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Sverdlov and Zinoviev—those two in Moscow were the mighty support of the Ural Bolsheviks, who dreamed of reprisal against the Romanovs. That was the purpose of Goloshchekin’s main meeting in Moscow, his meeting with Lenin.

Might this meeting not have taken place? Might Goloshchekin—a member of the Central Committee, the leader of the dying Urals, where according to Lenin the destiny of all Bolshevik power, the matter of the tsar and his family, was being decided—not have been received by Lenin? The fact that Lenin’s journal does not indicate such a meeting may only prove his understandable disinclination to have it known.

Goloshchekin had to resolve two issues concerning the tsar and his family at this meeting, the first being to agree upon what to do with the tsar should Ekaterinburg fall. Here there was no hesitation, especially since they could show the world indisputable evidence of a monarchist plot, which Goloshchekin had brought. The other issue was to agree upon the family.

From a letter of Leopold Shmidt in Vladivostok:

“Bonch-Bruevich once recalled the words of the young Lenin, who was reveling in the successful reply of the revolutionary Nechaev, the hero of Dostoevsky’s Devils. To the question Who of the ruling house must be destroyed? Nechaev gave a precise answer: The whole litany.’ ‘Yes, the entire house of Romanovs, after all, it’s so simple, it’s ingenious!’ Lenin was thrilled.”

A murdered emperor might cast a shadow of martyrdom on his children. Alexei and his sisters could also become a “living banner.”

This must have occurred to the man who had once appreciated Nechaev’s answer.

By sentencing himself to death, Nicholas sentenced his entire family to death as well.

Evidently the fate of Ella and all the Alapaevsk prisoners was decided at one and the same time.

Naturally they agreed upon the ticklish question of how to announce the execution. Evidently they decided then that the official announcement must refer only to Nicholas. Thus this horrible formula was born: “the family has been evacuated to a safe place.” The caustic Zinoviev may well have been its author.

Yes, the family’s death had to remain a secret for the time being, but an open secret. Trotsky was right: Lenin knew that the danger of reprisals for the bloody deed must close the ranks in these terrible times for the revolution.

Also, anticipating a possible collapse, the government naturally wished to keep its distance from the execution. The decision to execute had to come from the Ekaterinburg Soviet. This was very handy: the Uralites who executed the tsar were left with only two options—victory over the Whites or death. This must have served to close the ranks of the doomed town’s defenders.

Unlike the bloody romantics Trotsky and Zinoviev, Lenin was a pragmatist. The execution of the tsar and his family was to be carried out in one instance only: if Ekaterinburg fell. Otherwise they must remain as before—a card in the future game with the great powers.

It was at the fateful meeting in Moscow that the mechanism must have been devised: the signal to initiate the family’s execution could not come from the savage Ural revolutionaries. It had to come from outside Ekaterinburg. But who on the outside? That we shall learn later.

Such was to be the outcome of the meeting between Lenin and Goloshchekin. Lenin could not have helped but feel how extraordinary it was.

July is a bad month for revolutionaries. In France, Robespierre was executed in July; in Russia, five eminent Decembrists, who had revolted against Nicholas I, were hanged in July. And now in July the hour of vengeance had come. Vengeance against the son and grandson of the man who had once killed Lenin’s brother. The revolutionaries’ age-old hunt for Russian tsars was drawing to a close.

The discussion of the tsar’s fate must have evoked some associations. During that period, when all around him was collapsing, Lenin suddenly developed an interest in implementing the decree “on the removal of monuments honoring the tsars and their servants.