When the fatal hour strikes
We commemorate our dead
And in the silence the thoughts
Are crowding into our minds
We remember everything but dreams – The history, the fate, Russia
When the fatal hour strikes
We recall all our heroes
And in day light and at night
The fight, confusion, grief, happiness
And love visit us at this hour
New lights we were waiting for
Have come
Of course, we are all interlaced
With our grief and sorrow
Today the Fate and God, and we – The faithful sons of Russia – Are choosing our way
I often thought about how I coucld tell the truth about my father. After having talked with my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances I came to the conclusion that it should be written in the way he himself had told about it. He was not a historical character of a distant epoch but our contemporary born early in the XXth century and during 84 years, together with his people, endured hunger, suffering, and repressions. It is almost impossible to imagine, how he felt, realising who he was and keeping silent for so many years. He had seen and endured a lot to save himself and his family, his children. Maybe we shall never know the whole truth but we should try. “Non progredi – estra gredi’ (“Not to go forward means to go backwards’)
Father had lived a long life. He had compensated for his physical defects by his constant desire for harmonious development and knowledge. This had given him a stimulus to live. We, his children, were born when he was far from being young, we cheered up, he sensed a new meaning in life. And when his granddaughters were born, the truth finally came out and he told their mother, my wife Anzhelika Petrovna, about his tragic fate. It was in 1983, five years before his death. Only then did we understand that Father and the boy whom he spoke of as executed on the night of 16—17 July, 1918, but not killed, in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg, – was the same man, that is, he was Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov. Before, he had told us about it allegorically, piece by piece to each of us. Now we are collecting all his stories and our reminiscences of him to better understand what had happened. Part of the reminiscences of the members of our family – his children and his wife Lidiya Kuzminichna (due to her, strictly speaking, he had lived for so many years) – has been published in newspaper articles and served the basis for special investigations carried out by experts and continued until now. Unfortunately, there are many gaps in these reminiscences: he was restrained in his stories and we were children then and did not ask him any questions, we simply believed that what he had said was true. How could we not believe in our father, when we saw how he suffered and understood that his life could have been quite different! One might notice repetitions in this book, but this is not so awful. The most important thing is – to be honest (this is the basic principle) and to tell the truth as it could have been/. Of course, much could have been taken from the archives, both open and closed. But we cannot get there due to some circumstances, partly for lack of money, partly because of the fear which still lives in people. But without reading these pages, which will cause us to not allow anything like that to happen again, we will not know how the history of our country could have formed, without the revolution. If we speak about repentance, we should understand who killed Emperor Nikolas II. Why have none of the leaders of the country, specialists in forensic medicine, or laywers suggested a true version of those events in July 1918? How has the life of the participants of this tragedy in Ekaterinburg developed?
In 1988, on his death-bed, Father said: “I’ve told you the truth, and that’s what the Bolsheviks have brought Russia to.” We, his children, know that he has not deceived us. Unfortunately, he had told us little, and we still have questions. But as if his soul is still with us, we ask him questions, as if he was alive, trying to go back in time and associating with him
When one’s parents are alive, one takes them for granted, without thinking that they are not going to be with us forever. Therefore we have now to collect the crumbs of what he had said, supplementing his story with our own considerations and new facts revealed during recent times. Therefore Father’s story is sometimes interrupted by my reasoning’s. The investigation is not finished yet. Our friends, relatives, colleagues, and scientists interested in this story are helping us to carry this heavy cross that has fallen to our lot. I hope that, after all, all of us will know the truth. And this will be the real compensation
Yes, this is a fantastic and still not cleared up story. The first reaction to it of most of people is: “It can’t be so!” When children are confronted with something unknown, they cry, but grown-ups try to turn their back on it and ignore it. Apparently this is the reason, why, despite some serious examinations carried out on our initiative and voluminous, actual material now accumulated by various scientists, the official structures have not seriously investigated this story, which has a lot of blanks. There is no other explanation to the contrary. But nobody has been interested in checking up on whether it is so. And maybe the point is that such a story does not appeal to everyone… This is a form of unconsciousness, one way to forget. I am a christian and it is my opinion that only atheists have to be convinced. Of course, we, his wife and his children, simply believe in our father, but still not everything in his life is clear to us, because he had to keep out of sight in order not to expose us and the people who had helped him to danger. Therefore we are trying to find more facts to unravel the whole truth about this martyr who lived a long life, and saw and experienced so much that it would have been enough for several lives. As far as the improbability of this story is concerned, – the rescue of innocentchildren from terrible death is a miracle. God saves!
Father’s Biography
How did this all start? It began when father himself prompted us to start studying his life. He did it with his stories, when he told us what he knew about the execution of the Tsar’s family. Of particular importance for us was the fact that a boy remained alive after the execution of the Tsar’s family in Ekaterinburg, and in 1983 father gave us detailed information that the boy, i.e. Tsesarevich, was he himself. This information corresponded to the facts reported by members of the State commission to the media. Later on the family decided to be more active. Within the framework of a criminal case, prosecuted on the fact of murder, without trial or inquiry of the family of Nikolas II, it is said that the bodies of two of the Emperor’s children – Tsesarevich Alexei and his sister Maria – have not been found
We have gotten acquainted with the inquiry carried out by the investigator Nikolai Alekseevich Sokolov1. We have studied the materials of his book. We have gotten acquainted with the evidence of Vladimir Nikolaevich Derevenko, the Heir’s doctor, with the materials of interrogations of staff-captain Simonov, later a member of Kolchakov’s counter-intelligence, as well as of investigators: I.A. Sergeev, V.F. Kirsta, and A. Nametkin. We have read the report by the public prosecutor of the Kazan forensic department Miroliubov to Minister of Justice Strynkevich on the course of inquiry into the execution of Nikolas II and his family on December 12, 1918. Tomashevsky, investigator, said that many of those mentioned above were of the opinion that not everybody had been killed on the night of July 16—17, 1918. Staff Captain Simonov’s opinion deserves special attention. The fact is that before the White Czecks occupied Ekaterinburg, Simonov had served on the third army staff under the command of Berzin. General Diterichs2 mentioned in his book that he had sent the officer to the army of Kolchak. After the occupation of the town he served under Admiral Kolchak as chief of the intelligence and counter-intelligence unit. He himself reported to Admiral Kolchak that, according to the information available, the Tsar’s children had been rescued. However later on General Diterichs dropped this theme (that is, the content of the report by Staff Captain Simonov)
We