As the soldiers and their prisoners were going out of the room, Chelyshev remembered about the medicine, and, grasping the bottle, followed, calling out: “Please your Highness, take it with you.” He knew that without his medicine the Grand Duke might be subjected to great and needless suffering. The soldiers roughly pushed him aside and, making some brutal remark about the Imperial family, led the prisoners away. From that moment they were lost to view. Many stories of Michael’s escape and of his having been seen at Omsk, at Semipalatinsk, at Chita, at Harbin, etc., have been successively disproved.
Against the version of an escape there are the strongest evidences:—The Grand Duke would never have been a party to any attempt to evade his gaolers, knowing full well that both the Tsar—for whom his loyalty and affection were proverbial—and his own family would suffer for him. It may be objected that he was removed against his will by friends in disguise; but this theory cannot explain away their refusal to allow him to take with him a remedy necessary to his health and perhaps to his life. There had been plots to procure his escape—so I have reason to believe; but in every case the plans had been betrayed. Colonel Znamerovsky knew this. He would trust nobody with his plan, but obviously it miscarried, for he was himself to go with Michael, and we know that instead of that he was murdered. The shooting of Znamerovsky followed close upon the Grand Duke’s disappearance.
Chelyshev afterwards professed confidence in his master’s escape, but at the time he had no such illusion. In fact, he was convinced then that the Grand Duke had been trapped, for when he had had time to recover from his surprise, he went to the local Soviet and complained that the Grand Duke had been kidnapped. He relates that no attention was paid to him at first but that later some semblance of a search was made and quickly dropped.
Regarding the ultimate disposal of the two prisoners, stories circulate just as numerous and varied as the stories of their escape. I need not cite them. It suffices that the Grand Duke Michael, gentlest of men, to whom all thought of power and even of ambition was repugnant, disappeared to be seen no more.
Perm and its vicinity was destined to witness other tragedies full of horror. Many other members of the Romanov family had been interned there including (1) the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, sainted sister of the Empress, venerated by grateful Muscovites while Alexandra was disliked; (2) the Grand Duke Sergius Mikhailovich former Master of the Ordnance, and quite remote from politics; (3) Prince Igor; (4) Prince Ioan; (5) Prince Constantine, all three brilliant young men, the sons of the late Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich, none of them concerned with political matters; and (6) Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Palei son of the Grand Duke Paul and step-brother of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. This youth of seventeen had given promise of being one of the world’s greatest poets.
Prince Ioan was married to Princess Elena of Serbia, who had come to the Urals to share her husband’s exile. She had been persuaded to go to her country, the Bolshevists hesitating to incarcerate her, and she was at Ekaterinburg when, towards the end of June, she heard that Prince Ioan and the other captives had been put on starvation rations. She decided, come what might, not to leave him behind. Thereupon the Bolshevists arrested her. She was in the prison at Ekaterinburg when the Tsar and his family were murdered. In the same prison were some people who had followed the Imperial household into captivity; young Countess Anastasia Hendrykova, Mlle. Schneider, the Emperor’s valet Volkov. (Prince Dolgoruky and General Tatishchev had “disappeared” earlier.) Of course none of them knew anything about the awful happenings in Ipatiev’s house.
When the Jewish murderers and their accomplices, the German-Magyar “Letts,” had taken wing before the advance of the Whites these prisoners were sent to Perm for future disposal, while they themselves had hurried westward, having helped to accomplish the hellish design of the Jew fiend, Yankel Sverdlov—to exterminate “all the Romanovs.” Orders had already preceded them to Perm and the design had been fully accomplished there. The murder of the Romanovs of Perm took place exactly twenty-four hours after the murder of the family in Ekaterinburg.
Here are the bare facts of this new butchery. The six Romanov prisoners above-mentioned with the Grand Duchess’s companion, the nun Varvara, and S. M. Remes, manager for the princes, were interned in the village school of Alapaevsk, a place in the environs of Perm.
On the night of July 17 (1918) their warders came to tell them the story that Yurovsky had retailed to the Tsar: that there was danger for them, that the enemy (i.e., the Czecho-Slovaks) were approaching, and that in the interest of their personal safety they would be removed. It was even confided to them whither they were going, namely to the Siniachkhin Works. All unsuspicious, they at once complied. The programme of the murder was here somewhat different. It was not convenient to carry it out on the premises. The party took their seats in the native korobs (a small tarantass) and were driven north.
When twelve versts (eight miles) out the caravan halted in a wood which contained a number of disused iron-ore mines—one sees the similarity of detail in the murderers’ plan—and here the unfortunates were slain and their bodies thrown down the shafts.