The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II (39 page)

As they were leaving, Chelyshev remembered about Michael’s medicine and ran forward, holding out the bottle. ‘Please, Your Highness, take it with you’, he called out.
²⁰
The men roughly shoved him aside as they hauled Michael onto the stairway, motioning Johnson to follow.

Downstairs, Krumnis watched as three armed men and their prisoners came towards him in the hall. Michael and Johnson, he remembered, ‘were dressed in the everyday suits that they usually wore when they went out walking. They did not have coats with them, but carried sticks in their hands.’ He did not notice ‘any particular agitation on their faces.’
²¹

Myasnikov, who had stayed in the lobby, led the way into the street. Chelyshev, watching from the balcony, saw Michael ‘violently pushed’ into the first phaeton
²²
. Zhuzhgov clambered in after him, with Ivanchenko on the reins. Johnson climbed into the second phaeton, with the two other members of the squad. Because they had not allowed for Johnson’s inclusion there was no room now for Myasnikov in the three-seater phaetons. Nevertheless he told them to go ahead — ‘I will catch you up. If I don’t, then wait for me at Motovilikha.’
²³

As the two carriages clipped away towards the Siberian Highway, Malkov and Sorokin came running up from the Cheka offices and then went with Myasnikov into the militia office next door to the hotel, where they went over the plan they would put into operation as soon as they had telephone confirmation that Michael was dead. They would then circulate the story of his escape, and arrest his servants and associates.
²⁴
That done, Myasnikov ordered a militia carriage to take him to Motovilikha. Going at a fast trot he caught up with the others just as they arrived at the militia offices there. Zhuzhgov climbed down and came over to him. Yes, they had spades. No, there was no need for Myasnikov to follow, they could manage on their own.
²⁵

Myasnikov stood in the darkness and watched as the two phaetons set off and disappeared into the darkness. Satisfied that this was the end of Michael he then went into the militia offices and telephoned Malkov at the Perm Cheka. Malkov told him that the escape story would now be circulated, search parties organised, and telegrams sent out to the world at large to say that Michael Romanov had been abducted by counter-revolutionaries.
²⁶

By this time the phaetons had reached the paraffin stores some three miles beyond Motovilikha. Michael had sat silently on the journey to Motovilikha but when they moved off again he had begun to question Zhuzhgov about their destination. The first place that came into Zhuzhgov’s head was Mogilev, adding quickly that they were heading for a railway crossing to be put on a train there to avoid the attention they would have had in ‘a busy station’.
²⁷

It was not a reassuring answer: Mogilev was 1,400 miles to the west, and the carriages were heading east. Michael made no comment, but he ‘didn’t seem frightened’, said Zhuzhgov afterwards.

Six hundred yards past the paraffin stores
²⁸
the carriages slowed and then stopped as they reached the wood selected for the execution. Michael and Johnson were told to get out, and then led into the wood. To the obvious question of why, Zhuzhgov roughly replied that it was a short cut to the railway crossing. They did not go far before stopping, and pushing Michael and Johnson aside.

What followed was cold-blooded murder. There were no explanations, no ceremony, no macabre ritual of a last cigarette and blindfold. Zhuzhgov simply lifted his Browning and aimed it at Michael, standing a few feet away, and simultaneously Markov shot Johnson, but only wounding him. Zhuzhgov’s gun either misfired or he missed for Michael, knowing that he was about to die, ran forward his arms out wide, ‘begging to say goodbye to his secretary’.
²⁹
As he did so Zhuzhgov fired again but because he was using home-made bullets his gun jammed, as did Kolpashchikov’s gun as he attempted to fire a second bullet at the staggering Johnson. With Michael still moving forward with his arms outstretched he was shot in the head at close range. Markov later boasted that he did so; Zhuzhgov claimed that when Michael fell he ‘pulled Johnson, who had been shot by Ivanchenko, down with him. I went up to them. They were still moving. I put my Browning to Michael’s temple and shot him. Ivanchenko did the same to Johnson’.
³⁰

The time was approximately 2 a.m. on Thursday June 13.

With four men armed with the axes and spades taken from the carriages ‘it didn’t take very long’
³¹
to dig the single grave into which they then threw the bodies. Before burying Michael and Johnson their bodies were stripped of all their clothes and possessions, which were put into the phaetons and taken back to Motovilikha, seemingly as proof that they were dead. They had been told not to touch personal effects but the temptation of trophies proved too much for them. From Michael’s pockets they took a watch, a cigar case, a penknife and a tobacco tin.
³²
Johnson’s pockets yielded among other things a handsome silver watch which Markov kept for himself and which he would go on wearing for the rest of his life.
³³

At Motovilikha the killers took the bloodied clothes, poured kerosene over them and set them on fire. Myasnikov, lighting a cigarette, looked at his watch. It was 4 a.m.
³⁴

No one would ever find the graves.

THE first telegrams from the Perm Cheka announcing the ‘escape’ of Michael Romanov had already been despatched. Malkov telephoned Myasnikov at 2.20 a.m. to confirm that he had cabled the Soviet of People’s Commissars at Moscow, for the attention of Trotsky and Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka supremo. A copy was also sent to Petrograd and to the Ural Soviet and the regional head of Cheka in Ekaterinburg. The message read:
Last night Michael Romanov and Johnson were abducted by persons unknown in military uniform. Search as yet unsuccessful, most energetic measures taken
.
³⁵

That was code for Michael is dead. No alarm bells sounded in the Kremlin, as would have been the case if Michael had actually escaped and was on his way to lead the ‘Whites’. No vengeful tribunal descended on Perm to exact punishment for those charged with Michael’s security. No one demanded an accounting by the local leadership, or the arrest of those whose negligence had permitted the rescue. There was no enquiry, no scapegoat, no consequence.

Moreover, the ‘energetic measures’ to find the ‘escaped Michael’ involved no more than despatching token search parties, sent out everywhere except the road to Motovilikha and beyond. What the Cheka did do, and promptly, was to arrest Chelyshev and Borunov as ‘accomplices’.
³⁶
Chelyshev would later recount what had happened in the
Korolev Rooms
to a fellow prisoner, Aleksandr Volkov, a former valet in the Tsarskoe Selo household. He told him he was in no doubt that Michael had not been rescued by friends but abducted by enemies.
³⁷

Nevertheless, the story of the ‘escape’ was spread so convincingly that most ordinary people accepted it as fact. In the local Soviet newspaper, the Perm
Izvestiya,
Michael was said to have been abducted ‘soon after midnight’ by ‘three unidentified armed men in military uniform…Orders were immediately given for Romanov’s arrest and mounted militia units were despatched along all highways, but no traces were found.’
³⁸

Many of Perm’s townspeople saw ‘the hand of God’ in Michael’s disappearance. Prayers led by the archbishop were said for him in the cathedral, ‘for the health of God’s servant Michael’; rumour had it that he would reappear at the head of an army and restore order.
³⁹

One of the few who wondered if all was as it seemed to be was Krumnis in the
Korolev Rooms
. He noted that ‘everything about the escape seemed strange, all the more so because there were no house searches’.
⁴⁰
The sister of the senior Cheka man Lukoyanov, so recently promoted to Ekaterinburg, admitted that the news ‘had been received rather strangely at the Cheka; they weren’t particularly worried’.
⁴¹

The telegram to them apart, Moscow had full details of the murder shortly afterwards. According to Myasnikov, a local Bolshevik leader, M. P. Turkin, was immediately sent to the Kremlin to report on what had happened to Yacob Sverdlov, President of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and so powerful he was known as the ‘Red Tsar’. Sverdlov was said to be ‘very, very pleased’; he then telephoned Lenin, ‘who was also very pleased’.
⁴²

However, there is independent evidence that Turkin was indeed in Moscow at that time, for he is listed as a delegate to the All-Russian Congress held there at the beginning of July, and presided over by Sverdlov.
⁴³
Moreover, shortly after the murder, Myasnikov went to Ekaterinburg, to a meeting of the Ural Regional Soviet at the
Hotel Amerika
on Pokrovsky Prospekt. Those present were the leaders of the Ural Soviet, headed by Myasnikov’s old Perm friend, Beloborodov. The purpose of the meeting was to draw up a resolution for the execution of their Romanov prisoners. Although they knew Michael was already dead, his name was included as one of those the Regional Soviet ‘considers it indispensable to execute...’ However, the resolution recognised that ‘for reasons of foreign policy’ it might be necessary to keep that ‘absolutely secret’.
⁴⁴

The meeting also agreed that the Ural Soviet should send immediately two envoys to Moscow to obtain the endorsement of the Bolshevik leadership for their decision. The first envoy was a very senior figure in the ranks of the Ural Soviet: secretary and war commissar Filipp Goloshchenkin; the other was a man with no position at all — Myasnikov, who it was said was carrying ‘a personal report’ for Lenin. The two envoys were instructed to return ‘not later than July 15’.
⁴⁵

The man who had been Emperor Michael II was dead. Now the question was how best to deal with the other Romanovs in the custody of the Ural Soviet. Five weeks after the murder of Michael, the world would have the answer to that.

IN both London and Berlin the ‘escape’ of Michael was seen as of high importance, with both sides wondering how best to exploit that to their own advantage. Although the British, like the French, had withdrawn their ambassadors from Petrograd to the greater safety of Murmansk, on the White Sea, they still had a skeleton staff there, of whom the naval attaché Captain Francis Cromie was key to their intelligence sources. Just over two weeks after Michael’s murder, and based on reports from a spy in the German general staff, he reported by telegram on June 29, 1918, that the Germans intended to follow up their seemingly successful offensive in the West by a new effort in Russia. Their aim was to ‘break the Brest peace and declare a monarchy. Considerations will be more favourable than Brest Peace Conference, return of all territory to Russia, even Ukraine…Economic conditions will be onerous but less so than at present. Candidate for the throne is Grand Duke Michael and a high German Agent has already been sent to Perm to open negotiations, but Grand Duke has temporarily disappeared’.

The despatch to London, which fitted the facts as Cromie understood them, urged that since the Germans appeared bent on restoring the monarchy, albeit for their own interests, the best course for the British was to forestall them and back the monarchists first. ‘In Ukraine there are 200,000 officers of whom 150,000 will at once join up, but only in support of monarchy’, he said, adding that ‘Grand Duke Michael is the most popular candidate’.
¹

The Germans had re-established an embassy in Moscow, with Count Joachim von Mirbach, a Russian expert, as ambassador; they also maintained an important consulate in Petrograd. Their messages to Berlin and to the Kaiser’s brother Prince Henry, who was primarily responsible for questions relating to the Romanov dynasty, were also supportive of Michael as emperor. Prince Henry took the keenest interest in bringing the Bolsheviks to heel: his two sisters-in-law were Alexandra and Ella, both prisoners, and his wife, Princess Irene, was aunt to the five children in Ekaterinburg.

The question was how to rescue them, and the best hope of that might well prove to be Michael. On June 27, two weeks after his ‘escape’,
The Times
in London had reported rumours that ‘he is at the head of an anti-revolution movement in Turkestan’ and that ‘he had issued a manifesto to the Russian people…leaving the decision as to the form of government to be adopted by the Duma which was to be convoked’.

This seemed to re-affirm Michael’s manifesto on becoming emperor: that it was for the Russian people to decide its status, and that if he was to be emperor it was to be as a constitutional monarch not an autocrat. That being so, its authenticity seemed real enough. A week later, the newspaper had him ‘at the head of the Siberian revolt’.
²

On that same day, July 3, 1918, von Mirbach in Moscow advised Berlin that of all the Romanovs who might be restored to the throne the most popular was Michael, and that there was no support for ex-Tsar Nicholas whose cause he judged to be hopeless.