Free Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs by Coryne Hall Page A

Commander was prohibited from saying what he really knew about Nicholas’s fate.
    With the situation still uncertain, Mathilde sent for Ivan and Ludmilla. They had rescued almost everything left behind in the Beliaievsky Villa at Kislovodsk, so they brought some essentials. Mathilde then lent Ivan to the Grand Duchess, who was without a manservant. His wife Elizabeth became Miechen’s cook.
    After seven months they left Anapa on 6 June with an escort of General Pokrovsky’s personal guard. At Tonnelnaïa Station two carriages were reserved on the train. At every stop on the two-hour journey to Kislovodsk their Cossack guards leapt out on to the platform to prevent anyone from entering the carriages.
    After numerous complications they arrived back in Kislovodsk at 3 o’clock in the morning of 8 June. Mathilde, Vova, Julie and Ali moved back into the Beliaievsky Villa and resumed a fairly normal life. One day at a second-hand dealer’s Mathilde spotted the solid-silver ladle presented for her 25th anniversary on the stage and a crystal sugar basin with a silver rim made by Fabergé, presented for her 1911 jubilee. They were returned to her by the dealer.
    For six months Mathilde lived in hope and expectation that the White Army would crush what she called ‘the rebelling rabble’ 14 and they could return to their Petrograd homes. At the end of June General Denikin’s army drove the Bolsheviks out of the Ukraine and freed the Crimea. By August he had captured Odessa and the following month had advanced to within 250 miles of Moscow. Every day Mathilde expected to hear of the capital’s fall.
    Then October brought a Bolshevik counter-offensive. The following month Kiev fell to the Bolsheviks and Denikin’s army ceased to be an effective force.
    In December the situation became critical. With the Bolsheviks about to invade the Caucasus it was decided that the Grand Ducal party would go to Novorossisk, from where they could flee abroad if the Bolsheviks closed in. The nervous tension was palpable as the next few days were spent in feverish preparations for departure. Kube diedof typhus at the age of only thirty-eight and the day before they were due to leave Julie fell ill with typhoid, but they had to go. In the panic Andrei’s diary was left behind.
    They arrived at the station soon after 11 o’clock on 30 December/12 January. A first-class coach had been reserved for Andrei, the Grand Duchess, a few members of her suite and their families. Andrei gallantly gave up his compartment to Julie and moved into the third-class carriage with Mathilde, Vova and the other refugees. Ivan had brought a small stove and Elizabeth cooked their meals. They spent twelve hours sitting on hard wooden benches before the train was able to leave Kislovodsk. As they pulled out the next morning refugees clung desperately to the side of the carriage, begging to be taken on board. At every stop the panic was the same. Everyone was trying to flee from the Bolsheviks.
    At 3 o’clock the next afternoon they pulled into Mineralnyi Vody Station. There, for reasons unknown, they remained for several hours. To reach Rostov and then Novorossisk meant passing through four different states, each with different laws, prices and even police. Without huge bribes it was impossible to get very far. By the Old Style Russian Calendar (which Mathilde and her party were still using) it was 31 December.
    It was a depressing way to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Someone produced a bottle of champagne. Mathilde and Andrei drank to the coming year, still sitting on their hard benches. But nothing could hide their despondency. Nobody knew what the future held.
    As 1920 dawned it became obvious that the White Army had lost the civil war. There was nothing for the remaining Romanovs to do but flee.
    After sitting in the train at Mineralnyi Vody for several hours they finally moved on, reaching Novorossisk at 9 o’clock on 4/17 January. Described by Baedeker as ‘a