Thread by @akoz33

Here is another story that Edvard Radzinsky tells which I think is also relevant to his view on the role of Destiny or God in history.
Here is a shortened version (he tells it much better than I can repeat it).

During Gorbacchov’s perestroika he finally managed to get hold of the famous Yurovsky note (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Yur… ) in which the murder of the tsar’s family was described I great detail.

So, in his own way, possessing this unique material that had not yet been seen by any historian, he started to write a novel based on it. And he was writing on what he says was one of the first PCs in Moscow.

When he wrote 500 pages the computer suddenly crashed, or more exactly broke down. Radzinsky was writing at night and when he came to the Yurowsky note, the computer suddenly shut down and would not start again. .

He says that he had not yet read the note and the horror of the event began to reveal to him only when he was typing and suddenly the PC gave up the ghost. Nobody could help with anything - all 500 pages were gone.

And he felt very happy. He felt that this terrible burden has been lifted off his shoulders that all these bodies that were lying in a row in his mind were now gone, gone was the terrible question how this kind of thing could have happened in a Christian country,

and he could go back to his happy life as a celebrated playwright, among beautiful young actresses and actors. Then he went to a dacha. He did not have his own dacha (as he says, he did not private property was very secure in the Soviet Union so he preferred to rent).

He rented a dacha from a woman called Kalashnikova. And at two o’clock at night there is a call. He wakes up and answers the phone and the voice says: “Can I speak to Yurovsky?”.

He put down the receiver but soon the phone rang again: “I asked you in Russian, I want to speak to Yurovsky”. The phone was ringing until the morning.

In the morning, Radzinsky went to Kalashnikova’s house and told her carefully that he was woken up, and she profusely apologised and said I forgot to tell you this is my son’s house, his name is Yurovsky, after his father.

Then when it finished, he went to his friend, the pianist Nikolai Petrov and asked him to find him another place to stay. Petrov said, I will try and soon called Radzinsky. “I have found it. I will tell you address.” Radzinsky writes it down. “And the owner’s name is Romanov”.

And at this moment Radzinsky realised that there was no escape and he had to go back writing about the murder of the tsar and the Yurovsky note, restarting from scratch.