Claimants of Grand Duchess Tatiana Nicholaevna

Hi,
Yes, please look back to an earlier message on this topic and you will see a link to web site where the diary can be found as part of the 'Rescuing the Czar' McGarry / Smyth document.  If you still can't find it I have a copy printed - but you should have no trouble getting the web site - courtesy of Lexi I think.
All the best,
Tranwell

Hi!
Happy New Year!
I found the link fine. Thank you. Owen and Larissa were indeed mysterious and I would certainly like to learn more. It is interesting to me that, prior to marrying Larrisa, Owen was flat broke. Yet, as a couple, they lived well. I wonder where they got their income? The tombstone has me curious as well.
Lots of questions, I wonder if we will ever have answers.
Lexi

Can we stop knocking Occleshaw?
I don't think anyone else has provided as much pertinent discussion material as Occleshaw and I think he would be the first to accept that his theories need revision in the light of more recent discoveries.  I am sure he is quite right when he protests at the contempt the British Government has for genuine scholarship and their downright obstruction in allowing full disclosure of all they shouls disclose.  Mangold and Summers made the same point and my own attempts to get the Foreign Office to release papers, through my M.P., support this 'obfuscation'  attempt.  If the government stop 'weeding' then we can get to the bottom of this matter sooner. 
'No Resting Place for a Romanov,'   the highly derivative spin off of Occleshaw's book / s  mentions that Larissa's grave was disturbed at the time of the IF's internment at the Peter and Paul Cathedral so would exhumation prove anything?  Is it possible  that the remains of Larissa have already been replaced with other remains?  If the government would stop vasscilating and let us have all they have got then I am sure we would stop being conspiracy theorists but all the time things are being done which for my money suggest something is being covered up and I want to lknow what!

Just a note on the many contributions and different opinions I read on this site: I think it is great to read so many different points of view which are all treated in a scholastic manner and respected as valuable contributions to the debate.

Tranwell

Has there been a post deleted here?  Suddenly Occleshaw is being defended against an accusation I can't see being made recently, if at all.

Phil Tomaselli

Hello Phil,
Whoops!   I contribute to several parts of this site and sometimes I just think Occleshaw gets bad press.  Nothing missiing I think - just me putting a general comment on a particular discussion.

All the best,

Tranwell.

On revisiting certain files that Occleshaw quoted in his book I was delighted to discover an official note in file  WO 106/1237 stating that "A copy of document serial 799 missing from this piece - reference NR 1042 dated 9 February 1919, From Colonel Blair Vladivostock to War Office re Murder of Royal family has been located in FO 371/3977" dated 22 July 1994.  Another missing document located................................

Phil Tomaselli

Phil,
Did you see the actual document?

No, I haven't yet seen the document but, given I've located others he says were missing I don't doubt it's there.  Next time at the National Archives I'll endeavour to dig it out.

Phil T

I wonder why he would say those files were missing. I can only come up with a couple of explanations:
1. He didn't look real well.
2. They were missing when he looked.
3. High drama.
Lexi

There are several explanations.  Some of the documents are missing from the files in which he looked BUT duplicates exist in other files - HMG, like any bureacracy, copied in all and sundry so a telegram missing in a War Office file can turn up in a Foreign Office one.  Sometimes I suspect he didn't look too well or misunderstood the original reference so looked in the wrong place (you have to convert the old Foreign Office reference to a new National Archive one to get the original document and it's easy to make a mistake).  Sometimes he just doesn't look hard enough he says that there is verly little material from Thomas Presto, Ekaterinberg Consul, n in the files - in fact there's quite a lot of material, some of findable under "Platinum" because Preston was tasked by the War Office to keep an eye on Russian platinum mining.

Presumably also Preston burned a lot of documents (you do this automatically in a consulate in a war zone I assume).

Sometimes I think he just doesn't understand what he's looking at.  He has a new book out "Dances in Deep Shadows" in which there are a couple of real schoolboy howlers, but I won't bore you with theses as they aren't pertinent to the thread.

Phil T

When doing research,  I am contantly at a lost as to the logic behind some of the methods used in placing articles and information under titles.  Like Phil said:

... he says that there is verly little material from Thomas Presto, Ekaterinberg Consul, n in the files - in fact there's quite a lot of material, some of findable under "Platinum" because Preston was tasked by the War Office to keep an eye on Russian platinum mining. 

I am not making any kind of declaration that I have a better file system.  Looking at the piles of suff on my desk tells otherwise.  That's why someone invented computers.....  Ug,  another failure on my part because I didn't and continue not to  take the time to list each topic in the articles I have or will  save....    Most  articles or data  [reports, etc.]  deal with a number of topics and the person placing the data so where does one place it in the huge archives?  Under "A"  or  "D" ....?   

I have no idea how hard  Occleshaw looked for information.  Or if on those particular days the information wasn't there...  Sometimes that just happens. 

Sometimes,  in the middle of the night,  I'll wake up and realize I've been looking in all the wrong places and am feeling a little foolish for having missed the obvious.

AGRBear

Thank you Phil & Bear. That put it in perspective for me. Once I thought about it and read you posts, I realized how difficult it can be to find information unless you really know where to look. It would not have entered my head to look under platinum.

The joys of serendipity!  It never occurred to me to look for Ekaterinberg material under Platinum, I just stumbled across some index cards on the subject and remembered that Preston mentioned it somewhere.  You have to try and get into the mind set of the people compiling the records and why they might index them the way they did.

An even bigger problem comes with sorting and indexing your own research.  I have a filing cabinet full of files marked "Ekaterinberg Consulate", "Rasputin", "British Intelligence Mission", "Naval Intelligence", "Captain Cromie's Organisation", "Murmansk Military Intelligence", "RAF in N Russia", "MI5", "SIS in Russia 1919", "Finland" etc.  As one discovered document can cross several files it can be a nightmare (a) deciding which file to put it in and (b) cross referencing it with the others.  I've now moved to digital imaging but this only makes it worse..............

Phil T

Here is the text of the "missing" document as located in FO 371/3977A:



From: -               Col Blair, Vladivostock
To:-               War Office

                  Despatched: 15.45 9.2.19
                  Received 16.00 10.2.19

N.R.  1042  Feb 9th

         Following dated Feb 5th Received from General Knox


      It is shown by aditional evidence regarding the murder of the Imperial Family at Ekaterinburg that in the local Sovyet there are two parties, one wishing to save the family and the other headed by 5 Jews, of whom two Safarov and Vainen, determined on the murder, had accompanied Lenin on his journey across Germany.  The Central Sovyet at Moscow wished to send the family to Nesvij in ?West/WhiteRussia.  Between the 8th and 12th the Russian Guard on the house wasremoved, the pretext being that they had stolen 79,000 roubles.  A house guard of 13 men, viz. 3 Jews, Yurovski, Zaipoint and one other and 10 Letts replaced them,.  A criminal called Medvedyev who had been convicted in 1905 of a murder and arson and in 1911 of outraging a girl of five commanded the guard outside the house.  At 2 a.m. prompt the prisoners were awakened and toldto preparefor a journey.  An hour later they were called down to the lower room.  The sentence of theSovyet ending with the words “And so your life has come to and end” was read out by Yurovsky.  The Emperor said “I am ready”.  It is stated by an eyewitness who hassince died that theEmpressand her two elsest daughters made the sign of the cross.  The two younger Grand Duchesses fainted.  .  The man Mevyedev and the house guard carried out the massacre with revolvers.  In addition to the seven members of the Imperial family, in this room were murdered the Doctor Botkin, the cook, the valet and the maid.  The cook’s nephew, a boy of 14 was spared.  The bodies were thrown down the shaft of a coal mine.  Orders were sent to Apalaevsk the same morning to murder the party there and this was carried out by theRussians.

      Some eight tons of personal belongings of the family are being sent down to Vladivisotock.  Some of these things are of great national as well as material value.  On the body of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth for instance, was found the Holy Picture before which the Emperor prayed when about to abdicate.  This is stdded with precius stones and is valuedat several hundred thousand roubles.  Admiral K. said that if possible he would like them for greater security to be placed on board theKent.

02. Copies to :- M I 1a
MI1a copies to:-    CIGS
         DMI
         MIR & b & a
         MI6 b & L
         DMC
         MO5 a & b
         MOX
         FO
         DCIGS
         MI1 & a

 Please note that the MI6 noted as being copied in is not the MI6 we know today (which was then known as MI1c).

The file that accompanies this file, FO 371/3977B contains a (presumably much abridged) version of the Sokolov investigation given to the National Archive from "an official source" in 1958.  Interesting to see some of the photographs "in the flesh" as it were.

I must have looked at this years ago without appreciating the significance but nice to revisit.

Phil Tomaselli

Thank you Phil. That was interesting.