Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [215]
Next to the mine, on the clayey, rain-drenched ground, lies the tsar’s family as well as their servants and Dr. Botkin. The sun is already up when the bodies are undressed and the corsets with the sewn-in diamonds that had saved the unlucky girls for so long are removed from the grand duchesses. And the pearl belt, which had not saved the empress.
Yurovsky: “The detachment started undressing and burning them. A. F. turned out to be wearing an entire pearl belt made from several necklaces sewn into linen. The diamonds were immediately recorded, about half a pood [18 pounds] were collected.”
The clothing is burned right there on the fire. The naked corpses lie on the naked earth by the mine. The girls’ corset laces have made running knots along their bare bodies.
Yurovsky: “Each of the girls turned out to be wearing a picture of Rasputin around her neck with the text of his prayer sewn into an amulet. The ‘holy man’ was with them even after death.”
From the report of Kolchak’s Ministry of Justice:
“November 27, 1919, from N. Mirolyubov, Procurator of the Kazan Palace of Justice, regarding December 12, 1918, Omsk:
“According to Kukhtenkov’s testimony, after his military discharge he took a position as deputy leader of a workers’ club. On July 18–19, at about four in the morning, the chairman of the Upper Isetsk Executive Committee Soviet, Sergei Malyshkin, Military Commissar Ermakov, and prominent members of the party, Bolsheviks Alexander Kostousov, Vasily Levatnykh, Nikolai Partin, and Sergei Krivtsov, arrived at the club.
“At the club the abovementioned individuals met secretly.… Krivtsov asked the questions, and Levatnykh and Partin gave the answers. Levatnykh said: ‘When we arrived they were still warm. I felt the tsaritsa myself and she was warm.… Now it was no sin to die because I had felt the tsaritsa.’ [In the document the last sentence was crossed out in ink.] Then came the questions: How were the slain dressed, and were they pretty?… About their clothing Partin said that they were in civilian dress, that various jewels had been sewn into their clothing, and that none of them were beautiful: ‘There was no beauty to see in the dead.’”
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Finally the bodies are covered with the tarpaulin. After much discussion it is decided to burn the clothing and throw the bodies to the bottom of the nameless mine.
Yurovsky: “Once we had gathered together everything of value into sacks, everything else we found on the bodies was burned and the bodies themselves lowered into the mine shaft. In the process some of the valuables (someone’s brooch, Botkin’s false teeth) were dropped.”
A great many diamonds and pearls are gathered, so they do not worry about the small change. They are tired.
Yurovsky: “It was all buried at Alapaevsk in the cellar of one of the little buildings. In 1919 it was dug up and taken to Moscow.”
The historic moment has passed. Life begins anew.
He has a breakfast of eggs on a tree stump. Alexei’s eggs. After Yurovsky eats, it occurs to him to toss in a few grenades.
Yurovsky: “In my attempt to collapse the mine shaft with the help of hand grenades, evidently the bodies were damaged and a few parts torn off—that is how the commandant explains the Whites (who later discovered the mine) finding there a detached finger, etc.”
After which Ermakov and his comrades go to Upper Isetsk and Yurovsky makes sure the jewels get off to Alapaevsk, where that night Ella and her companions in captivity are to be “liquidated.”
There, in a hiding place, in the cellar of an anonymous Alapaevsk house, all the jewels taken from the “Ural Romanovs” are collected.
Yurovsky: “After completing the operation and leaving a guard there, at about ten or eleven in the morning (of July 17 now), the commandant took his report to the Ural Executive Committee, where he found Safarov and Beloborodov. The commandant told them what had been found and expressed