*On him see, Granat, XLI, Pt. 1, 26–29. Anti-Semitic monarchists, determined to blame the murder of the Imperial family on Jews, have decided that Beloborodov’s real name was “Weissbart,” for which there exists no evidence whatever.
†Bykov first published under the title “Poslednie dni poslednego tsaria” in N. I. Nikolaev, ed., Rabochaia revoliutsiia na Urale (Ekaterinburg, 1921), 3–26; this text was reprinted in ARR, XVII (1926), 302–16. He was subsequently given access to some unpublished materials, on the basis of which he drew up the official story: Poslednie dni Romanovykh (Sverdlovsk, 1926). The latter book has been translated into English, German, and French. For all its obvious tendentiousness it has value because it makes reference to documents locked up in Communist archives. Bykov was chairman of the Ekaterinburg Soviet after the October coup.
*Report of the Chekist F. Drugov, who says he heard it at the time (fall 1918) from a fellow Chekist, Tarasov-Rodionov: IR, No. 10/303 (February 28, 1931), 10. Drugov’s account, however, loses some of its credibility because he reports having met and talked to Tarasov-Rodionov while traveling on a nonexistent railroad from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg.
†The diaries of the ex-Empress, written in her idiosyncratic English, have never been published in entirety. The American journalist Isaac Don Levine brought out a photographic copy and published extensive excerpts in the Chicago Daily News, June 22–26 and 28, 1920, and in Eyewitness to History (New York, 1963).
*Krasnaia niva, No. 27 (1928), 17. Avdeev in KN, No. 5 (1928), 190, confirms that Iakovlev carried a mandate from Lenin. According to I. Koganitskii (PR, No. 4, 1922, 13) Iakovlev had orders to bring Nicholas to Moscow, which suspicious local Bolsheviks authenticated by communicating with the capital.
†For purposes of security, the communications between Iakovlev and the Kremlin referred to the ex-Tsar and his family as “merchandise.” The official in Moscow told Iakovlev to “bring only the main part of the baggage”: Iakovlev in Ural, No. 7 (1988), 160.
*In October 1918, Iakovlev defected to the Whites and gave an interview to the newspaper Ural’skaia zhizn’; it is reprinted in the monarchist journal RL, No. 1 (1921), 150–53.
*Nicholas’s diaries for 1918 are in KA, No. 1/26 (1928), 110-37.
*According to a recent account by a historian with access to the archives, Iakovlev talked with Sverdlov, who then communicated with Ekaterinburg, requesting “guarantees,” presumably of the safety of the Imperial family. Ekaterinburg is said to have given these guarantees on condition that it be allowed to take charge of the prisoners: Ioffe in Sovetskaia Rossiia, No. 161/9,412 (July 12, 1987), 4.
*A. P. Nenarokov, Vostochnyi front, 1918 (Moscow, 1969), 54, 72, 101. After defecting to the Whites later that year, Iakovlev was arrested by Czech counterintelligence. He fled to China, returned to the Soviet Union, and was arrested. After spending some time in a concentration camp at the Solovetskii Monastery, he was freed, and appointed commandant of an NKVD camp. Sometime later he was rearrested and executed. I owe this information to the Soviet writer, Mr. Vladimir Kashits.
*Bykov, Poslednie dni, 121. Miasnikov later became one of the leaders of the Workers’ Opposition, for which he was expelled from the party in 1921 and arrested in 1923. In 1924 or 1925 he turned up in Paris, where he peddled a manuscript describing Michael’s murder. He is said to have published it in Moscow in 1924 (Za svobodu!, April 1925).
†E.g., NVCh, No. 91 (June 17, 1918), 1. A month later the Press Bureau of the Sovnarkom issued a communiqué that Michael had fled to Omsk and was probably in London: NV, No. 124/148 (July 23, 1918), 3.
‡P. B.[ulygin] in Segodnia (Riga), No. 174 (July 1, 1928), 2–3. Only on June 28 did the Soviet authorities confirm that Nicholas and his family were safe, having allegedly received a wire from Ekaterinburg from the commander in chief of the Northern Urals front, that he had inspected the Ipatev house on June 21 and found its residents alive: NV, No. 104/128 (June 29, 1918), 3. Cf. M. K. Diterikhs, Ubiistvo tsarskoi sem’i i chlenov doma Romanovykh na Urale, I (Vladivostok, 1922), 46–48. The delay of one week in reporting this information is inexplicable except in the context of deliberate dissimulation.
