously the formation of factions inside the party had meant a contest of ideas, now it meant a contest of power in the guise of ideas.)

They understood each other virtually without words, Sverdlov and Goloshchekin. Sverdlov would carry out Moscow’s line, but … but if the Urals were sufficiently energetic, the Central Executive Committee would (could) accede.

Having received Sverdlov’s assurance, Goloshchekin reported to the presidium of the Central Executive Committee about the current lack of supervision