Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [182]
In 1939, Reinhold Berzin would be shot in Stalin’s camps.
BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE
It was seven o’clock in the evening.
The Romanov family was having tea. Their last tea. That morning the guards had come and taken away the little cook Sednev. Alix was very concerned and sent Botkin to ask what was going on. They explained that the boy had gone to see his uncle. He would return soon.
Having received Berzin’s order, the cautious Filipp Goloshchekin decided in any event to telegraph Moscow, so he sent that telegram—to the effect that the family’s execution agreed upon with Moscow could not be delayed because of the town’s imminent surrender.
“If your opinion is contrary, inform us immediately.”
He wanted to secure a direct decision from Moscow. He sent the telegram through Zinoviev—the execution’s ardent supporter. He understood that Zinoviev would not allow the execution decision rescinded. Zinoviev sent the telegram on to Lenin in Moscow. At 21:22 it was in Moscow, as the telegram itself attests.
Did Ekaterinburg receive an answer? Or, as always, was Moscow silent, implying agreement?
WAS THERE AN ANSWER FROM LENIN?
On August 11, 1957, an article was printed in Construction Newspaper entitled “On Lenin’s Advice.” An article with a title like that scarcely had many readers, which was too bad—the essay was as curious as could be.
Its hero was a certain Alexei Feodorovich Akimov, a senior lecturer at the Moscow Architecture Institute. Akimov had a meritorious revolutionary past, about which the essay’s author wrote. From April 1918 to July 1919, Alexei Akimov served in the Kremlin guard—first guarding Yakov Sverdlov and then Vladimir Lenin.
The newspaper recounted an event that involved Akimov in the summer of 1918:
“Most often he stood at his post by Lenin’s reception room or on the staircase to Lenin’s office. But sometimes he had to carry out other orders as well. Run down to the radio station or the telegraph office, for example, and transmit especially important telegrams from Lenin. In those instances he brought back not only the original of the telegram but also the telegraph ribbon. After transmitting one such telegram of Lenin’s the telegraph operator told Akimov that he would not give him the ribbon but would keep it. ‘I had to take out my pistol and insist,’ recalled Akimov. But when he returned to the Kremlin half an hour later with the original of the telegram and the telegraph ribbon, Lenin’s secretary said pointedly: ‘Go in to Vladimir Ilich, he wants to see you.’
“Akimov entered the office with a bold military step, but Lenin stopped him cold: ‘What were you up to there, comrade? Why did you threaten the telegraph operator?
“ ‘… Go to the telegraph office and publicly apologize to the operator.’”
This essay contained one very strange detail: not a word was said about the subject of that “especially important telegram” that Alexei Akimov took away from the telegraph operator while waving a revolver.
From a letter of Nikolai Lapik, director of the Progress Factory’s museum in the town of Kuibyshev:
“We have in our museum a typed record of a conversation between A. F. Akimov and A. G. Smyshlyaev, a veteran of our factory whose hobby was searching for materials on its history.
“In the stenographic record of this conversation, which took place on November 19, 1968, the following was written down from the words of A. F. Akimov:
“ ‘When the Ural Regional Party Committee decided to shoot Nicholas’s family, the Sovnarkom and Central Executive Committee wrote a telegram confirming this decision. Sverdlov sent me to take this telegram to the telegraph office, which was located then on Myasnitskaya Street. He said to send it as cautiously as possible. This meant that I was to bring back not only a copy of the telegram but the ribbon as well.
“ ‘When the telegraph operator sent the telegram, I asked for the copy and the ribbon. He would not give me the ribbon. Then I pulled out my revolver and began to threaten the operator. When I got the ribbon from him I left. While I was on my way to the