Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [137]
There was one detail in Yakovlev’s biography, though, known only to Sverdlov, who had worked in the Urals for a long time. Back during the time of the underground and expropriations, a “black cat” had run between Ufa’s Yakovlev and Ekaterinburg’s armed workers, and at the very beginning of 1918, when Moscow appointed Yakovlev military commissar of the entire Urals, Ekaterinburg flatly rejected him. They preferred someone else. So Goloshchekin, the head of the Ural Bolsheviks, became military commissar. Yakovlev’s mandate had to be reversed. The mutual ill will between Yakovlev and the Uralites had acquired new fuel.
Was this why the clever leader of the Central Executive Committee appointed Yakovlev to head the secret mission?
Sverdlov handed Commissar Yakovlev the ominous mandate of a Central Executive Committee plenipotentiary, a mandate bearing the signatures of Lenin and Sverdlov that obligated everyone to facilitate the plenipotentiary’s mission—or be shot for failure to obey orders. The powerful mandate said not a word, however, about the mission’s purpose.
Sverdlov explained Yakovlev’s task to him orally: the tsar’s family must be brought to Moscow.
Sverdlov asked Yakovlev his plan of action. Yakovlev proposed the typical plan of that insane period: without explaining anything to anyone (citing state secrecy), he would take the tsar’s family out of Tobolsk and down the frozen Tobol to Tyumen, where there was a railroad. He would put the family on a train and start out in the direction of Ekaterinburg, so as not to provoke any hostility on the part of the Uralites. But once he was well out of Tyumen he would turn toward Omsk—eastward. He would take the tsar’s family to Moscow via Omsk, which was at odds right then with Ekaterinburg. Should circumstances intervene, he would take the tsar’s family to his own Ufa, where there were people loyal to him and where it would be quite simple to continue on with the family to Moscow whenever necessary.
Sverdlov suggested keeping a third plan in reserve: if all else failed, Yakovlev could take the family to Ekaterinburg. The former terrorist was quite sure of himself, however. In his previous high-risk escapades he had always triumphed, and he would triumph this time as well: the tsar’s family would be in Moscow.
Yakovlev had two telegraphists put at his disposal—he must maintain constant contact with Moscow and Sverdlov. The telegrams were to use a code of sorts: “cargo” and “baggage” meant the tsar’s family; the “old route” was the Moscow route; the “new route” was the Ufa route; and finally, the “first route” was the Ekaterinburg route.
Having received his assignment, Yakovlev immediately left for Ufa to assemble a detachment. Ufa was his home, he had old friends there. The local Cheka formed a detachment of reliable men, the majority of them former comrades who had taken part in seizing the Miass gold. Yakovlev referred to them affectionately as the Miass robbers.
In Ufa, Yakovlev summoned the leader of the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks, Military Commissar Filipp Goloshchekin.
Yakovlev presented his mandate and demanded that Goloshchekin write orders subordinating all the Ekaterinburg men in Tobolsk—the head of the Tobolsk Soviet Pavel Khokhryakov, Avdeyev, and so on—to Yakovlev.
Certainly, Goloshchekin was prepared to give him the paper, but first he demanded that Yakovlev disclose the purpose of his mission: after all, the Central Executive Committee had already promised the tsar’s family to Ekaterinburg. Yakovlev explained that the tsars family would be brought to Ekaterinburg, just as the Central Executive Committee had promised, but no one must know that yet. Especially in Tobolsk. Why the secrecy? Yakovlev had a likely explanation: otherwise the Omsk detachment in Tobolsk would make trouble and matters might go as far as open conflict. Moreover, the old guard could mutiny as well. They had a long-standing