Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [211]
“It is well preserved in my memory: in the first flank sat Nicholas, Alexei, Alexandra, their older daughter Tatiana, then Dr. Botkin, and after that the lady-in-waiting and all the rest. When everything had settled down, I went out and told the driver: ‘Get going.’ He knew what he had to do, the truck roared to life, and exhaust started pouring out. All this was necessary in order to drown out the shots, so that no sound could be heard at liberty. Everyone seated was expecting something to happen. They were all tense and only from time to time exchanged words. But Alexandra said a few words not in Russian. When everything was in order, I handed Yurovsky, the house commandant, the Regional Executive Committee’s resolution. He was doubtful: ‘Why all of them?’ But I told him: ‘We have to do all of them, and we can’t go on talking here for long, time is short and we have to get going.’ I went downstairs with the commandant, and I must say that it had been decided beforehand who was to shoot whom and how. For myself I took Nicholas himself, Alexandra, the daughter, and Alexei, because I had a Mauser, and you could work with that. The rest had revolvers. After we got downstairs we delayed a little. Then the commandant suggested everyone stand, which they did, but Alexei sat in a chair. Then he began reading the sentence-resolution, which said: By resolution of the Executive Committee—execution. Then Nicholas burst out with: ‘So you’re not taking us anywhere?’ We couldn’t wait any longer, and I shot him point blank. He fell immediately, as did the others. At that time a wail rose up among them, they threw themselves on each other’s necks. Then several shots rang out—and everyone fell. When I began examining their condition—the ones that were still alive I shot again. Nicholas died from a single bullet, his wife got two, and the others also several bullets. Checking their pulses, when they were already dead, I gave the order to drag them all out through the lower entrance to the truck and stow them in it, which was done, and covered them all with a tarpaulin” (archive 221, list 2, file 774).
“I noted the archive reference especially for you to preclude any doubts,” he said when I had finished reading.
Nevertheless, I did check. By then I had received a letter from a reader in Sverdlovsk with excerpts from Ermakov’s memoirs, which her husband, an army political worker who had access to the secret archive, had made at one time. The excerpts coincided exactly, down to nonessential punctuation.
Yes, before me were the genuine memoirs of one of the principal actors on that monstrous night.
“The memoirs are odd, aren’t they?” my guest continued. “Nearly every detail is wrong.”
Indeed, if Yurovsky’s Note and the statements of the other witnesses coincided, Ermakov’s story differed surprisingly in many inaccurate details.
“In the first place, he combines himself with Yurovsky, ascribing to himself everything the commandant did. But if we toss out that boastful invention, then the memoirs represent a garbled compilation of well-known facts. As soon as he gets to the details the mistakes begin. The car did not arrive at ten but at midnight old style—that is, about two in the morning new style. Ermakov wasn’t the only one with a Mauser, Yurovsky had one as well; Yurovsky read the resolution, there were only two chairs, and so on. The only truthful detail, evidently, is the story about turning on the truck’s engine. As for Nicholas’s last sentence, that is evidently another invention, Ermakov himself changed that last sentence of the tsar’s many times.”
At this point I related to my strange guest Ermakov’s story told around a Pioneer campfire about the tsar’s last sentence.
“Yes, sure, ‘They know not what they do’—those are words Peter Zakharovich could scarcely have thought up, indeed. For all his wild imagination! He was after all very far removed from those kinds of words. So that it is quite likely those were Nicholas’s last