These “inner circles” are the men who “tried” the Tsar and condemned him to death, in other words, assumed the duty of carrying out Sverdlov’s orders. They sent “compromising” documents to Moscow afterwards: letters alleged to have been surreptitiously exchanged between the Tsar and officers outside. They are rank forgeries. One of them alludes to “five windows” facing the square, whereas the Tsar’s quarters comprised only two windows on that side, and if the alleged plotters had succeeded in penetrating the double barriers, scaling the house and entering as directed, they would have jumped into a veritable hornet’s nest. Besides, how could they hope to escape the machine-gunner on the roof?
This mockery of a trial has been perpetuated by the “fakes” of sensation-seekers and imaginative writers. One enterprising foreigner cabled thousands of words from Ekaterinburg not long after the murder, describing the aeroplanes that hovered over the city—presumably to carry off the Tsar—and the dropping of bombs, etc., all of which was, of course, rank nonsense; but he also gave a wonderful account by “the Tsar’s faithful servant,” whose name had never been heard of, who told with a wealth of detail how the Tsar was fetched away “for trial” and how he came back and took an affecting leave of his wife and children before being shot all alone.... There are pages and pages of this stuff, and it is all absolute twaddle, but none the less mischievous.
There was no trial of any sort whatsoever. The person named Sakovich in the above list was found in Ekaterinburg afterwards. He admits that he was in the room when Goloshchekin and his friends were talking to Yurovsky just before the murder, but he did not even pay attention to what they said, as the conversation was of such a banal character. No trial—therefore no verdicts, judgments or other such like formulæ, and no reading of any papers to the Tsar before the family was sent to its last account. This so-called “paper” is an invention inspired by the murderers, to fit in with the Moscow story of an intended trial. The only “paper” concocted by the murderers was the “Decision” as to the “execution.” At the Soviet headquarters in Ekaterinburg numerous drafts of this document were afterwards discovered and figure in the dossier. They show how troubled the murderers were to invent an appropriate lie for approval by Moscow.
Why was the Tsar moved from Tobolsk and why was he not brought to Moscow, as Yakovlev had been instructed? It is absurd on the face of it to hint that the Ural Regional Sovdep was overriding the decisions of Moscow. We have just seen that the virtual rulers of the Ural were Yankel Sverdlov’s fellow-Jews and associates, even subordinates.
An answer is offered by the Soviet organ, of the 4th May, 1918. It explains that it was “owing to alleged indications of efforts being made by local peasants and by Monarchist groups to promote escape.” We trace here the handiwork of Soloviev and Vasiliev. And it adds: “The regional Soviet of the Urals are charged with surveillance over the Imperial family” (The London Times, May 6, 1918).
But while this answer goes a certain way, and definitely involves the responsibility of the Moscow government for all that happened in the Urals, it by no means tells the whole truth. The inside history of Yakovlev’s mission has been explained. Yakovlev was the agent of Sverdlov. But Sverdlov as president of the Tsik[13] was over the foreign as well as the domestic affairs of Sovietdom, being in fact Prime Minister. Now Sverdlov had been a paid agent of Germany and was still in the closest touch and relationship with Mirbach. The Tsar’s own definition of Yakovlev’s mission was unquestionably right, in substance, if not in detail: to obtain his endorsement of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The Soviet organs published long accounts of Yakovlev’s journey. In these he is falsely described as the representative of the Sovnarkom, i.e., of Lenin’s parliament. That was merely to cover up the tracks. Yakovlev is quoted as speaking of Nicholas Romanov as a pleasant enough person, but of “extraordinarily limited intellect.” He was not clever enough to realise the advantages that were offered to him.
The Germans, of course, were extremely displeased by this contretemps, more especially as it came in conjunction with the failure of their plan to nobble the Russian intelligentzia and with their aid to set up the “new government” that Ludendorff craved. One of Mirbach’s chief assistants, a Dr. Ritzler, then remarked to one of these Russians that “the Bolsheviks were still necessary.” A few months later the Red terror avenged the slight inflicted upon the German associates of Sverdlov.
Voikov, the Jew, boasted to his “lady” friends in Ekaterinburg after the murder that “the world will never know what we did with the bodies.” It was his accomplices that suggested to the remorse-stricken Fesenko that the “cinders were not there.” The insolent confidence in the superiority of their “precautions” displayed by Voikov is characteristic of his race.
The murderers invented another story in Perm, of which I have not yet spoken. Their agents gave information that one of the Grand Duchesses had been seen in the city and that she had been shot during the Terror some months after the “execution”