Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [204]
Yurovsky: “The com[mandant] quickly repeated it and ordered the detachment to get ready.… Nicholas did not say anything more, having turned back toward the family; the others uttered a few incoherent exclamations. It all lasted just a few seconds.”
THE TSAR’S LAST WORDS
He “asked him to repeat it” and “did not say anything more”! Such were Nicholas’s last words, wrote Yurovsky and Strekotin.
But the tsar did say a few more words. Yurovsky and Strekotin did not understand them. Or rather, they did not choose to write them down.
Ermakov did not write them down either, but he did remember them. He did not remember much, but this he did not forget. He even talked about it sometimes.
From a letter of Alexei Karelin in Magnitogorsk:
“I remember Ermakov was asked, ‘What did the tsar say before the execution?’ ‘The tsar,’ he replied, ‘said, “You know not what you do.”’”
No, Ermakov could not have invented that sentence; he did not know those words, this assassin and atheist. Nor was there any way he could have known that those words of the Lord were written on the cross of Nicholas’s slain uncle Sergei Alexandrovich. The tsar repeated them, as Ella must have repeated them at the bottom of the mine: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
A few months later in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, another Romanov, Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich, would be led before a firing squad:
“The prison guard said that while Dmitry Konstantinovich was on his way to his execution, he kept repeating Christ’s words: ‘For-give them, Lord, for they know not what they do’” (From the memoirs of Grand Duke Gavriil Konstantinovich, In a Marble Palace).
His last words. At that moment it came to pass—the story of the sacrifice. And forgiveness.
After reading the piece of paper, Yurovsky jerked out his Colt.
Yurovsky: “The detachment had been told beforehand who was to shoot whom, and they had been ordered to aim straight for the heart, to avoid excessive quantities of blood and get it over with quicker.”
Strekotin: “At his last word he instantly pulled a revolver out of his pocket and shot the tsar. The tsaritsa and her daughter Olga tried to make the sign of the cross, but did not have enough time.”
Yurovsky: “Nich[olas] was killed by the commandant, point blank. Then A[lexandra] F[eodorovna] died immediately.”
Yurovsky wrote that it was he who killed the tsar. Strekotin too saw Yurovsky finish reading the paper and immediately pull out his hand with the gun and shoot the tsar.
Actually, that day Yurovsky had two guns with him.
Yurovsky: “Colt no. 71905 with a cartridge clip and seven bullets, and Mauser no. 167177 with a wooden gunstock and a clip with ten bullets.… I killed Nicholas point blank with the Colt.”
But Strekotin was only watching Yurovsky reading, and the guard only saw Yurovsky’s hand aimed at the former Autocrat of All the Russias.
Two others would later assert that they had shot the tsar.
The son of Chekist Medvedev: “The tsar was killed by my father.… As I already said, they had agreed who was to shoot whom. Ermakov the tsar, Yurovsky the tsaritsa, and my father Marie. But when they stood in the doorway, my father found himself directly opposite the tsar. While Yurovsky was reading the paper, my father stood there watching the tsar. He had never seen him so close up. As soon as Yurovsky repeated the last words, my father was ready and waiting and fired immediately. And he killed the tsar. He fired his shot faster than anyone.… Only he had a Browning. On a Mauser, a revolver, or a Colt you have to cock it, and that takes time. On a Browning you don’t have to.”
But Ermakov, to whom the tsar “belonged” by agreement….
Ermakov: “I shot him point blank, and he fell instantly.”
I am certain, though, that everyone crowding in the doorway of that terrible room, all twelve revolutionaries, had come to kill the tsar, and all twelve sent their first bullet into him. The triumphant inscription left on the wall—“On this