Entry 6 - Ivanitskys

 
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 . . . .