Part II - Introduction

 
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.