*“The friends sleep no longer and hope that the hour so long awaited has arrived. The revolt of the Czechoslovaks menaces the Bolsheviks ever more seriously. Samara, Cheliabinsk and all of eastern and western Siberia are under the control of the national provisional government. The army of the Slavic friends is eighty kilometers from Ekaterinburg, the soldiers of the Red Army are not resisting effectively. Be attentive to all outside movement, wait and be of good hope. But at the same time, I implore you, be prudent because the Bolsheviks, prior to being defeated, represent for you a real and serious danger. Be ready at all hours, day and night. Make a sketch of your two rooms, the places, the furniture, the beds. Write clearly the hour when all of you go to bed. One of you ought not to sleep between 2 and 3 every night from now on. Answer in a few words, but give, I beg you, all the useful information for your friends outside. Give your reply to the same soldier who transmits to you this note in writing but say not one word.
One who is prepared to die for you
An officer of the Russian army.”
*“from the corner up to the balcony. 5 windows face the street, 2 the square. All the windows are closed, sealed and painted white. The little one is still sick and in bed, and cannot walk at all—every concussion causes him pain. A week ago, because of the anarchists, thought was given to having us moved to Moscow at night. One must risk nothing without being absolutely sure of the result. We are almost all the time under careful observation.”
The four letters smuggled to the Imperial family in late June and early July 1918, with their replies, were first published in Russian in the Moscow daily Vechernye Izvestiia, No. 208 (April 2, 1919), 1–2, and No. 209 (April 3, 1919), 1–2. In November 1919, the Communist historian Michael Pokrovskii provided photographic copies of the originals to Isaac Don Levine, who published them in English translation in the Chicago Daily News, December 18, 1919, and again in his autobiography, Eyewitness to History (New York, 1973), 138–41. Levine adopted the dating and sequence suggested to him by Soviet archivists, which, as can be established from internal evidence, cannot be correct. Letter #2 in his version should be Letter #3, and vice versa; Letter #4, which he dates June 26, had to have been written after July 4. Mrs. Levine kindly allowed me to make copies of her late husband’s materials, and the correspondence appears here in the original French for the first time.
*It has been recently revealed that this and the subsequent letters from alleged monarchist rescuers were drafted by one P. Voikov, a member of the Ural Ispolkom and a graduate of Geneva University, and copied by another Bolshevik with neater handwriting: E. Radzinskii in Ogonëk, No. 2 (1990), 27.
*“We do not want to and cannot FLEE. We can only be abducted by force, as it was force that carried us from Tobolsk. Thus, do not count on any active assistance from us. The commandant has many assistants, they are frequently changed and have become anxious. They attentively guard our prison as well as our lives, and are good to us. We do not want them to suffer because of us, nor you for us. Above all, for God’s sake, avoid spilling blood. Obtain information about them yourselves. It is utterly impossible to descend from the window without a ladder. Even after the descent there still exists great danger because of the open window from the room of the commandants and the machine gun on the lower floor which one enters from the inside court. [Crossed out: “Therefore give up the idea of abducting us.”] If you are watching over us, you can always come to save us in case of imminent and real danger. We are completely ignorant of what goes on outside, receiving neither newspapers nor letters. After permission has been given to open the window, the surveillance has intensified and it is prohibited even to put one’s head out of the window, at the risk of getting a bullet in the face.”
