The Unknown Tsesarevitch. Reminiscences and Considerations on V. K. Filatov’s Life and Times. Oleg Vasiljevitch Filatov

the Reds, then it is no wondered that in 1924 Doctor Derevenko was summoned to ChK in Perm and in 1930 he was arrested and spent his last years in the concentration camp.) ¹ For the same purpose we tried to establish contacts with the monastery which supplied the Royal Family with milk. Nothing substantial came out of it: it could not be done, first, because of the house guard and, second, because we were followed. I remember that on July 16, I was in the monastery. On that day the milk was delivered to the house. The head of the photo-section of the monastery the nun Augustina said to me that the soldier said to the nun who brought the milk: “Today we shall take the milk, but to-morrow do not bring it, there will be no need” (Auth.: “That is, he notified her”). I do not remember the things we found in the shaft, apart from those I mentioned. All these things were taken by Captain Malinovsky to be stored”. Captain Malinovsky also mentioned it in his records. He described an exact lay-out of the rooms where the Royal Family members lived, namely, who and where. Then he says that he was one of the first who got into this house after the annexation of the town. He said that there was also a student kept in this house who twice took photos of the house. “…Akhverdov’s man-servant was also a source of information (I know neither his name nor his surname. It seems to me that it was Kotov). He got acquainted with a guard and learned something from him. … I informed our organization in Petrograd sending agreed telegrams in the name of Captain Fekhner (an officer of my brigade) and Riabov, esaul (sergeant) of the combined Cossack regiment. But I never received any answer.” This phrase of Captain Malinovsky shows that the officers’ organization had branches about which Malinovskysaid little. It means that, probably, the organization had been formed before the departure of the Academy from Saint-Petersburg, and the officers told even the White inquiry neither about the number of participants in the organization in Peterburg nor how long it existed, what it did in general and whether they had contact with it later on. It was because the officers were afraid for the life of their people and for the activity of these branches, which could still be effective for a long time in the future, supplying with useful military information and serving as channels to take people to safe places in case of failures. Besides, among the White investigators could be those who worked in the interests of the Red or somebody else. It was the war. The point was that the Tsar’s family should be rescued, and members of the organization did not know all the information because they knew that they should think about security in this dangerous work. All of them risked their lives and the lives of their relatives. “I would say that we had two plans, two goals. We had to have a group of people who at any moment in case of the expulsion of the bolsheviks could occupy the Ipatiev house and guard the safety of the Tsar’s Family. The other plan consisted in a daring attack of the Ipatiev house and taking the Royal Family away. Discussing these plans we drew seven officers more from our Academy. These were: Captain Durasov, Captain Semchevsky, Captain Miagkov, Captain Baumgarden, Captain Dubinkin, and Rotmistr Bartenev. I forgot the name of the seventh. This plan was utterly secret and I think that the bolsheviks could not learn about it. For instance, Akhverdova knew nothing about it… Two days before the occupation of Ekaterinburg by the Czechs I, among 37 officers, left for the Czechs and on the next day after the occupation I returned to the town.” “Note that Nikolai Ross (1987) who published the cited part of Malinovsky’s evidence cut off the end of the protocol recorded in 1919 by N.A. Sokolov. Captain Malinovsky believed that the Germans took the Family to Germany, simulating an execution.“¹ However, there are documents in the State archive of the Russian Federation which testify to the fact that not everybody agreed that all the members of the family had been killed. So, as Fyodor Nikiforovich Gorshkov from Ekaterinburg said, officer Tomashevsky asserted that the execution took place in the dining room and that not everybody was killed. Doctor Derevenko, as investigator Sergeev said, also believed that somebody remained alive. Incidentally, Sergeev himself was of the same opinion. N.A. Sokolov’s report on the inquiry into the murder of the Tsar’s family in the Urals is known to have been sent to widow Empress Maria Fyodorovna who till her death in 1928 beleived that her son Nikolas II and grandson Tsesarevich Alexei remained alive. She had written about it to Marshal Mannerheim in Finland. In this report N.A. Sokolov writes: “… Jewels sewn to clothes as buttons had, apparently, burned. The only diamond was found on the outskirts of the fire trampled into the earth. It (its setting) was slightly injured by fire.”… These words do not hold water. Carbonaceous compounds such as diamonds cannot be damaged by fire. These conclusions are incorrect. If Sokolov did not find what he was searching for, it means that the people had been annihilated. But maybe they had been rescued? Who had rescued them? Sokolov is known to have left this version out of his account. Why? What prevented investigator Sokolov N.A. from inquiring into the version of the rescue of part of the family of Emperor Nikolas II?¹ Today we know information about the people who had rescued Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov and who had named him Vasily and had done everything for him to live and work. It was the middle-class family of Filatov K.A. in Shadrinsk. What and who was he? The Filatov family – Ksenofont Afanasyevich Filatov and Ekaterina, his wife – could have refused to take a wounded boy into his family if they had not been prepared for this morally. They had a son born in 1907. In 1937 Vasily Filatov mentioned in his biography that his mother and brother died early² and by 1921 he was alone. Though he had two uncles who served in the Red Army and disappeared

      Our examination of the archives revealed that Vasily Filatov had also step brother and sister, born of the second wife of Ksenofont Filatov, Ekaterina Dmitrievna Utusikova. These were Konstantin born in 1915 and Nadezhda born in 1917.³ The two uncles are Ksenofont’s siblings – Alexander born in in 1887 and Andrei born in 1891, and their sister Anna born in 1895.⁴ Then records in the documents related to the complement of the family of Ksenofont Afanasyevich Filatov are made with pencil by a clerk of the municipal administration (according to the archive data). The form itself is printed using the pre-reform letters i and ъ filled in without them. It should be emphasized that it was 1915 and the documents were then recorded in a strict correspondence with instructions, using special ink, a numbered pen, and in special handwriting. Further, apart from the wife of the first-grade soldier Ksenofont Filatov Ekaterina, son Vasily eight years, son Alexander six years, wife Ekaterina eighteen years old, father Afanasy Nikanorovich, mother Maria Andreevna, brothers and sisters are included in this document. Andrei served in the army, and was discharged for 6 months to recover, Alexander was in prison, and their sister Maria was 15 years old, who was born in 1899. An examination of the documented family-tree of the Filatovs from 1863 and further has shown that Ksenofont Filatov had the following children by his first wife Elena Pavlovna Gladkikh (1889—1912): sons Vasily born in 1907, Alexander born in 1909, died on December 3, 1915, Konstantin born in 1911, died in 1911, daughter Antonina born in 1912, died in 1912. Documents of the Shadrinsk municipal uprava and of “Commission for the Care of the Poor” for 1915 contain an application for allowance to his children filed by Filatov Ksenofont Afanasyevich on January 8, 1915. That is, his son Vasily born in 1907 and son Alexander (1909—1915). Protocol #11 of January 27, 1915 mentions son Vasily (1907) and Alexander (1909). Vasily is also mentioned in Ksenofont Filatov’s other applications (protocols #12 of February 25, 1915 and #13 of March 18, 1915).¹ after these records in pencil, in 1915—1916 the records are made with pen. But in the documents of later years the name Maria disappeared. What does it mean? It means that superfluous dependents had appeared but not in July 1918 – in 1915, which could have aroused suspicion when inspecting and when searching for the two children of Nikolas II. Therefore the record had been dated 1915. Similarly, to save a man, one could have added a superfluous child to the register of births, deaths and marriages after the event, since the point was to save the lives of Tsesarevich Alexei and his sister Grand Duchess Maria. If later anybody wanted to check the relatives of Ksenofont Filatov, then these records could have been found. But one could always say that yes, really, Vasily and Maria did exist but it was Civil war at that time, disruption, and they disappeared somewhere, and witnesses died. Father did tell us that during the Civil war he “had travelled” very much. Even when teaching in Tiumen oblast he told us that he led a free