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A coachman drove up to the Ipatiev house. Yurovsky came out and began loading his things. The coachman helped. In his statements to the White Guard investigator, the coachman noted that Yurovsky had seven pieces of luggage and one large dark suitcase sealed with wax. This was the Romanov archive.

Yurovsky was departing for Moscow. He was in such a hurry that he forgot his wallet with all his money on the table in the Ipatiev house. (En route he sent a telegram about it—the Whites would find the telegram at the telegraph office.)

But the money was nothing; he was also unable to get his own mother, Esther, out of the town. The Whites would arrest her, but fortunately they did not have sufficient class consciousness to shoot the unlucky old woman, and Esther Yurovskaya would live to see her son’s triumphant return to Ekaterinburg.

On that day, July 19, Moscow officially announced the execution of Nicholas Romanov.

July 20: Ekaterinburg. The other chief participant in the events was also leaving town—the commandant’s assistant Nikulin.

In the Museum of the Revolution I found a sinister certificate written on the letterhead of the Ural government and issued that day to Nikulin: “… issued to Comrade Nikulin, G. P., to the effect that he is under orders from the Ural Soviet to safeguard the specially designated cargo located in the two train cars proceeding to Perm. All railway organizations and municipal and military authorities must render Comrade Nikulin the utmost assistance.

“The procedure and location of the unloading are known to Comrade Nikulin from the instructions in his possession. Ural Soviet Chairman A. Beloborodov.”

Those cars were transporting the packed-up property from the Ipatiev house.

Separately, in a dirty sack, Nikulin was also carrying something else.

Travel was terrifying. Merry bands roamed the countryside, plundering trains and passengers mercilessly. That was why Nikulin was proceeding to Perm in the poor clothing of a clumsy peasant.

The contents of his dirty sack were dangerous. That sack could cost him a painful death.

In 1964, during that radio recording session, old Nikulin would tell how he carried the Romanov jewels out of Ekaterinburg in a dirty sack. The same jewels that had been kept in their cases in the Ipatiev house.

Engineer Ipatiev’s house was empty. The sentries had been removed and the guard sent directly to the front. They would have to fight to their last drop of blood, for under no circumstances could they fall into White captivity. White captivity would be fatal for them after the Ipatiev house.

On July 20, at the last meeting in the municipal theater, Commissar Goloshchekin formally announced the execution of Nicholas Romanov. Official announcements of the execution of the tsar and the evacuation of the family to a safe place were pasted on poster columns all over town.

Only after this was Editor Vorobiev permitted to print his long-awaited report in the Ural Worker along with Safarov’s article:

“… Many formal aspects of bourgeois justice may have been violated in this process, nor was traditional-historical ceremony observed in the execution of the crowned persons. However, worker-peasant power was manifested in the process, making no exception for the All-Russian murderer, shooting as if he were an ordinary brigand. [Oh well, once the Savior hung on a cross “as if he were an ordinary brigand.”]

“… Nicholas the Bloody is no more.… And the workers and peasants have every right to tell their enemies: ‘You placed your bet on the imperial crown? It’s broken, take one empty crowned head in change!’” (Evidently this picturesque phrasing of Safarov’s gave rise to the legend about Yurovsky taking the tsar’s severed head with him to Moscow.)

July 21. The Soviet called in Ipatiev the engineer and gave him back the keys to his own house.

How did he feel walking into that trash-filled, terrible house of his, now stained with the incredible horror of the night of July 16–17?

THAT ROOM

On July 25 the Bolsheviks surrendered Ekaterinburg to the Czech Legion and Siberian