Grand Duchess Maria and the guard: did something inappropriate happen at the Ipatiev House?
Maria and the guard story: did something inappropriate really happen between the Grand Duchess and the guard Ivan Skorokhodov at The House of Special Purpose?
On June 14, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna turned 19 years old. It is unclear how her birthday was celebrated, or not celebrated, at the "House of Special Purpose"; what we do know is that many decades later, a story was published in one of the Romanov biographies, about a guard named Ivan Skorokhodov, who supposedly was more fond of Maria than was appropriate, and who smuggled a cake for her last birthday in June of 1918. It was claimed that this fondness was reciprocated on the part of the grand duchess, and Skorokhodov was consequently dismissed from his post, after being caught in a “compromising position” with Maria.
To be sure, George Hawkins and I addressed this narrative in our book, "Maria Romanov: Third Daughter of the Last Tsar", and found that there is absolutely no valid evidence that anything like this ever happened.
The story of the cake seems to have first originated with one of the executioners, Pyotr Ermakov, most of whose accounts have been proven to be extremely unreliable.
Ivan Skorokhodov was indeed a guard at the Ipatiev House, but he left due to an illness and hospitalisation rather than dismissal.
The "cake" myth served as a basis for stories about Maria being “shunned” or “frozen out” by her family members, by her mother and eldest sister Olga in particular, due to her alleged inappropriate behaviour, but again, there is no evidence that Maria was treated any differently by anyone.
The fact that she was the only one of the imperial children who did not have jewels sewn into her corset had nothing to do with being treated differently, but with the fact that she was the one who went to Ekaterinburg with her parents, while her siblings remained in Tobolsk, where they had secreted the jewels in their own under clothing, prior to their arrival at the Ipatiev house.
Parts of a note written by Yakov Yurovsky about a conversation with visiting clergy, which was cited as a source for the alleged "scandal" involving Maria and a guard, had been misconstrued, and used to imply that something untoward happened.
The Yurovsky note was quoted as stating that the priest who conducted the last service for the family stated that “one must give a pass [for inappropriate behaviour] to an imperial soul”.
However, the original note in Russian mentions nothing of the sort - the pertinent part actually reads: “I invited the Priest and the Deacon. When they had got dressed in their vestments in my commandant's office, I told them that they could perform the Service according to custom, but warned them there must be no conversation. The Deacon declared, ‘This is what happened before and not with such important people. If one messes it up, it can cause a scandal, but in this situation, we can sort it out in a good spirit’”.
It is still not completely clear where the myth of Maria’s inappropriate behaviour and consequent shunning was derived from, but it seems that it was just based upon a faulty translation in the original publication that referenced the alleged incident.
Another reason why the “cake” incident, not to mention "compromising" antics, was extremely unlikely, is as follows: after the new commandant Yakov Yurovsky arrived at the Ipatiev house, he installed an entirely different guard team, and started hyper-monitoring any fraternisation between the guards and prisoners during their final weeks. Breaking any rules, no matter how minor, resulted in the violator being immediately thrown into a local jail. That would just be the punishment for entering into a conversation with one of the prisoners. The alleged incident such as described, would have carried an even worse punishment, most likely an immediate execution, and the guards all knew this.
In conclusion, it is true that none of us has a way of knowing what may have happened behind closed doors at the House of Special Purpose, but there is absolutely no evidence that anything inappropriate ever happened between any of the grand duchesses and the guards. Any references used to indicate that something like that happened, is extremely unreliable or simply nonexistent.
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