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.
23. LONG LIVE MICHAEL
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 heeclass="underline" his two sisters-in-law were Alexandra and Ella, both prisoners, and his wife, Princess Irene, was aunt to the five children in Ekaterinburg.