The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-01-11
Bloody AutOcracy
Of Tsar Mich OIas
Exposed i'll Book
THE LAST DAYS OF TSAR
NICHOLAS, by P. M. Bykov With
an historical preface by Andrew
Rothstein, International Publish
ers. S1.00
By del
Reviewed by
ISIDOR SCHNEIDER

WITH the publication recently of
" the letters of the Tsar and
Tsarina, new culver Of sympathy
for the martyrs" ran up and down
bourgeois spines. Andrew Roth
stein, in his brilliant preface to this
book, reproduces some of these
quiverings, done in public in the
review columns of leading capitalist
journals, with the rhetorical throbs
that accompanied them. But, Of
course, more than sympathy was
expressed. The intent was double,
to Whitewash the last Romanoffs
as innocents, and to blacken the
| Soyiets.
The fact that these Royal CORE
spondents are absorbed in their
letters, chiefly in trivialities, exon
crates them in the opinion of their
apologists, from the crimes Of the
dynasty in its last years. And their
execution, one of the clearest acts
of justice upon crowned criminals
that history can show, is strenu-
ously attacked.
Rothstein directs against these
ranks of deliberate and msudlin
falsifiers a machine gun fire of
facts. He points out the consistent,
undertaking, autocratic policy of the
Tsar as revealed with the revolving
repetition in the Tsar's instructions
and notes on official papers, his
insistence upon bloody repression,
his scorn of generals who neglected
to massacre when massacre was
unnecessary; for in the perverted
mind of the auJocrat, even when
the overwhelmed masses submit
without resistance, little massacre
upon them is useful as a lesson.
The legend of the execution of
the Tsar and his family circle as
slaughter of the innocents, and
as an act unjustified by political
necessity, that misty myth of bour-
geois historians, must evaporate in
the strong light cast upon it by
Bykov,
THE account is, in its main out
lines, we'll known 1t is in the
details that the book is revealing
and important, for it is on the de-
tails that, to considerable extent,
the legend builders have founded
their structures.
Bykov was Chairman of the So
Wet of Ekaterinburg, where the
Tsar and his family and their i'm
mediate servants spent their last
days. He writes, therefore, with the
authority of first hand knowledge.
So long as the Tsar and his fam
lily we're under the care of the So
cial Revolutionists they were al
lowed a court life, practically as
luxurious as in their days of power
They lived happily in the assurance
that Kerensky would arrange their
escape, if necessary, to their royal
relatives in Windsor, and 1t required
the constant watchfulness of the
workers to see that the escape was
not carried through.
Unreliable elements, sympathetic
to the Romanoffs, especially among
the guard officers, worked then
way into association with the Tsar
Tobolsk at once became the center
of intrigue, and the Soviet Of the
Urals, alarmed, began to wori
toward removing the Tsar and hi;
family to Ekaterinburg.
IN EKATERINBURG, it soon be.
came clear that wherever the Tsa.
was, there counter revolution i'm
mediately sank root, and Their,
the forces of the counter-revolu
ton would converge.
The Whites began to stream
toward Ekaterinbu-g. A few day
before its capture by the counter
revolution the Royal family was ex
ecuted by shooting, in the cellar o
the house in which they had beer
imprisoned. The bodies were re
moved to a pit, outside the tow
where they were destroyed, to pre-
vent a ghoulish use being made o
them as relics and as Indictment
to the superstitious.
Bykov's account is grave and Wig
orous, recital as steel-like in it
historical logic, as the execution
itself.