Dear son and daughters. I am now sixty years old. As it turns out I have told you almost nothing of myself, especially my childhood and youth. I was born in 1878 in Tomsk. Ten children grew up in my father's family, and with them poverty bordering on destitution. We could not break out of it, even though the children began working for masters at the age of ten. Father was a glazier and mother a seamstress. They worked hard, to the point of exhaustion. My father was a deeply religious man, but we were Jewish, and slowly through the years we distanced ourselves from our faith. The Empire hated Jews...from the Tsar right down to our peasant neighbors...
I recall a time when I was thirteen, in 1891, that I joined the people of Tomsk in welcoming the Tsarevich...home from his tour of the Far East. We rang church bells and welcomed him with great cheers. It was an event, like a town festival. For one day at least it did not matter that we were poor and run down, Christian or Jew. I can remember vividly standing in a doorway and looking among the cheering crowds waving little Russian flags. Nicholas sped past me along Post Office Street in a brightly painted Troika. I followed the crowd to the Governor's House where he was headed and spoke to us briefly from the balcony. I remember how handsome the heir was with his little neat brown beard. Nicholas nodded and waved to us and for the briefest of moments I could have sworn he looked directly at me. That same face, of a much older man, I would see many years later...
I also vividly remember an argument with my father from after the Heir's visit. We were talking about the future of the Empire under his eventual reign and how he might fair compared to other Tsar's. My father revered Tsar Nicholas I, but standing up to him I explained that it was Alexander II who deserved the glory for his reforms. A truly conservative fellow my father unleashed his anger upon me and I ran away for two days. When I returned everything seemed different. My outlook had been altered, time had changed and this was a different era. I grew to detest Alexander III and, when he died, his son Nicholas. To me the new Tsar was a fiend, a bloodsucker and a killer. And finally I came to yet another understanding...that everything was made by the hands of workers and peasants, and that the Emperor was dependent on us. We controlled their destinies...
It was around this time that I began to study as a watchmaker. My master got himself rich off the sufferings of his adolescent workers. I worked for him until I was nineteen and never knew what it meant to eat my fill. It was then, now a young man, that I organized a workers strike and was jailed for several days. Forbidden to enter the town's watch and jewelry shops. I wandered for a time eventually honing my skill as a watchmaker and jeweler before settling down in 1904 in the city of Ekaterinburg. The place that would come to shape my destiny. I married your mother that year and beginning in 1905 I never ceased working for the Bolshevik Party for a single day. The revolution that year has a profound effect on my sensibilities and I realized my children deserved a different life from the one I was forced to live...a life of freedom and hope...
But Russia had become unsafe for Bolsheviks and revolutionaries and not wanting to be arrested and parted from my family I took you to Berlin. There your mother and I chose to covert to Lutheranism for various reasons that bear no consequence at this point. Religion is cynical and pointless and I was happy to change my stripes to fit in with whatever crowd I was part of at a particular time...be it Jewish, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Catholic. After returning us home to Russia the authorities finally caught up to me. Fortunately their evidence against me was flimsy and I was able to convince them my activities from years earlier were the ramblings of angry young man who had since been married with children, found a steady job, and settled down. In a odd twist of fate they sent me back to Ekaterinburg where by day I worked as a photographer and by night I dedicated myself, in secret, to socialist activities and the spreading of propaganda...
A few months after the war began I was drafted into the army. But instead of serving in the ordinary ranks I signed up for medical training and was assigned to the 198th Perm Infantry Regiment as a field hospital orderly. Perhaps it should only make sense that my life is destined to end, laid up in hospital bed, where I write you this letter. The war raged on and I was exposed to its horrors constantly. The blood and the suffering and the despair hardened me. After the revolution in 1917 I deserted my post and headed back home to Ekaterinburg. That fall I become one of the founding members of the Ural Regional Soviet, and shortly thereafter I was appointed Deputy Regional Commissar of Justice and joined the Regional Cheka. It made only perfect sense then that shortly after turning forty years of age I would be appointed Commandant of the Ipatiev House. Being held there was the Imperial Family and their retainers...[interrupted]
While Yurovsky tells his story we are shown the people, places and events as he describes them. He is then cut off, momentarily at least, by his nurse who suddenly reappears...
Nurse: Pardon me gentleman...Chief Yurovsky you have barely touched your food!
Yurovsky (clearing his throat): Oh, yes, I am sorry. We are rambling on here.
Nikulin: Yes, it is I who should apologize. Madame I will see to it that the Commandant...err...the Chief finishes his food.
Nurse (after a pause): Very well...please make sure of it. He needs his strength.
The nurse departs from the room and we are shown Nikulin picking back up his pencil. Yurovsky is able to sit up long enough to place a couple of forks full of food into his mouth. Before they are able to resume conversation the scene fades out and cuts away...
