Devoting himself wholeheartedly to the work he had undertaken, and displaying untiring patience and diligence, M. Sokolof was able in a few months to reconstruct every circumstance of the crime with remarkable accuracy.
THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CRIME ESTABLISHED BY THE ENQUIRY
In the following pages I shall describe the circumstances of the murder of the Imperial family as they appear from the depositions of the witnesses and evidence examined by the enquiry. From the six thick manuscript volumes in which it is contained I have extracted the essential facts of this drama about which, alas! there can be no longer any doubt. The impression left by reading these documents is that of a ghastly nightmare, but I do not feel justified in dwelling on the horror.
About the middle of May, 1918, Yankel Sverdlof, President of the Central Executive Committee at Moscow, yielding to the pressure of Germany,[75] sent Commissary Yakovlef to Tobolsk to arrange for the transfer of the Imperial family. He had received orders to take them to Moscow or Petrograd. In carrying out his mission he met with resistance which he did his best to overcome, as the enquiry has established. This resistance had been organised by the divisional government of the Ural, whose headquarters were at Ekaterinburg. It was they who, unknown to Yakovlef, prepared the trap which enabled them to seize the Emperor _en route_. But it appears to have been established that this plan had been secretly approved by Moscow. It is more than probable, indeed, that Sverdlof was playing a double game, and that, while pretending to accede to the pressure of General Baron von Mirbach in Moscow, he had arranged with the Ekaterinburg commissaries not to let the Czar escape. However this may be, the installation of the Czar at Ekaterinburg was carried out on the spur of the moment. In two days the merchant Ipatief was evicted from his house and the construction of a strong wooden fencing rising to the level of the second-floor windows begun.
To this place the Czar, Czarina, Grand-Duchess Marie Nicolaïevna, Dr. Botkin, and three servants accompanying them were brought on April 30th. Also Anna Demidova, the Czarina’s maid, Tchemadourof, the Czar’s valet, and Sednief, the Grand-Duchesses’ footman.