Murder of the Romanov family | |
---|---|
Part of the Red Terror during the Russian Civil War | |
![]() The basement where the Romanov family was killed. The wall had been torn apart in search of bullets and other evidence by investigators in 1919. The double doors leading to a storeroom were locked during the murders.[1] | |
Location | Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, Russian SFSR |
Coordinates | 56°50′39″N 60°36′35″E / 56.84417°N 60.60972°E |
Date | 16–17 July 1918, 106 years ago |
Target | Romanov family |
Attack type | Regicide, mass murder, extrajudicial killing, execution |
Deaths | 11 |
Perpetrators | Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on instructions from the Ural Regional Soviet[a] |
The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were shot and bayoneted to death[2][3] by Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Also murdered that night were members of the imperial entourage who had accompanied them: court physician Eugene Botkin; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and head cook Ivan Kharitonov.[4] The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped, mutilated with grenades to prevent identification, and buried.[3][5]
Following the February Revolution in 1917, the Romanovs and their servants had been imprisoned in the Alexander Palace before being moved to Tobolsk, Siberia, in the aftermath of the October Revolution. They were next moved to a house in Yekaterinburg, near the Ural Mountains, before their execution in July 1918. The Bolsheviks initially announced only Nicholas's death;[6][7] for the next eight years,[8] the Soviet leadership maintained a systematic web of disinformation relating to the fate of the family,[9] from claiming in September 1919 that they were murdered by left-wing revolutionaries,[10] to denying outright in April 1922 that they were dead.[9] The Soviets finally acknowledged the murders in 1926 following the publication in France of a 1919 investigation by a White émigré but said that the bodies were destroyed and that Lenin's Cabinet was not responsible.[11] The Soviet cover-up of the murders fuelled rumors of survivors.[12] Various Romanov impostors claimed to be members of the Romanov family, which drew media attention away from activities of Soviet Russia.[9]
In 1979, amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin discovered the burial site.[13] The Soviet Union did not acknowledge the existence of these remains publicly until 1989 during the glasnost period.[14] The identities of the remains were confirmed by forensic and DNA analysis and investigation in 1994, with the assistance of British experts. In 1998, eighty years after the executions, the remains of the Romanovs were reinterred in a state funeral in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.[15] The funeral was not attended by key members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who disputed the authenticity of the remains.[16] In 2007, a second, smaller grave which contained the remains of two of the Romanov children, missing from the larger grave, was discovered by amateur archaeologists;[17][13] they were confirmed to be the remains of Alexei and a sister—either Anastasia or Maria—by DNA analysis. In 2008, after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian prosecutor general's office rehabilitated the Romanov family as "victims of political repressions".[18] A criminal case was opened by the Russian government in 1993, but nobody was prosecuted on the basis that the perpetrators were dead.[19]
According to the official state version of the Soviet Union, ex-tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, were executed by firing squad by order of the Ural Regional Soviet.[20][21] Historians have debated whether the execution was sanctioned by Moscow leadership.[22] Some Western historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the ongoing Russian Civil War.[23][24] This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky's diary.[25] However, other historians have cited documented orders from the All-Russian Central Committee of the Soviets preferring a public trial for Nicholas II with Trotsky as chief prosecutor and his family spared.[26][27]
A 2011 investigation concluded that, despite the opening of state archives in the post-Soviet years, no written document has been found which proves Lenin or Sverdlov ordered the executions.[28] However, they endorsed the murders after they occurred.[29]
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