The 20th century did not start well for the Russian Empire. First, the failed Russo-Japanese War, as a result of which Russia lost Port Arthur, and the power of its authority among the already dissatisfied people. Nicholas II, unlike his predecessors, nevertheless decided to make concessions and give up a number of powers. So the first parliament appeared in Russia, but this did not help either.

Low level of economic development of the state, poverty, First World War and the growing influence of the socialists led to the overthrow of the monarchy in Russia. In 1917, Nicholas II signed the abdication of the throne on his behalf and on behalf of his son, Tsarevich Alexei. After that, the royal family, namely the emperor, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, daughters Tatyana, Anastasia, Olga, Maria and son Alexei were sent to Tobolsk.

The emperor, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, daughters Tatyana, Anastasia, Olga, Maria and son Alexei were sent to Tobolsk // Photo: ria.ru

Exile to Yekaterinburg and imprisonment in the Ipatiev house

There was no unity among the Bolsheviks about the future fate of the emperor. The country was plunged into civil war, and Nicholas II could become a trump card for the Whites. The Bolsheviks did not want this. But at the same time, according to a number of researchers, Vladimir Lenin did not want to quarrel with the German emperor Wilhelm, to whom the Romanovs were close relatives. Therefore, the "leader of the proletariat" was categorically against the massacre of Nicholas II and his family.

In April 1918, a decision was made to transfer the royal family from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. In the Urals, the Bolsheviks were more popular and were not afraid that the emperor could be released by his supporters. The royal family was placed in the requisitioned mansion of the mining engineer Ipatiev. The physician Evgeny Botkin, the cook Ivan Kharitonov, the valet Alexei Trupp and the room girl Anna Demidova were admitted to Nicholas II and his family. From the very beginning they declared their readiness to share the fate of the deposed emperor and his family.

As noted in the diaries of Nikolai Romanov and members of his family, exile in Yekaterinburg was a test for them // Photo: awesomestories.com

As noted in the diaries of Nikolai Romanov and members of his family, exile in Yekaterinburg became a test for them. The guards assigned to them allowed themselves liberties and often morally mocked the crowned persons. But at the same time, the nuns of the Novo-Tikhvin Monastery daily sent fresh food to the emperor's table, trying to please the exiled anointed of God.

There is an interesting history associated with these deliveries. Once, in a cork from a bottle of cream, the emperor found a note on French. It said that officers who remembered the oath were preparing the emperor's escape and he needed to be ready. Each time Nicholas II received such a note, he and his family members went to bed dressed and waited for their deliverers.

Later it turned out that it was a provocation of the Bolsheviks. They wanted to test how ready the emperor and his family were to escape. It turned out that they were waiting for the right moment. According to some researchers, this only strengthened the new government in the belief that it was necessary to get rid of the king as soon as possible.

The execution of the emperor

Until now, historians have not been able to find out who made the decision to kill the imperial family. Some argue that it was Lenin personally. But there is no documentary evidence for this. according to another version, Vladimir Lenin did not want to stain his hands with blood, and the Ural Bolsheviks took responsibility for this decision. The third version says that Moscow found out about the incident after the fact, and the decision was actually made in the Urals in connection with the uprising of the White Czechs. As Leon Trotsky noted in his memoirs, the execution order was practically given personally by Joseph Stalin.

“Having learned about the uprising of the White Czechs and the approach of the Whites to Yekaterinburg, Stalin uttered the phrase: “The Emperor must not fall into the hands of the Whites.” This phrase became the death sentence for the royal family. Trotsky writes.

By the way, Leon Trotsky was to become the main prosecutor at the show trial of Nicholas II. But it never took place.

The facts show that the execution of Nicholas II and his family was planned. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, a car for transporting corpses arrived at Ipatiev's house. Then the Romanovs were awakened and ordered to dress urgently. Allegedly, a group of people tried to free them from captivity, so the family will be urgently transported to another place. The assembly took about forty minutes. After that, members of the royal family were taken to the basement. Tsarevich Alexei could not walk on his own, so his father carried him in his arms.

Finding that there was absolutely no furniture in the room where they were taken, the empress asked to bring two chairs, on one of which she sat herself, and on the second she sat her son. The rest were lined up against the wall. After everyone gathered in the room, their chief jailer Yurovsky went down to the royal family and read out the verdict to the king. Yurovsky himself does not exactly remember what he said at that moment. Approximately he said that the supporters of the emperor tried to free him, so the Bolsheviks were forced to shoot him. Nicholas II turned around and asked again, and immediately the firing squad opened fire.

Nicholas II turned around and asked again, and immediately the firing squad opened fire // Photo: v-zdor.com

Nicholas II was one of the first to be killed, but his daughters and the Tsarevich were finished off with bayonets and shots from a revolver. Later, when the dead were undressed, they found a huge amount of jewelry in their clothes that protected the girls and the empress from bullets. Jewelry was stolen.

Burial of the remains

Immediately after the execution, the bodies were loaded into a car. Servants and a physician were killed along with the imperial family. As the Bolsheviks later explained their decision, these people themselves expressed their readiness to share the fate of the royal family.

Initially, the bodies were planned to be buried in an abandoned mine, but this idea failed because they could not arrange a collapse, and the corpses were easy to find. After the Bolsheviks made an attempt to burn the bodies. This idea was a success with the Tsarevich and the room girl Anna Demidova. The rest were buried near the road under construction, after disfiguring the corpses with sulfuric acid. The burial was also supervised by Yurovsky.

Investigation and conspiracy theories

The murder of the royal family was investigated repeatedly. Soon after the murder, Yekaterinburg was still captured by the Whites, and the investigation was entrusted to the investigator of the Omsk District, Sokolov. After they were engaged in foreign and domestic experts. In 1998 the remains last emperor and his relatives were buried in St. Petersburg. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation announced the closure of the investigation in 2011.

As a result of the investigation, the remains of the imperial family were discovered and identified. Despite this, a number of experts continue to assert that not all members of the royal family were killed in Yekaterinburg. It is worth noting that initially the Bolsheviks announced the execution of only Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexei. For a long time, the world community and the people believed that Alexandra Fedorovna and her daughters were taken to another place and survived. In this regard, impostors periodically appeared, calling themselves the children of the last Russian emperor.

In this case, the conversation will be about those gentlemen, thanks to whom, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, in Yekaterinburg there was a brutal the royal family of the Romanovs was killed. The name of these executioners is one - regicides. Some of them made the decision, while others carried it out. As a result, the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna and their children, Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Maria, Olga, Tatyana and Tsarevich Alexei, died. Together with them, people from service personnel. These are the personal cook of the family Ivan Mikhailovich Kharitonov, the chamber footman Alexei Egorovich Trupp, the room girl Anna Demidova and the family doctor Evgeny Sergeevich Botkin.

criminals

A terrible crime was preceded by a meeting of the Presidium of the Ural Council, which took place on July 12, 1918. It was on it that the decision was made to execute the royal family. It was also developed detailed plan both the crime itself and the destruction of corpses, that is, the concealment of traces of the destruction of innocent people.

The meeting was headed by the chairman of the Ural Council, a member of the presidium of the regional committee of the RCP (b) Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov (1891-1938). Together with him, the decision was made by: the military commissar of Yekaterinburg Filipp Isaevich Goloshchekin (1876-1941), the chairman of the regional Cheka Fyodor Nikolaevich Lukoyanov (1894-1947), Chief Editor newspapers "Yekaterinburgsky Rabochiy" Georgy Ivanovich Safarov (1891-1942), Commissar of Supply of the Ural Council Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov (1888-1927), commandant of the "House of Special Purpose" Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky (1878-1938).

The Bolsheviks called the house of the engineer Ipatiev the "House of Special Purpose". It was in it that the Romanov royal family was kept in May-July 1918 after it was transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg.

But you have to be a very naive person to think that middle-level executives took responsibility and independently made the most important political decision to execute the royal family. They found it possible only to coordinate it with the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (1885-1919). This is how the Bolsheviks presented everything in their time.

Already somewhere, where, but in the Leninist party, discipline was ironclad. Decisions came only from the very top, and grass-roots employees unquestioningly executed them. Therefore, with all responsibility it can be argued that the instruction was given directly by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who was sitting in the silence of the Kremlin office. Naturally, he discussed this issue with Sverdlov and the chief Ural Bolshevik Evgeny Alekseevich Preobrazhensky (1886-1937).

The latter, of course, was aware of all the decisions, although he was absent from Yekaterinburg on the bloody date of the execution. At this time, he took part in the work of the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Moscow, and then departed for Kursk and returned to the Urals only in the last days of July 1918.

But, in any case, officially Ulyanov and Preobrazhensky cannot be blamed for the death of the Romanov family. Sverdlov bears indirect responsibility. After all, he imposed the resolution "agreed". A kind of soft-bodied leader. Resignedly took note of the decision of the grassroots organization and readily scribbled the usual replies on a piece of paper. Only a 5-year-old child can believe in this.

The royal family in the basement of the Ipatiev house before the execution

Now let's talk about performers. About those villains who carried out a terrible sacrilege by raising their hands against the anointed of God and his family. To date, the exact name of the killers is unknown. No one can name the number of criminals. There is an opinion that Latvian riflemen took part in the execution, since the Bolsheviks considered that Russian soldiers would not shoot at the tsar and his family. Other researchers insist on the Hungarians who guarded the arrested Romanovs.

However, there are names that appear on all the lists of various researchers. This is the commandant of the "House of Special Purpose" Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky, who led the execution. His deputy Grigory Petrovich Nikulin (1895-1965). The commander of the guards of the royal family, Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov (1884-1952) and an employee of the Cheka, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Medvedev (Kudrin) (1891-1964).

These four people were directly involved in the execution of representatives of the House of Romanov. They carried out the decision of the Ural Council. At the same time, they showed amazing cruelty, since they not only shot absolutely defenseless people, but also finished them off with bayonets, and then doused them with acid so that the bodies could not be recognized.

To each will be rewarded according to his deeds

Organizers

There is an opinion that God sees everything and punishes the villains for their deeds. The regicides belong to the most cruel part of the criminal elements. Their goal is to seize power. They go to her through the corpses, not at all embarrassed by this. At the same time, people are dying who are not at all to blame for the fact that they received their crowned title by inheritance. As for Nicholas II, this man was no longer emperor at the time of his death, since he voluntarily renounced the crown.

Moreover, there is no way to justify the death of his family and staff. What was driving the villains? Of course, rabid cynicism, disregard to human lives, lack of spirituality and rejection of Christian norms and rules. The most terrible thing is that, having committed a terrible crime, these gentlemen were proud of what they had done for the rest of their lives. They willingly told about everything to journalists, schoolchildren and just idle listeners.

But let us return to God and trace the life path of those who doomed innocent people to a terrible death for the sake of an irrepressible desire to command others.

Ulyanov and Sverdlov

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. We all know him as the leader of the world proletariat. However, this people's leader was spattered up to the top of his head with human blood. After the execution of the Romanovs, he lived for only 5 years. He died of syphilis, having lost his mind. This is the most terrible punishment of the heavenly forces.

Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. He left this world at the age of 33, 9 months after the villainy committed in Yekaterinburg. In the city of Orel, he was severely beaten by workers. The very ones for whose rights he allegedly stood up for. With multiple fractures and injuries, he was taken to Moscow, where he died 8 days later.

These are the two main criminals directly responsible for the death of the Romanov family. The regicides were punished and died not at an advanced age, surrounded by children and grandchildren, but in the prime of life. As for the other organizers of villainy, here heavenly forces they postponed the punishment, but God's judgment still happened, giving everyone what they deserved.

Goloshchekin and Beloborodov (right)

Philip Isaevich Goloshchekin- the chief security officer of Yekaterinburg and the territories adjacent to it. It was he who went to Moscow at the end of June, where he received oral instructions from Sverdlov regarding the execution of crowned persons. After that, he returned to the Urals, where the Presidium of the Ural Council was hastily assembled, and a decision was made on the secret execution of the Romanovs.

In mid-October 1939, Philip Isaevich was arrested. He was accused of anti-state activities and an unhealthy attraction to little boys. This perverted gentleman was shot at the end of October 1941. Goloshchekin outlived the Romanovs by 23 years, but retribution still overtook him.

Chairman of the Ural Council Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov- at present, this is the chairman of the regional duma. It was he who led the meeting at which the decision was made to execute the royal family. His signature was next to the word "I approve". If we approach this issue officially, then it is he who bears the main responsibility for the murder of innocent people.

Beloborodov has been a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1907, having joined it as a minor boy after the 1905 revolution. In all the posts entrusted to him by his senior comrades, he showed himself to be an exemplary and diligent worker. The best proof of this is July 1918.

After the execution of the crowned persons, Alexander Georgievich soared very high. In March 1919, his candidacy was considered for the post of president of the young Soviet republic. But preference was given to Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875-1946), since he knew peasant life well, and our "hero" was born into a working-class family.

But former chairman The Ural Council was not offended. He was appointed head of the political department of the Red Army. In 1921, he became deputy to Felix Dzherzhinesky, who headed the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. In 1923 he succeeded him in this high post. True, further a brilliant career did not work out.

In December 1927, Beloborodov was removed from his post and exiled to Arkhangelsk. From 1930 he worked as a middle manager. In August 1936 he was arrested by the NKVD. In February 1938, by decision of the military board, Alexander Georgievich was shot. At the time of his death, he was 46 years old. After the death of the Romanovs, the main culprit did not live even 20 years. In 1938, his wife Yablonskaya Franciska Viktorovna was also shot.

Safarov and Voikov (right)

Georgy Ivanovich Safarov- Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper "Ekaterinburg Worker". This Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience was an ardent supporter of the execution of the Romanov family, although she did nothing wrong to him. He lived well until 1917 in France and Switzerland. He came to Russia together with Ulyanov and Zinoviev in a "sealed carriage".

After the committed villainy, he worked in Turkestan, and then in the executive committee of the Comintern. Then he became the editor-in-chief of Leningradskaya Pravda. In 1927 he was expelled from the party and sentenced to 4 years of exile in the city of Achinsk ( Krasnoyarsk region). In 1928, the party card was returned and again sent to work in the Comintern. But after the assassination of Sergei Kirov at the end of 1934, Safarov finally lost confidence.

He was again exiled to Achinsk, and in December 1936 he was sentenced to 5 years in the camps. From January 1937, Georgy Ivanovich served his sentence in Vorkuta. He performed the duties of a water carrier there. He walked in a prisoner's pea jacket, belted with a rope. The family abandoned him after the guilty verdict. For the former Bolshevik-Leninist, this was a heavy moral blow.

Safarov was not released after the end of his term. It was a difficult time, military, and someone apparently decided that Ulyanov’s former ally had nothing to do in the rear Soviet troops. He was shot by decision of a special commission on July 27, 1942. This "hero" survived the Romanovs by 24 years and 10 days. He died at the age of 51, having lost both freedom and family at the end of his life.

Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov- the main supplier of the Urals. He was closely involved in food issues. And how could he get food in 1919? Naturally, he took them away from peasants and merchants who did not leave Yekaterinburg. With his tireless activity, he brought the region to complete impoverishment. The troops of the white army arrived well in time, otherwise people would begin to die of hunger.

This gentleman also came to Russia in a "sealed carriage", but not with Ulyanov, but with Anatoly Lunacharsky (the first people's commissar of education). Voikov was a Menshevik at first, but quickly figured out which way the wind was blowing. At the end of 1917, he broke with a shameful past and joined the RCP (b).

Pyotr Lazarevich not only raised his hand, voting for the death of the Romanovs, but also took an active part in hiding the traces of villainy. It was he who came up with the idea to douse the bodies with sulfuric acid. Since he was in charge of all the warehouses of the city, he personally signed the invoice for the receipt of this very acid. By his order, transport was also allocated for the transportation of bodies, shovels, picks, crowbars. The business manager is the main one, whatever you want.

Activities related to material values, Pyotr Lazarevich liked. Since 1919, he was engaged in consumer cooperation, while serving as deputy chairman of the Tsentrosoyuz. Concurrently, he organized the sale abroad of the treasures of the Romanov House and museum valuables of the Diamond Fund, the Armory, private collections requisitioned from the exploiters.

Priceless works of art and jewelry went to the black market, since officially at that time no one had business with the young Soviet state. Hence the ridiculous prices that were given for items that had a unique historical value.

In October 1924, Voikov left as an envoy to Poland. It's already been big politics, and Petr Lazarevich enthusiastically began to settle in a new field. But the poor guy was out of luck. On June 7, 1927, he was shot dead by Boris Kaverda (1907-1987). The Bolshevik terrorist fell at the hands of another terrorist belonging to the white émigré movement. Retribution came almost 9 years after the death of the Romanovs. At the time of his death, our next "hero" was 38 years old.

Fyodor Nikolaevich Lukoyanov- the chief Chekist of the Urals. He voted for the execution of the royal family, therefore he is one of the organizers of villainy. But in subsequent years, this "hero" did not show himself in any way. The point is that since 1919 he began to be tormented by bouts of schizophrenia. Therefore, Fedor Nikolaevich devoted his entire life to journalism. He worked in various newspapers, and died in 1947 at the age of 53, 29 years after the murder of the Romanov family.

Performers

As for the direct perpetrators of the bloody crime, God's court treated them much milder than the organizers. They were forced people and just carried out the order. Therefore, they are less to blame. At least that's what you might think if you trace the fateful path of each criminal.

The main perpetrator of the terrible murder of defenseless women and men, as well as a sick boy. He boasted that he personally shot Nicholas II. However, his subordinates also claimed this role.

Yakov Yurovsky

After the crime, he was taken to Moscow and sent to work in the organs of the Cheka. Then, after the liberation of Yekaterinburg from the White troops, Yurovsky returned to the city. Received the post of Chief Chekist of the Urals.

In 1921 he was transferred to the Gokhran and began to live in Moscow. Engaged in the accounting of material values. After that, he worked a little in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.

In 1923, a sharp decline. Yakov Mikhailovich was appointed director of the Krasny Bogatyr plant. That is, our hero began to lead the release rubber shoes: boots, galoshes, boots. A rather strange profile after the KGB and financial activities.

In 1928, Yurovsky was transferred as director of the Polytechnic Museum. This is a long building near the Bolshoi Theatre. In 1938, the main perpetrator of the assassination died of an ulcer at the age of 60. He outlived his victims by 20 years and 16 days.

But apparently the regicides bring a curse on their offspring. This "hero" had three children. The eldest daughter Rimma Yakovlevna (1898-1980) and two younger sons.

The daughter joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and headed the youth organization (Komsomol) of Yekaterinburg. Since 1926, in the party work. did good career in this field in the city of Voronezh in 1934-1937. Then she was transferred to Rostov-on-Don, where she was arrested in 1938. She stayed in the camps until 1946.

Sat in prison and son Alexander Yakovlevich (1904-1986). He was arrested in 1952, but, however, was soon released. But trouble happened with the grandchildren and granddaughters. All the boys tragically died. Two fell from the roof of the house, two burned down during the fire. The girls died in infancy. Yurovsky's niece Maria suffered the most. She had 11 children. Only one boy survived to adolescence. The mother abandoned him. The child was adopted by strangers.

Concerning Nikulin, Ermakova and Medvedev (Kudrin), then these gentlemen lived to old age. They worked, were honorably retired, and then buried with dignity. But regicides always get what they deserve. This trio escaped their well-deserved punishment on earth, but there is still judgment in heaven.

Grave of Grigory Petrovich Nikulin

After death, each soul rushes to heavenly places, hoping that the angels will let her into the kingdom of heaven. So the souls of the killers rushed to the Light. But then a dark personality appeared in front of each of them. She politely took the sinner by the elbow and unambiguously nodded in the opposite direction from Paradise.

There, in the heavenly haze, a black pharynx was visible in the Underworld. And next to him were disgusting grinning faces, nothing like heavenly angels. These are devils, and they have one job - to put a sinner on a hot frying pan and fry him forever on a slow fire.

In conclusion, it should be noted that violence always breeds violence. The one who commits a crime becomes a victim of the criminals himself. Vivid proof of this is the fate of the regicides, about which we have tried to tell in as much detail as possible in our sad story.

Egor Laskutnikov

The royal family spent 78 days in their last home.

Commissioner A. D. Avdeev was appointed the first commandant of the House of Special Purpose.

Preparations for the shooting

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

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

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

There is no archive source for the telegram.

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

Execution

On the night of July 16-17, the Romanovs and the servants went to bed, as usual, at 22:30. At 11:30 p.m., two special representatives from the Ural Council came to the mansion. They handed the decision of the executive committee to the commander of the security detachment P.Z. Ermakov and the new commandant of the house, Commissioner of the Extraordinary Investigation Commission Yakov Yurovsky, who replaced Avdeev in this position on July 4, and suggested that the execution of the sentence be started immediately.

Awakened, family members and staff were told that due to the advance of the white troops, the mansion could be under fire, and therefore, for security reasons, it was necessary to go to the basement.

There is a version that the following document was drawn up by Yurovsky to carry out the execution: Revolutionary Committee under the Yekaterinburg Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies REVOLUTIONARY HEADQUARTERS OF THE URAL DISTRICT Extraordinary Commission C and o to the Special Forces to the house of Ipatiev / 1st Kamishl Rifle Regiment / Commandant: Gorvat Laons Fischer Anzelm Zdelshtein Isidor Fekete Emil Nad Imre Grinfeld Victor Vergazi Andreas Prob.Com. Vaganov Serge Medvedev Pav Nikulin City of Ekaterinburg July 18, 1918 Chief of the Cheka Yurovsky However, according to V.P. Kozlov, I.F. Plotnikov, this document, once provided to the press by former Austrian prisoner of war I.P. Meyer, first published in Germany in 1956 and, most likely, fabricated, does not reflect the real shooter list. According to their version, the execution team consisted of: a member of the collegium of the Ural Central Committee - M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin), the commandant of the house Y.M. Yurovsky, his deputy G.P. Nikulin, the security commander P.Z. Ermakov and ordinary soldiers of the guard - Hungarians (according to other sources - Latvians). In the light of I. F. Plotnikov’s research, the list of those who were shot may look like this: Ya. M. Yurovsky, G. P. Nikulin, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), P. Z. Ermakov, S. P. Vaganov, A. G Kabanov, P. S. Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, Ya. M. Tselms and, under a very big question, an unknown student miner. Plotnikov believes that the latter was used in the Ipatiev house for only a few days after the execution, and only as a jewelry specialist. Thus, according to Plotnikov, the execution of the royal family was carried out by a group consisting almost entirely of ethnic Russians, with the participation of one Jew (Ya. M. Yurovsky) and, probably, one Latvian (Ya. M. Celms). According to surviving information, two or three Latvians refused to participate in the execution. , The fate of the Romanovs Except family former emperor, all members of the Romanov House were destroyed, according to various reasons remaining in Russia after the revolution (with the exception of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich, who died in Tashkent from pneumonia, and two children of his son Alexander Iskander - Natalia Androsova (1917-1999) and Kirill Androsov (1915-1992), who lived in Moscow). Memoirs of contemporaries Memoirs of Trotsky My next visit to Moscow fell after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing: Yes, where is the king? - It's over, - he answered, - shot. - Where is the family? - And the family with him. - All? I asked, apparently with a hint of surprise. - That's it - Sverdlov answered, - but what? He was waiting for my reaction. I didn't answer. - And who decided? I asked. - We decided here. Ilyich believed that it was impossible to leave us a living banner for them, especially in the present difficult conditions. Memoirs of Sverdlova Somehow in mid-July 1918, shortly after the end of the Fifth Congress of Soviets, Yakov Mikhailovich returned home in the morning, it was already dawn. He said that he was late at the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, where, among other things, he informed the members of the Council of People's Commissars about the latest news he had received from Yekaterinburg. - Haven't you heard? - Yakov Mikhailovich asked. - After all, the Urals shot Nikolai Romanov. Of course, I haven't heard anything yet. The message from Yekaterinburg was received only in the afternoon. The situation in Yekaterinburg was alarming: the White Czechs were approaching the city, the local counter-revolution was stirring. The Ural Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, having received information that Nikolai Romanov, who was being held in custody in Yekaterinburg, was preparing to escape, issued a decision to shoot the former tsar and immediately carried out his sentence. Yakov Mikhailovich, having received a message from Yekaterinburg, reported on the decision of the regional council to the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which approved the decision of the Ural Regional Council, and then informed the Council of People's Commissars. V. P. Milyutin, who participated in this meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, wrote in his diary: “I returned late from the Council of People's Commissars. There were "current" cases. During the discussion of the project on public health, the report of Semashko, Sverdlov entered and sat down in his place on a chair behind Ilyich. Semashko finished. Sverdlov went up, leaned over to Ilyich and said something. - Comrades, Sverdlov is asking for the floor for a message. “I must say,” Sverdlov began in his usual tone, “a message was received that in Yekaterinburg, by order of the regional Soviet, Nikolai was shot ... Nikolai wanted to run away. The Czechoslovaks advanced. The Presidium of the Central Executive Committee decided to approve ... - Now let's move on to reading the project article by article, - suggested Ilyich ... " Destruction and burial of the royal remains Investigation Sokolov's investigation Sokolov painstakingly and selflessly conducted the investigation entrusted to him. Kolchak had already been shot, Soviet power returned to the Urals and Siberia, and the investigator continued his work in exile. With the materials of the investigation, he made a dangerous journey through all of Siberia to the Far East, then to America. In exile in Paris, Sokolov continued to take testimony from surviving witnesses. He died of a ruptured heart in 1924 without completing his investigation. It was thanks to the painstaking work of N. A. Sokolov that the details of the execution and burial of the royal family became known for the first time. The search for royal remains The remains of members of the Romanov family were discovered near Sverdlovsk back in 1979 during excavations led by consultant to the Minister of Internal Affairs Geliy Ryabov. However, then the found remains were buried at the direction of the authorities. In 1991, the excavations were resumed. Numerous experts have confirmed that the remains found then with big share probabilities are the remains of the royal family. The remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Princess Maria were not found. In June 2007, realizing the world historical significance of the event and the object, it was decided to conduct new survey work on the Old Koptyakovskaya road in order to find the alleged second hiding place for the remains of the members of the Romanov imperial family. In July 2007, the bones of a young man aged 10-13 years old, and a girl aged 18-23 years old, as well as fragments of ceramic amphoras with Japanese sulfuric acid, iron angles, nails, and bullets were found by Ural archaeologists near Yekaterinburg, not far from burial places of the family of the last Russian emperor. According to scientists, these are the remains of members of the Romanov imperial family, Tsarevich Alexei and his sister, Princess Maria, hidden by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Andrey Grigoriev, Deputy General Director of the Research and Production Center for the Protection and Use of Historical and Cultural Monuments Sverdlovsk region: “From the Ural local historian V.V. Shitov, I learned that the archive contains documents that tell about the stay of the royal family in Yekaterinburg and its subsequent murder, as well as an attempt to hide their remains. Until the end of 2006, we were unable to start prospecting. On July 29, 2007, as a result of the search, we stumbled upon finds.” On August 24, 2007, the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia resumed the investigation into the criminal case of the execution of the royal family in connection with the discovery near Yekaterinburg of the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria Romanov. Traces of cutting were found on the remains of the children of Nicholas II. This was announced by the head of the department of archeology of the research and production center for the protection and use of monuments of history and culture of the Sverdlovsk region Sergey Pogorelov. “Traces of the fact that the bodies were chopped up were found on a humerus belonging to a man and on a fragment of a skull identified as female. In addition, a fully preserved oval hole was found on the man's skull, possibly a trace from a bullet,” Sergei Pogorelov explained. 1990s investigation The circumstances of the death of the royal family were investigated as part of a criminal case initiated on August 19, 1993 at the direction of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. The materials of the Government Commission for the study of issues related to the study and reburial of the remains of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family have been published. Reaction to the shooting Kokovtsov V.N.: “On the day the news was printed, I was twice on the street, rode a tram, and nowhere did I see the slightest glimpse of pity or compassion. The news was read loudly, with grins, mockery and the most ruthless comments... Some kind of senseless callousness, some kind of boasting of bloodthirstiness. The most disgusting expressions: - it would have been so long ago, - come on, reign again, - cover Nikolashka, - oh, brother Romanov, danced. Heard all around, from the youngest youth, and the elders turned away, indifferently silent. Rehabilitation of the royal family In the 1990s-2000s, the question of the legal rehabilitation of the Romanovs was raised before various authorities. In September 2007, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation refused to consider such a decision, since it did not find "accusations and relevant decisions of judicial and non-judicial bodies vested with judicial functions" on the fact of the execution of the Romanovs, and the execution was "a premeditated murder, albeit politically tinged, committed by persons not endowed with appropriate judicial and administrative powers". At the same time, the lawyer of the Romanov family notes that "As you know, the Bolsheviks transferred all power to the councils, including the judiciary, so the decision of the Ural Regional Council is equated to judgment". On November 8, 2007, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized the decision of the prosecutor's office as legal, considering that the execution should be considered exclusively within the framework of a criminal case. The decision of the Ural Regional Council dated July 17, 1918, which decided to carry out the execution, was attached to the materials provided by the side of the rehabilitated to the bodies of the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, and then to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. This document was presented by the lawyers of the Romanovs as an argument confirming the political nature of the murder, which was also noted by representatives of the prosecutor's office, however, according to the Russian legislation on rehabilitation, the decision of bodies endowed with judicial functions is required to establish the fact of repression, which the Ural Regional Council de jure was not. Since the case had been considered by a higher court, representatives of the Romanov family intended to challenge the decision of the Russian court in the European Court. However, on October 1, the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized Nikolai and his family as victims political repression and rehabilitated them,,. As the lawyer of the Grand Duchess Maria Romanova Herman Lukyanov stated: According to the judge, According to the procedural norms of Russian legislation, the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is final and not subject to review (appeal). On January 15, 2009, the case of the murder of the royal family was closed. . . In June 2009, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation decided to rehabilitate six more members of the Romanov family: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Romanov, Elizaveta Fedorovna Romanova, Sergey Mikhailovich Romanov, Ioan Konstantinovich Romanov, Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov and Igor Konstantinovich Romanov, class and social signs, without being charged with a specific crime...“. In accordance with Art. 1 and pp. "c", "e" art. 3 Laws Russian Federation“On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions”, the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation decided to rehabilitate Paley Vladimir Pavlovich, Yakovleva Varvara, Yanysheva Ekaterina Petrovna, Remez Fedor Semenovich (Mikhailovich), Kalin Ivan, Krukovsky, Dr. Helmerson and Johnson Nikolai Nikolaevich (Bryan). The issue of this rehabilitation, unlike the first case, was actually resolved in a few months, at the stage of applying to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, no trials were required, since the prosecutor's office revealed all the signs of political repression during the audit. Canonization and ecclesiastical cult of the royal martyrs Notes Multatuli, P. To the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia on the rehabilitation of the royal family. Yekaterinburg initiative. academy Russian history (03.10.2008). Retrieved November 9, 2008. The Supreme Court recognized members of the royal family as victims of repression. RIA News(01/10/2008). Retrieved November 9, 2008. Romanov Collection, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

After the execution on the night of July 16-17, 1918, the bodies of members of the royal family and their entourage (11 people in total) were loaded into a car and sent towards Verkh-Isetsk to the abandoned mines of Ganina Yama. At first they unsuccessfully tried to burn the victims, and then they threw them into the shaft of the mine and threw them with branches.

Discovery of remains

However, the next day, almost the entire Verkh-Isetsk knew about what had happened. In addition, according to Medvedev, a member of the firing squad, “ ice water mines not only washed the blood clean, but also froze the bodies so much that they looked as if they were alive. The conspiracy clearly failed.

The remains were promptly reburied. The area was cordoned off, but the truck, having driven only a few kilometers, got stuck in the swampy area of ​​the Porosenkov Log. Without beginning to invent anything, one part of the bodies was buried right under the road, and the other - a little to the side, after filling them with sulfuric acid. Sleepers were placed on top for reliability.

Interestingly, the forensic investigator N. Sokolov, sent by Kolchak in 1919 to search for a burial site, found this place, but he did not think of raising the sleepers. In the area of ​​Ganina Yama, he managed to find only a severed female finger. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the investigator was unequivocal: “Here is all that remains of the August Family. Everything else was destroyed by the Bolsheviks with fire and sulfuric acid.”

Nine years later, perhaps it was Porosenkov Log that Vladimir Mayakovsky visited, as can be judged from his poem “The Emperor”: “Here the cedar was touched with an ax, notches under the root of the bark, at the root under the cedar there is a road, and the emperor is buried in it.”

It is known that shortly before his trip to Sverdlovsk, the poet met in Warsaw with one of the organizers of the execution of the royal family, Pyotr Voikov, who could show him the exact place.

Ural historians found the remains in the Piglet Log in 1978, but permission for excavations was received only in 1991. There were 9 bodies in the burial. During the investigation, some of the remains were recognized as "royal": according to experts, only Alexei and Maria were missing. However, many experts were confused by the results of the examination, and therefore no one was in a hurry to agree with the conclusions. The House of Romanov and the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the remains as authentic.

Alexei and Maria were found only in 2007, guided by a document compiled from the words of the commandant of the "House of Special Purpose" Yakov Yurovsky. "Yurovsky's note" initially did not inspire much confidence, nevertheless, the place of the second burial was indicated correctly in it.

Falsifications and myths

Immediately after the execution, representatives new government tried to convince the West that the members of the imperial family, or at least the children, were alive and in safe place. People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G. V. Chicherin in April 1922 at the Genoa Conference, to the question of one of the correspondents about the fate of the Grand Duchesses, vaguely answered: “The fate of the tsar's daughters is not known to me. I read in the papers that they were in America."

However, P. L. Voikov, in an informal setting, stated more specifically: "the world will never know what we did to the royal family." But later, after the publication in the West of the materials of the Sokolov investigation, the Soviet authorities recognized the fact of the execution of the imperial family.

Falsifications and speculations around the execution of the Romanovs contributed to the spread of enduring myths, among which the myth of the ritual murder and the severed head of Nicholas II, which was in the special storage of the NKVD, was popular. Later, stories about the “miraculous salvation” of the Tsar’s children, Alexei and Anastasia, grew into myths. But all this has remained a myth.

Investigation and expertise

In 1993, Vladimir Solovyov, an investigator from the General Prosecutor's Office, was entrusted with the investigation into the discovery of the remains. Given the importance of the case, in addition to the traditional ballistic and macroscopic examinations, additional genetic studies were carried out together with British and American scientists.

For these purposes, blood was taken from some of the Romanov relatives living in England and Greece for analysis. The results showed that the probability that the remains belonged to members of the royal family was 98.5 percent.
The investigation considered this insufficient. Solovyov managed to obtain permission to exhume the remains sibling king - George. Scientists confirmed the "absolute positional similarity of mtDNA" of both remains, which revealed a rare genetic mutation inherent in the Romanovs - heteroplasmy.

However, after the discovery in 2007 of the alleged remains of Alexei and Maria, new studies and examinations were required. The work of scientists was greatly facilitated by Alexy II, who, before the burial of the first group of royal remains in the tomb of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, asked the investigators to remove bone particles. “Science is developing, it is possible that they will be needed in the future,” these were the words of the Patriarch.

To remove the doubts of skeptics for new examinations, the head of the laboratory of molecular genetics at the University of Massachusetts Evgeny Rogaev (who was insisted on by representatives of the Romanov dynasty), the chief geneticist of the US Army Michael Cobble (who returned the names of the victims of September 11), as well as an employee of the Institute of Forensic Medicine from Austria, Walter Parson.

Comparing the remains from the two burials, the experts once again rechecked the previously obtained data, and also conducted new studies - the previous results were confirmed. Moreover, the “blood-splattered shirt” of Nicholas II (Otsu incident) found in the Hermitage funds fell into the hands of scientists. And again, a positive answer: the genotypes of the king “on the blood” and “on the bones” coincided.

Results

The results of the investigation into the case of the execution of the royal family refuted some pre-existing assumptions. For example, according to experts, “under the conditions in which the destruction of corpses was carried out, it was impossible to completely destroy the remains using sulfuric acid and combustible materials.”

This fact rules out Ganina Yama as the final burial site.
True, the historian Vadim Viner finds a serious gap in the conclusions of the investigation. He believes that some finds belonging to a later time, in particular coins of the 30s, were not taken into account. But as the facts show, information about the place of burial very quickly "leaked" to the masses, and therefore the burial ground could be repeatedly opened in search of possible values.

Another revelation is offered by the historian S. A. Belyaev, who believes that “the family of the Yekaterinburg merchant could be buried with imperial honors,” though without providing convincing arguments.
However, the conclusions of the investigation, which was carried out with unprecedented scrupulousness using the latest methods, with the participation of independent experts, are unequivocal: all 11 remains clearly correlate with each of those shot in the Ipatiev house. Common sense and logic dictate that it is impossible to accidentally duplicate such physical and genetic correspondences.
In December 2010, the final conference dedicated to latest results expertise. Reports were made by 4 groups of geneticists who worked independently in different countries. Opponents of the official version could also express their views, however, according to eyewitnesses, “having listened to the reports, they left the hall without uttering a word.”
The Russian Orthodox Church still does not recognize the authenticity of the "Ekaterinburg remains", but many representatives of the Romanov dynasty, judging by their statements in the press, accepted the final results of the investigation.

Bolsheviks and the execution of the royal family

Over the past decade, the topic of the execution of the royal family has become relevant in connection with the discovery of many new facts. Documents and materials reflecting this tragic event began to be actively published, causing various comments, questions, and doubts. That is why it is important to analyze the available written sources.

Emperor Nicholas II

Perhaps the earliest historical source is the materials of the investigator for especially important cases of the Omsk District Court during the period of the Kolchak army in Siberia and the Urals, N.A. Sokolov, who, in hot pursuit, conducted the first investigation of this crime.

Nikolai Alekseevich Sokolov

He found traces of fires, fragments of bones, pieces of clothing, jewelry, and other fragments, but did not find the remains of the royal family.

According to a modern investigator, V.N. Solovyov, manipulations with the corpses of the royal family due to the sloppiness of the Red Army would not fit into any schemes of the smartest investigator for especially important cases. The subsequent advance of the Red Army shortened the search time. N.A. version Sokolov was that the corpses were dismembered and burned. Those who deny the authenticity of the royal remains rely on this version.

Another group of written sources are the memoirs of the participants in the execution of the royal family. They often contradict each other. They clearly show a desire to exaggerate the role of the authors in this atrocity. Among them - “a note by Ya.M. Yurovsky”, which was dictated by Yurovsky to the chief keeper of party secrets, Academician M.N. Pokrovsky back in 1920, when information about the investigation by N.A. Sokolov has not yet appeared in print.

Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky

In the 60s, the son of Ya.M. Yurovsky donated copies of his father's memoirs to the museum and archive so that his "feat" would not be lost in the documents.
Also preserved are the memoirs of the head of the Ural workers' squad, a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1906, an employee of the NKVD since 1920. P.Z. Ermakov, who was instructed to organize the burial, for he, as a local resident, knew the surroundings well. Ermakov reported that the corpses were burned to ashes, and the ashes were buried. His memoirs contain many factual errors, which are refuted by the testimony of other witnesses. Memories date back to 1947. It was important for the author to prove that the order of the Yekaterinburg Executive Committee: "shoot and bury so that no one ever finds their corpses" - done, the grave does not exist.

The Bolshevik leadership also created considerable confusion by trying to cover up the traces of the crime.

Initially, it was assumed that the Romanovs would await trial in the Urals. Materials were collected in Moscow, L.D. was preparing to become a prosecutor. Trotsky. But Civil War aggravated the situation.
At the beginning of the summer of 1918, it was decided to take out royal family from Tobolsk, since the local council was headed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

transfer of the Romanov family to Yekaterinburg Chekists

This was done on behalf of Ya.M. Sverdlov, the Extraordinary Commissar of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Myachin (aka Yakovlev, Stoyanovich).

Nicholas II with his daughters in Tobolsk

In 1905, he became famous as a member of one of the most daring gangs that robbed trains. Subsequently, all the militants - Myachin's associates - were arrested, imprisoned or shot. He manages to escape abroad with gold and jewels. Until 1917 he lived in Capri, where he was acquainted with Lunacharsky and Gorky, sponsored underground schools and printing houses of the Bolsheviks in Russia.

Myachin tried to direct the royal train from Tobolsk to Omsk, but a detachment of Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks accompanying the train, learning about the change in route, blocked the road with machine guns. The Ural Council repeatedly demanded that the royal family be placed at its disposal. Myachin, with the approval of Sverdlov, was forced to yield.

Konstantin Alekseevich Myachin

Nicholas II and his family were taken to Yekaterinburg.

This fact reflects the confrontation in the Bolshevik environment over the question of who and how will decide the fate of the royal family. In any alignment of forces, one could hardly hope for a humane outcome, given the mood and track record of the people who made the decisions.
Another memoir appeared in 1956 in Germany. They belong to I.P. Meyer, who was sent to Siberia as a captured soldier of the Austrian army, but the Bolsheviks released him, and he joined the Red Guard. Since Meyer knew foreign languages, he became a confidant of the international brigade in the Urals military district and worked in the mobilization department of the Soviet Ural Directorate.

I.P. Meyer was an eyewitness to the execution of the royal family. His memoirs supplement the picture of the execution with essential details, details, including the names of the participants, their role in this atrocity, but do not resolve the contradiction that arose in previous sources.

Later, written sources began to be supplemented by material ones. So, in 1978, geologist A. Avdonin found a burial. In 1989, he and M. Kochurov, as well as screenwriter G. Ryabov, spoke about their discovery. In 1991, the ashes were removed. On August 19, 1993, the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case in connection with the discovery of the Yekaterinburg remains. The investigation began to be conducted by the prosecutor-criminalist of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation V.N. Solovyov.

In 1995 V.N. Solovyov managed to get 75 negatives in Germany, which were made in hot pursuit in the Ipatiev House by the investigator Sokolov and were considered lost forever: toys of Tsarevich Alexei, the bedroom of the Grand Duchesses, the execution room and other details. Unknown originals of N.A.’s materials were also delivered to Russia. Sokolov.

Material sources made it possible to answer the question of whether there was a burial of the royal family, and whose remains were found near Yekaterinburg. For this, numerous scientific studies were carried out, in which more than a hundred of the most authoritative Russian and foreign scientists took part.

used to identify the remains. latest methods, including a DNA examination, which was assisted by some of the current reigning persons and other genetic relatives of the Russian emperor. To eliminate any doubts in the conclusions of numerous examinations, the remains of George Alexandrovich, the brother of Nicholas II, were exhumed.

Georgy Alexandrovich Romanov

Modern achievements of science have helped to restore the picture of events, despite some discrepancies in written sources. This made it possible for the government commission to confirm the identity of the remains and adequately bury Nicholas II, the Empress, the three Grand Duchesses and courtiers.

There is one more controversial issue associated with the tragedy of July 1918. For a long time it was believed that the decision to execute the royal family was made in Yekaterinburg by the local authorities at their own peril and risk, and Moscow found out about this after the fait accompli. This needs to be clarified.

According to the memoirs of I.P. Meyer, on July 7, 1918, a meeting of the Revolutionary Committee was held, which was chaired by A.G. Beloborodov. He offered to send F. Goloshchekin to Moscow and get the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, since the Ural Council could not decide on its own the fate of the Romanovs.

It was also proposed to give Goloshchekin an accompanying paper outlining the position of the Ural authorities. However, the resolution of F. Goloshchekin was adopted by a majority of votes, that the Romanovs deserve death. Goloshchekin, as an old friend Ya.M. Sverdlov, was nevertheless sent to Moscow for consultations with the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov.

Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov

On July 14, F. Goloshchekin, at a meeting of the revolutionary tribunal, made a report on his trip and on negotiations with Ya.M. Sverdlov about the Romanovs. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee did not want the tsar and his family to be taken to Moscow. The Ural Soviet and the local revolutionary headquarters must decide for themselves what to do with them. But the decision of the Ural Revolutionary Committee had already been made in advance. This means that Moscow did not object to Goloshchekin.

E.S. Radzinsky published a telegram from Yekaterinburg, in which, a few hours before the assassination of the royal family, V.I. Lenin, Ya.M. Sverdlov, G.E. Zinoviev. G. Safarov and F. Goloshchekin, who sent this telegram, asked to be informed immediately if there were any objections. Judging by what happened next, there were no objections.

The answer to the question, but by whose decision the royal family was put to death, was also given by L.D. Trotsky in his memoirs relating to 1935: “The liberals were inclined, as it were, to the fact that the Ural executive committee, cut off from Moscow, acted independently. This is not true. The decision was made in Moscow. Trotsky reported that he proposed a public trial in order to achieve a wide propaganda effect. The progress of the process was to be broadcast throughout the country and commented on every day.

IN AND. Lenin reacted positively to this idea, but expressed doubts about its feasibility. There might not be enough time. Later, Trotsky learned from Sverdlov about the execution of the royal family. To the question: “Who decided?” Ya.M. Sverdlov replied: “We decided here. Ilyich believed that it was impossible to leave us a living banner for them, especially in the current difficult conditions. These diary entries by L.D. Trotsky were not intended for publication, did not respond "to the topic of the day", were not expressed in polemics. The degree of reliability of the presentation in them is great.

Lev Davydovich Trotsky

There is another clarification by L.D. Trotsky concerning the authorship of the idea of ​​regicide. In the drafts of the unfinished chapters of the biography of I.V. Stalin, he wrote about the meeting between Sverdlov and Stalin, where the latter spoke in favor of a death sentence for the tsar. At the same time, Trotsky did not rely on his own memories, but quoted the memoirs of the Soviet functionary Besedovsky, who had defected to the West. This data needs to be verified.

Message from Ya.M. Sverdlov at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18 about the execution of the Romanov family was greeted with applause and recognition that in the current situation the Ural Regional Council did the right thing. And at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, Sverdlov announced this by the way, without causing any discussion.

Trotsky outlined the most complete ideological justification for the execution of the royal family by the Bolsheviks with elements of pathos: “In essence, the decision was not only expedient, but also necessary. The severity of the reprisals showed everyone that we would fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the royal family was needed not only to confuse, horrify, and deprive the enemy of hope, but also to shake up their own ranks, to show that there was no retreat, that complete victory or complete death lay ahead. There were probably doubts and shaking of heads in the intelligent circles of the party. But the masses of workers and soldiers did not doubt for a moment: they would not have understood or accepted any other decision. Lenin felt this very well: the ability to think and feel for the masses and with the masses was highly characteristic of him, especially at great political turns ... "

The fact of the execution of not only the king, but also his wife and children, the Bolsheviks tried to hide for some time, and even from their own. So, one of the prominent diplomats of the USSR, A.A. Ioffe, officially reported only the execution of Nicholas II. He did not know anything about the wife and children of the king and thought that they were alive. His inquiries to Moscow yielded no results, and only from an informal conversation with F.E. Dzerzhinsky, he managed to find out the truth.

“Let Ioffe know nothing,” said Vladimir Ilyich, according to Dzerzhinsky, “it will be easier for him to lie there, in Berlin ...” The text of the telegram about the execution of the royal family was intercepted by the White Guards who entered Yekaterinburg. Investigator Sokolov deciphered and published it.

The royal family from left to right: Olga, Alexandra Feodorovna, Alexei, Maria, Nicholas II, Tatyana, Anastasia

The fate of the people involved in the liquidation of the Romanovs is of interest.

F.I. Goloshchekin (Isai Goloshchekin), (1876-1941), Secretary of the Ural Regional Committee and member of the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), Military Commissar of the Ural Military District, was arrested on October 15, 1939 at the direction of L.P. Beria and was shot as an enemy of the people on October 28, 1941.

A.G. Beloborodoe (1891-1938), chairman of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council, participated in the twenties in the inner-party struggle on the side of L.D. Trotsky. Beloborodoe provided Trotsky with his accommodation when the latter was evicted from the Kremlin apartment. In 1927, he was expelled from the CPSU (b) for factional activities. Later, in 1930, Beloborodov was reinstated in the party as a repentant oppositionist, but this did not save him. In 1938 he was repressed.

As for the direct participant in the execution, Ya.M. Yurovsky (1878-1938), a member of the board of the regional Cheka, it is known that his daughter Rimma suffered from repression.

Yurovsky's assistant in the "House of Special Purpose" P.L. Voikov (1888-1927), People's Commissar for Supply in the government of the Urals, when appointed in 1924 as the USSR ambassador to Poland, could not get an agrement from the Polish government for a long time, since his personality was associated with the execution of the royal family.

Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov

G.V. Chicherin gave the Polish authorities a characteristic explanation on this matter: “... Hundreds and thousands of fighters for the freedom of the Polish people, who died over the course of a century on the royal gallows and in Siberian prisons, would have reacted differently to the fact of the destruction of the Romanovs, than this could be concluded from your messages." In 1927 P.L. Voikov was killed in Poland by one of the monarchists for participating in the massacre of the royal family.

Of interest is another name in the list of persons who took part in the execution of the royal family. This is Imre Nagy. The leader of the Hungarian events of 1956 was in Russia, where in 1918 he joined the RCP (b), then served in the Special Department of the Cheka, and later collaborated with the NKVD. However, his autobiography refers to his stay not in the Urals, but in Siberia, in the region of Verkhneudinsk (Ulan-Ude).

Until March 1918, he was in the prisoner of war camp in Berezovka, in March he joined the Red Guard, and participated in the battles on Lake Baikal. In September 1918, his detachment, located on the Soviet-Mongolian border, in Troitskosavsk, was then disarmed and arrested by the Czechoslovaks in Berezovka. Then he ended up in a military town near Irkutsk. From the biographical information, it can be seen how mobile the future leader of the Hungarian Communist Party led in Russia during the execution of the royal family.

In addition, the information indicated by him in his autobiography did not always correspond to personal data. However, direct evidence of the involvement of Imre Nagy, and not his probable namesake, in the execution of the royal family, on this moment are not tracked.

Imprisonment in the Ipatiev House

Ipatiev house

The Romanovs and their servants in the Ipatiev house

The Romanov family was placed in a "special purpose house" - the requisitioned mansion of a retired military engineer N. N. Ipatiev. Doctor E. S. Botkin, chamber footman A. E. Trupp, maid of the Empress A. S. Demidov, cook I. M. Kharitonov and cook Leonid Sednev lived here with the Romanov family.

The house is good and clean. Four rooms were assigned to us: a corner bedroom, a dressing room, a dining room next to it with windows overlooking the garden and a view of the low part of the city, and, finally, a spacious hall with an archway without doors. We were seated as follows: Alix [Empress], Maria and I three in the bedroom, a shared bathroom, N[yuta] Demidova in the dining room, Botkin, Chemodurov and Sednev in the hall. Near the entrance is the guard officer's room. The guard was placed in two rooms near the dining room. To go to the bathroom and W.C. [water closet], you need to pass by the sentry at the door of the guardhouse. A very high plank fence was built around the house, two fathoms from the windows; there was a chain of sentries, in the garden too.

The royal family spent 78 days in their last home.

A. D. Avdeev was appointed commandant of the "house of special purpose".

Execution

From the memoirs of the participants in the execution, it is known that they did not know in advance how the “execution” would be carried out. Offered different variants: stab the arrested with daggers during sleep, throw grenades into the room with them, shoot them. According to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, the issue of the procedure for carrying out the "execution" was resolved with the participation of employees of the UraloblChK.

At 1:30 a.m. from July 16 to 17, a truck for transporting corpses arrived at Ipatiev's house, an hour and a half late. After that, doctor Botkin was awakened, who was told that everyone urgently needed to go downstairs due to the alarming situation in the city and the danger of staying on the top floor. It took about 30-40 minutes to get ready.

Evgeny Botkin, life medic Ivan Kharitonov, cook Alexei Trupp, valet Anna Demidova, maid

moved to the basement room (Alexei, who could not walk, was carried by Nicholas II in his arms). There were no chairs in the basement, then, at the request of Alexandra Feodorovna, two chairs were brought. Alexandra Fedorovna and Alexei sat on them. The rest were placed along the wall. Yurovsky brought in the firing squad and read out the verdict. Nicholas II only had time to ask: “What?” (other sources report last words Nicholas as "Huh?" or “How, how? Re-read"). Yurovsky gave the command, indiscriminate shooting began.

The executioners did not manage to immediately kill Alexei, the daughters of Nicholas II, the maid A.S. Demidov, Dr. E.S. Botkin. There was a cry from Anastasia, the maid Demidova rose to her feet, Alexei remained alive for a long time. Some of them were shot; the survivors, according to the investigation, were finished off with a bayonet by P.Z. Ermakov.

According to Yurovsky's memoirs, the shooting was erratic: many were probably shooting from the next room, over the threshold, and the bullets ricocheted off the stone wall. At the same time, one of the shooters was slightly wounded (“A bullet from one of the shooters from behind buzzed past my head, and one, I don’t remember, either hand, palm, or touched a finger and shot through”).

According to T. Manakova, during the execution, two dogs of the royal family, who raised a howl, were also killed - Tatiana's French bulldog Ortino and Anastasia's royal spaniel Jimmy (Jammy) Anastasia. The third dog, Aleksey Nikolaevich's spaniel named Joy, was spared his life because she did not howl. The spaniel was later taken in by the guard Letemin, who because of this was identified and arrested by the whites. Subsequently, according to the story of Bishop Vasily (Rodzianko), Joy was taken to the UK by an immigrant officer and handed over to the British royal family.

after the execution

The basement of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg, where the royal family was shot. GA RF

From the speech of Ya. M. Yurovsky before the old Bolsheviks in Sverdlovsk in 1934

The younger generation may not understand us. They may reproach us for killing the girls, for killing the boy-heir. But by today, girls-boys would have grown into ... what?

In order to muffle the shots, a truck was brought near the Ipatiev House, but the shots were still heard in the city. In Sokolov's materials, in particular, there are testimonies about this by two random witnesses, the peasant Buivid and the night watchman Tsetsegov.

According to Richard Pipes, immediately after this, Yurovsky harshly suppresses the attempts of the guards to plunder the jewelry they discovered, threatening to be shot. After that, he instructed P.S. Medvedev to organize the cleaning of the premises, and he left to destroy the corpses.

The exact text of the sentence pronounced by Yurovsky before the execution is unknown. In the materials of the investigator N. A. Sokolov, there are testimonies of the dividing guard Yakimov, who claimed, with reference to the guard Kleshchev who was watching this scene, that Yurovsky said: “Nikolai Alexandrovich, your relatives tried to save you, but they didn’t have to. And we are forced to shoot you ourselves.”

M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) described this scene as follows:

Mikhail Alexandrovich Medvedev-Kudrin

- Nikolai Alexandrovich! Attempts by your like-minded people to save you were unsuccessful! And so, in a difficult time for the Soviet Republic... - Yakov Mikhailovich raises his voice and cuts the air with his hand: - ... we have been entrusted with the mission to put an end to the house of the Romanovs!

In the memoirs of Yurovsky's assistant G.P. Nikulin, this episode is stated as follows: Comrade Yurovsky uttered such a phrase that:

"Your friends are advancing on Yekaterinburg, and therefore you are sentenced to death."

Yurovsky himself could not remember the exact text: “... I immediately, as far as I remember, told Nikolai something like the following, that his royal relatives and relatives both in the country and abroad tried to release him, and that the Council of Workers' Deputies decided to shoot them ".

On July 17, in the afternoon, several members of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council contacted Moscow by telegraph (the telegram is marked that it was received at 12 o’clock) and reported that Nicholas II had been shot and his family had been evacuated. The editor of the Uralsky Rabochy, a member of the executive committee of the Uraloblsovet V. Vorobyov, later claimed that they “were very uncomfortable when they approached the apparatus: former king was shot by the decision of the Presidium of the Regional Council, and it was not known how the central government would react to this "arbitrariness" ... ". The reliability of this evidence, wrote G.Z. Ioffe, cannot be verified.

Investigator N. Sokolov claimed that he had found a ciphered telegram from the chairman of the Ural Regional Executive Committee A. Beloborodov to Moscow, dated 21:00 on July 17, which allegedly was deciphered only in September 1920. It reported: “To the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars N.P. Gorbunov: tell Sverdlov that the whole family suffered the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will die during the evacuation.” Sokolov concluded: it means that on the evening of July 17, Moscow knew about the death of the entire royal family. However, the minutes of the meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18 speak only of the execution of Nicholas II.

Destruction and burial of the remains

Ganinsky ravines - the burial place of the Romanovs

Yurovsky's version

According to Yurovsky's memoirs, he went to the mine at three o'clock in the morning on July 17th. Yurovsky reports that Goloshchekin must have ordered P.Z. Ermakov to carry out the burial. However, things did not go as smoothly as we would like: Ermakov brought too many people as a funeral team (“Why so many of them, I still don’t know , I heard only isolated cries - we thought that they would give us them alive, but here, it turns out, they are dead ”); truck stuck; jewels sewn into the clothes of the Grand Duchesses were discovered, some of Yermakov's people began to appropriate them. Yurovsky ordered to put guards on the truck. The bodies were loaded onto spans. On the way and near the mine planned for burial, strangers met. Yurovsky assigned people to cordon off the area, as well as to inform the village that Czechoslovaks were operating in the area and that it was forbidden to leave the village under threat of execution. In an effort to get rid of the presence of an overly large funeral team, he sends some people to the city "as unnecessary." Orders to make fires to burn clothes as possible evidence.

From the memoirs of Yurovsky (spelling preserved):

The daughters wore bodices so well made of solid diamond and other valuable stones, which were not only receptacles for valuables, but at the same time protective armor.

That is why neither the bullet nor the bayonet gave results when shooting and hitting the bayonet. By the way, no one is to blame for these death throes of theirs, except for themselves. These values ​​turned out to be only about (half) a pood. The greed was so great that, by the way, Alexandra Feodorovna was wearing just a huge piece of round gold wire, bent in the form of a bracelet, weighing about a pound ... Those parts of the valuables that were discovered during excavations undoubtedly belonged to separately sewn things and remained after burning in the ashes of the fires.

After seizing valuables and burning clothes on fires, the corpses were thrown into the mine, but “... a new hassle. The water covered the bodies a little, what to do here? The funeral team unsuccessfully tried to bring down the mine with grenades (“bombs”), after which Yurovsky, according to him, finally came to the conclusion that the burial of the corpses had failed, since they were easy to detect and, in addition, there were witnesses that something was happening here . Leaving the guards and taking valuables, at about two o'clock in the afternoon (in the earlier version of the memoirs - "at 10-11 am") on July 17, Yurovsky went to the city. I arrived at the Ural Regional Executive Committee and reported on the situation. Goloshchekin summoned Ermakov and sent him to retrieve the corpses. Yurovsky went to the city executive committee to its chairman, S. E. Chutskaev, for advice on a place for burial. Chutskaev reported on deep abandoned mines on the Moscow Trakt. Yurovsky went to inspect these mines, but he could not get to the place right away due to a car breakdown, he had to walk. Returned on requisitioned horses. During this time, another plan appeared - to burn the corpses.

Yurovsky was not quite sure that the incineration would be successful, so the plan to bury the corpses in the mines of the Moscow Tract remained an option. In addition, he had the idea, in case of any failure, to bury the bodies in groups in different places on a clay road. Thus, there were three options for action. Yurovsky went to the commissar of supply of the Urals, Voikov, to get gasoline or kerosene, as well as sulfuric acid to disfigure faces, and shovels. Having received this, they loaded it onto carts and sent it to the location of the corpses. A truck was sent there. Yurovsky himself stayed behind to wait for Polushin, "the 'specialist' incineration," and waited for him until 11 pm, but he never arrived because, as Yurovsky later learned, he had fallen off his horse and injured his leg. At about 12 o'clock in the night, Yurovsky, not counting on the reliability of the car, went to the place where the bodies of the dead were, on horseback, but this time another horse crushed his leg, so that he could not move for an hour.

Yurovsky arrived at the scene at night. Work was underway to retrieve the bodies. Yurovsky decided to bury several corpses along the way. By dawn on July 18, the pit was almost ready, but a stranger appeared nearby. I had to abandon this plan. After waiting for the evening, we boarded the cart (the truck was waiting in a place where it should not get stuck). Then they were driving a truck, and it got stuck. Midnight was approaching, and Yurovsky decided that it was necessary to bury him somewhere here, since it was dark and no one could be a witness to the burial.

... everyone was so devilishly tired that they no longer wanted to dig a new grave, but, as always happens in such cases, two or three got down to business, then others set to work, immediately lit a fire, and while the grave was being prepared, we burned two corpses: Alexei and by mistake, instead of Alexandra Feodorovna, they apparently burned Demidov. A hole was dug at the place of burning, the bones were laid down, leveled, and lit again big bonfire and ash covered all traces.

Before putting the rest of the corpses in the pit, we doused them with sulfuric acid, filled up the pit, covered it with sleepers, the truck passed empty, compacted the sleepers a little and put an end to it.

I. Rodzinsky and M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) also left their memories of the burial of corpses (Medvedev, by his own admission, did not personally participate in the burial and retold the events from the words of Yurovsky and Rodzinsky). According to the memoirs of Rodzinsky himself:

The site where the remains of the alleged bodies of the Romanovs were found

We have now cleared this quagmire. She is deep God knows where. Well, here a part of these same darlings was decomposed and they began to fill it with sulfuric acid, they disfigured everything, and then it all turned into a quagmire. Nearby was Railway. We brought rotten sleepers, laid a pendulum through the very quagmire. They laid out these sleepers in the form of an abandoned bridge over a quagmire, and the rest at some distance they began to burn.

But now, I remember, Nikolai was burned, there was this same Botkin, I can’t tell you for sure now, now that’s a memory. How many we burned, either four, or five, or six people were burned. Who, I don't remember exactly. I do remember Nicholas. Botkin and, in my opinion, Alexei.

The execution without trial and investigation of the king, his wife, children, including minors, was another step along the path of lawlessness, neglect of human life, and terror. Many problems of the Soviet state began to be solved with the help of violence. The Bolsheviks who unleashed terror often became its victims themselves.
The burial of the last Russian emperor eighty years after the execution of the royal family is another indicator of the inconsistency and unpredictability of Russian history.

“Church on Blood” on the site of the Ipatiev House