The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (79 page)

89 Vyrubova
, Memories
, p. 338.

90 Ibid.

91
Dnevniki
I, p. 309.

92 Markov,
Pokinutaya Tsarskaya Semya
,
pp. 93, 95–7; see also Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 170;
Dnevniki
I, pp. 309–10.

93 Galushkin,
Sobstvennyi ego . . . konvoy
, p. 276.

94 Ibid.

431

693GG_TXT.indd 431

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NOTES

95 Ibid.

96 Penny Wilson, ‘The Memoirs of Princess Helena of Serbia’,

Atlantis Magazine
1. no. 3, 1999, p. 84.

97
NZ
182, p. 215.

98 Ktorova,
Minuvshee
, p. 96. Lili’s husband Charles, a lieutenant in the Guards Equipage, was on a military mission to England when

the revolution broke out.

99 Naryshkina diary, quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 333.

100 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 174. Alexandra mentions the destruction of her papers in her diary entries from 8 March, although Lili

recalled the process beginning on 7 March. See
Dnevniki
I, pp.

340, 366, 378, 382, etc.

101 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, pp. 173–4, 176. Some 1,700 letters and telegrams between Nicholas and Alexandra during the war years

therefore survived and are preserved in GARF, Moscow. See

Fuhrmann’s introduction to
WC
,
pp. 8–11.

102 Dehn,
Real Tsaristsa
, p. 178.

103 Ibid., pp. 174, 184.

104
Fall
, p. 42.

105 Benkendorf
, Last Days
, p. 8;
Fall
, p. 114.

106 One of those who appeared to desert the family at this time was

their former close friend Nikolay Sablin, who spent much of his

life in exile in the USA trying to justify why he did not go with

the family to Tobolsk. In conversation with Roman Gul in Paris

shortly before his death in 1937, Sablin insisted several times that

‘the emperor, through [Admiral] Nilov, had sent word that I had

acted correctly in not going with them’. Nevertheless, Sablin

appeared to be haunted by the fact, as Gul noticed, and was chas-

tised by many in émigré monarchist circles who told him that

‘your place was with the imperial family to the very end’. General

Count Ilya Tatishchev who voluntarily went to Tobolsk in Sablin’s

stead was murdered with the imperial family in Ekaterinburg in

1918. See Roman Gul, ‘S Tsarskoy semi na “Shtandarte”’, TS,

Amherst Center for Russian Culture. See also Radzinsky,
Last Tsar
, p. 189.

107 Naryshkina diary, quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 352.

108 Botkin,
Real Romanovs
, pp. 141, 142.

109 Ibid.

110 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 183.

111 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 270.

112 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 183.

432

693GG_TXT.indd 432

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NOTES

113 Gilliard,
Thirteen Years
, p. 215.

114 Galushkin,
Sobstvennyi ego . . . konvoy
, pp. 280, 279.

115 Ibid., p. 279.

116 Ibid., p. 280.

117 Benkendorf,
Last Days,
p. 17; Gilliard,
Thirteen Years
, p. 165.

Chapter 18
: Goodbye. Don’t Forget Me

1
Dnevniki
I, p. 367.

2 Botkina,
Vospominaniya
, p. 63;
Dnevniki
I, p. 370.

3 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 189.

4 Naryshkin-Kurakin
, Under Three Tsars
,
p. 220.

5 Long,
Russian Revolution Aspects
, p. 13.

6 Dorr,
Inside the Russian Revolution
, p. 132.

7
Dnevniki
I, p. 378;
The Times
, 22 March 1917 (NS).

8 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 1297; Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, pp.

262–3.

9 Ibid., p. 274.

10 A tantalizing story survives which suggests that thoughts of getting her children to safety had occurred to Alexandra even before then,

perhaps at the end of 1916. A letter in the archives of the Royal

Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport describes how an English

businessman, Frank Best, who had a large timber company in the

Baltic at Riga and Libau and who exported wood via Archangel

during the First World War, was called to a secret meeting at the

British Embassy some time late in 1916. Here he was met by the

tsaritsa and others who discussed the possibility of his making his

sawmill available to house the Romanov children in secret until

they could be collected by a ship of the Royal Navy and taken to

England. Best willingly agreed and as a symbol of her gratitude

the tsaritsa gave him an icon of St Nicholas, the patron saint of

children. Sadly no written evidence has been found to support this

story other than a letter written retrospectively in 1978 describing

the plan in brief. The icon, however, does survive; it was donated

by Best’s widow to the chapel of HMS
Dolphin
in 1962. See letter of Rev. G. V. Vaughan-James, 13 March 1978, Royal Navy

Submarine Museum, A 1917/16/002.

11 Botkin,
Real Romanovs
, p. 140.

12 Buchanan,
Dissolution of an Empire
, p. 195.

13 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 276.

433

693GG_TXT.indd 433

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NOTES

14 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 211.

15
LP
, p. 567.

16 See Pipes,
Russian Revolution
, p. 332.

17 Quoted in Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams,
From Liberty to Brest-Litovsk
(London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 60.

18
Dnevniki
I, pp. 384–5.

19 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 198. Many years of debate and recrimination followed with regard to the failure to evacuate the family in

time, with accusations variously made – against Kerensky and his

government, the British ambassador Buchanan, the prime minister

Lloyd George and George V himself. Buchanan’s daughter Meriel

later concluded that Lloyd George had advised against it because

of fear of losing British public support for Russia as a wartime ally.

But historian Bernard Pares, a great authority on Russia at the

time, thought that the Romanov asylum ‘could have made no

possible difference to the Russian Army, already then in the

process of disintegration’ and that Kerensky had done ‘everything

he could to save the Imperial Family’. Appraising the situation

with hindsight, a hundred years on, and taking into account the

extremely volatile situation in revolutionary Petrograd in the

spring of 1917, it seems clear that the logistical problems of

getting the family out of such a huge country, by the only viable

means – rail – to Murmansk or any other exit point by sea from

Russia were well nigh impossible. In the end the failure to do so

was the result of circumstance rather than an absence of will.

Later, before the renewed upheavals of the July days, it became

possible once more to evacuate the family, and the subject would

once more be discussed. For a fuller discussion of the Romanov

asylum issue see Rappaport,
Ekaterinburg: Last Days of the

Romanovs
, ch. 11.

20 Long,
Russian Revolution Aspects
, pp. 5, 7.

21 Naryshkin-Kurakin,
Under Three Tsars
,
p. 222.

22 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, p. 211.

23 Kleinmikhel,
Shipwrecked World
, p. 245.

24 Ibid., p. 246; Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 183; Buxhoeveden,
Life and
Tragedy
, p. 284.

25 Long,
Russian Revolution Aspects
, p. 14.

26 Naryshkina diary, quoted in
Dnevniki
I, pp. 434, 436, 438, 439.

27 Marie Pavlovna,
Things I Remember
, p. 305.

28 Long,
Russian Revolution Aspects
, p. 13.

29
Dnevniki
I, p. 383.

434

693GG_TXT.indd 434

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NOTES

30 Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 262.

31 See
Dnevniki I
, pp. 398, 399; Naryshkin,
Under Three Tsars
, p. 221.

32
Dnevniki
I, pp. 400–1.

33 Vyrubova,
Memories
, p. 221; Anon. [Stopford],
Russian Diary
, p.

144. Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, pp. 266–7.

34
Dnevniki
I, p. 405.

35 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 211; Benkendorf,
Last Days
, p. 29.

36 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, pp. 213–14; Vyrubova,
Memories
, p. 225.

37 Lili was later given permission to travel south and left Russia with Titi via Odessa. She managed to get her letters and papers to

England, where she was reunited with her husband. They had two

more daughters and lived in England for seven years. Widowed in

1932, she inherited an estate in Poland but in 1939 was forced to

flee again. In 1947 she emigrated to Venezuela with Titi, and

eventually joined her daughter Maria. She died in Rome in 1963.

Anna Vyrubova was transferred to the notorious Trubetskoy

Bastion of the Peter and Paul fortress where she was interrogated

and not released till July. She was then confined to house arrest at

her aunt’s house on Znamenskaya Ulitsa in Petrograd. From there

she was deported to Finland, where she died in 1964.

38
Dnevniki
I, p. 424.

39 The Zborovsky family had a strong tradition of imperial service.

Viktor’s and Katya’s father, Erast Grigorevich, had been a highly

decorated long-serving officer under Alexander III and one-time

deputy commander of the Escort. Alexander III stood as godfather

to Xenia Zborovskaya.

40 Galushkin,
Sobstvennyi ego . . . konvoy
, p. 329: ‘Two nurses from the Feodorovsky Hospital of the grand duchesses were given passes to

see the empress. One of them was the sister of Sotnik Zborovsky.

Every time she returned from the palace she brought greetings

from the empress and the grand duchesses.’

41 Ibid., p. 362.

42 Almedingen,
Empress Alexandra
, pp. 209–10; see also Buxhoeveden,
Life and Tragedy
, p. 288.

43 43 Benkendorf,
Last Days
,
pp. 65–6.

44 Benkendorf,
Last Days,
pp. 65–6.

45 Ibid., p. 65;
Dnevniki
I, pp. 430, 433.

46 Ibid., pp. 429, 434.

47 Ibid., pp. 429, 452.

48 See Belyaev’s description of the Easter services in
Fall
, pp. 140–6.

49 Bokhanov
et al.
,
Romanovs
, p. 145.

435

693GG_TXT.indd 435

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NOTES

50 Belyaev quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 447; Buxhoeveden,
Life and
Tragedy
, p. 296.

51 Ibid., p. 449.

52 Gilliard,
Thirteen Years
, p. 226
.

53
NZ
182, p. 220.

54
Dnevniki
I, p. 451.

55 Kobylinsky quoted in ibid., p. 473.

56
NZ
182, p. 218;
Dnevniki
I, p. 472.

57
NZ
182, p. 218.

58 Ibid.

59 Anon. [Stopford],
Russian Diary
, p. 145.

60
Dnevniki
I, p. 460.

61 Ibid., p. 465.

62
NZ
182, p. 222.

63
SA
,
p. 584
.

64
NZ
182, p. 224.

65 Letter to Katya, 12 April 1917, EEZ.

66 M. K. Diterikhs, ‘V svoem krugu’, in Bonetskaya,
Tsarskie deti
, p.

366; Melnik-Botkina,
Vospominaniya
, pp. 57–8. See also letter in
Dnevniki
I, p. 492.

67
Dnevniki
I, p. 478.

68 Ibid., p. 484.

69
Fall
, p. 148; original Russian in
Dnevniki
I, p. 486.

70 Letter to Katya, 30 April 1917, EEZ.

71 Naryshkin-Kurakin,
Under Three Tsars
, p. 227.

72 Maria to Katya, 8–9 June 1917, EEZ; See also Anastasia to Katya,

29 June 1917, EEZ.

73
Dnevniki
I, p. 503.

74 Ibid., p. 548.

75 Ibid., p. 518. See also Anastasia to Katya, letter no. 4, 30 May, EEZ.

76 Anastasia to Katya, unnumbered letter, 20 May 1917, EEZ.

77 Quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 598.

78 Letter to Katya, no. 11, 4 July 1917, EEZ.

79 Benkendorf,
Last Days
, p. 97.

80 Dehn,
Real Tsaritsa
, p. 233.

81
NZ
182, p. 233.

82 Letter to Alexander Syroboyarsky, 28 May 1917, Bokhanov,

Aleksandra Feodorovna
, p. 277. This letter is a typical example of the heavily religious overtones of many of Alexandra’s letters at

this time.

436

693GG_TXT.indd 436

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NOTES

83 Anastasia to Katya, letter, 11 June 1917, EEZ.

84 Gilliard,
Thirteen Years
, p. 232. See also
Dnevniki
I, pp. 576–7 and Tatiana’s letter to Grand Duchess Xenia, 20 July, in ibid., p. 599.

85
Fall
, p. 154.

86 Naryshkina diary quoted in
Dnevniki
I, p. 578.

87
Dnevniki
I, p. 587; Kerensky,
Catastrophe
, p. 271.