*The Ekaterinburg massacre, once the details became known from the investigations of commissions set up by Admiral Kolchak, led to a revolting outpouring of anti-Semitic literature by some Russian publicists and historians, which found repercussions in the West. Much of this literature blamed the Ekaterinburg massacre on Jews and interpreted it as part of a worldwide “Jewish conspiracy.” In the account of the Englishman Robert Wilton, a London Times correspondent, and even more in that of his Russian friend, General Diterikhs, the Judeophobia assumed pathological dimensions. Probably nothing that happened at the time contributed more to the spread of anti-Semitism and the popularization of the spurious Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So determined were these writers to blame the tragedy on Jews, they conveniently forgot that the death sentence was passed by the Russian Lenin.
*Sokolov, Ubiistvo, Photograph No. 129, between pp. 248 and 249. A. M. Moshkin, Avdeev’s assistant, was arrested on charges of stealing from the Imperial family.
*According to Alexandra’s diary, on July 6 Iurovskii returned to Nicholas a stolen watch.
†Sokolov found on a wall in Ipatev’s house an inscription in Hungarian: “Verhás András 1918 VII/15e—Örsegen” (Andras Verhas July 15, 1918—Guard). Houghton Archive, Harvard University, Sokolov File, Box 3.
‡in memoirs written in 1920 but published only in 1989, Iurovskii said that the coded order for the “extermination” (istreblenie) of the Romanovs was received on July 16 from Perm. Perm was the provincial capital used by Moscow as a communications center for the Urals region. According to him, the final execution order was signed by Goloshchekin at 6 p.m. the same day. Ogonëk, No. 21 (1989), 30.
*A carbon copy of the Sokolov Commission’s inquiry, in seven typewritten folders, is on deposit at Harvard’s Houghton Library: it originally belonged to Robert Wilton, the Russian correspondent of The Times of London who accompanied Sokolov. The fate of the manuscripts, of which there were three, is discussed by Ross in Gibel’, 13–17. There is some additional evidence on the Ekaterinburg events in Diterikhs, Ubiistvo tsarskoi sem’i.
*Some accounts state that the Imperial family was told they would be taken to a safe place away from Ipatev’s house, but this version is contradicted by the fact that they left their rooms without any of the items they would have been likely to take with them, including an ikon from which Alexandra never separated when traveling: Diterikhs, Ubiistvo, I, 25.
*It could have been Nicholas’s, however: on July 4, Alexandra, referring to Iurovskii’s demand that they turn over to him all jewelry, noted that her husband’s engagement ring would not come off.
*K. von Bothmer, Mit Graf Mirbach in Moskau (Tübingen, 1922), 104. A German scholar, defending the behavior of his country, cites the statement of Alexandra as recorded by the Tsare-vich’s tutor, Gilliard, that she would rather “die a violent death in Russia than be saved by the Germans”: Jagow in BM, No. 5 (1935), 371. This may be true, but, of course, the German Government had no way of knowing at the time that she felt this way.
*Bruce Lockhart claims that Karakhan had told him already in the evening of July 17 that the entire Imperial family had perished: Memoirs of a British Agent (London, 1935), 303–4. One wonders why it did not occur to anyone to ask in whose “hands” were Nicholas’s four daughters.
*The text of this document has become available in the West under rather suspicious circumstances. In the spring of 1956 there appeared at the editorial offices of the West German mass-circulation weekly 7 Tage an individual who identified himself as Hans Meier. He claimed to have been directly involved, as an Austrian POW, in the Ekaterinburg decision in 1918 to execute the Imperial family, and produced documents bearing on the matter which he said he had concealed for eighteen years while living in eastern Germany. His version of the events was full of fantastic details: its main purpose seems to have been to remove any doubt that Anastasia, stories of whose alleged survival began to circulate once again in the West, had perished along with the rest of the family. Meier’s documents seem partly authentic, partly fabricated: the most probable explanation is that he acted on behalf of the Soviet security police. His account is in 7 Tage, Nos. 27–35 (July 14-August 25, 1956). The above draft announcement, which appears authentic, was reproduced in 7 Tage on August 25, 1956. On Meier’s “evidence,” see P. Paganutstsi in Vremia i my, No. 92 (1986), 220–21. The author states that a German court which inspected Meier’s documents in connection with a suit brought by the so-called Anastasia declared them a forgery.
