on the Tsar

six 11 an article headed " The peb41 the Tsar's Death" dated seyo,..1 5 Tibor-Szamuely raised Points in criticism of a „..c'elatentary film for which we ik_"ere responsible "The File on ''`e rTsar" transmitted on BBC I 411arY 23.

is...._-. Szainuely described the pro

e as a " mendacious and ig;Qat hotch-potch" a programme r. on distortion, falsification alkPPression of evidence, a Tuga work of imagination. ihiba he fair, we have learned one eieh°t as journalists during the g, Months' enquiry that led to ilY,„tlocurnentary — never tangle Act"' an historian. on his Pet n

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sead o,ii . -.. simply arouse his %. errao hackles, and might °cot tonally force him into a display de bad bad manners. But our skirZ. after so many attempts at hawel,f118' have become tougher. kik, r. We do feel it is in the *au interest to answer in some hstiRathe allegations that our in 4rrtrilrustwioans.,, (fter an exercise in l'air eurPose of the documentary 71... eXaMine the credibility, 141 will a century, of the on ileaa, cal evidence surrounding the hitoly ,of the Russian Imperial ettortY8111 1918. We summed up our tilotts.„_bY concluding that corn,hialib,"14e and logic dictate that the .Qirto,„“Oust have died — but that 44112n.jh , cannot prove it. Mr llatrty'el,K's attempts to do what WokrthscloasserbeelosriPeUnable

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th , to do are 146a, iaarn, uelY criticises the music ka, ng.the programme even anthe,,,.-1 that the Soviet National old 4.4 Was used to accompany to; aWsreejs kr Whebeve of Nicholas II, Not „ sia war the Tsar or White. 8 the dominant theme or ts'44ic'....,,,4°11 of film, then "white 4teltevolas Played. Equally, when tib.u.,tion or the Bolsheviks li -, uonfinant theme of the vze A , red music" was played. 'Ite allr,enged the report of the A 14ttllov AUssiat investigator, °11 the death of the a 14 14ely report which Mr r0 t eagidlanItods us has been un e e rit Ibl.,110,41,,,s‘ tor fifty years (implying lal-u it t, -ain so) and we chal i0 'ask lsically for its dubious 0 4 t 1 to conclusions. Without evaluate the ltr7k. 41.11.2e,, of Professor FimraPn°criskaa.that ?zarnuely derides the lltrOble tue forensic evidence Liii :ould not stand up in a 40 i1t. or law today. There 1.1,, like ritish courts in Russia at 5. kit hl points out helpfully. il,,,,ari rm. „"le fact is, had there Stit'LigetZartlal and authoritative Ki I....11104in have the time (which we "ave been impossible) ' Iletilfr°rIs Would have been St °rent. kirli„Ilely isandards would Mr aphh,"ave the modern jourBritish st;„JAt.0 historical evidence 0 0 ',-,tielta-"-tards of justice Ylt Or ,,itiStiee 00 tikitv:144441.cuLleeLcyang,saayorsof owthe , ,Ccoarroenf ue iri'ys 00j 4, ear. to i. , „,e

lio,itherr otivered at the Four

'‘, '' a• 1st most or IA 0 llde-rfl,,e. Perhaps his atten1110 NPeoltorg When we said in the

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4 a " was able to produce 1'0 "tifulls v of evidence . . ." c//1 'kIttiltrii C‘Ie nt on to show much in a one-hour -lisclot r °11 this subject we lir the.,,,aasonably be expected 11111arttSza-r44),,reis of items found. thEtie'Y also found it we omitted the evidence of "one of the main witnesses" Pierre Gilliard (Mr Szamuely incorrectly spells his name Gillard). This is of course nonsense, Gilliard, the French tutor to the Imperial children, left Ekaterinburg on June 3, 1918 and returned on July 27 ten days after the alleged murders. On the day of the crime he was 185 miles away from the town in Tiumen. If that is Mr Szamuely's .,idea of a main witness to a crime, he should spend an evening at Scotland Yard. Gilliard was subsequently to offer conflicting opinions following his highly unskilled examination of the murder room.

On March 6, 1919 he made a deposition to Sokolov: "There was such a small number of bulletholes in the (murder) room which I had inspected that I thought it impossible for everybody to have been executed." By 1921 Mr Szamuely's "main witness" had changed his testimony, this time in his book., ta there being "numerous traces of bullets and bayonet scars. The first glance showed that several people had been done to death." He may well have made genuine mistakes, but as a witness he was useless. He did, of course, have a value in the positive identification of some of the Imperial bits and pieces found at the Four Brothers' mine.

We'll grant Mr Szamuely one point. It was an error not to mention in our film that a number of the Tsar's relatives had been similarly butchered. That is indeed useful circumstantial evidence for the death of the family.

Mr Szamuely alleges that we

denigrated ' every reputable witness." Well, allowing for the hyperbole and the way he uses the word " witness," let's look at that insinuation. Trotsky? He admitted in his 1935 diaries that his memory of what he had been told (not saw) of the alleged assassinations was "fragmentary." Sorry — but that's what he said. Sir Thomas Preston, our vice-consul in Ekaterinburg is in a different class altogether. He actually was in Ekaterinburg on the night of the murder, his testimony has always been important and he's impartial. But the fact remains that he has no prima facie evidence of the murders to offer. Like Trotsky, he was told they happened and not unreasonably believed it (he also believed for a time the Soviet lie that only the Tsar had been murdered). Sir Thomas would have been, by British court standards, a useful but not conclusive witness. Must everyone believe what they were told by the Soviets at the time? Is there no recorded instance of a Soviet fib?

Robert Wilton of the London Times became Sokolov's legman during the enquiry and did express total belief in the assassinations, but, as we were at some pains to point out, two equally distinguished on-the-spot journalists, Ackerman and Lasies, refused to believe in the deaths. Journalistically, two to one against, Mr Szamuely ignored that point.

His attack on our reference to Mr Guy Richard's work on the case is a fine example of the Szamuely smear. We too, disagree with many of Mr Richard's conclusions, including certain aspects of the Golienewski case; that's precisely why we ignored it. What could not be ignored was Mr Richard's pioneering criticism of the Sokolov report, and for this he deserves full Ct edit.

From smaar to sneer. Mr

Szamuely ridicules the source we used for showing some continuing confusion in Russian minds today about the fate of the Tsar and his family. We should, he says arrogantly, have quoted from the Soviet encyclopaedia he uses which suggests the whole family was shot. Forgive us, Mr Szamuely, we consulted official Soviet sources and asked them which reference work they wanted us to quote from, and they came up with one published ten years after Mr Szamuely's. Inrerestingly, the fact of the execution had in that decade been toned down to the local Soviets "taking a decision," to execute the family. Mr czamuely's touching faith in the veracity of Soviet historians is not always rewarded. Is this just the semantics game? We -Isn't know. Would Mr S2.c.mue1y entertain the doubts that plague us? For instance, over the Kremlin's repeated insistence to the Germans throughout July, August and September of 1918 that only the Tsar was dead, but the rest of the family alive?

Mr Szamuely's "I might as well put the BBC investigators in the picture" paragraph, showing "conclusively " that the death of the family can be proven by what he calls "in official and very detailed account of the massacre" leaves him perilously out on a historical twig. The source he refers to is the "official" Bykov version. Bykov was a sometime chairman of the Ekaterinburg soviet (but not in July 1918) and he did not write an official report. Mr Szamueiy should ask some of his historian colleagues, or if he hasn't done that, he should ask the Russians themselves. We did.

Bykov's " account " of the murders is an interesting, unofficial and inconsistent Soviet version. Bykov had access to the Sokolov report (there is evidence that he may have acquired seven dossiers stolen by Bolsheviks from Sokolov in Berlin), and he seems to have drawn heavily upon it where it suited the Soviet case. Yet it's a strange book. Whereas his account of what happened in Ekaterinburg up to the murdei date is detailed and convincing, as it should be, he becomes remarkably vague about the actual murders and adds little to the White Russian version.

Where he does clash with Sokolov, he clashes heavily.

Bykov says the corpses of Alexandra and her daughters were stripped and searched and "all the valuables collected." Well of course they weren't. Sokolov proved it with pictures. Bykov says the news of the execution of all the Romanovs was published a few days after the murders. That's a lie, and an important retrospective lie for the communists. Only the execution of the Tsar was announced. The rest of the family, said the notice, "had been evacuated to a place of safety." Bykov having virtually discounted the evidence of death left lying around the mine like a signpost, then has to account for the permanent non-appearance of half a ton of flesh, 350 teeth and eleven skulls. A problem? Not really; he simply says all the bodies were eventually taken away to a swamp. "There," he writes easily, "The bodies remained and by now have rotted away." No source, no evidence, no witness and no attribution for this colossal, vital allegation. Mr Szamuely buys it hook, line and sinker. Other, less gullible historians are not so sure. Nor are we.

Just over one year after the alleged murders of which Bykov boasted in his so-called official report, the communists themselves put on trial twenty-eight people accused of murdering the Tsar and his family. Several of the accused were executed for the crime, the ring-leader, Yakhontoff, confessed. He is not mentioned in either of the two reports Mr Szamuely hold so dear. Mr Szamuely might be able to explain this trial, but Bykov, wisely, ignored it, So, alas, for reasons of space, did we.

The fact is there has never been an official or unofficial report on the death of the family that retains much credibility fifty-four years later. The onus is now on the historian to prove death.

The sad thing is that there really is a serious debate to be held on the fate of the Russian Imperial family. We acknowledged they may have died, what we didn't indulge in was a parrot-like repetition of historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies.

"

History" wrote Lord Chesterfield in 1750, "is only a confused heap of facts." Benjamin Franklin took it further: "Historians relate not so much what is done, as what they would have believed."

Mr Szamuely believes the Imperial family died. We believe the established facts fail to show this. Tom Mangold Anthony Sumers From Sir Thomas Preston Sir: Mr George Edinger's letter on 'File on the Tsar (March 18) refers to me. I would remind Mr Edinger:

(1) That I held an exequater from the Tsarist Regime.

(2) I had been instructed by His Majesty's Government to support the Czechs and the Siberian Army seeing that they were to be used as a nucleus of the Allied intervention in Russia which followed.

(3) When I visited the Ural Soviet at Ekaterinburg for the first time, I was told (I quote) "that my Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, had left Russia, and an AngloAmerican Force had landed at Archangel." The Ural Soviet added (I quote) "they did not recognise me as Consul, and they did not know whether to talk to me or shoot me."

(4) Incidentally, besides mas

sacring the Russian Royal Family, the Ural Soviet did the same to thousands of Russians whose only crime was that they were not Communists. Moreover, the Ural Soviet, on

applying to Moscow as what to do with the Romanoff family in view of the rapid approach of the Czechs and Siberian Army, were told . . . "Act as you consider necessary" . . . whereupon they passed a resolution condemning the whole Russian Royal Family and their servants to death.

Later, when the Czechs and Siberian Army occupied Ekaterinburg on July 26, 1918, the Bolsheviks (Communists), who evacuated in panic, left a copy of a telegram they had sent to the Moscow Soviet stating that: "All the members of the Royal Family had shared the same fate as the Tsar," A copy of this telegram can he found in the Library of the British Museum. Thomas Preston The Hall, Beeston St. Lawrence, Neatishead, Norfolk