Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [146]
Simultaneously, telegrams were going to Omsk and other points declaring Yakovlev outside the law.
“Moscow. Sverdlov.… Having discussed the conduct of Commissar Yakovlev, by unanimous decision we deem it a direct betrayal of the revolution. The desire to take the former tsar beyond the limits of the revolutionary Urals for some unknown purpose in contradiction to the precise instruction of the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee is an act placing Commissar Yakovlev outside the ranks of revolutionaries. The Ural Regional Soviet proposes that all Soviet revolutionary organizations, especially the Omsk Soviet of Deputies, take the most extreme measures, including the use of force, to stop the train.”
Soon after, Yakovlev was brought one of these Ural telegrams. He found out that his train was supposed to be stopped in Omsk and he himself arrested.
Yakovlev lost his self-possession. He burst into Avdeyev’s compartment and screamed at the smiling Uralite: “What, have all of you there gone out of your minds?” But it was too late.
The train was approaching Omsk, where a detachment of Red Guards was waiting.
Yakovlev went “for the bank.” Not far from Omsk, he stopped the train, uncoupled the engine, and set out in the night with his telegraphist into the inferno—to Omsk.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“As soon as the train stopped [in Omsk] and we got out on the platform, we were surrounded by a dense mass of people.”
He stood alone amid the furious armed crowd, which was electrified by rumors of the traitor to the revolution. He was on the brink of death, but that had already happened many times in his life.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“I announced, shouting over the crowd: ‘I am Special Commissar Yakovlev of the Central Executive Committee! I need to see the Chairman of the Omsk Soviet!’”
And now, for the first time on this trip, he was lucky.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“The chairman of the Omsk Soviet turned out to be my friend Kosarev.… I recognized my old comrade, whom I had once been together with in the party school in Italy. I sketched out the events to him in general terms and asked him to go with me to the telegraph post: there we would contact Sverdlov. From whom I would first of all receive further instructions and secondly, Kosarev would understand that I was acting on instruction from the center.… As we raced to the telegraph post, we saw armed detachments everywhere.”
So he managed to convince his old friend, but.… At the telegraph office Yakovlev learned he had risked his life for nothing. By that time the long telegraph conversation between Ekaterinburg and Moscow had ended.
Goloshchekin had to be energetic.
And he was. Till the end. A threatening telegram followed from the Uralites: “In his letter of 9 April, Comrade Sverdlov said that Romanov would be transferred to Ekaterinburg and put under the responsibility of the Regional Soviet. Seeing that today the train is slipping away from the Urals for reasons unknown to us … we have informed Sverdlov. His reply greatly amazed us. It turns out Yakovlev is driving the train to the East in accordance with his instruction, and he asks that no obstacles be put in Yakovlev’s way….
“Our only solution to the current predicament is to send instructions to Yakovlev in Omsk to turn the train back to Ekaterinburg, otherwise the conflict could take on acute forms, for we feel that Nicholas does not need to wander the roads of Siberia but should be in Ekaterinburg under strict watch.”
Yes, they had stuck it out. Now Sverdlov could give in.
Moscow agreed, of course, “on condition that everything is done for the safety of the Romanovs,” that the “appropriate guarantees” are given. The guarantees were given immediately.
So when Yakovlev sat his telegraphist down, Sverdlov’s instructions arrived from Moscow: “Return to Tyumen immediately. Have come to an agreement with the Uralites. They have taken measures and given guarantees.