[Note: In
September 1992 I went to
Plaksin’s office is housed in a quai-side
mansion,
Ivanov is heard right away saying something about
"the best Russian forensic scientists," and this is a defense,
inasmuch as the bones are going to
Ivanov:
doesn't say much at first, is hesitant, reluctant, and when I tell him
I'll leave it all to his discretion he says he might not want to talk entirely
"for publication." (He means
for attribution.) He does NOT have
strong ties with Ekaterinburg, he says Avdonin was here a few days ago and may
still be here, but he has no idea how to get in touch with him, "we have
not very tight contacts." [Already
an absurdity – the man who supposedly found the grave and the scientists now
investigating it in
I am to understand that it's been
"difficult, very difficult" working in these circumstances, because
apart from the “feelings and considerations” engendered by the finding of the
relics (they were killed in Ekaterinburg, they should stay in Ekaterinburg,
etc.), there's the usual war going on between the provinces and Moscow. There's resentment in Ekaterinburg of
everything being centered in Moscow. He
says: "This isn't America,"
they have "difficult relations" with the provinces. He says this several times: it's been "very difficult."
Svetlana Gurtovaya is homey, warm, friendly,
forthcoming, concerned, frustrated, confiding -- reassuring at all levels. She believes Anastasia survived the shooting
but explains this is a subjective opinion:
as a person, she says, "as a
person" she believes it.
Neither she nor Ivanov speaks in any way that contradicts
the Maples report that it was A.'s body missing, as opposed to Plaksin, who at
one point says with pointed conviction:
"I know who these three
girls are, but until the expertise is completed in England I am not going to
say anything." The fate of
Anastasia is "one of the great mysteries" -- the word he uses is intriga.
Plaksin is against it -- "intriga,"
that is. There has been "too much
sensation," that is why he will not comment on Anastasia. All emphasis today is on
"expertise," everything is couched in terms of scientific probability, it's just the story so far, etc. He never says, "These are the
Romanovs," although obviously he thinks they are.
Svetlana's team are looking for gloves, hats, old
clothes of the Romanovs, hoping to find traces of sweat. She is honest in saying that so far she has
nothing, "absolutely nothing" with which to compare the
skeletons. "There is no
comparison," she says. She has
"begged and begged" for records and samples -- "It is not my job
to find these things!" Later I hear
about the "process" and the "channels" that have to be gone
through. There is at every level
apparently an investigator, an assistant, a chief assistant, and so forth.
One thing you notice about Russia right away is
that nobody offers information without being asked. If you go into a store, for instance, and ask
if they have stationery for sale, they will simply say, "No." They won't say, "But Dostoyevsky has
some down the street" -- certainly this lack of initiative is not limited
to shopkeepers. As regards the Romanovs,
there have been a large number of “functionaries,” bureaucrats, doctors and
researchers involved at all stages of the investigation (names are reeled off
here, sounding like the cast of Woody Allen’s Love and Death: Volkov,
Soloviev, Popoff, etc.) Everything has
to be cleared, everything is recorded, if a photograph is taken from the state
archives, for instance, it must be logged, labelled, noted.
Titles!
Functions! “Volkov” is the chief
assistant to the general procurator of the Sverdlovsk [Ekaterinburg]
Region. “Soloviev” was appointed at the
national level (by Russia’s “general procurator”) when the case began to
“expand.” “Popoff” is a dentist in
Petersburg in charge of forensics for the army.
I say this not in criticism but as fact -- they
seem to be in diapers when it comes to the private life of the tsar's
family. They keep referring to the
difficulty in finding “good quality pictures,” though it's an easy thing to
do. Plaksin still talks about "Dr.
Sergei Botkin" -- another point.
The blood type of the skeletons is NOT rare,
Svetlana speaks of "first" and "second" blood groups and
says “the Five” [of “the Nine,” there are the “Five” and the “Four”] all have
"the second group," very common.
They can't tell if it's positive or negative, though: they "can't tell the RH." About 60% of all Western Europeans and
Americans have this grouping; it's less common in Russia because of the
proximity to Asia. (In America, the
universal donor type is O -- Anna Anderson had type O.)
She offers as an explanation for all the interest
about it in Russia -- it's “atonement,” she says, also from the Christian view
it's a question of “helping the dead rest in peace” (in consecrated
ground). "There has been too much
talk," she agrees with Plaksin, too much palaver. It's too famous. "Only the DNA will settle it," she
thinks -- which would indicate that even if Abramov thinks he's got A's skull, she doesn't -- but realizes even DNA
won't help in the case of the nutters and fanatics: "There will be many more graves
found," she predicts. (Plaksin
tells me lots of people have been coming to them to say: they're buried here, they're buried there ...
and this not just in Ekaterinburg but around the country.)
Svetlana says "There are lots of arguments
and disputes" right now about "that period." People are saying, for instance: "Maybe if the Tsar hadn't abdicated the
October Revolution wouldn't have happened." "After so much time you only remember
the good things, not the bad," says Svetlana. "People want to believe it was much
better then -- and that it can be better now, it will be." But watch out for what's ahead, she says, the
fight that will come "when they want to bury them."
There has been "lots of intrigue,
back-stabbing," usw. She is
referring specifically to the "amateurs" in Ekaterinburg.
*
PLAKSIN starts with that: there are 2 ways of approaching this. One is the "amateur" way of
historians, journalists, archivists, monarchists (the way of Avdonin and `Obretenie'), and then there is “the
experts' way, the way of science.” He's
received his brief from the General Procurator's Office -- here we must always
distinguish between the local procurator of the Sverdlovsk Region and the
national (federal -- the word used is "republican") Procurator in
Moscow. It is now fully in Moscow's
hands, although the skeletons, to my surprise, are still in Ekaterinburg.
He credits Avdonin with the find -- he mentions
Ryabov only as someone who could help uncover documents, "Party archives,
KGB," etc. "So
Avdonin found a helping hand from Ryabov." His account follows the standard one in Moscow News, Rodina and elsewhere,
leading to the Yurovsky notes and the way the bodies were located.
"The situation was very different
then," he says -- this is the only explanation anyone can give for the
delays and amateur approach to the problem.
“There could not be any controls.”
Avdonin says in his July speech (at the Ekaterinburg conference) that
they began it to satisfy their own curiosity; they took an oath to keep it
secret, etc. Only in 1991 did Avdonin
send information officially to Interior Ministry authorities, and then on the
11th and the 13th of July 1991 a special group of "criminal medical
experts” started the excavations. This
would be the Koriakova mission, I'm supposing; Plaksin is not informed of it
until the 25th.
In the first digs they found "several
fragments" of bones as well as the remains of the ceramic jars. "Tests of soil were taken." "It is a huge well," says
Plaksin.
[It is
not, only three feet deep: see
photographs below.] Archaeologists don't start with a
cross-section, they work layer by layer down; the sketch the Sunday Times published is, however, how
they think the bodies were arranged. But
it's hard to tell in some instances which body owns which bones.
Work goes on from the 13th to the 25th, and now
it's clear they need help. Hence Abramov
is sent with a team to assist the locals.
Their detail is charged with determining the “scope and character” of
the work -- what needs to be done? -- and voilà,
Edict -- which he holds up for me to see several times. He doesn't exactly wave it, but he brandishes
it for sure -- detailing the circumstances of the case and empowering Plaksin,
alone, as “executive authority” in all matters concerning the
investigation: "The chief of the
bureau Mr. Plaksin is empowered to introduce into the work the best specialists
of his country and foreign specialists if necessary." He says there are "27 major
questions" still to be answered, but he doesn't enumerate.
Next: they
define “the membership.” It includes
specialists from Moscow State University, from the medical military academy in
St. Petersburg; from the Ukrainian Republic (Kiev), from Saratov, from
Krasnoyarsk, from Voronezh -- "that means the best of the nation, and not
just this country, but the nearest foreign country, Ukraine" (knowing
smiles here all around).
Each group of specialists is divided according to
its particular tasks. The Moscow U.
people are busy examining the damage to the bones, injuries before and after
death, previous illnesses of the victims.
In this case also:
the damage from the sulfuric acid, the damage from corrosion, and the
damage from the passage of time.
The Petersburg group concentrates mainly on dental work and ballistic
expertise -- meaning the nature and extent of the bullet wounds.
When I mention the published sketch of the grave,
Plaksin waves his hand and talks about "journalists, Reuters, Spiegel,
Stern," this with contempt. He says
there was "some discrepancy" in the “level of involvement of various
departments” with the press; there was also a rush on the story that led to a
lot of errors in reporting.
"Sometimes it was not the real thing, but the desired thing,"
that made the news. That is why, in May
1992, the specialists had to call a press conference to quell the rumors
(substitution of bodies, family of gold miners, rich merchants, etc.) and say
yes, they believed this was the burial place of Nicholas II. It's a statement of “the seriousness of the
investigation.”
The first thing to do was to sort out the bones
and assemble the skeletons. After
"defining the 9" they began to distribute them according to gender
and age, and this was when they could first say that “the victims appeared to
correspond with the historical record.”
The dental experts can say: the five are related, because they have had
the same kind of dental work, and also because the victims show signs of
"a special family dental disease."
They can't pinpoint it, but it's common to them all -- I think of A.'s
extracted teeth at Dalldorf. The level
of dental work is "extremely high, the slightest cavity was filled at
once," and one of the women has platinum crowns. In one of the skulls is a gold bridge
"with a very high carat gold."
This Plaksin says is "another brick added to the wall."
They have no information on the cook or the
valet, no pictures, nothing. They can
speak only of their age and sex.
Next step:
the photo combining process, which I understand a little better, taking it
to mean that the program can (so to say) "bring out" the skull from a
photo at any angle and match it with the skull at hand. Classic photo combining deals only with front
and profile, but this can detect the shape of the skull anyway it sits. The specific points of comparison haven't
changed: tip of nose, ear lobe, brow,
sockets, etc. Thus by May 1992 they
could say: Tsar, Empress, Botkin. They announced already then that Alexei's
remains were missing and that the investigation would continue.
Ekaterinburg conference opens July 27, 1992 --
the "amateurs" as well as the experts and the specialists -- he
distinguishes the two, saying the American team is made up of
"specialists" while the Russian team is made up of "experts"
(experts on this case, that is: It's the
difference between long and short study).
Americans invited by the town of Ekaterinburg, there is no criticism of
this today. The important thing is: the Russian team has already reached an
agreement "in principle" to work with the specialists at Aldermaston, and the project is to be sponsored by the
BBC. Plaksin is careful to say that
"with only minor differences" their work agrees with the
Americans. He also mentions that Maples
rendered "a very high assessment of the Russian team" at his press
conference, however much Plaksin (evidently?) regrets the focus on individual
names (i.e., Anastasia).
What do they need for the British tests? Plaksin "suppose[s] you would need
fragments of long bones, roughly 20 grams of weight (chacun)." They are
still working on the principle of Skeleton 1, 2, 3, etc., so as not to
influence the results -- there are no names attached to individual
skeletons. Again he says this ensures
"the blind method."
I think I may gather that a lot of the work done
at Aldermaston is experimental; Plaksin refers to the "very serious
scientific potential" of this study.
Anyway they have "experience and skill" working with some very
old bones (up to 350 years), and if indeed they are able to extract DNA from
the skeletons they will be able to compare it with living relations.
Note that he mentions the psychic's report in the
same tone (if not at the same length); so, he says, "one more brick in
place." There is no irony in his
telling me about her. (Should there
be? It's far from certain.)
This case is making Plaksin "rougher and
tougher" all the time. He mentions
this in relation to the proliferation of claimants ("Today there at least
ten Anastasias in Russia") and unsolicited "theories," such as
the "French" one that "doubles" of the imperial family were
killed at Ekaterinburg. I ask about the
continuing excavation (looking for A.'s and Alexei’s bones) and he says,
"The commission has everything under control. Excavations are still being made. They are studying the burial place
thoroughly, all around the area. But
there are no definite results."
Later: "It's very, very
doubtful that these 2 bodies could have been burned to ash in the condition of
the open air, on bonfires." Among
other things, “they didn't have time for such an operation.”
He anticipates "approximately one
month" for a "favorable" result from Aldermaston. I ask about Bilibin's suggestion that the
bones might be interred in Petersburg as early as November, and he goes off on
a long discourse about the difficulties publicity has engendered. "There is too much talk, both with the
mass media and with former Russians living abroad." "Our charge is too serious, we have no
right to make mistakes." And: "Expertise is not a production, it is
not something carried out in order to suit a particular date." His team expects "any development at any
time." He is conscious (and frank)
about the bearing this will have on "the face, the public profile, of the
Russian criminal medical service."
The results will be known on Ivanov's return. Then, he says, "It's full stop" for
his department. All materials will be
documented officially, all documents will be signed and delivered to the
General Procurator's Office. "After
that, a decision about the disposal of the remains will be taken by the Russian
Government."
He acknowledges the help they've received from Dvoranskoye Sobranie, and especially
from Prince Lopukhin (though mainly I would judge he's had his fill of
monarchists), and adds that his team would be "extremely grateful for any
information the world can provide.”
I'm to call on Monday the 21st around 12 o'clock
-- Abramov may be there, but in any case the skull pictures will be ready.