Michael, of course, knew nothing of Myasnikov other than he was rude and unpleasant; after his first ‘run in’ with him at the ‘Committee of Charms’ he simply shrugged off the row and went off on the Kama in a motor boat. In the afternoon he had ‘wonderful coffee and cake’ with the landlady at the
What troubled him more was that over the next three days he would spend much of his days in bed, suffering from stomach pains. On Saturday, June 8, ‘I ate nothing after midday because I was in pain all the time’. On Sunday he ‘spent the whole day in bed by the window’ and in the evening Znamerovsky arrived ‘and told me much of interest about rumours circulating in the city’.20
On Monday he was on his feet all day ‘but felt very poorly’; he also had a telegram from Natasha to report that she had arrived back in Gatchina from Moscow ‘last Wednesday’ after two weeks of fruitlessly banging on doors in her efforts to have him released. She saw no hope of that now, but she would be cheered by news that he had found an apartment. At least they would have somewhere to live together when next she could get to Perm.
The following day, Tuesday, Michael felt much better and the pains were ‘not as intense and did not last long’. Znamerovsky with Michael’s godson Nagorsky came to tea, and at 10 p.m. Nagorsky popped back to say goodbye , for as Michael wrote in his diary next morning, ‘he is going to Petrograd today.’ 21
It was Wednesday June 12. The last day of Michael’s life.
MICHAEL could not have known it, but he had been secretly ‘sentenced to death’ a few days earlier. There was no signed order and no paper trail to identify the names of those who decided his fate. In Perm itself, where the murder necessarily had to take place, there would be attempts many years later to pretend that it was entirely a local decision, taken under the pressure of the immediate threat from the Czechs and ‘Whites’ — ex-Tsarist officers and soldiers who had declared their own war on the Reds and were advancing from the east. But Perm was less at risk than Ekaterinburg or Alapaevsk, both of which were far nearer to the approaching enemy. Moreover, it would be another five weeks — July 17/18 — before the Ural Regional Soviet, which commanded all, would order the deaths of Nicholas and his family, and the other six Romanovs held in Alapaevsk. The decision to ‘execute’ Michael on June 12 was not therefore for the same reasons as the others. Moreover, officially, Michael was not to be killed at all — he was to escape.
Escape? That was its own proof that Moscow and not the mindless thugs in the Perm Cheka, or their counterparts in Ekaterinburg, were behind his murder. The local Bolsheviks were well able to kill Michael in secret; it was far beyond their wit to understand why, having done so, they should then promote afterwards the story that he had escaped — a story that could only, on the face of it, encourage the very counter-revolutionaries Michael’s death was supposed to dismay. Why kill him and then hand the enemy a propaganda victory by telling them he was alive, free, and had outwitted his captors?
The Kremlin knew perfectly well the purpose of that — wanting him dead, but also wanting him alive. Confusion in the ranks of their enemies suited them well, and unlike the men in the Urals they faced west, not east; the Germans were almost on their doorstep. In June 1918, with the British driven back to the sea, and a German army approaching Paris, Berlin could be optimistic about success in the West — if not victory, then forcing an armistice which would leave them a free hand in the East. For its part, Moscow could be in no doubt what that would mean for them, and possibly sooner rather than later.
After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1917, imperial Germany made very clear what its ambitions were in Russia. Monarchy was to be the natural order and a republic unthinkable. Poland in September 1917 had been declared an independent kingdom and a three-man Regency was established while Germany and Austria tried to agree on who would get the crown; the most popular candidate was the Austrian archduke Charles Stephen, in that he was a Catholic, spoke Polish, had two Polish sons-in-laws. The three former Russian Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — were declared to be Grand Duchies, though in the summer of 1918 Lithuania would go on to declare itself a kingdom, electing as sovereign the Wurttemburg Duke Wilhelm of Urach; Finland became independent in December 1917 with the help of 40,000 German troops and would shortly elect the Kaiser’s brother-in-law Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse-Cassel as king — though in the event neither would ever reign.
The Ukraine, which declared itself independent in November 1917, came under effective German control in April 1918 when a German-backed Russian general seized power as a prelude to a monarchy. Although Austria hoped that the crown would go to one of their archdukes, the Germans saw it as being part of a restored Russian monarchy. The man they had their sights on as Emperor was Michael.
There was no interest in the ex-Tsar, despite appeals on his behalf by those who had never resigned themselves to his abdication; both British and German intelligence agreed that the only possible candidate was Michael.
Hence the decision to kill Michael, but also to keep him ‘alive’. For then no other Romanov could step forward and claim his inheritance as Emperor. Lenin had boasted that he would not leave the Romanovs as a ‘live banner’ for counter-revolutionaries. So instead what he would leave them was a ghost. The last Emperor was to remain the last Emperor.
The subsequent testimony of those involved in Perm, emptied of any reference to the Kremlin’s strategic purpose, followed the simple line that Michael was killed because he was a rallying point for counter- revolutionaries. Myasnikov would claim the discovery of a plot by an organisation of officers to rescue him. He had to be killed because ‘he was the only figure around whom all the counter-revolutionary forces could unite’, and that the ‘danger to Soviet power if Michael escaped and became the head of the counter-revolutionary forces would be immense’.24
This was supported by another local Cheka chairman, Pavel Malkov, who said that Michael had been killed because of the advance of counter-revolutionaries, and also because of his ‘suspicious behaviour’.25 Another leading Bolshevik, A. A. Mikov, described a meeting attended by Malkov, Myasnikov and others in a
However, the impression that the Perm Cheka and the City Soviet were acting on their own initiative does not survive scrutiny. More credibly, the Perm Bolsheviks met that Sunday evening to discuss how best they could carry out the order to kill him, and then promote the cover-up. What certainly they agreed between themselves was the identity of the man who would organise and carry out the murder. That man, and the man most eager to take on the role of executioner, was Myasnikov. He was also the man most likely to be approved by their superiors in Ekaterinburg. The president of the Ural Soviet there was Aleksandr Beloborodov, a former clerk in Perm, and whose family still lived in the city. He knew Myasnikov well; they were close friends.
On the morning of Wednesday, June 12, Myasnikov was told to go ahead with the murder immediately. Everything else essential to its success was in place. Michael was about to ‘disappear’.
22. DEATH IN THE WOODS
ONCE the weekend decision to kill Michael had been confirmed, Myasnikov acted with considerable speed. His first task was to recruit an execution squad. ‘I needed hard men who had suffered from the autocracy…men who were prepared to bite through someone’s throat with their teeth. I needed men who could hold their tongues, who trusted me more than they did themselves, and were ready to do anything if I told them it was necessary in the interests of the revolution.’1
The four men who met this criteria were all from the Motovilikha arsenal.
Nikolai Zhuzhgov, aged 39, and a friend of Myasnikov for many years, was a member of the Perm Cheka and also assistant chief of the Motovilikha militia. A small man, with sunken eyes, he had spent seven years in labour camps, some of that time with fellow prisoner Myasnikov.
