16

Lenin denied it all.

During those tumultuous days, those violent days, when the outside world couldn’t tell what happened to Nikolai and Aleksandra, Lenin claimed that the ex-Tsar was safe, that the rumors of their murders were only a provocation and “lie of capitalist press.” But Lenin knew. Of course he did, for on that day, Tuesday July 16, 1918, he authorized not only the execution of Nikolai, but the entire family, including all the girls and the boy. That was what kind of man he was, a cold-blooded murderer. I spit on the bastard’s body, which to this day lies like a pickle in a glass coffin on Moscow’s Red Square. A shrine to a mass murderer, that’s what it is.

I never learned who discovered the envelope I hid in the bathroom, but it soon fell into Komendant Yurovksy’s hands, who in turn sounded the bloodthirsty alarm. And the discovery of that note from the Tsar to his would-be rescuers, his “Officers,” caused a terrible fright among the kommunisty. Expecting imminent defeat and seeing monarchist spies in every shadow and around every corner, some of the Reds fled into the forest and hills. Others slipped out of town and secretly crossed over enemy lines, where the double-crossing bastards swore allegiance to the Whites. Yet others, a core group of Reds, gathered at the American Hotel, a fine brick building down by the train station. It was there, in room number three, that these bloodthirsty Bolsheviki celebrated, for at last here it was, their excuse, and to Moscow they issued an urgent request:

… to destroy him and the family and relatives of the former Tsar… In case of refusal… we have decided to carry out this decree using our own forces.

Gospodi. Dear Lord. It was my fault that the note was found, that the plot to rescue them was exposed, and that the Tsar and his family were executed before they could be rescued. When I question myself, when I begin to doubt or even perhaps forgive myself, I take out my dossier. And I read these documents, and in each line I see the truth:

The Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government is at the telegraph apparatus:

In view of the enemy’s proximity to Yekaterinburg and the exposure by the Cheka of a serious White Guard plot with the goal of abducting the former Tsar and his family… For this reason: In light of the approach of the counterrevolutionary bands toward the Red capital of the Urals and the possibility of the crowned executioner escaping trial by the people (a plot among White Guards to try to abduct him and his family was exposed and the compromising documents have been found and will be published), the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the revolution, resolved to shoot the former Tsar, Nikolai Romanov, who is guilty of countless bloody, violent acts against the Russian people…

We ask for your sanction… The documents concerning the plot are being expedited by courier to the Sovnarkom and the TsIK. We are waiting by the apparatus for advice. We urgently request an answer; we are waiting by the apparatus.

Facts cannot lie, and in them I see that the stupidity of a young boy hastened the murder of the Imperial Family of Mother Russia and their four loyal attendants. Eleven people in total. But my guilt is even greater, for the Romanovs were more than simply people. Nikolai, Aleksandra, and their five children were the ultimate symbols, both good and bad, of all that was Russia, and their brutal murders unleashed such chaos and darkness. Yes, regicide opened the door to fratricide, matricide, and patricide of unimaginable proportion. Some twenty, thirty, forty million souls perished under the Reds, helped along in part by me, Leonka Sednyov, the kitchen boy, for if the plot to save the Tsar had succeeded, what corner might history have turned? Might Nikolai have rallied his troops in the depths of Siberia and gone on to defeat the Bolsheviki? Would that gentle, misdirected Tsar have finally found the good direction he had searched for all along, and would he then have been able to lead his people and country back to sanity? I burn with the thoughts of what needn’t have been and what might have been. And yet in a corner of my tired heart I still believe in the Russian people, that given the light, the life, and the opportunity a great future awaits them.

Meanwhile, of course, Yurovsky and the others were greatly dedicated to the destruction of the bourgeoisie and the creation of a workers’ paradise, and yet… while they were most eager to murder the family to cement their cause, there was great hesitation on their part to take any definitive action. After all, Yurovsky, unlike many of those beneath him, was a professional revolutionary, and orders had to be issued and obeyed, the chain of command had to be followed. Consequently, many urgent communications were sent to the Red tsars in Moscow.

To Moscow, Kremlin, to Sverdlov, copy to Lenin.

The following has been transmitted over the direct line from Yekaterinburg: “Let Moscow know that for military reasons the trial agreed upon… cannot be put off; we cannot wait. If your opinions differ, then immediately notify without delay.”

“Trial” was the code word for “murder,” and the confirmation thereof did not come from Moscow until midnight, which was why the family was not led down those twenty-three steps until after one in the morning on July 17. In the meantime, Yurovksy went about preparing and arranging it all, getting everything ready. He chose a room in the cellar with no exit, a barred window, and soft plaster walls that might prevent ricochets. He ordered a truck ready to transport the bodies. Just in case any guards of the outside detachment might disagree with the executions, he had their commander, Pavel Medvedev, confiscate their Nagant revolvers, some twelve in total. So confident was Yurovksy of Moscow’s approval that he even told Medvedev: “Tonight we will shoot them. Alert the detachment so they won’t be alarmed if they hear shooting.”

In my books I have since learned that earlier that afternoon Yurovsky and the murderers, all of whom were volunteers, not only agreed upon who was to shoot whom, but decided in an almost kind way that they should aim for the hearts so the victims wouldn’t suffer. My fate was also decided then. Yurovsky and his Red comrades had no way of knowing that it was I who had been the secret courier all along, they had not an inkling that it was I who had hidden the note in the WC. Had they even suspected I would surely have been killed as well. Instead, they misperceived me as an “innocent” and decided there was no need to kill me, a mere boy, simply because of my association with the royals. Hence, my fate was cast, I was “saved,” assigned instead to this long life of memory.

Some have written that it was the morning of the sixteenth that I was taken away, others the afternoon, but, no, it was that evening, just after dinner. Of course it was after dinner. I was washing the dishes in the kitchen when in came the guard, the young one with the blond beard, who was one of the few who’d survived the recent change in komendanti.

“The komendant requires you.”

I all but panicked. “Wh-what?”

“Follow me.”

Bozhe moi! My God! My first thought was the note, that I had been found out, and I all but dropped the dish in the metal tub. Too scared to say anything, I turned to cook Kharitonov, who stood stirring tomorrow’s soup on the oil stove.

He stared at me, wiped his hands on his apron. “Well, go on, boy.”