THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE DYNASTY

The spark that would light the fire and subsequently burn the Romanovs' shaky throne to the ground was the Great War, which started in August 1914. The purpose here is not to go into the causes of the Great War, the subject which has already occupied volume after volume of Russian history, but to discuss the cause of the start of hostilities as the same relates to the action of Nicholas II and then the effect that the war itself had on Nicholas II and the dynasty. Fate played an unhappy trick on the world in 1914 with respect to the rulers of Russia, Germany, Austria, and England. Three were absolute monarchies and the fourth a constitutional monarchy. Three of the then monarchs had succeeded their fathers, all of whom would have taken every opportunity to avoid a general European war. Nicholas's father, Alexander III, was well known for his adversity to any kind of armed conflict. Alexander III would have exercised every bit of his forceful personality and ability to avoid the conflict. In the same way, Kaiser Wilhelm II, also an absolute monarch, succeeded his father, Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm, who was indoctrinated in the art of liberal educated ruling by both his wife, Princess Victoria of Britain, and her father, the German born Albert, Prince Consort and husband of Queen Victoria of Britain. Kaiser Wilhelm II's father died after only 99 days on the throne from a terrible cancer of the throat. Nicholas II's father died at the early age of 49 and, therefore, would easily have been on the throne in 1914 had he lived. The constitutional monarch, George V of England, had, of course, no absolute power, as did his other two first cousins, the Kaiser and the Tsar, but an abler, more experienced monarch might have been able to calm the passions that arose in July 1914. Had his diplomatic father, the suave Edward VII, still been on the throne, he doubtless would have had more effect on events than did George V. Edward VII died at the age of 70, only four years before the start of the Great War, so he would, had he lived a long life, easily have been on the throne in 1914. Combining these three, perhaps the worst fateful reality was that the fourth throne, Austria-Hungary, was occupied by an absolute monarch, Franz Joseph, who having ruled for 60 years, had long outlived his expectancy on the throne. The Austro-Hungarian government and its general staff knew that Franz Joseph was effectively a dead weight on the top of the crumbling pyramid of the empire. His nephew and heir, Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination helped ignite the war, although not popular, was somewhat more liberal than Franz Joseph and at least would have entered into the deliberations and could not have been less helpful to the cause of peace than Franz Joseph. Thus, the three men on the thrones of Europe who could have helped prevent the catastrophe were dead, and followed by their three less effective sons, while the one emperor who failed to take any constructive action to forestall the catastrophe lived on and on.

There was a reason the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's death resulted in the chaos it did. After Austrian threats against Serbia, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II gave Austria Germany's promised military support, to which Nicholas responded by giving Serbia Russia's backing. The Kaiser and Nicholas both contributed to the incendiary atmosphere by mobilizing their troops along the common border. Nicholas, partly in the control of his general staff, and the Kaiser, partly in the control of his general staff, nevertheless exercised what little independent judgment they used in an unwise manner. Orders by either one to their general staffs could have obtained a delay which, if it did not prevent the war, certainly would not have allowed it to f lame into action in the first week of August 1914. Nicholas, as always indecisive and in agreement with the last strong opinion he received, put Russia on a wartime footing. The Kaiser, always egotistic, belligerent, and unintelligent, cooperated in the mistake and, therefore, he and Nicholas together sent their peoples and armies into a collision which would destroy them both.

The tragedy of the war was not only the slaughter of millions of soldiers and innocent civilians but the disasters it brought to many of the ruling families, including the Hohenzollerns of Germany, the Hapsburgs of Austria, and the Romanovs of Russia. Nicholas's fate was the swiftest, primarily because the war was an internal disaster for Russia. At the start of the war, Nicholas enjoyed perhaps his greatest popularity when people patriotically rallied behind the Tsar, who vowed to rid Russian soil of the foreign troops. A great surge of nationalism enveloped Nicholas in August of 1914. By the end of 1914, the patriotic fervor had largely disappeared. The country learned that the government and the senior military officers were noted primarily for inefficiency, inability, and corruption. The Russian army was not ready to fight a twentieth century war. It consisted of huge masses of manpower which were thrown wave after wave against the enemy. During the campaigns on the eastern front of 1914, the Russian army went into action with railroads that couldn't supply them, rifles unworkable or without cartridges, artillery pieces with shells of the wrong caliber, and some men armed with sticks and pitchforks. The Russian military tactics often consisted of rushing huge lines of soldiers against entrenched German machine gun battalions. German officers later told of having required their men to go out in front of the machine guns and clear away the Russian corpses as they became stacked so high that the machine guns did not have a clear field of fire. Five months after the start of the war, at the end of December 1914, the Russian military had suffered one million casualties.

Although at this point public blame rested primarily with the cabinet and the military, some of the shock, horror, and disappointment invariably spilled over on the Tsar. Nicholas perhaps might have been able to avoid some of the repercussions had not he made what must be one of the most disastrous decisions of his reign when he assumed personal command of the army in September 1915, discharging his cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas, known as Nicholasha, who had been commander in chief of the Russian forces and whose commanding physical stature occasioned great respect. Though not a military strategist on the order of some of the Great War generals, Nicholasha, nevertheless, was respected by the army and was an imposing figure and a bulwark to his troops, none of which fit the definition of Tsar Nicholas II as commander in chief. Further, by the time Nicholas assumed the command, only military disasters awaited, with the exception of the Brusilov offensive. These were now blamed on the Tsar personally, and his status as a semi-God fell with each military defeat, until we arrive at March of 1917, at which point there was open rebellion and a call from the Russian Parliament for Nicholas's resignation. At that point there was a chance of Alexei as a successor with a regency, or next the succession of Nicholas's brother, Grand Duke Michael, but by the time Nicholas finally determined that there was a problem and started back from army headquarters to St. Petersburg on March 17, 1917, all hopes of any kind of monarchial solution was gone. Two representatives of the Duma met Nicholas to demand his resignation, and all of Nicholas's generals advised him that the army would not support him personally. When Nicholas found that the army, which he undoubtedly believed to be his great support, had abandoned him, he abdicated, but with the sincere hope that his abdication would help both Russia and the war. He was to find very quickly to his sorrow that neither would be true.

THE ROAD TO EKATERINBURG

Nicholas, throughout his entire adult life, faithfully maintained a diary in which he entered the day's events every evening. The text is closer to a day book than a diary as a large part of it consists of comments about the weather or who visited or a recital of the Tsar's menial activities. On only two occasions did the Tsar make an entry which revealed the passion he felt at that day's events. One was on the day of abdication when he entered in his diary at the closing of that day's journal, "All around me is cowardice, treachery, and deceit." It is estimated that perhaps a majority of the Russian population did not necessarily want to see Nicholas executed, but a huge majority of the population did not want him to return to the throne. One of the problems with the overthrow of Nicholas II was that no one was able to appear as an authentic replacement as long as Nicholas, the "God's anointed," was alive, and no one, including the Imperial family, wanted Nicholas to remain or return as Tsar. For months before the abdication, members of the Imperial family had formed in cliques and groups and had written and addressed Nicholas warning him of the danger which lay ahead for himself and his relatives. As his brother-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander, told the Emperor and Empress, he understood that they were willing to throw themselves over the precipice, but they had no right to take the rest of the family with them. Nicholas and Alexandra remained oblivious to the danger and unbelieving of the warnings. On Nicholas's abdication, Russian rule passed to the provisional government and the Russian Parliament, the Duma. From all appearances, the provisional government had no intention or desire to see Nicholas executed but was willing to have him go in exile wherever he could be accepted. Nicholas, idiotically indifferent to the situation as always, preferred to remain in Russia, feeling that going in exile would dim his chances for a return to the throne, not understanding that there was hardly anyone in the entire empire, including the Imperial family, who desired that result. Consequently, he and his family were placed under effective house arrest at their palace and maintained a fairly normal life until August 1917. Alexander Kerensky,16 the head of the provisional government, made arrangements to send the Imperial family to Tobolsk in Siberia with the motive of relocating the family in a rural backwater settlement where they would be in far less danger. The time for exile to a foreign country had already passed, and as Kerensky explained to Nicholas, "Now they are after me and next they will be after you." It is doubtful that Nicholas ever fully understood until the final moments of his life the danger in which he and his family lived.

Nicholas and his family were taken by the Bolsheviks to Tobolsk in August 1917, along with their retainers and amenities. Probably no deposed monarch ever went into exile with a larger group of retainers and a more substantial set of belongings than Nicholas II. Tobolsk was reachable by taking a train to Tiumen and then a boat up river to Tobolsk. This reinforces the thought that Kerensky was sending them to a place where reactions against the Imperial family would not be so violent and, perhaps, they would be even treated with civility. They were installed in a large residence which had formerly been the governor's home, and Nicholas apparently settled in comfortably. Tobolsk was a far cry from the Alexander Palace, but it was certainly in no sense of the word a set of jail cells. Nicholas and his family were joined in the house by their personal physician, Dr. Eugene Botkin, the Tsar's valet, the Empress's lady's maid, and other household attendants. When this is compared to French King Louis XVI in the Bastille and England's Charles I in prison, the Romanovs' existence does not seem so harsh a punishment. They were, however, confined to the premises and, after a short while, were not allowed to leave the yard of the house. Nicholas apparently bore all this in stride, being very happy to exercise outside when he could and was utterly baffled when the guards did not reciprocate his attempts at friendship. Although they were not allowed visitors, they had the services of Alexei's physician, Dr. Vladimir Derevenko, who was allowed in on a not infrequent basis and, on several occasions, had services performed by a priest and deacon. It was not their previous life of luxury; however, it is difficult to describe it as severe imprisonment. Yet, a problem did arise when their guards and jailers became friendly and even sympathetic with the Imperial family whom they found to be very ordinary persons, with the exception of the Empress, who always remained haughty and imperious to the very end. It is important that the daughters became friendly with several of the guards. Although they had at the palace only reached the emotional level of 12 year olds, their attentions to and from the guards, which could barely be described as flirting, still indicated that there were probably many nominal party members in Tobolsk who would not have been that upset had the Imperial family been rescued and removed from Russia.

In the meantime, Russia staggered to the end of a bloody war, the moderates in the government lost control to Lenin and Trotsky who returned from the safety of foreign countries to take over the reins of government in October 1917. Lenin quickly made peace with Germany by surrendering a large part of Russia's territory to the Germans and rallied the people to his cause with a slogan of "Bread and Peace." This move to the extreme left, of course, increased the danger for the Romanovs. Whatever sympathy they might have had was nonexistent with the more hardened Bolshevik government which regarded them as an expendable cipher to be used only as a bargaining chip. As a result, by April 1918 plans were made to move the Imperial family once again. The Bolsheviks assigned an officer, Vassily Yakolev,18 as the officer who would transport the Imperial family from Tobolsk to an undesignated destination in the west, which some of the Romanovs would believe was Moscow.

When officer Yakolev arrived at Tobolsk, he found Alexei in such poor physical condition that the child was completely unable to travel. Yakolev then told Nicholas that he must still leave and, after a heartbreaking family counsel, it was decided that Nicholas, Alexandra, and Maria, their daughter, would leave and Alexei and the other three daughters would remain in Tobolsk until Alexei was able to travel. The threesome, with their attendants, boarded the train at Tiumen; numerous theories abound as to whether they were headed for another town in Siberia, for trial in Moscow, or for escape via Vladivostok. There still exists no essentially question-proof document which indicates what the plans were for the family. The actual result of the trip was that the train was halted in the town of Ekaterinburg, a violently revolutionary community in the Ural Mountains. Telegrams and statements exist indicating numerous scenarios, including that their safety had been guaranteed by the Ekaterinburg Soviet or that Ekaterinburg took them for the purposes of assassination or that Moscow allowed them to be abducted by the Ekaterinburg Soviet, thereby allowing Lenin to wash his hands of the whole problem. Whatever the truth, Nicholas, Alexandra, and Maria were situated in the house of a displaced mining executive, Ipatiev, which was ominously referred to by the Bolsheviks as "the house of special purpose." In a few weeks, Alexei was able to travel and the family was reunited for the last time in Ekaterinburg. The treatment there was certainly stricter than in Tobolsk, but the house was a decent accommodation, had numerous rooms, and consisted of living quarters and not places of imprisonment, although they were certainly restricted with respect to leaving the premises. Nicholas and his family would remain in the Ipatiev House until the infamous night of July 16, 1918.

THE MURDER ROOM

It is hoped this book will bring together as many sources as possible, including those recently published, to allow the reader to compare facts in one concise text. Where conclusions are drawn that are different from earlier authors, this in no sense should be taken as a criticism of those works. Obviously, this work has the benefit of many facts and documents which were not available to earlier writers. I would adopt Newton's analysis of his discoveries which was that he said if he could see farther than those before him had seen, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants.

The problem that has vexed students for nearly a century is how were the seven Romanovs killed, where did it occur, and when did it happen? As one reads through all the various statements, reports and biographies, one early learns that trying to put together a comprehensive timeline or location of events is simply baffling. When you read and reread the various statements, it seems akin to trying to find a blue needle in a blue haystack. It is very quickly apparent that many of the witnesses, as well as some of the early authors, not only had an inclination to one theory or another, but that many may well have had a personal interest in proving a particular theory.