Charles Richard Crane, the Chicago millionaire
who helped Count Y.N. Rostovtsev organize
an international effort to rescue Tsar Nicholas
and the Romanov family.
Note: The author of the following diary, the second half of Rescuing the Czar (1920) has been identified by Shay McNeal in her 2001 book The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar, p. 238, as Count Yakov Nikolaevich Rostovtsev (1865 - 1931), personal financial secretary to the Tsarina Alexandra and a friend of Alexandra's lady in waiting, the Baroness Sophie Buxhoevden.
Count Rostovtsev or Rostovtsov was a very close friend of Charles Richard Crane, one of the heads of America's 1917 Special Diplomatic Commission to Russia, known as the Root Commission because it was led by Elihu Root, a former U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of War.
This team of Americans, with the help of British Amabassador George Buchanan, certainly did work behind the scenes to rescue Tsar Nicholas II and his family, with the full backing of President Wilson's State Department and British Intelligence, then known as MI1c.
Because King George V's advisors felt that it would be unwise to offer asylum to the Romanovs in full view of the public press, the mission was conducted in secret and the Americans were allowed to take the lead, with full backing from the British team.
The previous diary documented the efforts of American agent Charles J. Fox and William Rutledge McGarry.
This diary illustrates the role played by Russian team members, Rostovtsev, who uses the pseudonym "Count Alexei Syvorotka" throughout, and Baroness Buxhoevden, who is referred to as "Baroness B." or, later, "Lucie de Clive."
According to an online Timeline created by the authors of The Fate of the Romanovs, on about 10 June 1918 a "Group of White officers led by Captain Rostovtsov and a certain Mamkin are captured while trying to organize a rescue attempt."
For the full story, see the diary below.
Photographs and Wikipedia links have been provided for the benefit of readers who are not familiar with the people and places named.
The second half of Rescuing the Czar begins with the following introduction by James P. Smythe (pseudonym for William Rutledge McGarry and translator George Romanovsky) :
INTRODUCTION
The daring reference by Fox, in the foregoing, to personages and events, to locations and the life incident thereto, that may easily be confuted are they false in any of their details, leads to but one conclusion.
Yet there are other incidents that reinforce that conclusion, that are only casually touched upon by Fox. The references to "the Performer at the Metropole" who "is a Baroness sure enough" and to the person named as "Syvorotka," in whom the Baroness is interested, display an unconscious connection between the mysterious underground diplomats and the Secret Agents who were acting independently in the rescue, and supplementing the activities of Fox, will be found to be fully authenticated in the vivid incidents recorded by the diarist of Part Two.
This diarist was doubtless a Russian gentleman of the official class, of elevated standing with the former Government, and of pronounced aristocratic sentiments. His previous official connections seem to have been with the High Administration, the Ministry of Finance, or with the Council of Ministers.
Like many others of his class in the old regime, when the Revolution broke, he was forced to degrade himself and mingle with the evil elements that were bent on loot and rapine. By May, 1918, he appears to have been transformed into a perfect type of "Red" that deceived and terrorized the Russian population and gave credence to the Bolshevik assertion that "former officialdom is now acting with the proletariat." How well the diarist deceives the Bolsheviki and sustains this claim of Trotzky is fully revealed in the dramatic incidents recorded: nowhere in literature is found a better illustration of social metempsychosis -- of the abasement of moral and intellectual refinement to the elemental and unconscious vulgarity and irresponsibility of predatory Communism and mob indifference to shame! It is the devolution of Moral Responsibility into organized iniquity and characterizes primordial passion released from sentiment and law -- and it was the necessary camouflage of the diarist in his struggle for life and in his efforts to promote the Czar's escape.
In translating Part Two, or the memoranda of this Imperial rescuer, from Russian into English, or the frequent French, to characterize the event recorded, there were found to be many situations, phrases and expressions that may shock the sensitive reader; in the conceptions of the diarist, however, in his cynicism and degradation he photographs Red Russia and reveals the characteristics necessary to visualize the horror that accompanied the event. A truthful picture of this unique segment of human history can be preserved only in a word-for-word translation of this document. Therefore, with the exception of a few letters involving the name of A.F. Kerensky, nothing has been withheld from the inspection of the reader to view the conduct of nobility subjected to privations, temptation and the fascinating power of sin.
TRANSLATOR.
Boris Stuermer (1848 - 1917)
Russian Minister of the Interior
... and, post factum, everybody claims that "he (or more often she)
predicted it long ago, but they would not listen." It is a lie; we
all knew that the war has been conducted abominably, that Rasputin and
Stuermer were plotting, that the administration was greatly inclined to
graft, -- all gossip of the town. But no one whom I had seen since the
execution of the monk was aware of the real fact: the revolution was
in the air.
Mikhail Rodzianko (1859 - 1924)
Chairman of the Fourth State Duma (Congress)
Rodzianko, to whom I spoke at the Club only a fortnight
before the abdication, said that everything would turn out all right.
In fact, the Court, and people around it -- were much better posted;
perhaps they felt something growing instinctively, as they were
too silly to crystallize their fears in some concrete conception.
Maroossia [wife of Count Rostovtsev, friend of Anna Vyrubova and Baroness
Buxhoevden, the Tsarina's closest friends]
was in Tsarskoye Selo not long before the old Admiral's
death; they said that the danger was expected from the "Town and
Country Union." But all these whispers and chatterings were always
of the category of a "so-and-so, whose brother's friend knew a man
who...."
Tsarskoe Selo "Tsar's Village"
With all my running around about the town I must confess I did
not notice any movement; I always thought that the reason of the
unrest -- was the shortage of food, and a little provocation, to put
Stuermer in a disagreeable position.
The realization of the serious danger approaching all of us
came to me only when the police fired on the mob
on the Nevsky and the first real clash took place. I happened
to cross the Liteinyi near Basseinaya Street, when I heard for the
first time in my life the whistling of bullets and the peculiar
drumming of the machine guns. I felt weak in the knees and around the
waist and had to stand in a porte-cochere for a while. It was only for
a few moments, and I felt ashamed of this disgusting feeling of fear.
July 4, 1917. Street demonstration on Nevskii Prospect
just after troops of the Provisional Government have
opened fire with machine guns.
A crowd of cooks, or maids, passed near me shouting and screaming for
help; they had disgustingly lost their self-control. I reached home in
a hurry and found Maroossia pale and frightened. I had to tell her
not to show her nose in the streets. Then Mikhalovsky called me up and
asked how did I like the revolution. He did not like it: his cook had
been shot in the knee; a very moderate cook, in fact.
Bolsheviks military committee, 1917
Committees, everywhere committees! Everywhere suspicions! No
more cheerful faces! Permanent meetings of the new elements! Much
conversation! Greetings! Wishes of prosperous free life! Hopes of the
Allies that we will continue the war!
All this still characterizes our poor country.
Today -- for the first time in my life (it is only the beginning!) I
saw a real communist alive. He was a man of rather short size and dark
complexion, if such could be detected under his greasy cheeks. He wore
a small beard twisted at the end in a tin hook. His ears -- transparent
and pale -- were unproportionately big. I stopped near the Elisseiev store
to buy score cards for this evening's bridge, when a little
group of men -- civilians and soldiers -- gathered near the communist.
The usual crowd of nowadays loafers -- shabby looking, discussing
something, casting around looks full of hostility, hatred and
superiority.
A boy brought a chair from a cigar counter, and the
communist stepped on it, and started his talk. "Tovarishshi," he
said,
"the time has come."... They all applauded, though nobody knew
what was going to be next, and the speaker could even have been a
reactionary.
"This is he," shouted a sailor to me; a big chap with hair falling
off
of his cap.
"Who is he?" I questioned.
"You, burjooi," a soldier said to me, "no wonder you do not know
him.
This is Comrade Trotzky. He comes from America. You had better move
on or I'll tell who you are," -- he continued staring at me very
resolutely, and spat on the sidewalk right near my foot.
I moved on. What people!
I crossed Nevsky and stood on the other side. From there I could not
hear Comrade Trotzky, but studied his movements and gesticulation, his
manner of scratching his nose, of quickly turning his head in a derby,
and the nervous shrugging of his shoulders. The mob applauded him
after every phrase, making his speech a series of separate sentences
and thus giving him the advantage of thinking of most radical ideas,
while awaiting for the listeners to finish the applause.
I have finally decided to give in my resignation. What is the use? No
work is being done. We only talk. The whole administration, the whole
administrative machinery, stands still, evidently retrograding every
day.
Many understand it. Rodzianko is going away south; a man whom they
think too old and too much of a reactionary. He is quite depressed,
I presume, but likes to look perfectly satisfied. When I asked him
whether the war looked to him as though it were to be continued, he
gazed at me, and not after hesitation sighed, and said:
"Yes, if the army will stand the effects of order number one."
And then, fearing the next question coming, he assumed the air of a
busy man and shook hands --"as he had to go and see his relatives."
Nearing the house I saw Kerensky in the Emperor's car, proud, and
smiling to left and right. His Excellency, the Minister of Justice!
Alexander Kerensky, Chairman of
the Provisional Government,
July - November 1917.
A colossal statue of Tsar Alexander III being dismantled (1918)
Everybody is sure and proud that he is building up the new Russia.
Lawyers and doctors, engineers and priests, all run with busy
faces -- they think a statesman of today must run -- everybody gives
orders, counter-orders, nobody carries them out, nobody listens. There
are about 200,000 Napoleons in Petrograd today; as they multiply by
section, this number will be enormous before long. The situation,
however, does not improve....
In the office there was quite a discussion of the probabilities, and
I was listening to the younger people. Criticism and "my own opinion"
are the main sicknesses. Perhaps the private initiative used to be so
hardly oppressed, that it comes out at present in excess.
Why should lawyers be convinced, that their profession gives them
the right, primo genio, to be statesmen? I should suggest an
archeologist, or a man in charge of a lighthouse.
Baroness Sophia Karlovna Buxhoeveden (1883 - 1956)
Lady in waiting to Empress Alexandra Romanov and
author of three memoirs about the Imperial family.
We all went to the "Farce," Maroossia and F., myself and Misha.
Afterwards we had supper. At the next table to us were the M's.,
Alexander Ivanitsky and the Baroness B.
Since her return she certainly looks much better. At first I did not see her,
then before all she reprimanded me in her usual kind manner. She had grown a little
thinner and has more jewelry I should say, and is as fascinating as before.
When she speaks one can see that she thinks of far distant things.
"We all are busy these days," she said, when I asked her whether she
came here from England just for curiosity to see all of us under the
Provisional Government. "You did not change at all."
Misha, who did not know B. before, did not like her very much -- in fact, they all
think she is suspicious. Aren't these youngsters peculiar? Especially
Misha who is so grouchy lately -- all seems dangerous to him.
I never think that a woman can be anything but pretty or hideous. There is no
middle, and no suspicion about them. If a woman is, what they perhaps
would call "suspicious" -- then there is a man's influence behind
her -- so find the man (and it is easy) and she is as plain as a card
on the table.
Baroness B. is pretty. And if she likes to talk like a Pythia -- that's her way
of making people interested in her.
Maroossia complained of a headache, so we left early. Baroness is in
the Hotel d'Europe -- she is so sorry that "her Astoria" became such a
hole. Well -- not only her Astoria.
The Hotel d'Europe in St. Petersburg,
located at the intersection of Nevskii Prospekt
and Mikhailovskaya Street.
Prince Georgy Lvov (1861 - 1925)
Russian Minister of Interior
March 1917 to July 1917
It certainly would be a wonder to expect anything but confusion from
the men who recently became the leaders of 180 millions. The leaders
are sure they can make wonders.
Prince Lvov! This old squeaking carriage, as Polenov says, is a man
from whom I would not expect anything. It is enough to look at his
beard, with remnants of yesterday's dinner on it, at his small blue
foxy eyes always reddish and always dropping tears.
Pavel Nikolaevich Milyukov (1859 - 1943)
Founder and leader of the Constitutional
Democratic Party, known as the Kadets
Miliukov! Minister of Foreign Affairs! All his experience consists of a continuous
chain of political breaks and a series of moderately paid, superficial
articles on Balkan questions in a provincial newspaper.
And, Monsieur Kerensky -- la fine fleur -- the Minister of Justice, a little man with
a single kidney and a double ambition. Insects!
These people would not be able to administer a small country
community, and here they are confronted with three immense
propositions: the Great War, the building up of a new state, and the
fighting of an organized propaganda directed against the war, and
against order.
It was enough for the ladies (and for Maroossia too) to see all of
these people in power, in order to find interesting points, not only
in their political activities, that would not be so bad -- but in their
private lives too. They all already know who these people are,
what they eat, when and where they were born, what their wives and
mistresses look like, etc., etc., up to the most intimate deeds and
traits of their characters. The foreign ladies also take a very keen
interest in those little tea-chats. All prefer to listen to them much
rather than to the events at the front.
Vadbolsky wrote me a letter sent through the "Help the Soldiers"
society. Of course he could not say much. They all realize that
discipline is going down with tremendous speed, at least at the
Northern front.
The soldiers listen more to what the Council of Deputies
say than to anything else. This treble power -- the Council,
the Government and the Army Authorities -- must be united, but there is
no one to realize it; and if there were, there would be no possibility
of co-ordinating the different currents.
Alexander Rakhmanov Ivanitsky (1881 - 1947)
of Kharkov, famous architect, civil engineer
and designer of buildings in St. Petersburg
(Tauride Palace, Mariinsky Palace, State Bank, etc.)
very familiar with locations in Irkutsk and Siberia.
Fyodor (Theodore) I. Ivanitsky (1861 - 1929),
a member of the People's Will Party
(anarchists devoted to assassinating Tsars)
arrested for plotting with Vera Figner.
Later a member of the Union of Liberation
and the first State Duma (Congress)
of 1906. After 1914 devoted to constitutional
monarchy -- a goal shared by British and Americans.
Evening with the Ivanitskys.
After dinner we all went into the library and started as usual to
speak of our very bad affairs, the high cost of living, even here, in
a private home, reserved, not to be accused of reactionary tastes. The
ladies looked at every one who would start to talk, as if he would be
the man to solve all of our complicated problems and mishaps.
Baroness B., whom I had seen very much lately, talked to me for a
while in a corner, to the ridiculous anger of Maroossia who went to
bed tonight without kissing me.
She (the Baroness) said that Sophie had already reached London
after the stay in Copenhagen and Paris.
"Her mission," she said -- as usual coquettishly and childishly
looking
around with a fear of being overheard -- "was a failure." In
Copenhagen
"they would not even listen" to Sophie, and she was told that the
solution and the "demarches" must be made, if made, from London, as
there people have every means to arrange with Berlin.
I asked the Baroness to keep all of this news to herself, and not to drag me, or
what would be worse, Maroossia, into any conspiracy. "Be just as you
are and don't try to become more serious, it may spoil you."
Heaven knows what the Baroness has become since her peculiar conduct with the
Vassilchikov and her permanent whisperings to Madame Vyrubov and
the rest of the gang. But still, there was already a movement about
Tsarskoe Selo. If I were not so particular about avoiding silly conversations,
I would have asked her what she meant by communicating
Sophie's failure to me.
Anna Vyrubova with Grand Duchess Olga (1916)
[Note: British spy Sidney Reilly's "right-hand man" Karol Yaroshinsky
worked with Boris Soloviev (the husband of Maria Rasputin) and with
Anna Vyrubova, the Tsarina Alexandra's lady-in-waiting, to form a group
called the Brotherhood of St. John of Tobolsk, a secret organization
that made the first efforts to rescue the Imperial family in late 1917.
During this period, Tsar Nicholas II and his family were being held
at Tobolsk under the casual and easy-going supervision of
Col. Eugene Kobylinsky. This was the ideal time to save them.
See Shay McNeal, The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar, Chapter 6 pp. 75ff.]
Finally, I am glad, I did not ask her questions. What is the use of
the Emperor's release to me? A man who did not know how to pick his
advisors, who did not know how to arrange his home affairs, his
Alice von Hessen Darmstadt, his monks and his generals, does not deserve to
be too much regretted, and certainly does not deserve too particular
interest. Baroness B's. actions are strange. Is she paid? By whom?
Cash? Promises?...
(a page missing)
... was stopped by me and slightly pursed her red lips, we joined
the rest, where a British Major (I never can think of his name) was
telling of his experiences in the research work for German propaganda
in Petrograd. So sorry he had to speak French with his typical
Anglo-Saxon struggles with "D" and "T," that makes French
so perfectly
ununderstandable in an English mouth. It is horrid that people like
the Ivanitskys don't know English well enough, and now, when we all
have to be among our British allies, we make ourselves, and the allies
as well, simply ridiculous!
So the Major explained that their man was at several meetings of a
body, which he called "Le conseil secret du parti bolchevique" (that
must have been something very bad indeed), where a man by name Lenine
was present, also communists Bronstein, Nakhamkes, Kohan, Schwarz
and others, I forget. They all are conspiring.
"Be no war with our brethren," "Be peace on earth," "Closer together
peasants
and soldiers, workingmen and poor," "To hell with the
intelligentzia,"
"Long live the International," etc., etc., was all we saw on the
banners lately.
The queerest thing is that the British agent at the meeting saw amongst the anarchists
several men from the police, and a fellow by name of Petrov, the same one that had the accident on the Moscow railway and was asked to leave the Foreign Office a couple of
years ago.
Now Petrov is with the communists.
Again the agent reported the presence of the 1905 black hundreds.
They all are there, and instead the "Boje Tsaria Khrani," they shout the International.
They all understand their people (the agent said) and they all are with
the Lenine and others, to return to the sweet past by destroying the
bitter present. Sir George, the Major continued, knew all about these
significant political blocks, and reported them to London, but the
Foreign Office and the Conseil de Guerre seem to be either ignorant (I
would not be very much surprised), or know more than the Ambassador,
so, as yet, our Cabinet has not been warned.
Our Cabinet! It sounds majestic.... Since Miliukov left, and the mercantile Monsieur
Tereshchenko took his hot seat--everything goes to the devil with our
policy abroad. It is strange, for Mr. Tereshchenko must be well posted
in foreign relations: both of his French twin mistresses gave him
every possibility of becoming "bien verse."
Mikhail Ivanovich Tereschenko (1886 - 1956)
Foreign Minister of Russia, May - October 1917
But -- oh, shades of Count Nesselrode and Prince Gorchakov! Inspire
the newcomer, looking from the walls of the Foreign Office, at his
struggles! Your illegitimate son needs your sense and help . . . .
