Note 9 — Chapter X · “WITHOUT TRACE”

Up to date (August, 1920), the only information that has reached the world respecting the Imperial family’s private papers, removed to Moscow after their death, is contained in three short telegrams published in The London Times of August 16, August 28, and September 28, 1918.

The first gives an extract of the Tsar’s diary for March 2/15, the day of his abdication at Pskov:—“General Ruzsky came this morning and read to me a long conversation which he had had on the telephone with Rodzianko, according to which the situation at Petrograd is such that a Cabinet of members of the Duma will be unable to do anything because against it are fighting the Socialist Parties in the shape of workmen’s committees. My abdication is necessary. Ruzsky has transmitted this conversation to General Headquarters, and Alexeiev passed it on to all the Commanders-in-Chiefs. At 12.30 came answers from all, the sense of which is that, to save Russia and keep the Army at the front quiet, I must make up my mind to this step. I have consented. From G.H.Q. they have sent a draft of a manifesto. In the evening arrived from Petrograd Guchkov and Shulgin, with whom I had a long talk, and handed them the signed manifesto as agreed (i.e., renouncing the Tsarevich’s rights as well—the Tsar’s own decision). At one o’clock in the morning left Pskov with a heavy feeling, due to all I have lived through. Am surrounded by treachery, cowardice, and deceit.”

The second reproduces a letter dated January 14, 1916, from the Empress Maria to “Niki,” complaining of Witte’s delay in summoning the Duma, bids the Tsar be strong, congratulating him on his “new spirit.” On April 5 (at Tsarskoe) the Tsar in his diary speaks of preparations to go to England, and says that news of this proposal was communicated to him by Prince Lvov and Kerensky.

The third merely enumerates the other documents seized by the Soviet:—“The diaries of the Empress and her daughters, notes by the Tsarevich, over 5,000 letters of the correspondence of the Tsar with his wife, with the Kaiser and other Sovereigns, with Razputin with divers official personages, also with his father Alexander III, between 1877 and 1894.”

Lastly, the Manchester Guardian (of July 1, 1920) published from its Moscow correspondent a summary of Alexandra’s letters to Nicholas II., copies of which (the originals having disappeared) had been secretly lent to him by a member of the Soviet Government. The extracts quoted by him do not shed any new light on her life and character.