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By Root 2265 0

time: he made out as if he couldn’t remember; the madman, he’d drunk away his memory.… Yes, he did like to drink. He kept everyone at the town beer stands entertained with stories about how he had killed the tsar. But at the beer stand, drunk as a skunk, not a word about the ride. Still, since he was very drunk.… Then I began my conversation again, and he, as always, contributed his part: how he killed them all. On his way out, he suddenly asked, ‘I can see you don’t believe they were all …?’ And he chuckled. Then he added: ‘They all perished, all of them!’ and suddenly gave me a bone-chilling look, like a wild animal.

“Before he died I paid him a visit. In my day, there was a revolutionary idea in the air that a Chekist should visit a dying man instead of a priest. In the end, even atheists need to unburden their souls, and who better to tell than the institution where one was supposed to speak only the truth? So that a special corps could have been created in the Cheka of Chekist priests. They could have been called something like Truthgatherers. It was in this capacity of ‘truth-gatherer’ that I chatted with Peter Zakharovich. But again nothing! By the way, have you ever tried to reconstruct that ride and the truck’s route?”

——

I had studied that route well. Investigator Sokolov had once attempted to reconstruct it from the tracks left by the terrible truck in the rain-wet earth and from the statements of witnesses.

The route the tsarist bodies took to their first grave turned out to have been described in detail in Commandant Yurovsky’s secret note.

Finally, two amateurs from Sverdlovsk studying the history of the execution sent me a map of the truck’s route.

In the summer of 1989 I went to Sverdlovsk and traversed on foot the entire path to that first grave of the family.

And all the statements coalesced.

THE TRUCK WITH THE BODIES

The Ipatiev house gates open, and the driver Sergei Lyukhanov steers the truck out into the street. It is three in the morning. The truck sets out down Ascension Avenue, then turns down Main Street, drives past the city limits by the racetrack, and then down the road toward the village of Koptyaki.

Passing by the Upper Isetsk factory, the truck then crosses the railroad tracks to Perm and enters a dense, mixed forest that stretches all the way to Koptyaki. About 3 versts (2 miles) to the north of the Perm railway line, the truck crosses a second set of tracks—the mine-factory line—near station number 120.

These are wild places where the only structures are railway booths. Here the road forks: the truck turns toward the railroad crossing, toward booth 184, where there is a marshy, swampy place, and about 100 meters from the booth it gets stuck in a quagmire. Lyukhanov tries to get it out, but the motor overheats. Now he needs water for the engine and planks to lay over the swampy area in order to cross the marsh. Fortunately, nearby is the railroad crossing by booth 184. Lyukhanov gets out of the truck.

At this time the noise of the truck skidding in the swamp awakens the watchwoman in booth 184. There is a knock at the door; she opens it and sees Lyukhanov and the truck’s silhouette dark in the dawning sky.

The driver says his motor has overheated and asks her for some water. The watchwoman grumbles, at which Lyukhanov lashes out: “You’re sleeping here like god almighty, while we’ve been breaking our backs all night long.”

Through the open door, the watchwoman sees Red Guards around the truck and immediately begins pumping water readily for the engine. Then the Red Guards take some planks dumped around her booth and lay them over the swampy area, and the truck drives over the planks. Passing the booth, it enters the forest and drives 3 versts along the forest road to the Four Brothers, a landmark in the desolate terrain.

At this time near Koptyaki a picket of Red Guards is standing on a knoll, turning all inhabitants back to the village. Another picket is standing not far from booth 184. They let no one onto the road. They evidently meet the truck and lead it through the Four