I was just thinking, that even if Sofia said about treasures or gave them some , she could be easily murdered. ( I do not think , if somebody could keep their
word, so seriously. Even White Army did not do it in some cases)
But she was not murdered.
Dear Hikaru,
You READ my mind. This is what I have been thinking of over dinner.
I would venture to say that it is a KNOWN fact that the earliest elements of the CHEKA were not from the higher levels of Russian society, and I am being polite here so as not to anger one.
Given that they shot the old Mme Naryshkina at 90 years of age on-the-stop with no reason; given that they shot an entire branch of the Prince and Princess Mechersky family in the part of the Ukraine that they occupied with no reason; given that they shot the old debilitated Count Fredericks with no reason; given that they liquidated 25% (twenty-five percent) of the City of Omsk after taking it from the Kolchakii with no apparent reason; etc., etc., and given their LONG list of hideous crimes against the Russian people, the Church, the landed gentry, and just about anybody that they could get their hands on, including eventually liquidating each other, frankly, you are 100% correct...they could have shot her on-the-spot, as I keep saying.
And before continuing, the theory that the Vryubova passed herself as a harmless fool would not have fooled THEM for one Petersburg second as all of Russia by that point knew of her and the Camarilla of the final years -- that is just a convenient middle-class cover story, far from the truth, I believe.
So what did they offer up that was so major.
This is what I want to speculate on and ask your opinions.
1. I would venture that Buxhoeveden was carrying or was part of knew of supplemental offers of asylum for the Imperial Family -- perhaps Canada, perhaps Ireland, perhaps South Africa, perhaps even Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Cuba -- all of it arranged by the British Secret Service -- or even perhaps, at its worst, an offer of asylum in Germany, or perhaps Sweden or Norway under German aegis. The Baroness would have know the Legates and the Ambassadors -- they would have know her. She was a far less contentious figure politically than the Vryubova and would have appeared to the Reds as the little lady doing petit-point.
Or, and again I postulate, Nicholas and Alexandra would have provided her secretly with a list of the numbers of the numbered Tsarist bank accounts in Switzerland, and in London, and such other accounts as were in New York and San Francisco, which funds might have been used to buy their safety and that the Baroness was charged with this mission -- of getting to the West, with a "fonde de pouvoir" (accent on the e) and arranging these matters with the Imperial Ambassadors still in place, say Sazanov, for example.
3. In terms of the Vryubova, I postulate that it might have been either one of the above, with the offers of rescue and safety being more likely.
Indeed, they would have not just exchanged information and then released these "damii" -- this is what I think escapes our modern readers. AGRBear writes that this was a common practice in order to sully the person by the Cheka, etc., in the eyes of the others, but I am sorry, I politely disgree. They wouldn't have had to sully these two -- they simply would have shot them.
4. Which comes back in my opinion to the really astute question raised by Hikaru -- how did the Baroness come by her "droit de sejour" in England when so many of the high nobility were refused "droit de sejour" in England? Hikaru mentioned that at that point in time it was possible to "buy" a "droit de sejour" in England (a point that I cannot ascertain in 1919, so I would ask Hikaru to confirm where this idea comes from)..but if we postulate that a "droit de sejour" could be had for pounds sterling 100,000 in 1919, and if know for a fact that the Baroness had no evident source of income at all (she was not primogeniture in her own family), would it not be possible that the Baroness availed herself of this money from the Bank of England using one of the "fonde de pouvoir" that the Imperial Couple might have given her?
This is all speculation but I am trying to point our readers in what I think may be the right path for investigation.
With all of the best from Shanghai,
A.A.