Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [236]
Another specter of the Ipatiev house emerging from oblivion.
At the Central Party Archive, I was finally able to read the “Secret statements of Chekist Medvedev-Kudrin on the execution of the tsar’s family,” which I had heard so much about from his son. One more witness tells the story:
“Yurovsky read the decision to execute. ‘You mean they’re not taking us anywhere?’ Botkin asked. Yurovsky wanted to say something in response, but I was already pulling the trigger. I planted the first bullet in the tsar.… Yurovsky and Ermakov shot Nicholas in the chest as well, almost point-blank.… On my fifth shot Nicholas II toppled back like a sheaf of grass.… There was a woman’s scream, and moaning.… You couldn’t see anything because of the smoke: we were shooting at falling silhouettes we could barely see….
“ ‘Stop! Cease firing,’ Yurovsky commanded.
“ ‘Thank the Lord! God has saved me!’ The surviving maid staggered as she tried to get up.… Then the maid was bayonetted. At her dying cry, Alexei, who was lightly wounded, came to and started moaning. He was lying on a chair. Yurovsky walked over and emptied the last bullets from his Mauser into him. The boy became quiet and slowly crawled to his father’s feet.… Nicholas was completely riddled with bullets.… We examined the remaining ones and finished off Tatiana and Anastasia, who were still alive, with the Colt.”
Did “lightly wounded” Alexei and Anastasia survive the execution? Only after that, Medvedev-Kudrin asserts, were they finished off—in a room where “you couldn’t see anything because of the smoke.”
Two tape recordings are also preserved in the Party Archive: those historic 1964 recordings once discussed in such detail by historian Mikhail Medvedev, Medvedev-Kudrin’s son. On the tapes are the voices of one of the main regicides, Grigory Nikulin, the assistant to the Ipatiev house commandant, and I. Rodzinsky, who participated in the secret burial of the tsar’s family, telling the story of how the tsar and his family died.
Especially interesting are the statements of the man whose name so resembles my own, I. Rodzinsky.
First he tells the tale I have already heard from Medvedev about how the Cheka organized provocations by composing “forged letters over the signature ‘An Officer’”:
“We needed proof that preparations were under way to abduct the Family, even though no such preparations were under way.… Voikov dictated the letters to me in French, and I wrote … so the handwriting was mine.”
The Chekist described the execution as well, and here the name of Alexei crops up once again:
“I must say the execution was chaotic. We nearly shot ourselves because of the bullets ricocheting.… For example, Alexei II took 11 bullets … only after that did he die.”
But Rodzinsky himself did not witness the execution. His story is based on what the other executioners told them, and they were clearly amazed at Alexei’s “strange vitality.”
He did witness the second burial of the tsar’s family, however, and even participated in it. He describes all its terrible details. The Chekist remembered everything: how they got to the mine at dawn, “how one man dropped down into the water with ropes and dragged the corpses out of the water … we pulled Nicholas out first.” He recalled: “The water was so cold that the corpses’ faces were red-cheeked, as if they were still alive.” He recalled seeing the naked body of the tsar and how amazed he was at “Nicholas’s remarkable physical development … his muscles, torso, stomach, and arms.” He remembered little details, too, such as Yurovsky being sent to town for sulfuric acid and him taking that time to go into the village to drink some milk.
He described in detail how they created this terrible secret grave:
“The truck got stuck in a quagmire, and