Where Nicholas 2 and his family were killed. How the royal Romanov family lived in the last days before the execution

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, along with four members of the staff, was shot. There are 11 people in total. I am attaching an excerpt from a chapter of the book “Jews in the Revolution and Civil War” with the title “Purely Russian Murder” (Two Hundred Years of Protracted Pogrom, 2007, Volume No. 3, Book No. 2), dedicated to this historical event.

COMPOSITION OF THE SHOOTING TEAM

Previously, it was established that the main commander in the house where the family of Emperor Nicholas II was kept was a member of the Ural Regional Council, Commissar P. S. Ermakov, to whom 67 Red Army soldiers were subordinate, serving as guards for the royal family. It should be recalled that the execution of the royal family took place in the basement of the Ipatiev house measuring 5x6 meters with one double door in the left corner. The room had a single window, protected from the street by a metal mesh, in the upper left corner under the ceiling, from which practically no light penetrated into the room.
The next most important issue related to the execution is to clarify the number and names of the real, and not fictitious, team of armed people who were directly involved in this crime. According to the version of investigator Sokolov, supported by science fiction writer E. Radzinsky, 12 people took part in the execution, including six to seven foreigners, consisting of Latvians, Magyars and Lutherans. Radzinsky calls Chekist Pyotr Ermakov, originally from the Verkh-Isetsky plant, “one of the most sinister participants in the Ipatiev Night.” He was the head of the entire house security, and Radzinsky turns him into the head of a machine gun platoon (E. Radzinsky. Nicholas II, Vagrius ed., M., 2000, p. 442). This Ermakov, who by agreement “belonged to the tsar,” himself asserted: “I fired at him at point-blank range, he fell immediately...” (p. 454). The Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of the Revolution contains a special act with the following content: “On December 10, 1927, they accepted from comrade P. Z. Ermakov a revolver 161474 of the Mauser system, with which, according to P. Z. Ermakov, the Tsar was shot.”
For twenty years, Ermakov traveled around the country and gave lectures, usually to pioneers, telling how he personally killed the Tsar. On August 3, 1932, Ermakov wrote a biography in which, without any modesty, he said: “On July 16, 1918... I carried out the decree - the Tsar himself, as well as his family, was shot by me. And I personally burned the corpses myself” (p. 462). In 1947, the same Ermakov published “Memoirs” and, together with his biography, submitted them to the Sverdlovsk party activist. This book of memoirs contains the following phrase: “I honorably fulfilled my duty to the people and the country, took part in the execution of the entire reigning family. I took Nikolai himself, Alexandra, my daughter, Alexei, because I had a Mauser and could work with it. The rest had revolvers.” This confession by Ermakov is enough to forget all the versions and fantasies of Russian anti-Semites about the participation of Jews. I recommend that all anti-Semites read and re-read “Memoirs” by Pyotr Ermakov before going to bed and after waking up, when they again want to blame the Jews for the murder of the royal family. And it would be useful for Solzhenitsyn and Radzinsky to memorize the text of this book as “Our Father.”
According to the message of the son of the security officer M. Medvedev, a member of the firing squad, “participation in the execution was voluntary. We agreed to shoot in the heart so that they wouldn’t suffer. And there they sorted out who was who. Pyotr Ermakov took the Tsar for himself. Yurovsky took the queen, Nikulin took Alexei, Maria went to the father.” The same son of Medvedev wrote: “The king was killed by his father. And immediately, as soon as Yurovsky repeated the last words, his father was already waiting for them and was ready and immediately fired. And he killed the king. He made his shot faster than anyone else... Only he had a Browning (ibid., p. 452). According to Radzinsky, the real name of the professional revolutionary and one of the Tsar’s killers, Mikhail Medvedev, was Kudrin.
In the murder of the royal family on a voluntary basis, as Radzinsky testifies, another “chief of security” of the Ipatiev House, Pavel Medvedev, “a non-commissioned officer of the tsarist army, a participant in the battles during the defeat of Dukhovshchina”, captured by the White Guards in Yekaterinburg, took part, who allegedly told Sokolov that “ he himself fired 2-3 bullets at the sovereign and at other persons whom they shot” (p. 428). In fact, P. Medvedev was not the head of security; investigator Sokolov did not interrogate him, because even before Sokolov’s “work” began, he managed to “die” in prison. In the caption under the photograph of the main participants in the execution of the royal family, given in Radzinsky’s book, the author calls Medvedev simply “a security guard.” From the materials of the investigation, which Mr. L. Sonin outlined in detail in 1996, it follows that P. Medvedev was the only participant in the execution who gave evidence to the White Guard investigator I. Sergeev. Please note that several people immediately claimed the role of the king's killer.
Another killer took part in the execution - A. Strekotin. On the night of the execution, Alexander Strekotin “was appointed as a machine gunner on the ground floor. The machine gun stood on the window. This post is very close to the hallway and that room.” As Strekotin himself wrote, Pavel Medvedev approached him and “silently handed me the revolver.” “Why do I need him?” - I asked Medvedev. “There will be an execution soon,” he told me and quickly left” (p. 444). Strekotin is clearly being modest and concealing his real participation in the execution, although he is constantly in the basement with a revolver in his hands. When the arrested were brought in, the taciturn Strekotin said that “he followed them, leaving his post, they and I stopped at the door of the room” (p. 450). From these words it follows that A. Strekotin, in whose hands there was a revolver, also participated in the execution of the family, since it is physically impossible to observe the execution through the only door in the basement room where the shooters were crowded, but which was closed during the execution. “It was no longer possible to shoot with the doors open; shots could be heard on the street,” reports A. Lavrin, quoting Strekotin. “Ermakov took my rifle with a bayonet and killed everyone who was alive.” From this phrase it follows that the execution in the basement took place with the door closed. This very important detail - the closed door during the execution - will be discussed in more detail later. Please note: Strekotin stopped at the very door where, according to Radzinsky, eleven riflemen were already crowded together! How wide were these doors if their opening could accommodate twelve armed killers?
“The rest of the princesses and servants went to Pavel Medvedev, the head of the security, and another security officer - Alexei Kabanov and six Latvians from the Cheka.” These words belong to Radzinsky himself, who often mentions nameless Latvians and Magyars taken from the dossier of investigator Sokolov, but for some reason forgets to name them. Radzinsky indicates the names of two security chiefs - P. Ermakov and P. Medvedev, confusing the position of the head of the entire security team with the head of the guard service. Later, Radzinsky, “according to legend,” deciphered the name of the Hungarian - Imre Nagy, the future leader of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, although without Latvians and Magyars, six volunteers had already been recruited to shoot 10 adult family members, one child and servants (Nicholas, Alexandra, Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Tatyana, Olga, Maria, Tsarevich Alexei, Doctor Botkin, cook Kharitonov, footman Trupp, housekeeper Demidova). In Solzhenitsyn, with the stroke of a pen, one invented Magyars turns into many Magyars.
Imre Nagy, born in 1896, according to bibliographic data, participated in the First World War as part of the Austro-Hungarian army. He was captured by Russians and was kept in a camp near the village of Verkhneudinsk until March 1918, then he joined the Red Army and fought on Lake Baikal. Therefore, there was no way he could take part in the execution in Yekaterinburg in July 1918. There is a large number of autobiographical data about Imre Nagy on the Internet, and none of them contains any mention of his participation in the murder of the royal family. Only one article supposedly states this “fact” with reference to Radzinsky’s book “Nicholas II”. Thus, the lie invented by Radzinsky returned to its original source. This is how in Russia they create a ring lie with liars referring to each other.
The nameless Latvians are mentioned only in the investigative documents of Sokolov, who clearly included a version of their existence in the testimony of those whom he interrogated. In Medvedev’s “testimony” in the case concocted by investigator Sergeev, Radzinsky found the first mentions of Latvians and Magyars, completely absent from the recollections of other witnesses to the execution, whom this investigator did not interrogate. None of the security officers who wrote their memoirs or biographies voluntarily - neither Ermakov, nor the son of M. Medvedev, nor G. Nikulin - mentions the Latvians and Hungarians. Pay attention to the stories of witnesses: they name only Russian participants. If Radzinsky had named the names of the mythical Latvians, he might as well have been grabbed by the hand. There are no Latvians in the photographs of the participants in the execution, which Radzinsky cites in his book. This means that the mythical Latvians and Magyars were invented by investigator Sokolov and later turned by Radzinsky into living invisible people. According to the testimony of A. Lavrin and Strekotin, the case mentions Latvians who allegedly appear at the last moment before the execution of “a group of people unknown to me, about six or seven people.” After these words, Radzinsky adds: “So, the team of Latvian executioners (that was them) is already waiting. That room is already ready, already empty, all the things have already been taken out of it” (p. 445). Radzinsky is clearly fantasizing, because the basement was prepared in advance for execution - all things were taken out of the room, and its walls were lined with a layer of boards to the full height. To the main questions related to the participation of imaginary Latvians: “Who brought them, where from, why were they brought if there were more volunteers than required? - Radzinsky does not answer. Five or six Russian executioners completely coped with their task in a few seconds. Moreover, some of them claim that they killed several people. Radzinsky himself let slip that there were no Latvians present during the execution: “By 1964, only two of those who were in that terrible room remained alive. One of them is G. Nikulin” (p. 497). This means that there were no Latvians “in that terrible room.”
Now it remains to explain how all the executioners, along with the victims, were housed in a small room during the murder of members of the royal family. Radzinsky claims that 12 executioners stood in the opening of an open double door in three rows. In an opening one and a half meters wide they could fit
no more than two or three armed shooters. I propose to conduct an experiment and arrange 12 people in three rows to make sure that at the first shot, the third row should shoot in the back of the head of those standing in the first row. The Red Army soldiers standing in the second row could only shoot directly, between the heads of the people stationed in the first row. Family members and household members were only partially located opposite the door, and most of them were in the middle of the room, away from the doorway, which is shown in the photograph in the left corner of the wall. Therefore, it can definitely be said that there were no more than six real killers, all of them were located inside the room behind closed doors, and Radzinsky tells tales about Latvians in order to dilute the Russian riflemen with them. Another phrase from M. Medvedev’s son betrays the authors of the legend “about the Latvian riflemen”: “They often met in our apartment. All former regicides who moved to Moscow” (p. 459). Naturally, no one remembered the Latvians who could not end up in Moscow.
It is necessary to pay special attention to the size of the basement and the fact that the only door of the room in which the execution took place was closed during the action. M. Kasvinov reports the dimensions of the basement - 6 by 5 meters. This means that along the wall, in the left corner of which there was an entrance door one and a half meters wide, only six armed people could accommodate. The size of the room did not allow placing a larger number of armed people and victims in a closed room, and Radzinsky’s statement that all twelve shooters allegedly shot through the open doors of the basement is a nonsense invention of a person who does not understand what he is writing about.
Radzinsky himself repeatedly emphasized that the execution was carried out after a truck drove up to the House of Special Purpose, the engine of which was deliberately not turned off in order to muffle the sounds of gunfire and not disturb the sleep of the city residents. In this truck, half an hour before the execution, both representatives of the Urals Council arrived at Ipatiev’s house. This means that the execution could only be carried out behind closed doors. To reduce the noise from gunfire and enhance the sound insulation of the walls, the previously mentioned plank cladding was created. Let me note that investigator Nametkin found 22 bullet holes in the plank lining of the basement walls. Since the door was closed, all the executioners, along with the victims, could only be inside the room in which the execution took place. At the same time, Radzinsky’s version that 12 shooters allegedly fired through an open door immediately disappears. One of the participants in the execution, the same A. Strekotin, reported in his memoirs in 1928 about his behavior when it was discovered that several women were only wounded: “It was no longer possible to shoot at them, since all the doors inside the building were open, then Comrade . Ermakov, seeing that I was holding a rifle with a bayonet in my hands, suggested that I finish off those who were still alive.”
From the testimony of the surviving participants interrogated by investigators Sergeev and Sokolov and from the above memoirs, it follows that Yurovsky did not participate in the execution of members of the royal family. At the time of the execution, he was to the right of the front door, a meter from the Tsarevich and Tsarina sitting on chairs and between those who shot. In his hands he held the Resolution of the Urals Council and did not even have time to read it a second time at Nikolai’s request, when a volley rang out on Ermakov’s order. Strekotin, who either did not see anything or himself participated in the execution, writes: “Yurovsky stood in front of the Tsar, holding his right hand in his trouser pocket, and in his left - a small piece of paper... Then he read the verdict. But before he could finish the last words, the Tsar loudly asked again... And Yurovsky read it a second time” (p. 450). Yurovsky simply did not have time to shoot, even if he intended to do so, because after a few seconds it was all over. People fell at the same moment after the shot. “And immediately after the last words of the sentence were pronounced, shots rang out... The Urals did not want to give the Romanovs into the hands of the counter-revolution, not only alive, but also dead,” Kasvinov commented on this scene (p. 481). Kasvinov never mentions any Goloshchekin or the mythical Latvians and Magyars.
In reality, all six shooters lined up along the wall in one row inside the room and fired at point-blank range from a distance of two and a half to three meters. This number of armed people is quite enough to shoot 11 unarmed people within two or three seconds. Radzinsky writes: Yurovsky allegedly claimed in the “Note” that it was he who killed the Tsar, but he himself did not insist on this version, but admitted to Medvedev-Kudrin: “Eh, you didn’t let me finish reading - you started shooting!” (p. 459). This phrase, invented by dreamers, is key to confirm that Yurovsky did not shoot and did not even try to refute Ermakov’s stories, according to Radzinsky, “avoided direct clashes with Ermakov,” who “shot at him (Nikolai) at point-blank range, he fell immediately” - these words are taken from Radzinsky’s book (pp. 452, 462). After the execution was completed, Radzinsky came up with the idea that Yurovsky allegedly personally examined the corpses and found one bullet wound in Nikolai’s body. And the second could not have happened if the execution was carried out at point-blank range.
It is the dimensions of the basement room and the doorway located in the left corner that clearly confirm that there could be no question of placing twelve executioners in the doors, which were closed. In other words, neither Latvians, nor Magyars, nor the Lutheran Yurovsky took part in the execution, but only Russian riflemen led by their chief Ermakov took part: Pyotr Ermakov, Grigory Nikulin, Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin, Alexey Kabanov, Pavel Medvedev and Alexander Strekotin, which could barely fit along one of the walls inside the room. All names are taken from the book by Radzinsky and Kasvinov.
The guard Letemin did not seem to personally participate in the execution, but he was honored to steal the family’s red spaniel named Joy, the prince’s diary, “the reliquaries with incorruptible relics from Alexei’s bed and the image that he wore...”. He paid with his life for the royal puppy. “Many royal things were found in Ekaterinburg apartments. They found the Empress's black silk umbrella, and a white linen umbrella, and her purple dress, and even a pencil - the same one with her initials, which she used to write in her diary, and the princesses' silver rings. The valet Chemodumov walked through the apartments like a bloodhound.”
“Andrei Strekotin, as he himself said, took jewelry from them (from the executed). But Yurovsky immediately took them away” (ibid., p. 428). “When removing the corpses, some of our comrades began to remove various things that were with the corpses, such as watches, rings, bracelets, cigarette cases and other things. This was reported to comrade. Yurovsky. Comrade Yurovsky stopped us and offered to voluntarily hand over various things taken from the corpses. Some passed in full, some passed partly, and some didn’t pass anything at all...” Yurovsky: “Under the threat of execution, everything stolen was returned (gold watch, cigarette case with diamonds, etc.)” (p. 456). From the above phrases, only one conclusion follows: as soon as the killers finished their job, they began looting. If not for the intervention of “Comrade Yurovsky,” the unfortunate victims would have been stripped naked by Russian marauders and robbed.
And again I draw attention to the fact - no one remembered the Latvians. When the truck with the corpses left the city, it was met by an outpost of Red Army soldiers. “Meanwhile... they began to load the corpses onto carriages. Now they started emptying their pockets - and then they had to threaten with shooting...” “Yurovsky guesses a savage trick: they hope that he is tired and will leave - they want to be left alone with the corpses, they long to look into the “special corsets,” Radzinsky clearly comes up with, as if he himself were among the Red Army soldiers (p. 470). Radzinsky comes up with a version that, in addition to Ermakov, Yurovsky also took part in the burial of the corpses. Obviously, this is another fantasy of his.
Before the murder of members of the royal family, Commissioner P. Ermakov suggested that the Russian participants “rape the grand duchesses” (ibid., p. 467). When a truck with corpses passed the Verkh-Isetsky plant, they met “a whole camp - 25 horsemen, in carriages. These were workers (members of the executive committee of the council) who were prepared by Ermakov. The first thing they shouted was: “Why did you bring them to us dead?” A bloody, drunken crowd was waiting for the Grand Duchesses promised by Ermakov... And so they were not allowed to take part in a just cause - to decide the girls, the child and the Tsar-Father. And they were sad” (p. 470).
The prosecutor of the Kazan Judicial Chamber N. Mirolyubov, in a report to the Minister of Justice of the Kolchak government, reported some of the names of the dissatisfied “rapists”. Among them are “military commissar Ermakov and prominent members of the Bolshevik party, Alexander Kostousov, Vasily Levatnykh, Nikolai Partin, Sergei Krivtsov.” “Levatny said: “I myself touched the queen, and she was warm... Now it’s not a sin to die, I touched the queen... (in the document the last phrase is crossed out in ink. - Author). And they began to decide. They decided to burn the clothes and throw the corpses into an unnamed mine - to the bottom” (p. 472). As we see, no one mentions Yurovsky’s name, which means he did not participate in the burial of the corpses at all.

From abdication to execution: the life of the Romanovs in exile through the eyes of the last empress

On March 2, 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne. Russia was left without a king. And the Romanovs ceased to be a royal family.

Perhaps this was Nikolai Alexandrovich’s dream - to live as if he were not an emperor, but simply the father of a large family. Many said that he had a gentle character. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was his opposite: she was seen as a harsh and domineering woman. He was the head of the country, but she was the head of the family.

She was calculating and stingy, but humble and very pious. She knew a lot: she did needlework, painted, and during the First World War she cared for the wounded - and taught her daughters how to make bandages. The simplicity of the Tsar's upbringing can be judged by the letters of the Grand Duchesses to their father: they easily wrote to him about the “idiot photographer”, “filthy handwriting” or that “the stomach wants to eat, it is already cracking.” In her letters to Nikolai, Tatyana signed herself “Your faithful Voznesenets”, Olga - “Your faithful Elisavetgradets”, and Anastasia signed it like this: “Your loving daughter Nastasya. Shvybzik. ANRPZSG Artichokes, etc.”

A German who grew up in the UK, Alexandra wrote mainly in English, but spoke Russian well, albeit with an accent. She loved Russia - just like her husband. Anna Vyrubova, maid of honor and close friend of Alexandra, wrote that Nikolai was ready to ask his enemies for one thing: not to expel him from the country and to let “the simplest peasant” live with his family. Perhaps the imperial family could actually live by their labor. But the Romanovs were not allowed to live a private life. Nicholas turned from a king into a prisoner.

"The thought that we are all together pleases and consoles..."Arrest in Tsarskoe Selo

“The sun blesses, prays, holds on with her faith and for the sake of her martyr. She does not interfere in anything (...). Now she is only a mother with sick children ..." - the former Empress Alexandra Feodorovna wrote to her husband on March 3, 1917.

Nicholas II, who signed the abdication, was at Headquarters in Mogilev, and his family was in Tsarskoe Selo. One after another, the children fell ill with measles. At the beginning of each diary entry, Alexandra indicated what the weather was like today and what the temperature was for each of the children. She was very pedantic: she numbered all her letters from that time so that they would not get lost. The couple called their son baby, and called each other Alix and Nicky. Their correspondence is more like the communication of young lovers than a husband and wife who have already lived together for more than 20 years.

“I realized at first glance that Alexandra Feodorovna, an intelligent and attractive woman, although now broken and irritated, had an iron will,” wrote the head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky.

On March 7, the Provisional Government decided to place the former imperial family under arrest. The associates and servants who were in the palace could decide for themselves whether to leave or stay.

"You can't go there, Mister Colonel"

On March 9, Nicholas arrived in Tsarskoye Selo, where for the first time he was greeted not as an emperor. “The officer on duty shouted: “Open the gates to the former Tsar.” (...) When the Emperor passed by the officers gathered in the lobby, no one greeted him. The Emperor was the first to do this. Only then did everyone greet him,” wrote valet Alexei Volkov.

According to the memoirs of witnesses and the diaries of Nicholas himself, it seems that he did not suffer due to the loss of the throne. “Despite the conditions we now find ourselves in, the thought that we are all together makes us happy and comforting,” he wrote on March 10. Anna Vyrubova (she stayed with the royal family, but was soon arrested and taken away) recalled that he was not even affected by the attitude of the guard soldiers, who were often rude and could tell the former Supreme Commander: “You can’t go there, Mr. Colonel, come back when you want.” They say!"

A vegetable garden was built in Tsarskoye Selo. Everyone worked: the royal family, close associates and palace servants. Even a few guard soldiers helped

On March 27, the head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, forbade Nicholas and Alexandra from sleeping together: the spouses were allowed to see each other only at the table and speak to each other exclusively in Russian. Kerensky did not trust the former empress.

In those days, an investigation was underway into the actions of the couple’s inner circle, it was planned to interrogate the spouses, and the minister was sure that she would put pressure on Nikolai. “People like Alexandra Feodorovna never forget anything and never forgive anything,” he later wrote.

Alexei’s mentor Pierre Gilliard (his family called him Zhilik) recalled that Alexandra was furious. “To do this to the sovereign, to do this nasty thing to him after he sacrificed himself and renounced in order to avoid civil war - how low it is, how petty it is!” - she said. But in her diary there is only one discreet entry about this: “N<иколаю>and I am only allowed to meet during meals, but not to sleep together.”

The measure did not remain in force for long. On April 12, she wrote: “Tea in the evening in my room, and now we sleep together again.”

There were other restrictions - domestic ones. The security reduced the palace's heating, after which one of the court ladies fell ill with pneumonia. The prisoners were allowed to walk, but passers-by looked at them through the fence - like animals in a cage. Humiliation did not leave them at home either. As Count Pavel Benkendorf said, “when the Grand Duchesses or the Empress approached the windows, the guards allowed themselves to behave indecently in front of them, thereby causing the laughter of their comrades.”

The family tried to be happy with what they had. At the end of April, a vegetable garden was planted in the park - the imperial children, servants, and even guard soldiers carried the turf. They chopped wood. We read a lot. They gave lessons to thirteen-year-old Alexei: due to a shortage of teachers, Nikolai personally taught him history and geography, and Alexandra - the Law of God. We rode bicycles and scooters, swam in the pond on a kayak. In July, Kerensky warned Nicholas that due to the unsettled situation in the capital, the family would soon be moved to the south. But instead of Crimea they were exiled to Siberia. In August 1917, the Romanovs left for Tobolsk. Some of those close to them followed them.

"Now it's their turn." Link in Tobolsk

“We settled far from everyone: we live quietly, we read about all the horrors, but we won’t talk about it,” Alexandra wrote to Anna Vyrubova from Tobolsk. The family was settled in the former governor's house.

Despite everything, the royal family remembered life in Tobolsk as “quiet and calm”

The family was not restricted in correspondence, but all messages were viewed. Alexandra corresponded a lot with Anna Vyrubova, who was either released or arrested again. They sent each other parcels: the former maid of honor once sent “a wonderful blue blouse and delicious marshmallows,” and also her perfume. Alexandra responded with a shawl, which she also scented with verbena. She tried to help her friend: “I send pasta, sausages, coffee - even though it’s fasting now. I always take greens out of the soup so that I don’t eat the broth, and I don’t smoke.” She hardly complained, except maybe about the cold.

In Tobolsk exile, the family managed to maintain the same way of life in many respects. We even managed to celebrate Christmas. There were candles and a Christmas tree - Alexandra wrote that the trees in Siberia are of a different, unusual variety, and “they smell strongly of orange and tangerine, and resin flows down the trunk all the time.” And the servants were given woolen vests, which the former empress knitted herself.

In the evenings, Nikolai read aloud, Alexandra embroidered, and her daughters sometimes played the piano. Alexandra Fedorovna’s diary entries from that time are everyday ones: “I was drawing. I consulted with an ophthalmologist about new glasses,” “I sat and knitted all afternoon on the balcony, 20° in the sun, in a thin blouse and a silk jacket.”

Everyday life occupied the spouses more than politics. Only the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk really shocked both of them. “A humiliating world. (...) Being under the yoke of the Germans is worse than the Tatar yoke,” wrote Alexandra. In her letters she thought about Russia, but not about politics, but about people.

Nikolai loved to do physical labor: sawing wood, working in the garden, cleaning ice. After moving to Yekaterinburg, all this was banned

At the beginning of February we learned about the transition to a new style of chronology. "Today is February 14th. There will be no end to misunderstandings and confusion!" - Nikolai wrote. Alexandra called this style “Bolshevik” in her diary.

On February 27, according to the new style, the authorities announced that “the people do not have the means to support the royal family.” The Romanovs were now provided with an apartment, heating, lighting and soldiers' rations. Each person could also receive 600 rubles a month from personal funds. Ten servants had to be fired. “It will be necessary to part with the servants, whose devotion will lead them to poverty,” wrote Gilliard, who remained with the family. Butter, cream and coffee disappeared from the prisoners' tables, and there was not enough sugar. Local residents began to feed the family.

Food card. “Before the October revolution, there was plenty of everything, although we lived modestly,” recalled valet Alexey Volkov. “Dinner consisted of only two courses, and sweets only happened on holidays.”

This Tobolsk life, which the Romanovs later recalled as quiet and calm - even despite the rubella that the children suffered from - ended in the spring of 1918: they decided to move the family to Yekaterinburg. In May, the Romanovs were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House - it was called a “house for special purposes.” Here the family spent the last 78 days of their lives.

Last days.In the "special purpose house"

Together with the Romanovs, their associates and servants came to Yekaterinburg. Some were shot almost immediately, others were arrested and killed several months later. Someone survived and was subsequently able to talk about what happened in the Ipatiev House. Only four remained to live with the royal family: Doctor Botkin, footman Trupp, maid Nyuta Demidova and cook Leonid Sednev. He will be the only one of the prisoners who will escape execution: on the day before the murder he will be taken away.

Telegram from the Chairman of the Ural Regional Council to Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, April 30, 1918

“The house is good, clean,” Nikolai wrote in his diary. “We were given four large rooms: a corner bedroom, a restroom, next to it a dining room with windows into the garden and a view of the low-lying part of the city, and, finally, a spacious hall with an arch without doors.” The commandant was Alexander Avdeev - as they said about him, “a real Bolshevik” (he would later be replaced by Yakov Yurovsky). The instructions for protecting the family said: “The commandant must keep in mind that Nikolai Romanov and his family are Soviet prisoners, therefore an appropriate regime is established at the place of his detention.”

The instructions ordered the commandant to be polite. But during the first search, Alexandra’s reticule was snatched from her hands, which she did not want to show. “Until now, I have dealt with honest and decent people,” Nikolai noted. But I received the answer: “Please do not forget that you are under investigation and arrest.” The king's entourage was required to call family members by name and patronymic instead of "Your Majesty" or "Your Highness." This really upset Alexandra.

The prisoners got up at nine and drank tea at ten. Afterwards, the rooms were checked. Breakfast was at one, lunch was around four or five, tea was at seven, dinner was at nine, and we went to bed at eleven. Avdeev claimed that there were two hours of walking per day. But Nikolai wrote in his diary that he was only allowed to walk for an hour a day. To the question "why?" The former king was answered: “To make it look like a prison regime.”

All prisoners were prohibited from any physical labor. Nikolai asked permission to clean the garden - refusal. For a family that had spent recent months only entertaining themselves by chopping wood and cultivating garden beds, this was not easy. At first, the prisoners could not even boil their own water. Only in May Nikolai wrote in his diary: “They bought us a samovar, at least we won’t depend on the guard.”

After some time, the painter painted over all the windows with lime so that the inhabitants of the house could not look out into the street. It was not easy with windows in general: they were not allowed to open. Although the family would hardly have been able to escape with such protection. And in the summer it was hot.

Ipatiev's house. “A rather high plank fence was built around the outer walls of the house facing the street, covering the windows of the house,” its first commandant Alexander Avdeev wrote about the house.

It was only towards the end of July that one of the windows was finally opened. “Such joy, finally, delightful air and one window pane, no longer covered with whitewash,” Nikolai wrote in his diary. After this, the prisoners were forbidden to sit on the windowsills.

There were not enough beds, the sisters slept on the floor. Everyone dined together, not only with the servants, but also with the Red Army soldiers. They were rude: they could put a spoon into a bowl of soup and say: “They still don’t feed you anything.”

Vermicelli, potatoes, beet salad and compote - this was the food on the prisoners’ table. There were problems with meat. “They brought meat for six days, but so little that it was only enough for soup,” “Kharitonov prepared a pasta pie... because they didn’t bring any meat at all,” Alexandra notes in her diary.

Hall and living room in the Ipatva House. This house was built in the late 1880s and later purchased by engineer Nikolai Ipatiev. In 1918, the Bolsheviks requisitioned it. After the execution of the family, the keys were returned to the owner, but he decided not to return there, and later emigrated

“I took a sitz bath, since hot water could only be brought from our kitchen,” Alexandra writes about minor household inconveniences. Her notes show how gradually, for the former empress, who once ruled over “a sixth of the earth,” everyday little things become important: “great pleasure, a cup of coffee,” “the good nuns are now sending milk and eggs for Alexei and us, and cream ".

Products were indeed allowed to be taken from the Novo-Tikhvin Convent. With the help of these parcels, the Bolsheviks staged a provocation: they handed over a letter from a “Russian officer” in the cork of one of the bottles with an offer to help escape. The family responded: “We do not want and cannot RUN. We can only be abducted by force.” The Romanovs spent several nights dressed, awaiting possible rescue.

Prison style

Soon the commandant changed in the house. It was Yakov Yurovsky. At first, the family even liked him, but very soon the harassment became more and more. “You need to get used to living not like a king, but how you have to live: like a prisoner,” he said, limiting the amount of meat supplied to the prisoners.

Of the monastery's products, he allowed only milk to remain. Alexandra once wrote that the commandant “had breakfast and ate cheese; he no longer allows us to eat cream.” Yurovsky also forbade frequent baths, saying that there was not enough water for them. He confiscated jewelry from family members, leaving only a watch for Alexey (at the request of Nikolai, who said that the boy would be bored without it) and a gold bracelet for Alexandra - she wore it for 20 years, and it could only be removed with tools.

Every morning at 10:00 the commandant checked that everything was in place. Most of all, the former empress did not like this.

Telegram from the Kolomna Committee of the Bolsheviks of Petrograd to the Council of People's Commissars demanding the execution of representatives of the House of Romanov. March 4, 1918

Alexandra, it seems, experienced the loss of the throne the hardest of all in the family. Yurovsky recalled that if she went out for a walk, she would certainly dress up and always put on a hat. “It must be said that, unlike the others, in all her appearances she tried to maintain all her importance and her former self,” he wrote.

The rest of the family members were simpler - the sisters dressed rather casually, Nikolai wore patched boots (although, as Yurovsky claims, he had quite a few intact ones). His hair was cut by his wife. Even the needlework that Alexandra did was the work of an aristocrat: she embroidered and wove lace. The daughters washed handkerchiefs and darned stockings and bed linen together with the maid Nyuta Demidova.

“The world will never know what we did to them,” boasted one of the executioners, Peter Voikov. But it turned out differently. Over the next 100 years, the truth has found its way, and today a majestic temple has been built at the site of the murder.

Tells about the reasons and main characters of the murder of the royal family Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Lavrov.

Maria Pozdnyakova,« AiF“: It is known that the Bolsheviks were going to hold a trial of Nicholas II, but then abandoned this idea. Why?

Vladimir Lavrov: Indeed, the Soviet government, led by Lenin in January 1918 announced that the trial of the former emperor Nicholas II will. It was assumed that the main accusation would be Bloody Sunday - January 9, 1905. However, Lenin in the end could not help but realize that that tragedy did not guarantee a death sentence. Firstly, Nicholas II did not give the order to shoot the workers; he was not in St. Petersburg at all that day. And secondly, by that time the Bolsheviks themselves had soiled themselves with “Bloody Friday”: on January 5, 1918, a peaceful demonstration of many thousands in support of the Constituent Assembly was shot in Petrograd. Moreover, they were shot in the same places where people died on Bloody Sunday. How can one then throw it in the king’s face that he is bloody? And Lenin with Dzerzhinsky then which ones?

But let’s assume that you can find fault with any head of state. But what is my fault? Alexandra Fedorovna? Is that the wife? Why should the sovereign’s children be judged? The women and the teenager would have to be released from custody right there in the courtroom, admitting that the Soviet government repressed the innocent.

In March 1918, the Bolsheviks concluded a separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the German aggressors. The Bolsheviks gave up Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states, and pledged to demobilize the army and navy and pay indemnity in gold. Nicholas II, at a public trial after such a peace, could turn from an accused into an accuser, qualifying the actions of the Bolsheviks themselves as treason. In a word, Lenin did not dare to sue Nicholas II.

Izvestia of July 19, 1918 opened with this publication. Photo: Public Domain

— In Soviet times, the execution of the royal family was presented as an initiative of the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks. But who is really responsible for this crime?

— In the 1960s. former security guard of Lenin Akimov said that he personally sent a telegram from Vladimir Ilyich to Yekaterinburg with a direct order to shoot the Tsar. This evidence confirmed the memories Yurovsky, commandant of the Ipatiev House, and the head of his security Ermakova, who previously admitted that they had received a death telegram from Moscow.

Also revealed was the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated May 19, 1918 with instructions Yakov Sverdlov deal with the case of Nicholas II. Therefore, the tsar and his family were sent specifically to Yekaterinburg - Sverdlov’s patrimony, where all his friends from underground work in pre-revolutionary Russia were. On the eve of the massacre, one of the leaders of the Yekaterinburg communists Goloshchekin came to Moscow, lived in Sverdlov’s apartment, received instructions from him.

The day after the massacre, July 18, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee announced that Nicholas II had been shot, and his wife and children were evacuated to a safe place. That is, Sverdlov and Lenin deceived the Soviet people by declaring that their wife and children were alive. They deceived us because they understood perfectly well: in the eyes of the public, killing innocent women and a 13-year-old boy is a terrible crime.

— There is a version that the family was killed because of the advance of the whites. They say that the White Guards could return the Romanovs to the throne.

— None of the leaders of the white movement intended to restore the monarchy in Russia. In addition, White's offensive was not lightning fast. The Bolsheviks themselves evacuated themselves perfectly and seized their property. So it was not difficult to take out the royal family.

The real reason for the destruction of the family of Nicholas II is different: they were a living symbol of the great thousand-year-old Orthodox Russia, which Lenin hated. In addition, in June-July 1918, a large-scale Civil War broke out in the country. Lenin needed to unite his party. The murder of the royal family was a demonstration that the Rubicon had been passed: either we win at any cost, or we will have to answer for everything.

— Did the royal family have a chance of salvation?

- Yes, if their English relatives had not betrayed them. In March 1917, when the family of Nicholas II was under arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government Miliukov suggested the option of her going to the UK. Nicholas II agreed to leave. A George V, the English king and at the same time the cousin of Nicholas II, agreed to accept the Romanov family. But within a matter of days, George V took back his royal word. Although in letters George V swore to Nicholas II of his friendship until the end of days! The British betrayed not just the Tsar of a foreign power - they betrayed their close relatives, Alexandra Feodorovna is the beloved granddaughter of the English Queen Victoria. But George V, also Victoria’s grandson, obviously did not want Nicholas II to remain a living center of gravity for Russian patriotic forces. The revival of a strong Russia was not in Britain's interests. And the family of Nicholas II had no other options to save themselves.

— Did the royal family understand that its days were numbered?

- Yes. Even the children understood that death was approaching. Alexei once said: “If they kill, at least they don’t torture.” As if he had a presentiment that death at the hands of the Bolsheviks would be painful. But even the killers’ revelations do not tell the whole truth. No wonder the regicide Voikov said: “The world will never know what we did to them.”

The family of the last Emperor of Russia, Nicholas Romanov, was killed in 1918. Due to the concealment of facts by the Bolsheviks, a number of alternative versions appear. For a long time there were rumors that turned the murder of the royal family into a legend. There were theories that one of his children escaped.

What really happened in the summer of 1918 near Yekaterinburg? You will find the answer to this question in our article.

Background

Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century was one of the most economically developed countries in the world. Nikolai Alexandrovich, who came to power, turned out to be a meek and noble man. In spirit he was not an autocrat, but an officer. Therefore, with his views on life, it was difficult to manage the crumbling state.

The revolution of 1905 showed the insolvency of the government and its isolation from the people. In fact, there were two powers in the country. The official one is the emperor, and the real one is officials, nobles and landowners. It was the latter who, with their greed, licentiousness and short-sightedness, destroyed the once great power.

Strikes and rallies, demonstrations and bread riots, famine. All this indicated decline. The only way out could be the accession to the throne of an imperious and tough ruler who could take complete control of the country.

Nicholas II was not like that. It was focused on building railways, churches, improving the economy and culture in society. He managed to make progress in these areas. But positive changes affected mainly only the top of society, while the majority of ordinary residents remained at the level of the Middle Ages. Splinters, wells, carts and everyday life of peasants and craftsmen.

After the entry of the Russian Empire into the First World War, the discontent of the people only intensified. The execution of the royal family became the apotheosis of general madness. Next we will look at this crime in more detail.

Now it is important to note the following. After the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II and his brother from the throne, soldiers, workers and peasants began to take the leading roles in the state. People who have not previously dealt with management, who have a minimal level of culture and superficial judgments, gain power.

Small local commissars wanted to curry favor with the higher ranks. The rank and file and junior officers simply mindlessly followed orders. The troubled times that ensued during these turbulent years brought unfavorable elements to the surface.

Next you will see more photos of the Romanov royal family. If you look at them carefully, you will notice that the clothes of the emperor, his wife and children are by no means pompous. They are no different from the peasants and guards who surrounded them in exile.
Let's figure out what really happened in Yekaterinburg in July 1918.

Course of events

The execution of the royal family was planned and prepared for quite a long time. While power was still in the hands of the Provisional Government, they tried to protect them. Therefore, after the events in July 1917 in Petrograd, the emperor, his wife, children and retinue were transferred to Tobolsk.

The place was deliberately chosen to be calm. But in fact, they found one from which it was difficult to escape. By that time, the railway lines had not yet been extended to Tobolsk. The nearest station was two hundred and eighty kilometers away.

They sought to protect the emperor's family, so the exile to Tobolsk became for Nicholas II a respite before the subsequent nightmare. The king, queen, their children and retinue stayed there for more than six months.

But in April, after a fierce struggle for power, the Bolsheviks recalled “unfinished business.” A decision is made to transport the entire imperial family to Yekaterinburg, which at that time was a stronghold of the red movement.

The first to be transferred from Petrograd to Perm was Prince Mikhail, the Tsar’s brother. At the end of March, their son Mikhail and three children of Konstantin Konstantinovich were deported to Vyatka. Later, the last four are transferred to Yekaterinburg.

The main reason for the transfer to the east was Nikolai Alexandrovich’s family ties with the German Emperor Wilhelm, as well as the proximity of the Entente to Petrograd. The revolutionaries feared the release of the Tsar and the restoration of the monarchy.

The role of Yakovlev, who was tasked with transporting the emperor and his family from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, is interesting. He knew about the assassination attempt on the Tsar that was being prepared by the Siberian Bolsheviks.

Judging by the archives, there are two opinions of experts. The first ones say that in reality this is Konstantin Myachin. And he received a directive from the Center to “deliver the Tsar and his family to Moscow.” The latter are inclined to believe that Yakovlev was a European spy who intended to save the emperor by taking him to Japan through Omsk and Vladivostok.

After arriving in Yekaterinburg, all prisoners were placed in Ipatiev’s mansion. A photo of the Romanov royal family was preserved when Yakovlev handed it over to the Urals Council. The place of detention among the revolutionaries was called a “house of special purpose.”

Here they were kept for seventy-eight days. The relationship of the convoy to the emperor and his family will be discussed in more detail below. For now, it is important to focus on the fact that it was rude and boorish. They were robbed, psychologically and morally oppressed, abused so that they were not noticeable outside the walls of the mansion.

Considering the results of the investigations, we will take a closer look at the night when the monarch with his family and retinue were shot. Now we note that the execution took place at approximately half past two in the morning. Life physician Botkin, on the orders of the revolutionaries, woke up all the prisoners and went down with them to the basement.

A terrible crime took place there. Yurovsky commanded. He blurted out a prepared phrase that “they are trying to save them, and the matter cannot be delayed.” None of the prisoners understood anything. Nicholas II only had time to ask that what was said be repeated, but the soldiers, frightened by the horror of the situation, began to shoot indiscriminately. Moreover, several punishers fired from another room through the doorway. According to eyewitnesses, not everyone was killed the first time. Some were finished off with a bayonet.

Thus, this indicates a hasty and unprepared operation. The execution became lynching, which the Bolsheviks, who had lost their heads, resorted to.

Government disinformation

The execution of the royal family still remains an unsolved mystery of Russian history. Responsibility for this atrocity may lie both with Lenin and Sverdlov, for whom the Urals Soviet simply provided an alibi, and directly with the Siberian revolutionaries, who succumbed to general panic and lost their heads in wartime conditions.

Nevertheless, immediately after the atrocity, the government began a campaign to whiten its reputation. Among researchers studying this period, the latest actions are called a “disinformation campaign.”

The death of the royal family was proclaimed the only necessary measure. Since, judging by the ordered Bolshevik articles, a counter-revolutionary conspiracy was uncovered. Some white officers planned to attack the Ipatiev mansion and free the emperor and his family.

The second point, which was furiously hidden for many years, was that eleven people were shot. The Emperor, his wife, five children and four servants.

The events of the crime were not disclosed for several years. Official recognition was given only in 1925. This decision was prompted by the publication of a book in Western Europe that outlined the results of Sokolov’s investigation. Then Bykov is instructed to write about “the current course of events.” This brochure was published in Sverdlovsk in 1926.

Nevertheless, the lies of the Bolsheviks at the international level, as well as hiding the truth from the common people, shook faith in power. and its consequences, according to Lykova, became the reason for people's distrust of the government, which did not change even in post-Soviet times.

The fate of the remaining Romanovs

The execution of the royal family had to be prepared. A similar “warm-up” was the liquidation of the Emperor’s brother Mikhail Alexandrovich and his personal secretary.
On the night from the twelfth to the thirteenth of June 1918, they were forcibly taken from the Perm hotel outside the city. They were shot in the forest, and their remains have not yet been discovered.

A statement was made to the international press that the Grand Duke had been kidnapped by attackers and went missing. For Russia, the official version was the escape of Mikhail Alexandrovich.

The main purpose of such a statement was to speed up the trial of the emperor and his family. They started a rumor that the escapee could contribute to the release of the “bloody tyrant” from “just punishment.”

It was not only the last royal family that suffered. In Vologda, eight people related to the Romanovs were also killed. The victims include the princes of the imperial blood Igor, Ivan and Konstantin Konstantinovich, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, Prince Paley, the manager and the cell attendant.

All of them were thrown into the Nizhnyaya Selimskaya mine, not far from the city of Alapaevsk. Only he resisted and was shot. The rest were stunned and thrown down alive. In 2009, they were all canonized as martyrs.

But the thirst for blood did not subside. In January 1919, four more Romanovs were also shot in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Nikolai and Georgy Mikhailovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich and Pavel Alexandrovich. The official version of the revolutionary committee was the following: the liquidation of hostages in response to the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg in Germany.

Memoirs of contemporaries

Researchers have tried to reconstruct how members of the royal family were killed. The best way to cope with this is the testimony of the people who were present there.
The first such source is notes from Trotsky’s personal diary. He noted that the blame lies with the local authorities. He especially singled out the names of Stalin and Sverdlov as the people who made this decision. Lev Davidovich writes that as Czechoslovak troops approached, Stalin’s phrase that “the Tsar cannot be handed over to the White Guards” became a death sentence.

But scientists doubt the accurate reflection of events in the notes. They were made in the late thirties, when he was working on a biography of Stalin. A number of mistakes were made there, indicating that Trotsky forgot many of those events.

The second evidence is information from Milyutin’s diary, which mentions the murder of the royal family. He writes that Sverdlov came to the meeting and asked Lenin to speak. As soon as Yakov Mikhailovich said that the Tsar was gone, Vladimir Ilyich abruptly changed the topic and continued the meeting as if the previous phrase had not happened.

The history of the royal family in the last days of its life is most fully reconstructed from the interrogation protocols of the participants in these events. People from the guard, punitive and funeral squads testified several times.

Although they are often confused, the main idea remains the same. All the Bolsheviks who were close to the tsar in recent months had complaints against him. Some were in prison themselves in the past, others had relatives. In general, they gathered a contingent of former prisoners.

In Yekaterinburg, anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries put pressure on the Bolsheviks. In order not to lose authority, the local council decided to quickly put an end to this matter. Moreover, there was a rumor that Lenin wanted to exchange the royal family for a reduction in the amount of indemnity.

According to the participants, this was the only solution. In addition, many of them boasted during interrogations that they personally killed the emperor. Some with one, and some with three shots. Judging by the diaries of Nikolai and his wife, the workers guarding them were often drunk. Therefore, real events cannot be reconstructed for certain.

What happened to the remains

The murder of the royal family took place secretly and was planned to be kept secret. But those responsible for the disposal of the remains failed to cope with their task.

A very large funeral team was assembled. Yurovsky had to send many back to the city “as unnecessary.”

According to the testimony of the participants in the process, they spent several days with the task. At first it was planned to burn the clothes and throw the naked bodies into the mine and cover them with earth. But the collapse did not work out. We had to extract the remains of the royal family and come up with another method.

It was decided to burn them or bury them along the road that was just under construction. The preliminary plan was to disfigure the bodies with sulfuric acid beyond recognition. It is clear from the protocols that two corpses were burned and the rest were buried.

Presumably the body of Alexei and one of the servant girls burned.

The second difficulty was that the team was busy all night, and in the morning travelers began to appear. An order was given to cordon off the area and prohibit travel from the neighboring village. But the secrecy of the operation was hopelessly failed.

The investigation showed that attempts to bury the bodies were near shaft No. 7 and the 184th crossing. In particular, they were discovered near the latter in 1991.

Kirsta's investigation

On July 26-27, 1918, peasants discovered a golden cross with precious stones in a fire pit near the Isetsky mine. The find was immediately delivered to Lieutenant Sheremetyev, who was hiding from the Bolsheviks in the village of Koptyaki. It was carried out, but later the case was assigned to Kirsta.

He began to study the testimony of witnesses pointing to the murder of the Romanov royal family. The information confused and frightened him. The investigator did not expect that this was not the consequences of a military court, but a criminal case.

He began questioning witnesses who gave conflicting testimony. But based on them, Kirsta concluded that perhaps only the emperor and his heir were shot. The rest of the family was taken to Perm.

It seems that this investigator set himself the goal of proving that not the entire Romanov royal family was killed. Even after he clearly confirmed the crime, Kirsta continued to interrogate more people.

So, over time, he finds a certain doctor Utochkin, who proved that he treated Princess Anastasia. Then another witness spoke about the transfer of the emperor’s wife and some of the children to Perm, which she knew about from rumors.

After Kirsta completely confused the case, it was given to another investigator.

Sokolov's investigation

Kolchak, who came to power in 1919, ordered Dieterichs to understand how the Romanov royal family was killed. The latter entrusted this case to the investigator for particularly important cases of the Omsk District.

His last name was Sokolov. This man began to investigate the murder of the royal family from scratch. Although all the paperwork was handed over to him, he did not trust Kirsta’s confusing protocols.

Sokolov again visited the mine, as well as Ipatiev’s mansion. Inspection of the house was made difficult by the location of the Czech army headquarters there. However, a German inscription on the wall was discovered, a quote from Heine's verse about the monarch being killed by his subjects. The words were clearly scratched out after the city was lost to the Reds.

In addition to documents on Yekaterinburg, the investigator was sent cases on the Perm murder of Prince Mikhail and on the crime against the princes in Alapaevsk.

After the Bolsheviks recapture this region, Sokolov takes all office work to Harbin, and then to Western Europe. Photos of the royal family, diaries, evidence, etc. were evacuated.

He published the results of the investigation in 1924 in Paris. In 1997, Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein, transferred all paperwork to the Russian government. In exchange, he was given the archives of his family, taken away during the Second World War.

Modern investigation

In 1979, a group of enthusiasts led by Ryabov and Avdonin, using archival documents, discovered a burial near the 184 km station. In 1991, the latter stated that he knew where the remains of the executed emperor were. An investigation was re-launched to finally shed light on the murder of the royal family.

The main work on this case was carried out in the archives of the two capitals and in the cities that appeared in the reports of the twenties. Protocols, letters, telegrams, photos of the royal family and their diaries were studied. In addition, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, research was carried out in the archives of most countries of Western Europe and the USA.

The investigation of the burial was carried out by the senior prosecutor-criminologist Soloviev. In general, he confirmed all of Sokolov’s materials. His message to Patriarch Alexei II states that “under the conditions of that time, the complete destruction of the corpses was impossible.”

In addition, the investigation of the late 20th - early 21st centuries completely refuted alternative versions of events, which we will discuss later.
The canonization of the royal family was carried out in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and in Russia in 2000.

Since the Bolsheviks tried to keep this crime secret, rumors spread, contributing to the formation of alternative versions.

So, according to one of them, it was a ritual murder as a result of a conspiracy of Jewish Freemasons. One of the investigator's assistants testified that he saw "kabbalistic symbols" on the walls of the basement. When checked, these turned out to be traces of bullets and bayonets.

According to Dieterichs' theory, the emperor's head was cut off and preserved in alcohol. The finds of remains also refuted this crazy idea.

Rumors spread by the Bolsheviks and false testimonies of “eyewitnesses” gave rise to a series of versions about the people who escaped. But photographs of the royal family in the last days of their lives do not confirm them. And also the found and identified remains refute these versions.

Only after all the facts of this crime were proven, the canonization of the royal family took place in Russia. This explains why it was held 19 years later than abroad.

So, in this article we got acquainted with the circumstances and investigation of one of the most terrible atrocities in the history of Russia in the twentieth century.

I bring to the attention of readers very interesting information from the book “Way of the Cross of the Holy Royal Martyrs”
(Moscow 2002)

The murder of the Royal Family was prepared in the strictest secrecy. Even many high-ranking Bolsheviks were not initiated into it.

It was carried out in Yekaterinburg on orders from Moscow, according to a long-conceived plan.

The investigation names Yankel Movshevich Sverdlov, who held the position of Chairman of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Escort, as the main organizer of the murder. Committee of the Congress of Soviets, the all-powerful temporary ruler of Russia in this era.

All the threads of the crime converge on him. From him came the instructions received and carried out in Yekaterinburg. His task was to give the murder the appearance of an unauthorized act of the local Ural authorities, thereby completely removing the responsibility of the Soviet government and the real initiators of the crime.

The following persons were accomplices in the murder from among the local Bolshevik leaders: Shaya Isaakovich Goloshchekin - a personal friend of Sverdlov, who seized actual power in the Urals, the military commissar of the Ural region, the head of the Cheka and the main executioner of the Urals at that time; Yankel Izidorovich Weisbart (called himself Russian worker A.G. Beloborodov) - Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Ural Regional Council; Alexander Moebius - Chief of the Revolutionary Staff - Bronstein-Trotsky's special representative; Yankel Khaimovich Yurovsky (who called himself Yakov Mikhailovich, - Commissioner of Justice of the Ural Region, member of the Cheka; Pinhus Lazarevich Weiner (who called himself Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov (the modern Moscow metro station "Voikovskaya" is named after him)) - Commissioner of Supply of the Ural Region, - Yurovsky's closest assistant and Safarov is Yurovsky's second assistant. They all carried out instructions from Moscow from Sverdlov, Apfelbaum, Lenin, Uritsky and Bronstein-Trotsky (in his memoirs, published abroad in 1931, Trotsky accused himself, cynically justifying the murder of the entire Royal Family, including including the August Children).

In the absence of Goloshchekin (he went to Moscow to Sverdlov for instructions), preparations for the murder of the Royal Family began to take a concrete form: unnecessary witnesses were removed - the internal guards, because she was almost completely disposed towards the Royal Family and was unreliable for the executioners, namely on July 3, 1918. - Avdeev and his assistant Moshkin (who was even arrested) were suddenly expelled. Instead of Avdeev, the commandant of the “House of Special Purpose”, Yurovsky became his assistant, Nikulin (known for his atrocities in Kamyshin, working in the Cheka) was appointed his assistant.

All security was replaced by selected security officers seconded by the local emergency service. From that moment and during the last two weeks, when the Royal Prisoners had to live under the same roof with their future executioners, Their Life became sheer torment...

On Sunday, July 1/14, three days before the murder, at the request of the Sovereign, Yurovsky allowed the invitation of Archpriest Father Ioann Storozhev and Deacon Bumirov, who had previously served the mass for the Royal Family on May 20/June 2. They noticed a change in the state of mind of Their Majesties and Most August Children. According to St. John, they were not “depressed in spirit, but still gave the impression of being tired.” On this day, for the first time, none of the Members of the Royal Family sang during the Divine Service. They prayed in silence, as if anticipating that this was Their last church prayer, and as if it was revealed to them that this prayer would be extraordinary. And indeed, a significant event took place here, the deep and mysterious meaning of which became clear only when it became a thing of the past. The deacon began to sing “Rest with the Saints,” although according to the rite of the liturgy, this prayer is supposed to be read, recalls Fr. John: “...I also began to sing, somewhat embarrassed by such a deviation from the rules, but as soon as we started singing, I heard that the Members of the Romanov Family standing behind me knelt down...” So the Royal Prisoners, without suspecting it themselves, prepared for death by accepting funeral instructions...

Meanwhile, Goloshchekin brought an order from Moscow from Sverdlov to execute the Royal Family.

Yurovsky and his team of executioners quickly prepared everything for the execution. On the morning of Tuesday, July 3/16, 1918. he removed the cook’s apprentice, little Leonid Sednev, I.D.’s nephew, from the Ipatiev house. Sednev (children's footman).

But even in these dying days, the Royal Family did not lose courage. On Monday, July 2/15, four women were sent to Ipatiev's house to wash the floors. One later testified to the investigator: “I personally washed the floors in almost all the rooms reserved for the Royal Family... The princesses helped us clean and move the beds in Their bedroom and talked cheerfully among themselves...”

At 7 o’clock in the evening, Yurovsky ordered the revolvers to be taken away from the Russian outer guards, then he distributed the same revolvers to the participants in the execution, Pavel Medvedev helped him.

On this last day of the life of the Prisoners, the Sovereign, the Heir Tsarevich and all the Grand Duchesses went for their usual walk in the garden and at 4 o'clock in the afternoon during the changing of the guards they returned to the house. They didn't come out anymore. The evening routine was not disrupted by anything...

Suspecting nothing, the Royal Family went to bed. Shortly after midnight, Yurovsky entered Their rooms, woke everyone up, and, under the pretext of the danger threatening the city from the approaching White troops, announced that he had orders to take the Prisoners to a safe place. After some time, when everyone had dressed, washed and prepared to leave, Yurovsky, accompanied by Nikulin and Medvedev, led the Royal Family to the lower floor to the outer door facing Voznesensky Lane.

Yurovsky and Nikulin walked ahead, holding a lamp in his hand to illuminate the dark narrow staircase. The Emperor followed them. He carried the Heir, Alexei Nikolaevich, in his arms. The Heir's leg was bandaged with a thick bandage, and with every step He moaned quietly. Following the Emperor were the Empress and the Grand Duchesses. Some of them had a pillow with them, and Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna carried her beloved dog Jimmy in her arms. Next came the physician E.S. Botkin, the room girl A.S. Demidova, the footman A.E. Trupp and the cook I.M. Kharitonov. Medvedev brought up the rear of the procession. Having gone downstairs and passing through the entire lower floor to the corner room - it was the front room with the exit door to the street - Yurovsky turned left into the adjacent middle room, just under the bedroom of the Grand Duchesses, and announced that they would have to wait until the cars were delivered. It was an empty semi-basement room 5 1/3 long and 4 1/2 m wide.

Since the Tsarevich could not stand and the Empress was unwell, at the Emperor’s request three chairs were brought. The Emperor sat down in the middle of the room, seating the Heir next to Him and hugging Him with his right hand. Behind the Heir and slightly to the side of Him stood Doctor Botkin. The Empress sat down on the left hand of the Emperor, closer to the window and a step behind. A pillow was placed on Her chair and on the Heir's chair. On the same side, even closer to the wall with the window, in the back of the room, stood Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna and a little further, in the corner near the outer wall, Anna Demidova. Behind the Empress’s chair was one of the senior V. Princesses, probably Tatyana Nikolaevna. On Her right hand, leaning against the back wall, stood V. Princesses Olga Nikolaevna and Maria Nikolaevna; Next to them, a little ahead, is A. Troupe, holding a blanket for the Heir, and in the corner far left of the door is cook Kharitonov. The first half of the room from the entrance remained free. Everyone was calm. They are apparently accustomed to such night alarms and movements. Moreover, Yurovsky’s explanations seemed plausible, and some “forced” delay did not arouse any suspicion.

altYurovsky went out to make the last orders. By this time, all 11 executioners who shot the Royal Family and Her faithful servants that night had gathered in one of the neighboring rooms. Here are their names: Yankel Haimovich Yurovsky, Nikulin, Stepan Vaganov, Pavel Spiridonovich Medvedev, Laons Gorvat, Anselm Fischer, Isidor Edelstein, Emil Fecte, Imre Nad, Victor Grinfeld and Andreas Vergazi - mercenaries - Magyars.

Each had a seven-shot revolver. Yurovsky, in addition, had a Mauser, and two of them had rifles with fixed bayonets. Each killer chose his victim in advance: Gorvat chose Botkin. But at the same time, Yurovsky strictly forbade everyone else to shoot at the Sovereign Emperor and the Tsarevich: he wanted, or rather, he was ordered, to kill the Russian Orthodox Tsar and His Heir with his own hand.

Outside the window, the noise of the engine of a four-ton Fiat truck, prepared for transporting bodies, was heard. Shooting to the sound of a running truck engine, in order to muffle the shots, was a favorite technique of the security officers. This method was applied here as well.

It was 1 o'clock. 15m. Nights according to solar time, or 3 hours. 15m. according to summer time (translated by the Bolsheviks two hours ahead). Yurovsky returned to the room, along with the entire team of executioners. Nikulin moved closer to the window, opposite the Empress. Gorvat positioned himself facing Doctor Botkin. The others split up on either side of the door. Medvedev took a position on the threshold.

Approaching the Emperor, Yurovsky said a few words, announcing the upcoming execution. This was so unexpected that the Emperor, apparently, did not immediately understand the meaning of what was said. He stood up from his chair and asked in amazement: “What? What?" The Empress and one of the Grand Duchesses managed to cross themselves. At that moment, Yurovsky raised his revolver and shot several times at point-blank range, first at the Sovereign and then at the Heir.

Almost simultaneously, others began shooting. The Grand Duchesses, standing in the second row, saw their Parents fall and began to scream in horror. They were destined to outlive Them for several terrible moments. Those shot fell one after another. About 70 shots were fired in just 2-3 minutes. The wounded Princesses were finished off with bayonets. The heir moaned weakly. Yurovsky killed Him with two shots to the head. The wounded Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna was finished off with bayonets and rifle butts.

Anna Demidova rushed about until she fell under the blows of bayonets. Some victims were shot and stabbed to death before everything died down.

...Through the bluish fog that filled the room from many shots, with the weak illumination of one electric light bulb, the picture of the murder presented a terrifying spectacle.

The Emperor fell forward, close to the Empress. The Heir was lying on his back nearby. The Grand Duchesses were together, as if They were holding each other's hands. Between Them lay the corpse of little Jimmy, whom the Great Anastasia Nikolaevna held close to her until the last moment. Dr. Botkin took a step forward before falling on his face with his right arm raised. Anna Demidova and Alexey Trupp fell near the back wall. Ivan Kharitonov lay supine at the feet of the Grand Duchesses. All those killed had several wounds, and therefore there was especially a lot of blood. Their faces and clothes were covered in blood; it stood in puddles on the floor, splashes and stains covered the walls. It seemed that the whole room was covered in blood and represented a slaughterhouse (an Old Testament altar).

On the night of the martyrdom of the Royal Family, Blessed Maria of Diveyevo raged and shouted: “The princesses with bayonets! Damned Jews! She raged terribly, and only then did they understand what she was screaming about. Under the arches of the Ipatiev basement, in which the Royal Martyrs and their Faithful servants completed their way of the cross, inscriptions left by the executioners were discovered. One of them consisted of four cabalistic signs. It was deciphered as follows: “Here, on the orders of satanic forces, the Tsar was sacrificed for the destruction of the State. All nations are informed of this.”

“...At the very beginning of this century, even before the First World War, small shops in the kingdom of Poland sold under the counter rather crudely printed postcards depicting a Jewish “tzaddik” (rabbi) with a Torah in one hand and a white bird in the other. The bird had the head of Emperor Nicholas II, with an imperial crown. Below... was the following inscription: “Let this sacrificial animal be my cleansing, it will be my substitute and cleansing sacrifice.”

During the investigation into the murder of Nicholas II and His Family, it was established that the day before this crime, a special train consisting of a steam locomotive and one passenger carriage arrived in Yekaterinburg from Central Russia. It brought a face in black clothes, looking like a Jewish rabbi. This person examined the basement of the house and left a Kabbalistic inscription on the wall (the above-mentioned comp.)..."."Christography", magazine "New Book of Russia".

...By this time, Shaya Goloshchekin, Beloborodov, Mobius and Voikov arrived at the “House of Special Purpose”. Yurovsky and Voikov began a thorough examination of the dead. They turned everyone over on their backs to make sure there were no signs of life left. At the same time, they took jewelry from their victims: rings, bracelets, gold watches. They took off the princesses' shoes, which they then gave to their mistresses.

Then the bodies were wrapped in pre-prepared overcoat cloth and transferred on a stretcher made of two shafts and sheets to a truck parked at the entrance. Zlokazovsky worker Lyukhanov was driving. Yurovsky, Ermakov and Vaganov sat down with him.

Under the cover of darkness, the truck drove away from Ipatiev’s house, went down Voznesensky Avenue towards Main Avenue and left the city through the suburb of Verkh-Isetsk. Here he turned onto the only road leading to the village of Koptyaki, located on the shores of Lake Isetskoe. The road there goes through the forest, crossing the Perm and Tagil railway lines. It was already dawn when, about 15 versts from Yekaterinburg and, not reaching four versts to Koptyakov, in a dense forest in the “Four Brothers” tract, the truck turned left and reached a small forest clearing near a row of abandoned mines, called “Ganina Yama”. Here the bodies of the Royal Martyrs were unloaded, cut up, doused with gasoline and thrown onto two large bonfires. The bones were destroyed using sulfuric acid. For three days and two nights, the killers, assisted by 15 responsible party communists specially mobilized for this purpose, carried out their diabolical work under the direct leadership of Yurovsky, on the instructions of Voikov and under the supervision of Goloshchekin and Beloborodov, who came from Yekaterinburg to the forest several times. Finally, by the evening of July 6/19, it was all over. The killers carefully destroyed traces of fires. The ashes and all that was left of the burnt bodies were thrown into a mine, which was then blown up with hand grenades, and the ground around was dug up and covered with leaves and moss to hide the traces of the crime committed there.

alt Beloborodov immediately telegraphed Sverdlov about the murder of the Royal Family. However, this latter did not dare to reveal the truth not only to the Russian people, but even to the Soviet government. At a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, which took place on July 5/18 under the chairmanship of Lenin, Sverdlov made an emergency statement. It was a complete pile of lies.

He said that a message had been received from Yekaterinburg about the execution of the Sovereign Emperor, that He was shot by order of the Ural Regional Council and that the Empress and Heir were evacuated to a “safe place.” He kept silent about the fate of the Grand Duchesses. In conclusion, he added that the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved the resolution of the Ural Council. Having listened in silence to Sverdlov’s statement, the members of the Council of People’s Commissars continued the meeting...

The next day it was announced in all newspapers in Moscow. After long negotiations with Sverdlov over a direct line, Goloshchekin made a similar message to the Ural Council, which was published in Yekaterinburg only on July 8/21, since the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks, who allegedly arbitrarily shot the Royal Family, actually did not even dare to issue a message without Moscow’s permission about the execution. Meanwhile, as the front approached, the Bolsheviks began a panicky flight from Yekaterinburg. On July 12/25 it was taken by troops of the Siberian Army. On the same day, guards were assigned to Ipatiev’s house, and on July 17/30 a judicial investigation began, which restored the picture of this terrible crime in almost all details, and also established the identities of its organizers and perpetrators. In subsequent years, a number of new witnesses appeared, and new documents and facts became known, which further supplemented and clarified the investigation materials.

Investigating the ritual murder of the Royal Family, investigator N.A. Sokolov, who literally sifted through all the earth at the site of the burning of the bodies of the Royal Family and discovered numerous fragments of crushed and burnt bones and extensive greasy masses, did not find a single tooth, not a single fragment, and As you know, teeth don’t burn in fire. It turned out that after the murder Isaac Goloshchekin immediately went to Moscow with three barrels of alcohol... He took with him to Moscow these heavy barrels, sealed in wooden boxes and wrapped in ropes, and there was no place at all in the cabin of the carriage, without touching the contents in them in the cabin. Some of the accompanying security officials and train servants were interested in the mysterious cargo. To all questions, Goloshchekin answered that he was carrying samples of artillery shells for the Putilov plant. In Moscow, Goloshchekin took the boxes, went to Yankel Sverdlov and lived with him for five days without returning to the carriage. What documents in the literal sense of the word, and for what purpose, could be of interest to Yankel Sverdlov, Nakhamkes and Bronstein?

It is quite possible that the murderers, destroying the Royal bodies, separated honest heads from them, to prove to the leadership in Moscow about the liquidation of the entire Royal Family. This method, as a kind of “reporting,” was widely used in the Cheka during those terrible years of mass murder of the defenseless population of Russia by the Bolsheviks.

There is a rare photograph: during the days of the February Troubles, the Tsar's children, sick with measles, after recovery, all five were photographed with shaved heads - so that only their heads are visible, and they all have the same face. The Empress burst into tears: five children’s heads seemed to be cut off...

There is no doubt that it was a ritual murder. This is evidenced not only by the ritual Kabbalistic inscriptions in the basement room of the Ipatiev House, but also by the murderers themselves.

The wrongdoers knew what they were doing. Their conversations are noteworthy. One of the regicides M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) described the night of July 17 in December 1963:

...We went down to the first floor. That room is “very small.” “Yurovsky and Nikulin brought three chairs - the last thrones of the condemned Dynasty.”

Yurovsky declares out loud: “...we have been entrusted with the mission to put an end to the House of Romanov!”

And here is the moment immediately after the massacre: “Near the truck I meet Philip Goloshchekin.

Where have you been? - I ask him.

I walked around the square. I heard shots. It was audible. — He bent over the Tsar.

The end, you say, of the Romanov Dynasty?! Yes…

The Red Army soldier brought Anastasia's lap dog on a bayonet - when we walked past the door (to the stairs to the second floor), a long, plaintive howl was heard from behind the doors - the last salute to the All-Russian Emperor. The dog's corpse was thrown next to the king's.

Dogs - dog death! - Goloshchekin said contemptuously.”

After the fanatics initially threw the bodies of the Royal Martyrs into the mine, they decided to remove them from there in order to set them on fire. “From July 17th to 18th,” recalled P.Z. Ermakov, - I arrived in the forest again, brought a rope. I was lowered into the mine. I began to tie each one up individually, and two guys pulled them out. All the corpses were taken (sic! - S.F.) from the mine in order to put an end to the Romanovs and so that their friends would not think of creating HOLY RELICS.”

M.A., already mentioned by us. Medvedev testified: “Before us lay ready-made “MIRACULAR POWERS”: the icy water of the mine not only completely washed away the blood, but also froze the bodies so much that they looked as if they were alive—a blush even appeared on the faces of the Tsar, the girls and women.”

One of the participants in the destruction of the royal bodies, security officer G.I. Sukhorukov recalled on April 3, 1928: “So that even if the whites had found these corpses and had not guessed from the number that these were the Royal Family, we decided to burn two of them at the stake, which we did, the first Heir and the second is the youngest daughter Anastasia...”

Participant in the regicide M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) (December 1963): “Given the deep religiosity of the people in the province, it was impossible to allow even the remains of the Royal Dynasty to be left to the enemy, from which the clergy would immediately fabricate “HOLY MIRACLE-WORKING RECENTS” ....”

Another security officer, G.P., also thought the same. Nikulin in his radio conversation on May 12, 1964: “... Even if a corpse had been discovered, then, obviously, some kind of POWERS were created from it, you know, around which some kind of counter-revolution would have grouped...”.

The same thing was confirmed the next day by his comrade I.I. Rodzinsky: “...It was a very serious matter.<…>If the White Guards had discovered these remains, do you know what they would have done? POWERS. Processions of the cross would take advantage of the darkness of the village. Therefore, the question of hiding traces was more important than even the execution itself.<…>This was the most important thing...”

No matter how distorted the bodies are, M.K. believed. Diterichs, - Isaac Goloshchekin understood perfectly well that for a Russian Christian it is not the finding of a physical whole body that matters, but their most insignificant remains, as sacred relics of those bodies whose soul is immortal and cannot be destroyed by Isaac Goloshchekin or another fanatic like him from the Jewish people "

Truly: even the demons believe and tremble!

...The Bolsheviks renamed the city of Yekaterinburg to Sverdlovsk - in honor of the main organizer of the murder of the Royal Family, and thereby not only confirmed the correctness of the accusations of the judiciary, but also their responsibility for this greatest crime in the history of mankind, committed by the world forces of evil...

The date of the savage murder itself—July 17—is no coincidence. On this day, the Russian Orthodox Church honors the memory of the holy noble prince Andrei Bogolyubsky, who consecrated the autocracy of Rus' with his martyrdom. According to the chroniclers, the Jewish conspirators, who “accepted” Orthodoxy and were blessed by Him, killed him in the most cruel way. Holy Prince Andrei was the first to proclaim the idea of ​​Orthodoxy and Autocracy as the basis of the statehood of Holy Rus' and was, in fact, the first Russian Tsar.

According to God's providence, the Royal Martyrs were taken from earthly life all together. As a reward for boundless mutual love, which tightly bound them into one inseparable whole.

The Emperor courageously ascended Golgotha ​​and with meek submission to the Will of God accepted martyrdom. He left a legacy of an unclouded Monarchical Beginning as a precious Pledge received by Him from His Royal ancestors.