These “inner circles” are the men who “tried” the Tsar and condemned him to death, in other words, assumed the duty of carrying out Sverdlov’s orders. They sent “compromising” documents to Moscow afterwards: letters alleged to have been surreptitiously exchanged between the Tsar and officers outside. They are rank forgeries. One of them alludes to “five windows” facing the square, whereas the Tsar’s quarters comprised only two windows on that side, and if the alleged plotters had succeeded in penetrating the double barriers, scaling the house and entering as directed, they would have jumped into a veritable hornet’s nest. Besides, how could they hope to escape the machine-gunner on the roof? This mockery of a trial has been perpetuated by the “fakes” of sensation-seekers and imaginative writers. One enterprising foreigner cabled thousands of words from Ekaterinburg not long after the murder, describing the aeroplanes that hovered over the city--presumably to carry off the Tsar--and the dropping of bombs, etc., all of which was, of course, rank nonsense; but he also gave a wonderful account by “the Tsar’s faithful servant,” whose name had never been heard of, who told with a wealth of detail how the Tsar was fetched away “for trial” and how he came back and took an affecting leave of his wife and children before being shot all alone.... There are pages and pages of this stuff, and it is all absolute twaddle, but none the less mischievous. There was no trial of any sort whatsoever. The person named Sakovich in the above list was found in Ekaterinburg afterwards. He admits that he was in the room when Goloshchekin and his friends were talking to Yurovsky just before the murder, but he did not even pay attention to what they said, as the conversation was of such a banal character. No trial--therefore no verdicts, judgments or other such like formulæ, and no reading of any papers to the Tsar before the family was sent to its last account. This so-called “paper” is an invention inspired by the murderers, to fit in with the Moscow story of an intended trial. The only “paper” concocted by the murderers was the “Decision” as to the “execution.” At the Soviet headquarters in Ekaterinburg numerous drafts of this document were afterwards discovered and figure in the _dossier_. They show how troubled the murderers were to invent an appropriate lie for approval by Moscow. Why was the Tsar moved from Tobolsk and why was he not brought to Moscow, as Yakovlev had been instructed? It is absurd on the face of it to hint that the Ural Regional Sovdep was overriding the decisions of Moscow. We have just seen that the virtual rulers of the Ural were Yankel Sverdlov’s fellow-Jews and associates, even subordinates.