| July 17 |  |
Editor says, what if all of the Romanovs safely made it out of Ekaterinberg? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the October 2009 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1918, on this day at 3am Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family were awoken in their bedrooms on the upper floor at Ipatiev house by the British "Ace of Spies" Sidney Reilly (pictured) and told to dress quickly and come downstairs. The Romanovs were then taken away in in a truck and secreted in an abandoned mine shaft that was nearby. Six days later, they were rescued when Ekaterinburg fell to White Forces led by Nicholas Sokolov.
Ace of SpiesBecause after the abdication, the Imperial family were held under house arrest at Tobolsk in western Siberia. Following the Bolshevik takeover, they were moved to a house owned by a merchant named Ipatiev in Ekaterinburg, further south in the Urals.
But by the late summer of 1918, the civil war was raging and White armies were drawing close to Ekaterinburg, raising the prospect of the Romanovs being rescued. The Ural Soviet had sent to Moscow suggesting that Nicholas be executed and on July 12th they received word that the central regime would leave the fate of the prisoners in their hands. But the message was intercepted by Reilly, who impersonating Yaknv Yurovsky, led a platoon of White Officers disguised as a squad of Cheka secret police.
At 4pm on July 16th, the tsar and his daughters took a stroll in the garden. At 10.30pm they retired to bed, but three hours later they were woken by Reilly and his men. And the guards at Ipatiev House were easily duped into believing that the rescue team were the executioners sent by the Ural Soviet, because they were keen to flee Ekaterinburg before the White Army arrived.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© "The murders at Ekaterinburg: July 17th 1918", History Today Magazine 58.7 (July 2008)
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Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beasts Source: Wikipedia Labels: Sidney Reilly, Romanov, Ekatinerbeg, Russian Revolution, Russia. Editor says, please note that extensive amounts of content have been repurposed from the source articles and the photograph is of course Sam Neil playing Sidney Reilly in the movie.
~ So what does this mean for the Bolsheviks? Do the White Russians win?
~ If the Whites can hold Petrograd they are 40 percent of the way there. If they could ever formulate a coherent political program on the land and national questions they are 40 percent more. Bolshies still held what passed for the industrial heartland of Russia and the main Rus population base. Czar per se doesnt accomplish much. Few loved him beyond a clique of White officers.
~ Interesting comments - thanks. I was thinking perhaps the Romanovs flee to the US (Anastacia lives to 1984 etc) or Britain (i.e. as in the alt Nicky and Georgie and Willy and where their expensive exile causes a UK constitutional crisis) but perhaps a double what-if is - on the verge of victory, the white forces lose support because they seize the Czar as a symbol figurehead, but it backfires on them?
~ I think the Tsar would have been very happy to live out his life in exile, maybe in Canada. With him as a symbolic figurehead, the White exile movement might have accomplished rather more.
~ Dont say that chap, I'm a dyed in the wool republican that moved to Canada to get away from the Royal Families of Europe, I dont want to bump into the Romanovs or the Windsors for that matter at the Burger King in Downtown Toronto at the weekend :-)
~ The Whites weren't any sort of heroes, either. One reason they failed was their practice, during the Russian civil war, of slaughtering whole villages they suspected of being pro-Bolshevik--especially Jewish villages.
Had they won the war, Russia might have been an Axis power in the 1930s and '40s.
~ If anything a living Nicky would hurt the White cause as he was more useful as a Matyr To Red Terror than he was alive. He could also split the exile community between the monarchist and the republicans unless he kept a very low profile. That being said, without a Red Russia I doubt the Axis as we knew it OTL could have formed.
~ Good idea, but I thought that Reilly hated the Romanovs.
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