The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (78 page)

dance a single dance with anyone else from here to the grave’. He

kept his promise for sixteen years, before finally marrying in 1929.

See web site accessible @: http://saltkrakan.livejournal.com/2520.

html

42 See
ASM
,
pp. 179, 181, 182, 186.

43
SA
, p. 412.

44
ASM
, p. 180.

45
WC
, p. 472.

46 See
ASM
, pp. 185–6.

47
NZ
181, p. 231.

48
ASM
, p. 186.

49
WC
, p. 482.

50 Ibid., p. 590.

51 Ibid., p. 500.

52 Letter to Rita Khitrovo from Stavka, July 1916; Hoover Tarsaidze

Papers, Box 16, Folder 5. This original transcript has some gaps.

The quotation can be found in full in Galushkin,
Sobstvennyi ego

. . .
konvoy
, pp. 241–2.

53 Dassel,
Grossfürstin Anastasia Lebt
, p. 16. Felix Dassel later became embroiled in the fraudulent claim of Anna Anderson aka Franziska

Szankowska that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia, miraculously

escaped from death at the Ipatiev House. Dassel published his

memories of the hospital at Feodorovsky Gorodok five months

before he met Anna Anderson in 1927; see King and Wilson,

Resurrection
, pp. 166–7, 303.

54 Ibid., pp. 19, 22.

55
NZ
181, p. 223.

56 Dassel,
Grossfürstin Anastasia Lebt
, pp. 20, 25.

57 Geraschinevsky, ‘Ill-Fated Children of the Czar’, p. 159.

58 Ibid., p. 171.

59 Ibid., p. 160.

426

693GG_TXT.indd 426

29/10/2013 16:17

NOTES

60 Ibid.

61
WC
, p. 556.

62 See ibid. Prior to the war Alexander Funk had worked with the St

Petersburg photographer Karl Bulla, but at the time of this photo-

graphic session appears to have moved mainly into war photog-

raphy.

63 Foster Fraser, ‘Side Shows in Armageddon’, pp. 268–9; see also

Paléologue,
Ambassador’s Memoirs
, p. 507.

64 Foster Fraser, ‘Side Shows in Armageddon’, pp. 268–9.

65
ASM
, p. 217.

66 Ibid., p. 220. Some weeks later she received a telegram from him, from Mozdoka in northern Ossetiya in the Caucasus. She saw him

briefly on 22 December 1916 (see
ASM
, p. 237), but did not

mention him again, except for noting his birthday in 1917. A

fellow officer at the annexe heard he was later made commander

of a hospital train (see
SA
, p. 220). Nothing more is known of Dmitri Shakh-Bagov, other than a possible sighting in the autumn

of 1920 when the Red Army was on the brink of victory in

Zakavkaz, when one of the Ezid resistance groups based in

Echmiadzin was commanded by an officer named Shakh-Bagov.

This may well have been Dmitri, who, like David Iedigarov, may

have been a Georgian Muslim. For photographs and a résumé of

what is known of Olga’s Mitya, see web site @: http://saltkrakan.

livejournal.com/658.html

67
WC
, p. 636.

68 Galushkin,
Sobstvennyi ego . . . konvoy
, p. 197.

69 Bokhanov
et al.
,
Romanovs
, p. 268.

70 Ibid., p. 228.

71 Ibid., p. 233.

72
WC
, p. 660.

73 Ibid., p. 681.

74
ASM
, p. 233; see also
WC
, p. 670. Staritsa Mariya died in January 1917, and was later canonized.

75
WC
, p. 670.

76 Vyrubova,
Memories
, p. 148; Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 223.

77
WC
, p. 670.

78 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 223.

79 Paléologue
, Ambassador’s Memoirs
, pp. 541, 677.

80 Ibid., p. 676.

81 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 92.

82
SA
, p. 349.

427

693GG_TXT.indd 427

29/10/2013 16:17

NOTES

83 Paléologue
, Ambassador’s Memoirs
, p. 731.

84 Ibid., p. 680.

Chapter 17
: Terrible Things Are Going on in St Petersburg

1
ASM
, p. 236. Although Anastasia later destroyed her diaries this appears to be a rare survival, perhaps in a notebook.

2 Ibid.

3
WC
, p. 684.

4 Ibid., p. 651.

5 Fuhrmann,
Rasputin
, ch. 11, p. 112.

6 Ibid., p. 140.

7 Ibid., p. 228. ‘Dark Forces’ became the code name for Rasputin used by British agents.

8 Eugene de Savitsch,
In Search of Complications: An Autobiography
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940), pp. 15 and 16.

9
ASM
, p. 236.

10 A. A. Mordvinov quoted in
LP
, p. 507.

11
WC
, p. 68; Paléologue,
Ambassador’s Memoirs
, p. 740.

12 Dorothy Seymour, MS diary, 26 December (NS) 1916; Paléologue,

Ambassador’s Memoirs
, p. 74. Dorothy Nina Seymour was the well-connected daughter of a lord and granddaughter of an admiral of

the fleet. Prior to volunteering as a VAD, she had been a woman

of the bedchamber to Queen Victoria’s daughter, Helena –

Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein – herself a great patron

of women’s wartime nursing. Dorothy left Petrograd on 24 March

(NS) 1917 and in December that year married General Sir Henry

Cholmondely Jackson. She died in 1953. Her vivid and engaging

diary from November 1914 to May 1919 is in the IWM, as are 49

letters written during the same period – though few of these are

from Petrograd because of the difficulties in sending mail from

Russia during the war and revolution.

13 It is still unclear who fired the fourth bullet into Rasputin’s skull.

Recent studies have claimed that Oswald Rayner and Stephen

Alley – agents of the British Special Intelligence Mission in

Petrograd – played a role in the murder. It has also now been

suggested that wounds on Rasputin’s corpse indicate that he was

tortured before being killed, in an attempt to ascertain whether he

had indeed been a German spy – an act in which the British

agents might well have participated. The Special Intelligence

428

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NOTES

Mission was certainly privy to the plot and its members had their

own good reasons to back any conspiracy to kill Rasputin or at

least remove him from his position of influence over the empress.

14 There is an enormous amount of literature on Rasputin and the

circumstances of his murder, much of it contradictory, some of it

contentious. The most recent books include: Fuhrman,
Rasputin

(2012); Moe,
Prelude
,
(2011), see ch. IX, ‘Death in a Cellar’; and Margarita Nelipa’s extensive study
The Murder of Grigorii Rasputin
(2010), which contains detailed police and forensic evidence. For

British involvement see Richard Cullen,
Rasputin: The Role of the
British Secret Service in his Torture and Murder
(London: Dialogue, 2010) and Andrew Cook,
To Kill Rasputin
(Stroud, Glos: History Press, 2006).

15 Dorothy Seymour, MS diary, 30 December 1916.

16 Maria diary AvSes 237.

17 Vyrubova,
Memories
, pp. 182–3; Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, pp. 122–3.

Rasputin did not rest in peace for long. Shortly after the revolu-

tion his corpse was dug up and taken into Petrograd and burnt.

Recent evidence suggests that it was cremated in the boiler room

of the Polytechnic Institute in the northern suburbs of Petrograd

and the ashes scattered by the roadside. See Nelipa,
Murder of

Rasputin
, pp. 459–60.

18 Oleg Platonov,
Rasputin i ‘deti dyavola’
(Moscow: Algoritm, 2005), p. 351.

19 Paléologue,
Ambassador’s Memoirs
, p. 735;
NZ
181, p. 208. Dorothy Seymour, MS diary, 6 January NS/24 December OS, IWM.

20 Gilliard,
Thirteen Years
, p. 183.

21 Dorr,
Inside the Russian Revolution
, p. 121.

22 22 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, pp. 137–8.

23 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p.p. 137–8.

24
NZ
182, p. 207.

25 Spiridovich,
Les Dernières années
, vol. 2, p. 453.

26 Ibid., p. 452; Buchanan,
Queen Victoria’s Relations
, p. 220.

27 This 158-page notebook kept between 1905 and 1916 survives in

the Russian State Archives, GARF 651 1 110.

28 Paléologue,
Ambassador’s Memoirs
, p. 739.

29 Botkin,
Real Romanovs
, p. 127.

30
ASM
, p. 239

31 Gilliard,
Thirteen Years
, p. 183.

32 In their later memoirs both Iza Buxhoeveden and Anna Vyrubova

said that this visit took place in the autumn of 1916, but it was

429

693GG_TXT.indd 429

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NOTES

recorded in Alexandra and Nicholas’s diaries and comments

relating to Maria’s mishap clearly date it to 8 January 1917. See

Dnevniki
I, p. 46.

33
NZ
182, p. 204.

34 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 235;
NZ
181, p. 204.

35
NZ
182, p. 205.

36 Naryshkina diary, quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 50; Vyrubova,
Memories
, p. 86. Note that the manuscript of the Naryshkina diary, an

extremely valuable eyewitness account of the imperial family’s last

months at Tsarskoe Selo, is held in the state archives in Moscow,

at GARF f. 6501.op.1.D.595.

37 Naryshkina diary, quoted in
Dnevniki
I p. 96.

38 Queen Marie of Romania diary, 12/26 January 1917. Romanian

State Archives.

39 Letter to her mother and sister, 1 December 1916, IWM.

40 17 December (4 December OS) letter to mother and sister.

41 Dorothy Seymour, MS diary, 4 February (NS) 1917, IWM.

42 Ibid.

43 See
Dnevniki
I, pp. 134, 139; Savchenko,
Russkaya devushka
, p. 43.

44 Alexander,
Once a Grand Duke
, pp. 282–3.

45
Dnevniki
I, p. 166.

46 Ibid., p. 171;
ASM
, p. 241.

47 See web site @: http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/mdiaries.

html

48
WC
, p. 691.

49 Zinaida Gippius,
Sinyaya kniga: Peterburgskiy dnevnik 1914 –1918

(Belgrade: Radenkovicha, 1929), p. 39.

50 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 190.

51
WC
, p. 692; Dorr,
Inside the Russian Revolution
, p. 130.

52 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 251.

53
WC
, pp. 694, 695.

54 Naryshkina,
Under Three Tsars
, pp. 217, 212.

55
NZ
182, p. 211; see also pp. 210–12,
Dnevniki
I, p. 193.

56
Dnevniki
I, p. 200; Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 267.

57 Zeepvat, ‘Valet’s Story’, p. 329.

58
Dnevniki
I, p.
206

59 Buchanan,
Ambassador’s Daughter
, p. 146.

60 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 155.

61 Ibid., p. 152; see also Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 254, re the night of 28 February.

62
NZ
182, p. 213.

430

693GG_TXT.indd 430

29/10/2013 16:17

NOTES

63 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 156.

64 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
,
p. 255. See also
Dnevniki
I, p. 223; Galushkin,
Sobstevennyi ego . . . konvoy
, p. 262.

65 Ibid., p. 265. For a valuable account of the Tsar’s Escort at the Alexander Palace during the early days of the revolution and the

key role of Viktor Zborovsky, see ibid., pp. 262–80.

66 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 184.

67 Ibid., pp. 151–2.

68 Ibid., pp. 157–8.

69 Ibid., p. 158.

70 Naryshkina diary quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 232.

71 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 254; Benkendorf,
Last Days
, pp.

6–7.

72 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 160;
WC
, p. 698.

73
WC
, p. 700.

74 Naryshkina diary quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 253.

75
Dnevniki
I, p. 253.

76 Ibid., pp. 254, 266.

77 Paul Grabbe,
Windows on the River Neva
(New York: Pomerica Press, 1977), p. 123.

78 Letter to Nicholas, 3 March, accessible @: http://www.alexander-

palace.org/palace/mdiaries.html

79 Ibid.; Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 164; Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 251.

80
Dnevniki
I, p. 258.

81
Fall
, p. 138.

82
Dnevniki
I, p. 259; P. Savchenko,
Gosudarynya imperatritsa
Aleksandra Feodorovna
(Belgrade: Nobel Press, 1939), p. 91.

83
WC
, p. 701.

84
Dnevniki
I, p. 290.

85 Ibid., p. 293.

86 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 262.

87 Galushkin,
Sobstvennyi ego . . . konvoy
, p. 274.

88 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 166.