CHAPTER XII

WHO WAS COMRADE JAKOLEV ?

IN an earlier chapter I promised to hazard a guess as to the identity of Commissar Jakolev and the nature of his mission of "particular importance ."  It will be only a deduced conclusion, in the realm of conjecture, quite distinct from the facts before narrated, which have been juridically established and historically authenticated .  The only persons capable of fully substantiating my thesis are dead ;  the remaining principal actors in that unsuccessful episode are still dumb, though they have contributed valuable hints .

It will be necessary to recall the military history of the Great War and to visualize the situation on the Western Front at that time .  Germany had suffered a fatal check by the entrance of the United States into the arena on the side of her adversaries .  With fresh and seemingly unending American forces pouring into the trenches and massing before Saint-Mihiel, the German High Staff prepared for that supreme drive on Paris that caused the world to hold its breath in agonized expectation .  The scales of war hung even .

The disappearance of Russia from the Allied line was followed by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which reduced Bolshevist Russia to the status of a sullen vassal of the Teutonic Powers .  The interpreter of Germany's will and the virtual dictator of Russia's foreign policy was Count Mirbach, the German ambassador in Moscow .  Fully aware of the fundamentally revolutionary character of Bolshevism, with its threat to German monarchism as well as to Russian autocracy, and perfectly willing to repudiate the dubious alliance which military necessity had obliged her to contract with Communist Russia, Germany decided on a bold move .  She would restore monarchy in Russia and place Alexis on the throne--provided the Tzar would consent to sign the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and align Russia with the Teutonic Powers !

The Tzar's spontaneous and indignant reaction to Jakolev's very first proposals and his outspoken resentment against Germany support this view :  "I will let them cut off my hand before I do it ."  The coachman who drove the team to Tiumen reported that Jakolev had sought in vain to win the Tzar over to some weighty project .  Although unable to hear the exact words, the driver made out that Nicholas always refused ;  he did not "scold the Bolsheviki, but some body else ."

General Ludendorff, in his Memoirs, gives solid ground for a similar surmise .  Guardedly, vaguely, as if unwilling yet to admit the full truth, he says : --

We could have deposed the Soviet Government, which was thoroughly hostile to us, and given help to other authorities in Russia, which were not working against us, but indeed anxious to coöperate with us .  This would have been a success of great importance to the general conduct of the war .  If some other government were established in Russia, it would almost certainly have been possible to come to some compromise with it over the Peace of Brest .

These are significant words .  If Mirbach was authorized to sound out Nicholas on this important possibility, he must get the Tzar back to Moscow, or, better still, out of Russia .  Sverdlov, already under the domination of Mirbach, may have been obliged to acquiesce--or feign acquiescence--in the plan to move the Tzar .  It was noted at Tobolsk that Jakolev was not the usual type of Bolshevist Commissar ;  he was suave, well spoken, versed in foreign languages, showed breeding, "had clean hands and thin fingers," in the words of Khobylinsky, and treated the former monarch with courtesy and deference .  He did not omit to salute Nicholas as the Emperor entered the cart for the trip to Tiumen .  His nervous haste and ill-concealed anxiety to get his prisoner out of the danger zone indicates knowledge of some coup d'état ahead .

But something went wrong .  Either the Tzar refused point-blank to accede to the Teutonic advances, as we may reasonably assume from his own condemnatory utterances and was flung back into the hands of the Soviets by that infuriated Mirbach, or Mirbach himself was double-crossed by Sverdlov, who permitted the escape as far as Omsk and then ordered the farce to be ended at Ekaterinburg .  In any case, the final decision was abrupt and unexpected ;   no preparation had been made for the imprisonment at Ekaterinburg and Ipatiev's house was requisitioned at a moment's notice ;  no properly constituted guard was on hand, but had to be recruited from a local factory ;  the encircling stockade was hurriedly erected after the arrival of the prisoners .  Neither Sverdlov nor Mirbach is available to affirm or deny ;  they were assassinated too soon .

If my main hypothesis be true, which only time and the opening up of more European archives can determine, then Comrade Jakolev was an agent of the German High Staff ;  and Nicholas II, redeeming an inglorious past by one heroic choice, was murdered because of his unshakable loyalty to the cause of the Allies .