Death of Nicholas 2 and his family. The execution of the royal family: what really happened. Each one will be rewarded according to his deeds

08.04.2020

Everyone who in one way or another came close to the shooting case royal family, killed? Why can’t you trust the books of Sokolov (the seventh! investigator in this case), published after his murder? The historian of the royal family, Sergei Ivanovich, answers these questions.

The royal family was not shot!

The last Russian Tsar was not shot, but perhaps left hostage.

Agree: it would be stupid to shoot the Tsar without first shaking out his honestly earned money from his cashboxes. So he was not shot. However, it was not possible to get the money right away, because the times were too turbulent...

Regularly, by the middle of summer of each year, loud crying for the king, who was killed for no reason, is resumed. NicholasII, whom Christians also “canonized” in 2000. Here is Comrade. Starikov, exactly on July 17, once again threw “wood” into the firebox of emotional lamentations about nothing. I was not interested in this issue before, and would not have paid attention to another dummy, BUT... At the last meeting in his life with readers, Academician Nikolai Levashov just mentioned that in the 30s Stalin met with NikolaiII and asked him for money to prepare for a future war. This is how Nikolai Goryushin writes about it in his report “There are prophets in our fatherland!” about this meeting with readers:

“...In this regard, the information related to tragic fate last Emperor Russian Empire Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov and his family... In August 1917, he and his family were deported to the last capital of the Slavic-Aryan Empire, the city of Tobolsk. The choice of this city was not accidental, since the highest degrees of Freemasonry are aware of the great past of the Russian people. The exile to Tobolsk was a kind of mockery of the Romanov dynasty, which in 1775 defeated the troops of the Slavic-Aryan Empire (Great Tartaria), and later this event was called the suppression of the peasant revolt of Emelyan Pugachev... In July 1918 Jacob Schiff gives a command to one of his trusted persons in the Bolshevik leadership Yakov Sverdlov for the ritual murder of the royal family. Sverdlov, after consulting with Lenin, orders the commandant of Ipatiev’s house, a security officer Yakov Yurovsky carry out the plan. According to official history, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Nikolai Romanov, along with his wife and children, was shot.

At the meeting, Nikolai Levashov said that in fact NikolaiII and his family were not shot! This statement immediately raises many questions. I decided to look into them. Many works have been written on this topic, and the picture of the execution and the testimony of witnesses look plausible at first glance. The facts obtained by investigator A.F. do not fit into the logical chain. Kirstoy, who joined the investigation in August 1918. During the investigation, he interviewed Dr. P.I. Utkin, who reported that at the end of October 1918 he was invited to the building occupied by the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution to provide medical care. The victim turned out to be a young girl, presumably 22 years old, with a cut lip and a tumor under her eye. To the question “who is she?” the girl replied that she was “ daughter of the Tsar Anastasia" During the investigation, investigator Kirsta did not find the corpses of the royal family in Ganina Pit. Soon, Kirsta found numerous witnesses who told him during interrogations that in September 1918, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Grand Duchesses were kept in Perm. And witness Samoilov stated from the words of his neighbor, the guard of Ipatiev’s house Varakushev, that there was no execution, the royal family was loaded into a carriage and taken away.

After receiving this data, A.F. Kirst is removed from the case and ordered to hand over all materials to investigator A.S. Sokolov. Nikolai Levashov reported that the motive for saving the lives of the Tsar and his family was the desire of the Bolsheviks, contrary to the orders of their masters, to take possession of hidden wealth of the dynasty The Romanovs, whose location Nikolai Alexandrovich certainly knew. Soon the organizers of the execution in 1919, Sverdlov, and Lenin in 1924 die. Nikolai Viktorovich clarified that Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov communicated with I.V. Stalin, and the wealth of the Russian Empire was used to strengthen the power of the USSR..."

Speech by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Veniamin Alekseev.
Ekaterinburg remains - more questions than answers:

If this was the first lie of Comrade. Starikova, one might well think that the person still knows little and was simply mistaken. But Starikov is the author of several very good books and is very savvy in matters of recent Russian history. This leads to the obvious conclusion that he is deliberately disingenuous. I won’t write here about the reasons for this lie, although they lie right on the surface... I’d better give some more evidence that the royal family was not executed in July 1918, and the rumor about the execution was most likely started for “reporting” before customers - Schiff and other comrades who financed the coup in Russia in February 1917…

Did Nicholas II meet with Stalin?

There are suggestions that Nicholas II was not shot, and the entire female half of the royal family was taken to Germany. But the documents are still classified...

For me, this story began in November 1983. I then worked as a photojournalist for a French agency and was sent to a summit of heads of state and government in Venice. There I accidentally met an Italian colleague, who, having learned that I was Russian, showed me a newspaper (I think it was La Repubblica) dated the day of our meeting. In the article to which the Italian drew my attention, it was said that a certain nun, Sister Pascalina, died in Rome at a very old age. I later learned that this woman held an important position in the Vatican hierarchy under Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), but that is not the point.

The secret of the Vatican's "Iron Lady"

This sister Pascalina, who earned the honorable nickname of the “Iron Lady” of the Vatican, before her death called a notary with two witnesses and in their presence dictated information that she did not want to take with her to the grave: one of the daughters of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II - Olga- was not shot by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 16-17, 1918, but lived long life and was buried in a cemetery in the village of Marcotte in northern Italy.

After the summit, I and my Italian friend, who was both my driver and translator, went to this village. We found the cemetery and this grave. On the plate was written in German:

« Olga Nikolaevna, eldest daughter of Russian Tsar Nikolai Romanov” – and dates of life: “1895-1976”.

We talked with the cemetery watchman and his wife: they, like all the village residents, remembered Olga Nikolaevna very well, knew who she was, and were sure that the Russian Grand Duchess was under the protection of the Vatican.

This strange find interested me extremely, and I decided to look into all the circumstances of the execution myself. And in general, was he there?

I have every reason to believe that there was no execution. On the night of July 16-17, all the Bolsheviks and their sympathizers left for railway to Perm. The next morning, leaflets were posted around Yekaterinburg with the message that the royal family was taken away from the city, - so it was. Soon the city was occupied by whites. Naturally, an investigative commission was formed “in the case of the disappearance of Emperor Nicholas II, the Empress, the Tsarevich and the Grand Duchesses,” which did not find any convincing traces of the execution.

Investigator Sergeev in 1919 he said in an interview with an American newspaper:

“I don’t think that everyone was executed here - both the king and his family. “In my opinion, the empress, prince and grand duchesses were not executed in Ipatiev’s house.” This conclusion did not suit Admiral Kolchak, who by that time had already proclaimed himself the “supreme ruler of Russia.” And really, why does the “supreme” need some kind of emperor? Kolchak ordered the collection of a second investigative team, which got to the bottom of the fact that in September 1918 the Empress and the Grand Duchesses were kept in Perm. Only the third investigator, Nikolai Sokolov (led the case from February to May 1919), turned out to be more understanding and issued the well-known conclusion that the entire family had been shot, the corpses dismembered and burned at the stake. “Parts that were not susceptible to fire,” wrote Sokolov, “were destroyed with the help of sulfuric acid».

What, then, was buried? in 1998. in the Peter and Paul Cathedral? Let me remind you that shortly after the start of perestroika, some skeletons were found in Porosyonkovo Log near Yekaterinburg. In 1998, they were solemnly reburied in the Romanov family tomb, after numerous genetic examinations were carried out before that. Moreover, the guarantor of the authenticity of the royal remains was the secular power of Russia in the person of President Boris Yeltsin. But the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the bones as the remains of the royal family.

But let's go back to the times Civil War. According to my data, in Perm royal family divided. The path of the female part lay in Germany, while the men - Nikolai Romanov himself and Tsarevich Alexei - were left in Russia. Father and son were kept for a long time near Serpukhov at the former dacha of the merchant Konshin. Later in the NKVD reports this place was known as "Object No. 17". Most likely, the prince died in 1920 from hemophilia. I can’t say anything about the fate of the last Russian emperor. Except for one thing: in the 30s “Object No. 17” Stalin visited twice. Does this mean that Nicholas II was still alive in those years?

The men were left hostage

To understand why such incredible events from the point of view of a 21st century person became possible and to find out who needed them, you will have to go back to 1918. Remember from school course stories about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk? Yes, on March 3, in Brest-Litovsk, a peace treaty was concluded between Soviet Russia on the one hand and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey on the other. Russia lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic states and part of Belarus. But this was not why Lenin called the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty “humiliating” and “obscene.” By the way, the full text of the agreement has not yet been published either in the East or in the West. I believe that because of the secret conditions present in it. Probably the Kaiser, who was a relative of Empress Maria Feodorovna, demanded that all women of the royal family be transferred to Germany. The girls had no rights to the Russian throne and, therefore, could not threaten the Bolsheviks in any way. The men remained hostages - as guarantors that the German army would not venture further east than stated in the peace treaty.

What happened next? What was the fate of the women brought to the West? Was their silence a requirement for their integrity? Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers.

Interview with Vladimir Sychev on the Romanov case

A most interesting interview with Vladimir Sychev, who refutes official version execution of the royal family. He talks about the grave of Olga Romanova in northern Italy, about the investigation of two British journalists, about the conditions of the Brest Peace of 1918, under which all the women of the royal family were handed over to the Germans in Kyiv...

Author – Vladimir Sychev

The execution of the royal family is a falsification (Sychev V.):

In June 1987, I was in Venice as part of the French press accompanying François Mitterrand to the G7 summit. During breaks between pools, an Italian journalist approached me and asked me something in French. Realizing from my accent that I was not French, he looked at my French accreditation and asked where I was from. “Russian,” I answered. - Is that so? – my interlocutor was surprised. Under his arm he held an Italian newspaper, from which he translated a huge, half-page article.

Sister Pascalina dies in a private clinic in Switzerland. She was known to the entire Catholic world, because... passed with the future Pope Pius XXII from 1917, when he was still Cardinal Pacelli in Munich (Bavaria), until his death in the Vatican in 1958. She had such a strong influence on him that he entrusted her with the entire administration of the Vatican, and when the cardinals asked for an audience with the Pope, she decided who was worthy of such an audience and who was not. This - short retelling a long article, the meaning of which was that we had to believe the phrase uttered at the end and not by a mere mortal. Sister Pascalina asked to invite a lawyer and witnesses because she did not want to take her to the grave the secret of your life. When they appeared, she only said that the woman buried in the village Morcote, near Lake Maggiore – indeed daughter of the Russian Tsar - Olga!!

I convinced my Italian colleague that this was a gift from Fate, and that it was useless to resist her. Having learned that he was from Milan, I told him that I would not fly back to Paris on the presidential press plane, but he and I would go to this village for half a day. We went there after the summit. It turned out that this was no longer Italy, but Switzerland, but we quickly found a village, a cemetery and a cemetery watchman who led us to the grave. On the gravestone - photograph elderly woman and the inscription in German: Olga Nikolaevna(no surname), eldest daughter of Nikolai Romanov, Tsar of Russia, and dates of life – 1985-1976!!!

The Italian journalist was an excellent translator for me, but he clearly didn’t want to stay there for the whole day. All I had to do was ask questions.

– When did she live here? – In 1948.

– She said that she was the daughter of the Russian Tsar? - Of course, the whole village knew about it.

– Did this get into the press? - Yes.

– How did the other Romanovs react to this? Did they sue? - They served it.

- And she lost? - Yes, I lost.

– In this case, she had to pay the legal costs of the other party. - She paid.

- She worked? - No.

-Where does she get the money from? – Yes, the whole village knew that the Vatican was supporting her!!

The ring has closed. I went to Paris and began to look for what was known on this issue... And quickly came across a book by two English journalists.

II

Tom Mangold and Anthony Summers published a book in 1979 "Dossier on the Tsar"(“The Romanov Case, or the Execution that Never Happened”). They started with the fact that if the classification of secrecy from state archives is removed after 60 years, then in 1978 60 years will expire from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and you can “dig up” something there by looking into the declassified archives. That is, at first the idea was just to look... And they very quickly got to telegrams the British ambassador to his Foreign Ministry that the royal family was taken from Yekaterinburg to Perm. There is no need to explain to BBC professionals that this is a sensation. They rushed to Berlin.

It quickly became clear that the Whites, having entered Yekaterinburg on July 25, immediately appointed an investigator to investigate the execution of the royal family. Nikolai Sokolov, whose book everyone still refers to, is the third investigator who received the case only at the end of February 1919! Then a simple question arises: who were the first two and what did they report to their superiors? So, the first investigator named Nametkin, appointed by Kolchak, having worked for three months and declaring that he is a professional, the matter is simple, and he does not need additional time (and the Whites were advancing and did not doubt their victory at that time - i.e. all the time is yours, don’t rush, work!), puts a report on the table stating that there was no execution, but there was a mock execution. Kolchak shelved this report and appointed a second investigator named Sergeev. He also works for three months and at the end of February hands Kolchak the same report with the same words (“I am a professional, the matter is simple, no additional time is needed,” there was no execution– there was a mock execution).

Here it is necessary to explain and remind that it was the Whites who overthrew the Tsar, not the Reds, and they sent him into exile in Siberia! Lenin was in Zurich these February days. No matter what ordinary soldiers say, the white elite are not monarchists, but republicans. And Kolchak did not need a living Tsar. I advise those who have doubts to read Trotsky’s diaries, where he writes that “if the Whites had nominated any tsar - even a peasant one - we would not have lasted even two weeks”! These are the words of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army and the ideologist of the Red Terror!! Please believe me.

Therefore, Kolchak already appoints “his” investigator Nikolai Sokolov and gives him a task. And Nikolai Sokolov also works for only three months - but for a different reason. The Reds entered Yekaterinburg in May, and he retreated along with the Whites. He took the archives, but what did he write?

1. He did not find any corpses, and for the police of any country in any system “no bodies - no murder” is a disappearance! After all, when arresting serial killers, the police demand to see where the corpses are hidden!! You can say anything, even about yourself, but the investigator needs physical evidence!

And Nikolai Sokolov “hangs the first noodles on our ears”:

“thrown into a mine, filled with acid”.

Nowadays they prefer to forget this phrase, but we heard it until 1998! And for some reason no one ever doubted it. Is it possible to fill a mine with acid? But there won't be enough acid! In the local history museum of Yekaterinburg, where director Avdonin (the same one, one of the three who “accidentally” found the bones on the Starokotlyakovskaya road, cleared before them by three investigators in 1918-19), there is a certificate about those soldiers on the truck that they had 78 liters of gasoline (not acid). In the month of July in the Siberian taiga, with 78 liters of gasoline, you can burn the entire Moscow zoo! No, they went back and forth, first they threw it into the mine, poured it with acid, and then took it out and hid it under the sleepers...

By the way, on the night of the “execution” from July 16 to 17, 1918, a huge train with the entire local Red Army, the local Central Committee and the local Cheka left Yekaterinburg for Perm. The Whites entered on the eighth day, and Yurovsky, Beloborodov and his comrades shifted responsibility to two soldiers? Inconsistency, - tea, we were not dealing with a peasant revolt. And if they shot at their own discretion, they could have done it a month earlier.

2. The second “noodle” by Nikolai Sokolov - he describes the basement of the Ipatievsky house, publishes photographs where it is clear that there are bullets in the walls and in the ceiling (when they stage an execution, this is apparently what they do). Conclusion - the women's corsets were filled with diamonds, and the bullets ricocheted! So, it’s like this: the Tsar from the throne and into exile in Siberia. Money in England and Switzerland, and they sew diamonds into corsets to sell to peasants at the market? Well well!

3. The same book by Nikolai Sokolov describes the same basement in the same Ipatiev house, where in the fireplace there are clothes from every member of the imperial family and hair from every head. Did they have their hair cut and changed (undressed??) before being shot? Not at all - they were taken out on the same train on that very “night of the execution,” but they cut their hair and changed their clothes so that no one would recognize them there.

III

Tom Magold and Anthony Summers intuitively understood that the answer to this intriguing detective story must be sought in Treaty of the Brest-Litovsk Peace. And they began to look for the original text. And what?? With all the removal of secrets after 60 years of such an official document nowhere! It is not in the declassified archives of London or Berlin. They searched everywhere - and everywhere they found only quotes, but nowhere could they find the full text! And they came to the conclusion that the Kaiser demanded from Lenin that the women be extradited. The Tsar's wife was a relative of the Kaiser, his daughters were German citizens and had no right to the throne, and besides, the Kaiser at that moment could crush Lenin like a bug! And here are Lenin’s words that “The world is humiliating and obscene, but it must be signed”, and the July attempt at a coup by the Socialist Revolutionaries with Dzerzhinsky joining them at the Bolshoi Theater takes on a completely different form.

Officially, we were taught that Trotsky signed the Treaty only on the second attempt and only after the start of the German army’s offensive, when it became clear to everyone that the Republic of Soviets could not resist. If there is simply no army, what is “humiliating and obscene” here? Nothing. But if it is necessary to hand over all the women of the royal family, and even to the Germans, and even during the First World War, then ideologically everything is in its place, and the words are read correctly. Which Lenin did, and the entire ladies’ section was handed over to the Germans in Kyiv. And immediately murder German Ambassador Mirbach in Moscow and the German consul in Kyiv begin to make sense.

“Dossier on the Tsar” is a fascinating investigation into one cunningly intricate intrigue of world history. The book was published in 1979, so the words of sister Paskalina in 1983 about Olga’s grave could not have been included in it. And if there were no new facts, there would be no point in simply retelling someone else’s book here.

10 years have passed. In November 1997, in Moscow, I met former political prisoner Geliy Donskoy from St. Petersburg. The conversation over tea in the kitchen also touched upon the king and his family. When I said that there was no execution, he calmly answered me:

– I know it wasn’t.

- Well, you are the first in 10 years,

- I answered him, almost falling from my chair.

Then I asked him to tell me his sequence of events, wanting to find out at what point our versions coincide and at what point they begin to diverge. He did not know about the extradition of the women, believing that they died somewhere in different places. There was no doubt that they were all taken out of Yekaterinburg. I told him about the “Dossier on the Tsar,” and he told me about one seemingly insignificant find that he and his friends noticed in the 80s.

They came across the memoirs of the participants in the “execution”, published in the 30s. In them, except known facts that two weeks before the “execution” a new guard arrived, it was said that a high fence was built around the Ipatievsky house. It would be of no use for execution in a basement, but if a family needs to be taken out unnoticed, then it would come in handy. The most important thing - something that no one had ever paid attention to before - the head of the new guard spoke with Yurovsky at foreign language! They checked the lists - the head of the new guard was Lisitsyn (all participants in the “execution” are known). It seems nothing special. And here they were really lucky: at the beginning of perestroika, Gorbachev opened hitherto closed archives (my Sovietologist friends confirmed that this happened for two years), and then they began searching in declassified documents. And they found it! It turned out that Lisitsyn was not Lisitsyn at all, but an American Fox!!! I was ready for this a long time ago. I already knew from books and from life that Trotsky came to make a revolution from New York on a ship full of Americans (everyone knows about Lenin and the two carriages with Germans and Austrians). The Kremlin was full of foreigners who did not speak Russian (there was even Petin, but an Austrian!) Therefore, the guards were made up of Latvian riflemen, so that the people would not even think that foreigners had seized power.

And then mine new friend Helium Donskoy completely captivated me. He asked himself one very important question. Fox-Lisitsyn arrived as the head of the new guard (in reality, the head of the royal family’s security) on July 2. On the night of the “execution” on July 16-17, 1918, he left on the same train. And where did he get his new assignment? He became the first head of the new secret facility No. 17 near Serpukhov (on the estate of the former merchant Konshin), which Stalin visited twice! (why?! More on that below.)

I have been telling this whole story with the new continuation to all my friends since 1997.

On one of my visits to Moscow, my friend Yura Feklistov asked me to visit his school friend, and now a candidate historical sciences so that I could tell him everything myself. That historian named Sergei was the press secretary of the Kremlin commandant’s office (scientists were not paid salaries in those days). At the appointed hour, Yura and I climbed the wide Kremlin stairs and entered the office. Just like now in this article, I started with sister Pascalina and when I came to her phrase that “the woman buried in the village of Morkote is really the daughter of the Russian Tsar Olga,” Sergei almost jumped: “Now it’s clear why The Patriarch did not go to the funeral! - he exclaimed.

This was also obvious to me - after all, despite the strained relations between different faiths, when it comes to persons of this rank, information is exchanged. I just did not understand the position of the “workers”, who from faithful Marxists-Leninists suddenly became devout Christians, do not value several statements of His Holiness himself. After all, even I, being in Moscow only on visits, twice heard the Patriarch say on central television that the examination of the royal bones cannot be trusted! I heard it twice, but what, no one else?? Well, he could not say more and declare publicly that there was no execution. This is the prerogative of the highest government officials, not the church.

Further, when at the very end I told that the tsar and the prince were settled near Serpukhov on the Konshin estate, Sergei shouted: “Vasya!” You have all of Stalin's movements in your computer. Well, tell me, was he in the Serpukhov area? “Vasya turned on the computer and answered: “I was there twice.” Once at the dacha of a foreign writer, and another time at Ordzhonikidze’s dacha.

I was prepared for this turn of events. The point is that in Kremlin wall Not only is John Reed (the journalist-writer of one book) buried there, but 117 foreigners are buried there! And this was from November 1917 to January 1919!! These are the same German, Austrian and American communists from the Kremlin offices. People like Fox-Lisitsyn, John Reed and other Americans who left their mark on Soviet history after the fall of Trotsky were legalized as journalists by official Soviet historians. (An interesting parallel: the artist Roerich’s expedition to Tibet from Moscow was paid for by the Americans in 1920! This means there were a lot of them there). Others ran away - they were not children and knew what awaited them. By the way, apparently, this Fox was the founder of the cinema empire “XX Century Fox” in 1934 after Trotsky’s expulsion.

But let's return to Stalin. I think few people will believe that Stalin traveled 100 km from Moscow to meet with a “foreign writer” or even Sergo Ordzhonikidze! He received them in the Kremlin.

He met the Tsar there!! With the man in the iron mask!!!

And this was in the 30s. This is where writers' imaginations can unfold!

These two meetings are very intriguing to me. I'm sure they discussed at least one topic seriously. And Stalin did not discuss this topic with anyone. He believed the Tsar, not his marshals! This Finnish war- Finnish campaign, as it is shyly called in Soviet history. Why the campaign - after all, there was a war? Yes, because there was no preparation - a campaign! And only the tsar could give such advice to Stalin. He had been in captivity for 20 years. The king knew the past - Finland was never a state. The Finns really defended themselves to the last. When the order for a truce came, several thousand soldiers came out of the Soviet trenches, and only four from the Finnish ones.

Instead of an afterword

About 10 years ago I told this story to my Moscow colleague Sergei. When he reached the Konshin estate, where the Tsar and the Tsarevich were settled, he became agitated, stopped the car and said:

“Let my wife tell you.”

– I dialed the number on my mobile and asked:

- Darling, do you remember how we were students in 1972 in Serpukhov at the Konshina estate, where is the local history museum? Tell me, why were we shocked then?

“And my dear wife answered me on the phone:

“We were completely horrified.” All graves have been opened. We were told that they were plundered by bandits.

I think that it was not the bandits, but that they had already decided to deal with the bones at the right moment. By the way, in the Konshin estate there was the grave of Colonel Romanov. The king was a colonel.

June 2012, Paris – Berlin

The Romanov case, or the execution that never happened

A. Summers T. Mangold

translation: Yuri Ivanovich Senin

The Romanov Case, or the Execution that Never Happened

The story described in this book can be called a detective story, although it is the result of a serious journalistic investigation. Dozens of books told with great conviction how the Bolsheviks shot the Royal Family in the basement of the Ipatiev House.

It would seem that the version of the execution of the Royal Family has been clearly proven. However, in most of these works, the “bibliography” section mentions the book by American journalists A. Summers and T. Mangold “The file on the tsar”, published in London in 1976. Mentioned, that's all. No comments, no links. And no translations. Even the original of this book is not easy to find.

Exactly 100 years ago, on July 17, 1918, security officers shot the royal family in Yekaterinburg. The remains were found more than 50 years later. There are many rumors and myths surrounding the execution. At the request of colleagues from Meduza, journalist and associate professor at RANEPA Ksenia Luchenko, the author of many publications on this topic, answered key questions about the murder and burial of the Romanovs

How many people were shot?

The royal family and their entourage were shot in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 17, 1918. In total, 11 people were killed - Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, their four daughters - Anastasia, Olga, Maria and Tatiana, son Alexei, the family doctor Yevgeny Botkin, cook Ivan Kharitonov and two servants - valet Aloysius Troupe and maid Anna Demidova.

The execution order has not yet been found. Historians have found a telegram from Yekaterinburg, in which it is written that the tsar was shot because the enemy was approaching the city and the discovery of a White Guard conspiracy. The decision to execute was made by the local government authority Uralsovet. However, historians believe that the order was given by the party leadership, and not the Urals Council. The commandant of the Ipatiev House, Yakov Yurovsky, was appointed the main person in charge of the execution.

Is it true that some members of the royal family did not die immediately?

Yes, according to the testimony of witnesses to the execution, Tsarevich Alexei survived the machine gun fire. He was shot by Yakov Yurovsky with a revolver. Security guard Pavel Medvedev spoke about this. He wrote that Yurovsky sent him outside to check if shots were heard. When he returned, the whole room was covered in blood, and Tsarevich Alexei was still moaning.

Photo: Grand Duchess Olga and Tsarevich Alexei on the ship "Rus" on the way from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. May 1918, last known photograph

Yurovsky himself wrote that it was not only Alexei who had to be “finished”, but also his three sisters, the “maid of honor” (maid Demidova) and Doctor Botkin. There is also evidence from another eyewitness, Alexander Strekotin.

“The arrested were all already lying on the floor, bleeding, and the heir was still sitting on the chair. For some reason he did not fall from the chair for a long time and remained alive.”

They say that bullets bounced off the diamonds on the princesses' belts. This is true?

Yurovsky wrote in his note that the bullets ricocheted off something and jumped around the room like hailstones. Immediately after the execution, the security officers tried to appropriate the property of the royal family, but Yurovsky threatened them with death so that they would return the stolen property. Jewels were also found in Ganina Yama, where Yurovsky’s team burned the personal belongings of the murdered (the inventory includes diamonds, platinum earrings, thirteen large pearls, and so on).

Is it true that their animals were killed along with the royal family?

Photo: Grand Duchesses Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana in Tsarskoe Selo, where they were detained. With them are Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Jemmy and French bulldog Ortino. Spring 1917

The royal children had three dogs. After the night execution, only one survived - Tsarevich Alexei's spaniel named Joy. He was taken to England, where he died of old age in the palace of King George, cousin of Nicholas II. A year after the execution, the body of a dog was found at the bottom of a mine in Ganina Yama, which was well preserved in the cold. Her right leg was broken and her head was pierced. Teacher in English royal children Charles Gibbs, who helped Nikolai Sokolov in the investigation, identified her as Jemmy, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel of Grand Duchess Anastasia. The third dog, Tatiana's French bulldog, was also found dead.

How were the remains of the royal family found?

After the execution, Yekaterinburg was occupied by the army of Alexander Kolchak. He ordered to begin an investigation into the murder and find the remains of the royal family. Investigator Nikolai Sokolov studied the area, found fragments of burnt clothing of members of the royal family and even described a “bridge of sleepers”, under which a burial was found several decades later, but came to the conclusion that the remains were completely destroyed in Ganina Yama.

The remains of the royal family were found only in the late 1970s. Film writer Geliy Ryabov was obsessed with the idea of finding the remains, and Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “Emperor” helped him in this. Thanks to the poet’s lines, Ryabov got an idea of the Tsar’s burial place, which the Bolsheviks showed to Mayakovsky. Ryabov often wrote about the exploits of the Soviet police, so he had access to classified documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Photo: Photo No. 70. An open mine at the time of its development. Ekaterinburg, spring 1919

In 1976, Ryabov came to Sverdlovsk, where he met local historian and geologist Alexander Avdonin. It is clear that even the scriptwriters favored by the ministers in those years were not allowed to openly search for the remains of the royal family. Therefore, Ryabov, Avdonin and their assistants secretly searched for the burial place for several years.

The son of Yakov Yurovsky gave Ryabov a “note” from his father, where he described not only the murder of the royal family, but also the subsequent scrambles of the security officers in attempts to hide the bodies. The description of the final burial site under a flooring of sleepers near a truck stuck on the road coincided with Mayakovsky’s “instructions” about the road. It was the old Koptyakovskaya road, and the place itself was called Porosenkov Log. Ryabov and Avdonin explored the space with probes, which they delineated by comparing maps and various documents.

In the summer of 1979, they found a burial and opened it for the first time, taking out three skulls. They realized that it would be impossible to conduct any examinations in Moscow, and keeping the skulls in their possession was dangerous, so the researchers put them in a box and returned them to the grave a year later. They kept the secret until 1989. And in 1991, the remains of nine people were officially found. Two more badly burnt bodies (by that time it was already clear that these were the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria) were found in 2007 a little further away.

Is it true that the murder of the royal family was ritual?

There is a typical anti-Semitic myth that Jews allegedly kill people for ritual purposes. And the execution of the royal family also has its own “ritual” version.

Finding themselves in exile in the 1920s, three participants in the first investigation into the murder of the royal family - investigator Nikolai Sokolov, journalist Robert Wilton and General Mikhail Diterichs - wrote books about it.

Sokolov cites an inscription he saw on the wall in the basement of the Ipatiev house where the murder took place: “Belsazar ward in selbiger Nacht Von seinen Knechten umgebracht.” This is a quote from Heinrich Heine and translates as “On this very night Belshazzar was killed by his slaves.” He also mentions that he saw there a certain “designation of four signs.” Wilton in his book concludes from this that the signs were “kabbalistic”, adds that among the members of the firing squad there were Jews (of those directly involved in the execution, only one Jew was Yakov Yurovsky, and he was baptized into Lutheranism) and comes to the version about the ritual murder of the royal family. Dieterichs also adheres to the anti-Semitic version.

Wilton also writes that during the investigation, Dieterichs assumed that the heads of the dead were severed and taken to Moscow as trophies. Most likely, this assumption was born in attempts to prove that the bodies were burned in Ganina Yama: teeth that should have remained after the burning were not found in the fire pit, therefore, there were no heads in it.

The version of ritual murder circulated in emigrant monarchist circles. Russian foreign Orthodox Church canonized the royal family in 1981 - almost 20 years earlier than the Russian Orthodox Church, so many of the myths that the cult of the martyr king managed to acquire in Europe were exported to Russia.

In 1998, the Patriarchate asked the investigation ten questions, which were fully answered by the senior prosecutor-criminologist of the Main Investigation Department of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Solovyov, who led the investigation. Question No. 9 was about the ritual nature of the murder, question No. 10 was about the cutting off of heads. Soloviev replied that in Russian legal practice there are no criteria for “ritual murder,” but “the circumstances of the death of the family indicate that the actions of those involved in the direct execution of the sentence (choice of the place of execution, team, murder weapon, burial place, manipulation of corpses) , were determined by random circumstances. People of various nationalities (Russians, Jews, Magyars, Latvians and others) took part in these actions. The so-called “Kabbalistic writings have no analogues in the world, and their writing is interpreted arbitrarily, with essential details being discarded.” All the skulls of those killed were intact and relatively intact; additional anthropological studies confirmed the presence of all cervical vertebrae and their correspondence to each of the skulls and bones of the skeleton.

The royal family spent 78 days in their last home.

Commissar A.D. Avdeev was appointed the first commandant of the “House of Special Purpose”.

Preparations for execution

According to the official Soviet version, the decision to execute was made only by the Urals Council; Moscow was notified of this only after the death of the family.

At the beginning of July 1918, the Ural military commissar Filipp Goloshchekin went to Moscow to resolve the issue of future fate royal family.

At its meeting on July 12, the Urals Council adopted a resolution on the execution, as well as on methods for destroying the corpses, and on July 16, it transmitted a message (if the telegram is genuine) about this via direct wire to Petrograd - G. E. Zinoviev. At the end of the conversation with Yekaterinburg, Zinoviev sent a telegram to Moscow:

There is no archived source for the telegram.

Thus, the telegram was received in Moscow on July 16 at 21:22. The phrase “court agreed upon with Filippov” is an encrypted decision to execute the Romanovs, which was agreed upon by Goloshchekin during his stay in the capital. However, the Urals Council asked once again to confirm this in writing earlier decision, citing “military circumstances”, since the fall of Yekaterinburg was expected under the blows of the Czechoslovak Corps and the White Siberian Army.

Execution

On the night of July 16-17, the Romanovs and the servants went to bed, as usual, at 10:30 p.m. At 23:30 two special representatives from the Urals Council appeared at the mansion. They presented the decision of the executive committee to the commander of the security detachment P.Z. Ermakov and the new commandant of the house, Commissioner of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission Yakov Yurovsky, who replaced Avdeev in this position on July 4, and proposed to immediately begin the execution of the sentence.

The awakened family members and staff were told that due to the advance of the white troops, the mansion might be under fire, and therefore, for safety reasons, they needed to move to the basement.

There is a version that in order to carry out the execution, Yurovsky drew up the following document:

Revolutionary Committee under the Yekaterinburg Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies REVOLUTIONARY HEADQUARTERS OF THE URAL DISTRICT Extraordinary Commission List of Special Forces Teams to the Ipatiev House / 1st Kamishl.Rifle Regiment / Commandant: Gorvat Laons Fischer Anselm Zdelshtein Izidor Fekete Emil Nad Imre Grinfeld Victor Vergazi Andreas Regional Com. Vaganov Serge Medvedev Pav Nikulin Yekaterinburg July 18, 1918 Head of the Cheka Yurovsky

However, according to V.P. Kozlov, I.F. Plotnikov, this document, at one time provided to the press by former Austrian prisoner of war I.P. Meyer, first published in Germany in 1956 and, most likely, fabricated, does not reflect the real hit list.

According to their version, the execution team consisted of: member of the board of the Ural Central Committee - M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), commandant of the house Ya. M. Yurovsky, his deputy G. P. Nikulin, security commander P. Z. Ermakov and ordinary guard soldiers - Hungarians (according to other sources - Latvians). In the light of I. F. Plotnikov’s research, the list of those executed may look like this: Ya. M. Yurovsky, G. P. Nikulin, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), P. Z. Ermakov, S. P. Vaganov, A. G. . Kabanov, P. S. Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, J. M. Tselms and, under a very big question, an unknown mining student. Plotnikov believes that the latter was used in Ipatiev’s house within only a few days after the execution and only as a jewelry specialist. Thus, according to Plotnikov, the execution of the royal family was carried out by a group whose national composition was almost entirely Russian, with the participation of one Jew (Ya. M. Yurovsky) and, probably, one Latvian (Ya. M. Tselms). According to surviving information, two or three Latvians refused to participate in the execution. ,

The fate of the Romanovs

In addition to the family of the former emperor, all members of the House of Romanov, who for various reasons remained in Russia after the revolution, were destroyed (with the exception of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich, who died in Tashkent from pneumonia, and two children of his son Alexander Iskander - Natalia Androsova (1917-1999 ) and Kirill Androsov (1915-1992), who lived in Moscow).

Memoirs of contemporaries

Memoirs of Trotsky

My next visit to Moscow came after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing:
Yes, where is the king?

“It’s over,” he answered, “he was shot.”

-Where is the family? - And his family is with him., received by him from Yekaterinburg.

-Have you not heard? - asked Yakov Mikhailovich. - After all, the Urals shot Nikolai Romanov.

Of course, I haven't heard anything yet. The message from Yekaterinburg was received only in the afternoon. The situation in Yekaterinburg was alarming: the White Czechs were approaching the city, the local counter-revolution was stirring. The Ural Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, having received information that the escape of Nikolai Romanov, who was being held in Yekaterinburg, was being prepared, issued a resolution to shoot the former tsar and immediately carried out his sentence.

Yakov Mikhailovich, having received a message from Yekaterinburg, reported on the decision of the regional council to the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which approved the resolution of the Ural Regional Council, and then informed the Council of People's Commissars.

V.P. Milyutin, who participated in this meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, wrote in his diary: “I returned late from the Council of People's Commissars. There were “current” matters. During the discussion of the health care project, the Semashko report, Sverdlov entered and sat down in his place on the chair behind Ilyich. Semashko finished. Sverdlov came up, leaned towards Ilyich and said something.

- Comrades, Sverdlov asks for the floor for a message.

“I must say,” Sverdlov began in his usual tone, “a message has been received that in Yekaterinburg, by order of the regional Council, Nikolai was shot... Nikolai wanted to escape. The Czechoslovaks were approaching. The Presidium of the Central Electoral Commission decided to approve... “Let’s now move on to an article-by-article reading of the draft,” Ilyich suggested...”

In 1991, excavations were resumed. Numerous experts have confirmed that the remains found then are most likely the remains of the royal family. The remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Princess Maria were not found.

In June 2007, aware of the global historical significance events and the object, it was decided to carry out new survey work on the Old Koptyakovskaya Road in order to discover the supposed second hiding place of the remains of members of the Romanov imperial family.

In July 2007, the bone remains of a young man aged 10-13 years, and a girl aged 18-23 years, as well as fragments of ceramic amphorae with Japanese sulfuric acid, iron angles, nails, and bullets were found by Ural archaeologists near Yekaterinburg near burial place of the family of the last Russian emperor. According to scientists, these are the remains of members of the Romanov imperial family, Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Princess Maria, hidden by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

Andrey Grigoriev, deputy general director Scientific and Production Center for the Protection and Use of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Sverdlovsk Region: “From the Ural local historian V.V. Shitov, I learned that the archive contains documents that tell about the stay of the royal family in Yekaterinburg and its subsequent murder, and also about an attempt to hide their remains. Start by the end of 2006 search work we couldn't. On July 29, 2007, as a result of our searches, we came across the finds.”

On August 24, 2007, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office resumed the investigation into the criminal case of the execution of the royal family in connection with the discovery of the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria Romanov near Yekaterinburg.

Traces of cutting were found on the remains of the children of Nicholas II. This was announced by the head of the archeology department of the scientific and production center for the protection and use of historical and cultural monuments of the Sverdlovsk region, Sergei Pogorelov. “Traces that the bodies were cut up were found on a humerus belonging to a man and on a fragment of a skull identified as female. In addition, a completely preserved oval hole was found on the man’s skull, possibly a trace from a bullet,” explained Sergei Pogorelov.

1990s investigation

The circumstances of the death of the royal family were investigated as part of a criminal case initiated on August 19, 1993 at the direction of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. Materials of the government Commission to study issues related to the research and reburial of the remains of Russian Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family have been published.

Reaction to the shooting

Kokovtsov V.N.: “On the day the news was published, I was on the street twice, rode a tram and nowhere did I see the slightest glimmer of pity or compassion. The news was read loudly, with grins, mockery and the most ruthless comments... Some kind of senseless callousness, some kind of boasting of bloodthirstiness. The most disgusting expressions: - it would have been like this a long time ago, - come on, reign again, - the lid is on Nikolashka, - oh brother Romanov, he finished dancing. They were heard all around, from the youngest youth, but the elders turned away and remained indifferently silent.”

Rehabilitation of the royal family

In the 1990-2000s, the question of legal rehabilitation of the Romanovs was raised before various authorities. In September 2007, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation refused to consider such a decision, since it did not find “charges and corresponding decisions of judicial and non-judicial bodies vested with judicial functions” in connection with the execution of the Romanovs, and the execution was “a premeditated murder, albeit one with political overtones, committed by persons not endowed with appropriate judicial and administrative powers." At the same time, the lawyer of the Romanov family notes that "As is known, the Bolsheviks transferred all power to the councils, including the judicial power, therefore the decision of the Ural Regional Council is equivalent to court decision" On November 8, 2007, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized the decision of the prosecutor's office as legal, considering that the execution should be considered exclusively within the framework of a criminal case. The materials provided by the party rehabilitated to the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, and then to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, included the decision of the Ural Regional Council of July 17, 1918, which decided to carry out the execution. This document was presented by the Romanovs' lawyers as an argument confirming the political nature of the murder, which was also noted by representatives of the prosecutor's office, however, according to Russian legislation on rehabilitation, in order to establish the fact of repression, a decision of bodies vested with judicial functions is required, which the Ural Regional Council de jure was not. Since the case was considered by a higher court, representatives of the Romanov dynasty intended to challenge the decision Russian court in the European Court. However, on October 1, the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized Nikolai and his family as victims of political repression and rehabilitated them.

As the lawyer of Grand Duchess Maria Romanova, German Lukyanov, stated:

According to the judge,

According to the procedural norms of Russian legislation, the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is final and not subject to revision (appeal). On January 15, 2009, the case of the murder of the royal family was closed. , ,

In June 2009, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation decided to rehabilitate six more members of the Romanov family: Mikhail Alexandrovich Romanov, Elizaveta Fedorovna Romanov, Sergei Mikhailovich Romanov, Ioann Konstantinovich Romanov, Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov and Igor Konstantinovich Romanov, since they “were subjected to repression... by class and social characteristics, without being charged with committing a specific crime...“.

In accordance with Art. 1 and paragraphs. “c”, “e” art. 3 Laws Russian Federation“On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression,” the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation decided to rehabilitate Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, Varvara Yakovleva, Ekaterina Petrovna Yanysheva, Fedor Semenovich Remez (Mikhailovich), Ivan Kalin, Krukovsky, Dr. Gelmerson and Nikolai Nikolaevich Johnson (Brian).

The issue of this rehabilitation, unlike the first case, was resolved in fact in a few months, at the stage of appealing to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, no legal proceedings were required, since the prosecutor's office during the inspection revealed all the signs of political repression.

Canonization and church cult of the royal martyrs

Notes

Multatuli, P. To the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia on the rehabilitation of the royal family. Yekaterinburg initiative. Academy Russian history (03.10.2008). Retrieved November 9, 2008.
The Supreme Court recognized members of the royal family as victims of repression. RIA News(01/10/2008). Retrieved November 9, 2008.
Romanov Collection, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

The text of the resolution of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies, published a week after the execution, said: “In view of the fact that Czechoslovak gangs threaten the capital of the Red Urals, Yekaterinburg; in view of the fact that the crowned executioner can avoid the trial of the people (a White Guard conspiracy aimed at kidnapping the entire Romanov family has just been discovered), the Presidium of the regional committee, in fulfillment of the will of the people, decided: to shoot former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty before the people of countless bloody crimes.”

The civil war gained momentum, and Yekaterinburg soon truly came under the control of the whites. The resolution did not report the execution of the entire family, but the members of the Urals Council were guided by the formula “You cannot leave them the banner.” According to the revolutionaries, any of the Romanovs freed by the Whites could subsequently be used for the project of restoring the monarchy in Russia.

If we look at the question more broadly, then Nikolai and Alexandra Romanov were considered by the masses as the main culprits of the troubles that occurred in the country at the beginning of the 20th century - a lost one Russo-Japanese War, “Bloody Resurrection” and the subsequent first Russian revolution, “Rasputinism”, the First World War, low living standards, etc.

Contemporaries testify that among the workers of Yekaterinburg there were demands for reprisals against the Tsar, caused by rumors about attempts to escape by the Romanov family.

The execution of all the Romanovs, including children, is perceived as a terrible crime from a peacetime point of view. But in the conditions of the Civil War, both sides fought with increasing brutality, in which not only ideological opponents, but also members of their families were increasingly killed.

As for the execution of the entourage who accompanied the royal family, members of the Urals Council subsequently explained their actions as follows: they decided to share the fate of the Romanovs, so let them share it to the end.

Who made the decision to execute Nikolai Romanov and his family members?

The official decision to execute Nicholas II and his relatives was made on July 16, 1918 by the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies.

This council was not exclusively Bolshevik and also consisted of anarchists and left Socialist Revolutionaries, who were even more radically disposed towards the family of the last emperor.

It is known that the top leadership of the Bolsheviks in Moscow was considering the issue of holding the trial of Nikolai Romanov in Moscow. However, the situation in the country worsened sharply, the Civil War began and the issue was postponed. The question of what to do with the rest of the family was not even discussed.

In the spring of 1918, rumors about the death of the Romanovs arose several times, but the Bolshevik government denied them. Lenin's directive, sent to Yekaterinburg, demanded the prevention of “any violence” against the royal family.

The highest Soviet leadership represented by Vladimir Lenin And Yakova Sverdlova The Ural comrades were confronted with a fact - the Romanovs were executed. During the Civil War, central control over the regions was often formal.

To date, there is no real evidence to suggest that the government of the RSFSR in Moscow gave the order for the execution of Nikolai Romanov and members of his family.

Why were the children of the last emperor executed?

In conditions of an acute political crisis and the Civil War, the four daughters and son of Nikolai Romanov were considered not as ordinary children, but as figures with the help of which the monarchy could be revived.

Based on known facts, we can say that such a view was not close to the Bolshevik government in Moscow, but the revolutionaries on the ground reasoned exactly like this. Therefore, the Romanov children shared the fate of their parents.

At the same time, it cannot be said that the execution of the royal children is a cruelty that has no analogues in history.

After his election to the Russian throne founder of the Romanov dynasty Mikhail Fedorovich, in Moscow, a 3-year-old was hanged at the Serpukhov Gate Ivashka Vorenok, aka Tsarevich Ivan Dmitrievich, son of Marina Mnishek and False Dmitry II. The whole fault of the unfortunate child was that the opponents of Mikhail Romanov considered Ivan Dmitrievich as a contender for the throne. Supporters of the new dynasty solved the problem radically by strangling the baby.

At the end of 1741, as a result of a coup, she ascended the Russian throne. Elizaveta Petrovna, daughter Peter the Great. At the same time, she overthrew John VI, the infant emperor, who was not even one and a half years old at the time of the overthrow. The child was subjected to strict isolation, prohibiting his images and even the public speaking of his name. After spending his childhood in exile in Kholmogory, at the age of 16 he was imprisoned in solitary confinement in the Shlisselburg fortress. After spending his entire life in captivity, the former emperor was stabbed to death by guards at the age of 23 during a failed attempt to free him.

Is it true that the murder of Nikolai Romanov’s family was ritual in nature?

All investigative teams that have ever worked on the case of the execution of the Romanov family came to the conclusion that it was not of a ritual nature. Information about certain signs and inscriptions at the execution site that have a symbolic meaning is a product of myth-making. This version became most widespread thanks to a book by a Nazi Helmut Schramm"Ritual murder among the Jews." Schramm himself included it in the book at the suggestion of Russian emigrants Mikhail Skaryatin And Grigory Schwartz-Bostunich. The latter not only collaborated with the Nazis, but made a brilliant career in the Third Reich, rising to the rank of SS Standartenführer.

Is it true that some members of Nicholas II's family escaped execution?

Today we can confidently say that both Nikolai and Alexandra and all their five children died in Yekaterinburg. In general, the overwhelming majority of members of the Romanov clan either died during the revolution and the Civil War or left the country. The rarest exception can be considered the great-great-great-granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I, Natalya Androsova, who in the USSR became a circus performer and a master of sports in motorcycle racing.

To a certain extent, the members of the Urals Council achieved the goal they were striving for - the basis for the revival of the institution of monarchy in the country was completely and irrevocably destroyed.

First, the Provisional Government agrees to fulfill all the conditions. But already on March 8, 1917, General Mikhail Alekseev informed the Tsar that he “can consider himself, as it were, under arrest.” After some time, a notification of refusal comes from London, which previously agreed to accept the Romanov family. On March 21, former Emperor Nicholas II and his entire family were officially taken into custody.

A little more than a year later, on July 17, 1918, the last royal family Russian Empire will be shot in a cramped basement in Yekaterinburg. The Romanovs were subjected to hardships, getting closer and closer to their grim ending. Let's look at rare photos of members of the last royal family of Russia, taken some time before the execution.

After February Revolution In 1917, the last royal family of Russia, by decision of the Provisional Government, was sent to the Siberian city of Tobolsk to protect them from the wrath of the people. A few months earlier, Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated the throne, ending more than three hundred years of the Romanov dynasty.

The Romanovs began their five-day journey to Siberia in August, on the eve of Tsarevich Alexei's 13th birthday. The seven family members were joined by 46 servants and a military escort. The day before reaching their destination, the Romanovs sailed past the home village of Rasputin, whose eccentric influence on politics may have contributed to their dark ending.

The family arrived in Tobolsk on August 19 and began to live in relative comfort on the banks of the Irtysh River. In the Governor's Palace, where they were housed, the Romanovs were well fed, and they could communicate a lot with each other, without being distracted by state affairs and official events. The children performed plays for their parents, and the family often went into the city for religious services - this was the only form of freedom they were allowed.

When the Bolsheviks came to power at the end of 1917, the regime of the royal family began to tighten slowly but surely. The Romanovs were forbidden to attend church and generally leave the territory of the mansion. Soon coffee, sugar, butter and cream disappeared from their kitchen, and the soldiers assigned to protect them wrote obscene and offensive words on the walls and fences of their home.

Things went from bad to worse. In April 1918, a commissar, a certain Yakovlev, arrived with an order to transport the former tsar from Tobolsk. The Empress was adamant in her desire to accompany her husband, but Comrade Yakovlev had other orders that complicated everything. At this time, Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from hemophilia, began to suffer from paralysis of both legs due to a bruise, and everyone expected that he would be left in Tobolsk, and the family would be divided during the war.

The commissioner's demands to move were adamant, so Nikolai, his wife Alexandra and one of their daughters, Maria, soon left Tobolsk. They eventually boarded a train to travel through Yekaterinburg to Moscow, where the Red Army was headquartered. However, Commissar Yakovlev was arrested for trying to save the royal family, and the Romanovs got off the train in Yekaterinburg, in the heart of the territory captured by the Bolsheviks.

In Yekaterinburg, the rest of the children joined their parents - they were all locked in Ipatiev’s house. The family was placed on the second floor and completely cut off from the outside world, with the windows boarded up and guards posted at the doors. The Romanovs were allowed to go out into the fresh air for only five minutes a day.

At the beginning of July 1918, the Soviet authorities began to prepare for the execution of the royal family. Ordinary soldiers on guard were replaced by representatives of the Cheka, and the Romanovs were allowed last time go to worship. The priest who conducted the service later admitted that none of the family said a word during the service. For July 16, the day of the murder, five truckloads of barrels of benzidine and acid were ordered to quickly dispose of the bodies.

Early in the morning of July 17, the Romanovs were gathered and told about the advance of the White Army. The family believed that they were simply being moved to a small, lighted basement for their own protection, because it would soon be unsafe here. Approaching the place of execution, the last king Russia walked past the trucks, in one of which his body would soon lie, not even suspecting what a terrible fate awaited his wife and children.

In the basement, Nikolai was told that he was about to be executed. Not believing his own ears, he asked: “What?” - immediately after which the security officer Yakov Yurovsky shot the Tsar. Another 11 people pulled their triggers, filling the basement with Romanov blood. Alexei survived the first shot, but was finished off by Yurovsky’s second shot. The next day, the bodies of members of the last royal family of Russia were burned 19 km from Yekaterinburg, in the village of Koptyaki.