My testimony has been read to me and it is written correctly.

(Signed) Eugene Stepanovitch Kobylinsky,
N. Sokoloff.

IV
EXAMINATION OF PHILIP PROSKOURIAKOFF

[The deposition of Philip Proskouriakoff possesses a certain amount of psychological interest as the testimony of a lad of seventeen who was suddenly confronted with death in one of its most violent and terrible forms. Proskouriakoff appears to have been a clever, restless youth with a distaste for settled employment, and who probably enlisted in the Workmen’s Guards solely in the spirit of adventure.

His story of the murder of the imperial family is more horrible than the accounts given by the older men. Proskouriakoff’s love of the morbid, and his slightly decadent mentality, is plainly shown in his account of the events of the night, when he was awakened from a drunken sleep and ordered to proceed to that sinister bullet-riddled room on the ground floor of Ipatieff’s house. But his minute attention to many of the ghastly and often irrelevant details is valuable as documentary evidence, as it goes to prove most conclusively that these things actually happened and were retained as they happened in the mind of a person whose neurotic temperament enabled him to remember them accurately and vividly.—Editor’s Note.]

From the first to the third day of April, 1919, the Investigating Magistrate for Cases of Special Importance of the Omsk Tribunal, N. A. Sokoloff, in conformity with Paragraphs 403-409 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, conducted an investigation in the town of Yekaterinburg, in which the man named below, speaking as the accused, deposed: I am Philip Poliektoff Proskouriakoff. At the time that the crime was committed I was seventeen years old; I am a Russian peasant, belonging to the Orthodox Church, and single. For three years I went to the Sissert five-class school. My specialty is electrical fittings. In answer to your questions, I reply as follows:

For many years my father had been a foreman in the iron works, and resided all the time in the Sissert Iron Works. This was also my birthplace. I did not complete my studies in the Sissert school, and attended classes only during three years. It was very difficult for me to learn; at the same time my father got sick and took me away from school. At first he placed me in the blacksmith’s shop of the factory, so that I might learn the trade. I was instructed by Vasily Afanasievitch Belonosoff. I left after I had worked for about a year in the shop: this work was too hard for me. My eldest brother found me a position in the Palais Royal Theatre where I began to study for a position of electrician. I stayed there for about a year, learned something about electricity and started in a business of my own—installing electric wires in town. Later I got a position in the central electric plant in Yekaterinburg. I worked there for about a month and, before Easter 1918, went home.

I remember quite well that on May 9th I met in the bazaar a friend of mine, Ivan Semenoff Talapoff. He told me that a certain commissar, Mrachkovsky, had started recruiting amongst our factory workmen for a special detachment that was intended to guard the czar. Personally, I did not see Mrachkovsky. I heard only that he was in command of some troops fighting against Dutoff—from whence he had come. I related to my father Talapoff’s words. Both my father and my mother advised me not to enlist. My father’s words were: “Philip, don’t go, think it well over.” I was anxious to see the czar so I ignored my father’s advice and on the next day enlisted. The enlistment took place in the house of Vasily Erkoff, which is on the Tzerkovnaia Street, close to the soviet. The enlistment was conducted by one of our Sissert workmen, Paul Spiridonoff Medvedeff. Medvedeff told me that we should be paid four hundred roubles per month, that we should have to perform sentry duty, but that we should not be allowed to sleep while doing so! Such were the conditions explained to me, so I enlisted at once.

I heard at the time that thirty Sissert workmen altogether had enlisted. Later, some of them withdrew, but the number of those who did so was small and they were replaced by others, also workmen from our factory.

Eleven of these first thirty men, as I was told, belonged to the Bolshevik communist party.