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 dacha outside the city. Malkov told the assembled group that ‘it was dangerous to “keep” Michael any longer; he might escape even though he was being watched closely’. Mikov suggested killing him. ‘I was sure they were all in favour’. He dated the meeting as ‘in the middle of June…I remember it well, it was a Sunday evening.’24 If so, it was Sunday, June 9, when Michael was laid up in the Korolev Rooms with his ‘damned stomach pains’.
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.
Vasily Ivanchenko, aged 44, was head of the Perm militia and a deputy in the local Soviet; in 1906 he had been given a 15-year prison sentence for the murder of two Cossacks, and like Myasnikov he had been freed in the February revolution.
Andrei Markov, aged 36, was the Perm ‘commissar for nationalisation’ and worked as a foreman in one of the Motovilikha workshops. A thickset man, he again had spent some time in prison with Myasnikov, who regarded him as someone who could be relied upon to do whatever he was told.
The fourth member of the death squad was Ivan Kolpashchikov, a powerfully-built man with a curiously squeaky high-pitched voice, and like the others a veteran of the prison camps; when not working at the Motovilikha arsenal, he served as a Red Guard.2
On Wednesday evening, June 12, Myasnikov called the four men to a meeting in the projection room of the cinema in Motovilikha. There he set out the reasons why Michael had to be killed. If ‘His Imperial Majesty’ is not dealt with, then ‘tomorrow he may not be here, tomorrow he may be standing at the head of the massed forces of the counter-revolution.’
But there was something very important that they had to understand. Nobody was to know about it. The official story was to be that Michael had escaped, for then Lenin and the Bolshevik leaders would not have to defend themselves against ‘the bourgeois governments’ and ‘we will not compromise them’.3
The four men having vowed silence, Myasnikov then told them that in order to ensure secrecy the murder would have to take place that night; Michael would be seized from his hotel room, taken to a wood and shot. As cover for the abduction, he would be presented with a forged order, and told that he was being ‘evacuated for security reasons’ because of the threat posed by advancing ‘Whites’. On the morrow it would be announced that he had escaped, and his entourage would be arrested for complicity and shot.
The time was now 9.30 p.m. The abduction was set for midnight. The chosen execution spot was a wood near a place called Malaya Yazovaya, not far beyond Motovilikha. If all went according to plan, ‘His Imperial Majesty’ had four hours to live.
AT the beginning of June, in accordance with an order from Moscow, the clocks in Bolshevik Russia had been advanced by two hours. It was a fuel-saving device, and accordingly it did not become dark in Perm on June 12 until after eleven o‘clock. On that date, darkness lasted for six hours and 13 minutes, so that with sunset at 10.52 p.m., sunrise would be at 5.05 a.m.4 The distance between the hotel and the wood was six-and-a-half miles (10.5 km), and by horse-drawn carriage, travelling slowly over bad roads in darkness, the journey would take about an hour. There would be no difficulty in finding the wood for it was well known to Bolsheviks as a favoured meeting place in the days when they held illegal gatherings there.5 Allowing an hour or so for digging a grave, the execution squad would be back in Motovilikha long before dawn.
There was a great deal to do. Myasnikov telephoned the arsenal and arranged horses for the two phaetons to be used in the abduction. At ten o’ clock they were ready and he and the four-man death squad set off for Perm’s Cheka offices.6
On arrival Myasnikov drafted ‘the order’ intended to fool Michael into thinking it was official. The wording was that In view of the approach of the front, Comrade Nikolai Zhuzhgov is hereby instructed to evacuate Citizen Michael Romanov to Central Russia. The order was to be triple-signed, ostensibly by the Cheka chairman Malkov, the Cheka secretary, and by Myasnikov as head of the counter-revolutionary department. Myasnikov signed for himself; Markov and Kolpashchikov forged the two other signatories.7
During Markov’s typing of the document Myasnikov later claimed that they were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Malkov and of Sorokin, chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee. He would say that they saw what was being written, guessed its purpose and appeared ‘confused and frightened’; he had to swear them to silence.8 That was untrue, though it is its own evidence that even seventeen years later, in 1935, when Myasnikov set down his account of events in the hope of gaining favour in Stalin’s Russia,9 he still felt bound to cover up the role of some of those involved. Malkov, Sorokin, and the other local Bolshevik leaders were wholly complicit in the decision ‘to shoot Michael Romanov immediately in complete secrecy’. Myasnikov was their agent.
What is therefore more probable is that Malkov feigned surprise when he walked into the Cheka offices, for officially he did not know anything about the plot, given that his role was to pretend afterwards that Michael had escaped. In the meantime he stayed where he was, and would no nothing more until he received a telephone call from Myasnikov to confirm that Michael had been successfully abducted and taken to his death.
At 11.45 p.m. Myasnikov and his men were ready to leave. Marching out of the Cheka offices, with Zhuzhgov folding the typewritten order and thrusting it into his pocket, fifteen minutes later their two phaetons clattered into Siberia Street and stopped outside the Korolev Rooms. While Ivanchenko and Kolpashchikov turned the carriages round so that they would be facing in the right direction for the abduction, Zhuzhgov went to the hotel entrance and banged hard on the door. A Red Guard opened it, then stood back as Zhuzhgov flourished his order and pushed his way inside.10