Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [148]
An immense crowd was standing by it.
Ural Commissar Goloshchekin himself walked out through the gates of the Ipatiev house as the automobile drove up. He ordered the driver, Feodor Samokhvalov, to take him to Ekaterinburg’s main train station, where Goloshchekin ordered him to wait while he ran off somewhere, then returned and ordered Samokhvalov to drive to Ekaterinburg’s freight station.
All this was Goloshchekin’s sly maneuver to get the crowd by the house to disperse.
From the memoirs of Housing Commissar Zhilinsky (kept in the Sverdlovsk Party Archive):
“We decided to trick the people and send cars to the main station and from there continue to the freight station, where we were to pick up the Romanovs. That was what we did. Everyone followed the cars to the main station.”
THE FINAL STRUGGLE
The crowd was indignant.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“The air was filled with an unimaginable din, threatening shouts were heard time and again.… The disorderly crowd had begun to advance on our men.… The guard standing on the platform was not making much of an effort to hold back the press of people.
“ ‘Bring the Romanovs out, and let me spit in his face….’
“ ‘Get out the machine guns….’
“That had an effect. The crowd recoiled. Threatening shouts flew in my direction.”
At the same time the train sent by the Stationmaster advanced on the crowd. The crowd rushed back—and a long line of comrades walled off the raging crowd from the train.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“Curses and shouts were heard … and while the crowd was making its way through the buffer of a freight train … we got under way and disappeared among the countless tracks of the Ekaterinburg station. Fifteen minutes later we were in complete safety at the freight station.”
From Nicholas’s diary:
“17 [30] April. Tuesday. Another marvelous warm day. At 8.40 we arrived in Ekaterinburg. Stopped for about 3 hours at one station, where there was powerful ferment between the local commissars and ours.”
And not a word about the raging crowd! The tsar did not want to describe his crazed former subjects.
A meeting had been arranged at the freight station.
Forty Red Guards immediately uncoupled the train.
On the platform stood three leaders of the Ural Soviet:
Twenty-seven years old, blue-eyed, wearing a large white fur cap—Comrade Alexander Beloborodov. A former electrical repairman, now chairman of the Soviet, or, as he liked to refer to himself, head of the revolutionary government of the Red Urals;
Comrade Filipp (Isai) Goloshchekin—leader of the Ural Bolsheviks;
And yet another influential member of the Soviet—Comrade Boris Ditkovsky, son of a tsarist officer, educated in Petersburg, student at the Military School, graduate of the University of Geneva, brilliant mining engineer.
All were very decisive men.
At that moment the sharpshooters of the old guard rebelled. They had realized what lay in store for the Romanovs. The sharpshooters stood in the doors of the train car and would not let anyone in. Yakovlev attempted to use this last opportunity to his advantage. The commissar was not one to give up until he had reached the end of his rope. Yakovlev demanded to be put in contact with Moscow.
All this went on for an hour and a half. The troika was tired. The three decisive men were sick of waiting.
They announced that if they were not allowed into the car immediately, the Red Guard would open fire on the train. Only then did Yakovlev placate the sharpshooters.
All eight sharpshooters were disarmed, and by evening they were sitting in the Ekaterinburg jail, whence Yakovlev freed them with great difficulty.
Beloborodov entered the train car. After exchanging dry greetings with the plenipotentiary, he sat down