The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

of everyone; moreover, that would have done little to help them.

Plotters would make sure they had the right papers — or least papers that looked right — and a plausible story to go with them. Mr O’Brien and Mr Hess could be anyone. They came, they went, and the Cheka was none the wiser.

Colonel Znamerovsky certainly had ideas of escape, and given the worsening position in Perm it would be odd if he had not; with good reason he feared that the ‘Motovilikha workmen might be goaded into violence’.⁸ The problem was not escape in itself, but making good that escape by getting out of Perm to safety.

Curious messages arrived at the Korolev Rooms in those anxious days; two survive, though their meaning is lost. The mignonette is not a flower of brilliant beauty, but its fragrance is divine, says one. The other is equally mysterious: Turkeys are yours.⁹

On Tuesday May 28, a week after Michael’s first visit to the Cheka, the city was declared to be ‘in a state of war’.

THE Czech threat had also heightened fears among the Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, half-way between Perm and Chelyabinsk, and therefore at even greater risk of finding itself under attack. Nicholas and Alexandra had been transferred there from Tobolsk four weeks earlier, arriving on April 30. They had been taken to the ominously- named ‘House of Special Purpose’ — formerly, until they seized it, the two-storey home of a wealthy local merchant, Nikolai Ipatev. Their five children, kept behind because Alexis had been ill, rejoined them three weeks later.

The house had been hidden from curious eyes by the erection of a tall wooden fence on all sides. Five rooms on the upper floor, their window-panes painted white so that no one could see in or out, were to serve as prison for the family. The lower floor became a guardroom. Other than being allowed to walk in the garden in the afternoon, the family spent their days confined to their rooms, with nothing to do except to read and sew and make up their own games to pass the slow days. It was tedious, humiliating, and with their Red Guards marching to and fro as they pleased, deliberately oppressive.

But they were not the only Romanov captives in Ekaterinburg. Alexandra’s sister Ella, aged 54, was there also, confined in a hotel along with Grand Duke Serge Mikhailovich, the three grown-up sons of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, who had died in 1915, and, the youngest of the group, Vladimir Paley, the 21-year-old half-brother of Grand Duke Dimitri. They were allowed no contact with Ipatev House, and Alexandra was never told that her sister was in the town.

The locally-based but powerful Ural Regional Soviet — commanding Perm as well as Ekaterinburg — had no intention of evacuating Nicholas and his family, notwithstanding the threat from the Czechs. With the railway line to Moscow blocked at Chelyabinsk, their options were limited in any event. What to do with the family would be a decision they were not ready to make.

However, at the end of May their second group of six Romanov captives were told that they were being moved ‘for safety’ to Alapaevsk, a bleak mining town some 180 miles to the north-east of Ekaterinburg, and roughly the same distance from Perm. There they would be confined in a small simply-furnished schoolhouse, with no more than five or six rooms, guarded by Latvians and local Red Guards. They were allowed to walk into the town, and talk to locals, but in the evenings there was nothing to do but sit in their rooms, and pass the time as best they could. It was a dreary existence, in which one day was indistinguishable from the next; with no prospect of escape, they could only endure the grinding monotony in the hope that somehow better times lay ahead.

Had they known of it, they would have been astonished at the freedom enjoyed by Michael — and the seeming concern of the Bolsheviks to treat him as they treated no other of their Romanov prisoners. Nights at the opera, dinner parties with friends, shopping in town, his own staff of retainers — that was a privileged world they could barely imagine still existed. On the face of it, and whatever the reason for his special treatment, Michael was a very lucky man indeed.

Sadly, that luck was about to run out.

AS Ella and the other Romanovs in her group were preparing for their move to Alapaevsk, Michael noted in his diary that ‘it is difficult to work out what is going on, but something major is brewing’.¹⁰ There were rumours everywhere as he walked about town, heads still bowed as he passed by. A few days later, on Monday June 3, he wrote to Natasha to set out his views on his own position, his spirits low.

‘My dearest sweetheart, my own darling Natasha…it is now 16 days since you went away. I can’t describe how I feel— depressed and desperate from all the surroundings here, from this dreadful town where I am in absolute uncertainty and living an aimless life. Why do I write this when you know it so well yourself!’ One practical complaint was that the Korolev Rooms were becoming increasingly expensive, and a drain on his reserves of cash. ‘The price for the rooms is going up all the time and the cook serves us with enormous bills,’ he added.

The good news was that he had found an apartment at 212 Ekaterinskaya Street with ‘a nice view from the balcony over the river’.¹¹ That would save money, for it was privately owned by his friends the Tupitsins, and the rent would be almost nominal. It would be free in a couple of weeks, and when Natasha could get back to Perm it would be a home for them. Given the military situation he feared that ‘we will not be able to see each other for another two months, which would be dreadful’, though if matters improved, ‘I will hope that you can come here sooner’.

To this letter he added a separate postscript, jokily headlining it as The Recent Political Review and signing off as Correspondent-on-Tour.

Everything here is outwardly calm, but the authorities admit that things are rather acute and serious. We have to continue to give our signatures daily in the Committee of ‘Charms’. In the town squares the railwaymen and party-workers are receiving military training, drill and similar body exercises… The town is full of rumours and disturbed by news that in the east — not very far away, in ‘Katia’s Burg’ [Ekaterinburg] there are activists of either ‘Czech-Slovaks’ or ‘Slovak-Czechs’… What their further plans are, nobody knows, but our town is now declared under military law.¹²

Shortly after sending off this letter Michael suffered another bout of his ‘damned stomach pains’, the first for some time. Next day he went as usual to report to the Cheka, and ‘had a bit of a run in with one of the “comrades” there who was very rude to me’.¹³ The ‘comrade’ was Gavriil Myasnikov, former chairman of the Motovilikha Soviet, who had been appointed ten days earlier to the Perm Cheka, taking over responsibility for dealing with ‘counter-revolutionaries’.¹⁴

With his arrival, the local Cheka changed from being offensively officious to menacing. Before the 1917 February Revolution Myasnikov had spent four years in a labour camp for terrorist acts. In the six years before that he had been arrested and imprisoned for various violent crimes, his life a series of escapes, periods in hiding, and prison until in 1913 he went to a labour camp.¹⁵ Now 29, Myasnikov hated what Michael represented and bitterly resented the freedom he was allowed in Perm.

Among his Bolshevik members in Motovilikha there had been fierce criticism of the benign treatment afforded Michael and the way in which the ‘bourgeoisie’ would bow to him in the street, and lay flowers in his path when he went to the Cathedral.

There had been nothing Myasnikov could do about that from Motovilikha, but now as head of a Cheka department he was determined to come down hard on Michael and show him who was master in Perm.

A fellow Bolshevik, the secretary of the Perm Party Committee, thought Myasnikov to be ‘a bloodthirsty and embittered man, and not altogether sane…’¹⁶ Other local Bolsheviks were also frightened of him, believing him capable of utter ruthlessness. In turn, he suspected some members of the Perm Soviet of being in awe of Michael and too ready to protect him. He was also convinced that there is ‘an organisation of officers attempting to liberate him’.¹⁷

There appears to have been some effort by the ‘moderates’ to remove Myasnikov from the city Cheka, for only a week after his appointment they tried to get rid of him by ‘promoting’ him to the Ural Regional Cheka in Ekaterinburg. But after he refused to go, the appointment went to the local Cheka chairman, F. N. Lukoyanov^,18 whose removal left Myasnikov more powerful than before. Lukoyanov was no saint; Myasnikov was a cold-blooded killer.