It was a much cruder performance than that of Ekaterinburg. The actual murderers here were simply Russian criminals, escaped convicts who “worked” for the Chrezvychaika, the Red Inquisition. They just slaughtered the victims and got rid of the bodies without so much as rifling their pockets.
Meanwhile at the school certain “precautions” were being taken. A pretended “escape” was staged. The school building and its approaches were “faked” to show evidence of combat between the Red Guards and pretended White Guards, and to give verisimilitude to the performance they took a peasant who happened to be locked up in the local gaol, murdered him and placed his dead body in the school to represent the White “bandits.”
Mr. Preston, the Consul, telegraphed from Ekaterinburg, October 28, 1918, that on the retaking of Alapaevsk by the White troops on September 28, the corpses of the Romanov Princes, the Grand Duchess and their attendants were found sufficiently preserved to be recognised, and that they were buried in the presence of a great concourse of people.
The discovery had been made, thanks to the resource of a local police agent, whose name I do not give for special reasons. Post mortem examination showed that the victims had been bludgeoned to death but must have undergone a prolonged agony before they died. The Grand Duke Sergius was shot through the head, perhaps to put him out of his misery; for the murderers were just butchers who did not seek to torture their victims. There was no refinement of cruelty about them. They were only Russians. It is not true that they threw their victims down the shaft before life was extinct. The autopsy has dispelled that legend. The murderers even exploded hand grenades down the shaft, probably to make assurance doubly sure.
The investigation has clearly established the authorship of these murders. The orders came from Moscow through the same channels that had been used in the murder of the Tsar—namely, from the Jew Sverdlov to the Jew Goloshchekin, and, as usual, the Russian workman Belodorodov acted as the dummy president of the Ekaterinburg Soviet board—the channel through which Moscow acted in the Urals. These orders were carried out by the leading komisars of Perm, among them being the Komisar of Justice Soloviev.
As in the case of the murder at Ekaterinburg, the Bolshevists at Perm followed up their traitorous crime by announcing that there had been a conspiracy. The world was told that the Princes had been kidnapped by bands of White Guards. (When the Whites had to evacuate Perm, General Diterichs arranged to have the bodies of the martyred Princes removed eastward. They rest in a place of safety—at the Russian Cathedral in Peking).
More than half a year later a crime equally abominable was perpetrated at Petrograd. The victims were the Grand Dukes Paul Alexandrovich, Dmitri Constantinovich, Nicholas Mikhailovich (the historian), and George Mikhailovich. They had been imprisoned for some time without any charge being preferred against them. On January 29, 1919, they were removed to the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul, and there on the same day without any investigation or form of trial they were “killed by Red Guards with revolvers”—such is the trite information that is available. But the crime of Ekaterinburg and the slaughter of Alapaevsk give a clue as to the authorship of this atrocity. The last of the Romanovs within the power of the Jew-ruled Soviet had passed away. Perhaps, some day, N. A. Sokolov will be able to investigate the crime of Petrograd.
We now approach the end of this long martyrology. The members of whom I am about to speak form part of the Red Terror ordained by the Soviet to avenge the murder of Uritsky and the attempt on Lenin, which took place about a month after the crime of Ekaterinburg.
I referred above to the transfer of certain prisoners from that city to Perm. Volkov, the Tsar’s valet, has deposed that altogether thirty-six persons travelled in the prison train. Among them were Countess Hendrykova, Mlle. Schneider, and Princess Elena. They all found themselves interned in the same prison in Perm. Here Volkov met Chelyshev, who had also been locked up, and from him heard the account of the abduction of the Grand Duke Michael. They saw the Princess leave. After great difficulty the Siberian Government had managed to rescue her. She did not, of course, know that her husband had been murdered. She thought he had escaped, and went away willingly enough this time.
The Terror had been proclaimed on September 1, 1918. The official Izvestiya declared that the “proletariat (sic) will reply ... in a manner that will make the whole bourgeoisie shudder with horror.” The Krasnaia (Red) Gazeta announced:—“We will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds.... Let them drown themselves in their own blood.”[11]