Following is the first of three articles on the Law Library's collection of documents and photographs relating to the assassination of the Russian imperial family. Parts two and three will be published in future issues of the LC Information Bulletin.
The Library of Congress has long served the nation as its "library of last resort," where people can locate copies of rare or hard-to-find research materials. But it has also served as what one might call the "repository of last resort."
Valuable collections from around the globe that have faced censorship, physical degradation or extinction for political, religious or other reasons have made their way here, either intentionally or by accident. In particular, the Law Library, dedicated to the preservation and access of international legal materials, has acquired some of its finest and rarest Russian holdings because donors have deposited documents there to ensure physical safety and free accessibility. This is precisely how the Law Library acquired its unique copy of the Sokolov Commission documents, investigative case files from the first inquiry into the murder of the Romanov family in 1918, begun just weeks after their assassination in Ekaterinburg, Russia. George Tellberg, a former professor of law at the University of Saratov, deposited the documents at the Library in 1953.
The story of the execution of the czar's family in the early hours of the morning of July 17, 1918, is now known in all its bloody details. Recent genetic tests, based on skeletal remains excavated from a pit in the Ural Mountains, where the bodies were dumped, have yielded irrefutable evidence of the death of the family, along with several retainers. Only the remains of Tsarevich Alexis and one of the younger daughters (either Maria or Anastasia) have not been found. Their bodies are believed to have been incinerated. Genetic testing has also proved that Anna Anderson, who long claimed to be Anastasia, had no genetic relationship to the imperial family.
This recent investigation into the murders has been fully supported by the current Russian government, which has even floated, or at least encouraged, rumors that the imperial remains will be interred in the official resting place of the Romanov dynasty in St. Petersburg.
Ironically, the present investigation is driven by exactly the same motives as Sokolov's inquiry -- to find out what actually happened; to prove beyond a doubt that all members of the imperial family were killed (and, therefore, forestall any claims by pretenders like Anderson); and to discredit the Bolsheviks and their methods.
As we now know, the imperial family was killed because the city where they were being held by the Red Army was soon to be overrun by the anticommunists. In the midst of the chaos of civil war, the Bolshevik leaders, thousands of miles away in the Kremlin, deemed it expedient to kill the Romanovs rather than risk their capture during evacuation to a safer place.
Within days of their death, Adm. Alexander Kolchak's "white" army marched into Ekaterinburg and, by July 30, he ordered an investigation into the murders. The gross ineptness of the original investigators, Aleksei Nemetkin and Ivan Sergeev, soon led Kolchak to have all the forensic materials remanded to his personal custody. On Feb. 6, 1919, he handed the case over to Nikolai Sokolov, Investigating Magistrate for Cases of Special Importance of the Omsk Tribunal. During the criminal investigation, Sokolov examined all available witnesses connected with the imperial family during their exile. He gathered photographs, deposed servants, doctors and tutors to the children, guards, soldiers and local eyewitnesses.
The findings of the Sokolov Commission, comprising eight volumes and dozens of photographs, became important state documents for Kolchak's Siberian government and were carefully preserved through the chaos of war, the disorderly retreat to Eastern Siberia and the army's dispersal in the Far East. Sokolov himself transported a set of documents through Vladivostok to Paris, where he prepared a book about the fate of the Romanovs (published posthumously in 1925). Seven of the original eight volumes that belonged to Sokolov are now at Harvard University.
The Law Library has materials that had been in the personal possession of Kolchak's justice minister, George Tellberg. Not unlike today, when authors are rushing to print with books based on the findings of the latest investigation, the early 1920s also saw a rash of books about the then-mysterious fate of the imperial family. Tellberg was among the first into print. In 1920 he published The Last Days of the Romanovs, based on files he had borrowed from Kolchak and his officers. Tellberg held on to the materials and in 1954 donated them to the Law Library, along with a large collection of materials relating to the Siberian government and the last years of Romanov rule.
The collection includes material never published in its original form. While some eyewitness testimony appeared in a German edition of the Sokolov Commission papers in 1987 (in Russian), the evidence that did not relate directly to the assassination was omitted, such as the deposition of Sidney Gibbes, the English tutor to the imperial family from 1908 until the family's avacuation from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg in spring 1918. Gibbes lived in the royal household, and his account provides new insights into the character of the emperor and individual members of the family, including the children. The oldest, Olga, "was fair, direct, honest and open ... but could be easily irritated and her manners were a little brusque." Tatiana "was reserved, haughty, not open, but the most responsible." Maria loved their place of exile in Tobolsk, and she told Gibbes "she would happily stay there forever." Anastasia "was a real comedian, and she made everyone laugh. But she herself never laughed, just her eyes twinkled." And Alexis was clever, though not fond of reading, and had odd fancies, such as collecting old nails, saying "they may be useful."
While abroad, refugees from Russia such as Tellberg and Sokolov published their accounts of the murder of the Romanovs. In their homeland, the Soviet government refused to divulge any information about the fate of Nicholas and his family. This vacuum of official information was soon filled with numerous popular tales of the miraculous survival of one or more of the children. Several young women declared themselves to be Anastasia, and a telegraph operator in Siberia who was barely literate, certainly knew no foreign languages and was wholly ignorant of the intricacies of court etiquette (which would have been second nature to a Romanov), stubbornly insisted that he was the Tsarevich Alexis.
Today, thanks to unfettered access to all of Sokolov's materials, we have little trouble separating fact from fiction. But there is one pressing question: Who ordered the murders? Lenin's close adviser Yakov Sverdlov? Lenin himself?
There is no written evidence, because in 1918, just as today, such an order would have been given by telephone or face to face behind closed doors. Just as Tellberg understood how important it is for posterity that all documentary evidence about the Romanov deaths be preserved, so the men who ordered the execution understood that that which is not recorded cannot be preserved.
And so history must remain silent.
