Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [135]
The Omsk men had celebrated their victory prematurely, however. Ekaterinburg dealt a new blow. A third armed detachment of Ekaterinburg men under Zaslavsky entered the town. Simultaneously the Ekaterinburg men seized power in the Soviet. Now Khokhryakov became chairman of the Soviet and Avdeyev and Zaslavsky its most influential members. The Soviet of Ekaterinburg men began to run Tobolsk, but their expectations were not borne out. Despite the fact that they were now the municipal authority, despite all Matveyev’s efforts, they were not allowed into Freedom House either.
Kobylinsky announced to the Soviet: “We have been sent here by the central authorities, and we will hand over the tsar and his family only to the central authorities.”
A battle of telegrams began around the house. The Omsk Soviet telegraphed Moscow to order the “old guard” replaced by an Omsk detachment. The Tobolsk Soviet demanded that Moscow replace the old guard with the Ekaterinburg Red Guard.
Simultaneously Goloshchekin was sending Moscow “accurate information” obtained from Lukoyanov about the monarchist Soloviev’s plot and the flight being readied for the family “as soon as the rivers open.” He even specified that the escape was supposed to be accomplished on the vessel Maria. But Moscow was enigmatically silent.
Meanwhile in Tobolsk, the Red Guard detachments were waiting for someone to approach the house. They were afraid of the guard’s excellently armed, tsarist-trained riflemen. They were afraid of each other.
Finally Moscow decided to intervene.
Chapter 11
SECRET MISSION
This puzzling episode began at the very beginning of April 1918, when announcements started appearing in the papers about “the impending trial in Moscow against Nicholas the Bloody.”
On April 1 the Central Executive Committee passed a secret resolution: “To form a detachment of 200 men and send it to Tobolsk to reinforce the guard. Should the opportunity arise, to transfer the prisoners to Moscow.” The resolution was not intended for publication in the press; however, it immediately became known to the Uralites (Sverdlov? Of course, Sverdlov!), provoking a storm of indignation in Ekaterinburg.
As a result Sverdlov “was forced to back down”: the Central Executive Committee passed an “addendum” to the earlier resolution: “1. The tsar and his family shall be moved to the Urals. 2. For this, military reinforcement will be sent to Tobolsk.”
Sverdlov sent an official letter covering all this to Ekaterinburg on April 9.
Why did the powerful supporters of a Moscow trial against the tsar agree to this “addendum”? Only because Sverdlov evidently reassured them, and there was only one way he could have done that: by explaining that the “addendum” had been passed only to quiet the energetic Uralites and avert an independent seizure of the tsar’s family by Ekaterinburg.
Indeed, the “armed reinforcement” sent to Tobolsk had a secret mission: to bring the tsar and his family to Moscow.
Clever Sverdlov did not explain, however, that the “addendum” would now give Ekaterinburg the legal right to demand the tsar’s family for itself.
Sverdlov’s double game had begun. Oh, how that game would mislead all future investigators.
Placed at the head of the secret mission was Vasily Yakovlev.
Commissar Yakovlev. Here he is in his big fur hat, a sailor’s shirt visible underneath his open sheepskin coat. His face is “rather intelligent,” as Dr. Botkin’s daughter described it.
What biographies! And how infuriatingly bland our own lives!
Vasily Yakovlev—that was his party nom de guerre from one of his many fake passports. His real name was Konstantin Myachin. Born in 1886 in Ufa, he had worked quietly and peaceably as a turner for the railroad until the First Russian Revolution drew him into its many storms. The nineteen-year-old turner Myachin became a member of an armed workers’ detachment—in plain words, a terrorist. Lenin had very eloquently defined the tasks of those armed workers’ detachments in a letter to the Petersburg Bolshevik Action Committee