Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [170]
The hour of liberation was approaching and the usurpers’ days were numbered. In any event, the Czechs were getting closer and closer to Ekaterinburg. They were but a few versts from town. “Do not forget that at the last moment the Bolsheviks will be ready to commit any crime. The moment has come, we must act. Wait for a whistle toward midnight—that will be the signal. An officer.”
Dolgorukov and Tatishchev, however, “who are already saved,” had long been lying in unmarked graves.
How strangely mendacious this well-wisher was. Moreover, how well informed he was that the Romanovs knew nothing about the fate of “D. and T.”
Now, just as I became weary of the constant suspicion, I receive a letter from the historian M. M. Medvedev, the son of the Chekist M. A. Medvedev, one of the executioners of the tsar’s family. (This letter became the starting point for our many conversations.) Here is what he told me in his letter:
“In 1964, two old men arrived at Moscow Radio.
“These two were felt to be the last people living of those present at the family’s execution.
“One of these old men was Grigory Nikulin, the murderer of Prince Dolgorukov and one of the main participants in the execution of the tsar’s family. The other was I. Rodzinsky, who did not participate in the execution of the Romanovs but who was a member of the Ural Cheka in 1918.”
This conversation and the invitation to the radio station had been devised and organized by this very historian, Mikhail Medvedev. With great difficulty he managed to talk the two into recording their statements for posterity. With equal difficulty he managed to talk the authorities into it: only after he went to Nikita Khrushchev himself was this taping at Moscow Radio permitted. Medvedev asked the questions, but a “representative of the Central Committee” also took part in the conversation.
This taping took a long time, and we will return to it again. Now we are interested in the statements of the Chekist Rodzinsky:
“The letter with the signature ‘An officer,’ which Nicholas Romanov believed, was composed at the Cheka. Its author was one of the Bolshevik leaders of Ekaterinburg, Peter Voikov.”
(Peter Voikov, 1888–1927, party name “Intellectual.” Expelled for revolutionary activity first from grammar school and later from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. Participated in terrorist acts. Emigrated, lived in Switzerland, graduated from the University of Geneva, in August 1917 returned to Russia and joined the Bolsheviks. In 1918, people’s commissar for government supply in the Red Urals. As of 1924, Soviet ambassador to Poland. He was lucky—he didn’t live until 1938; in 1927 he was killed by a monarchist in Poland for his participation in the execution of the Romanov family.)
According to Rodzinsky’s statements, this University of Geneva graduate composed all the letters in the bottles.
But Voikov had terrible handwriting (or he may not have wanted to leave evidence of his role as a provocateur), and he suggested that Rodzinsky copy out the letters. The Chekist had good handwriting, so he did. To ensure that there could be no doubt of the truthfulness of his words, Rodzinsky left a sample of his handwriting at the radio station.
The old Chekist had evidently come not only to reminisce but to repent.
INTRIGUE
How astonishingly well thought out everything in this story is. Beginning with the food from the monastery, which the conscientious Uralites suddenly allowed to be brought to the Romanovs.
It was all done very cleverly. In early June a certain Ivan Sidorov (an obvious pseudonym) arrived in Ekaterinburg with a large sum of money from Vyrubova and other loyal friends of the tsar’s family. Through Dr. Derevenko, Sidorov made contact with the Novotikhvinsky monastery and, simultaneously, with Commandant Avdeyev. Soon after, the suddenly soft-hearted commandant allowed food to be brought from the monastery (to establish his “concern” for the family and to fatten his own pocket—with the money Dr. Derevenko offered him for the food.