The main condition for the existence of immortality is death itself.

Stanislav Jerzy Lec

The execution of the Romanov royal family on the night of July 17, 1918 is one of the most important events of the era of the Civil War, the formation of Soviet power, and the exit of Russia from the First World War. The murder of Nicholas 2 and his family was largely predetermined by the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. But in this story, not everything is as simple as it is commonly said. In this article, I will present all the facts that are known in this case in order to assess the events of those days.

History of events

We should start with the fact that Nicholas 2 was not the last Russian emperor, as many believe today. He abdicated (for himself and for his son Alexei) in favor of his brother, Mikhail Romanov. So he is the last emperor. This is important to remember, we will return to this fact later. Also, in most textbooks, the execution of the royal family is equated with the murder of the family of Nicholas 2. But these were far from all the Romanovs. To understand how many people we are talking about, I will give only data on the last Russian emperors:

• Nicholas 1 - 4 sons and 4 daughters.
• Alexander 2 - 6 sons and 2 daughters.
• Alexander 3 - 4 sons and 2 daughters.
• Nicholas 2 - son and 4 daughters.

That is, the family is very large, and any of the list above is a direct descendant of the imperial branch, which means a direct contender for the throne. But most of them also had children of their own ...

Arrest of members of the royal family

Nicholas 2, having abdicated the throne, put forward rather simple demands, the fulfillment of which the Provisional Government guaranteed. The requirements were as follows:

• Safe transfer of the emperor to Tsarskoe Selo to his family, where at that time Tsarevich Alexei was more.
• The safety of the whole family at the time of their stay in Tsarskoye Selo until the full recovery of Tsarevich Alexei.
• The safety of the road to the northern ports of Russia, from where Nicholas 2 and his family should cross to England.
• After the end of the Civil War royal family will return to Russia and will live in Livadia (Crimea).

It is important to understand these points in order to see the intentions of Nicholas 2 and later the Bolsheviks. The emperor abdicated the throne so that the current government would provide him with a safe exit to England.

What is the role of the British government?

The provisional government of Russia, after receiving the demands of Nicholas 2, turned to England with the question of the consent of the latter to host the Russian monarch. A positive response was received. But here it is important to understand that the request itself was a formality. The fact is that at that time an investigation was underway against the royal family, for the period of which it was impossible to leave Russia. Therefore, England, giving consent, did not risk anything at all. Something else is much more interesting. After the complete justification of Nicholas 2, the Provisional Government again makes a request to England, but more specific. This time the question was no longer posed abstractly, but concretely, because everything was ready for the move to the island. But then England refused.

So when today Western countries and people screaming at every corner about the innocently killed, talk about the execution of Nicholas 2, this only causes a reaction of disgust at their hypocrisy. One word from the British government that they agree to accept Nicholas 2 with his family, and in principle there would be no execution. But they refused...

In the photo on the left is Nicholas 2, on the right is George 4, King of England. They were distant relatives and had an obvious resemblance in appearance.

When was the royal family of the Romanovs executed?

Michael's murder

After the October Revolution, Mikhail Romanov approached the Bolsheviks with a request to remain in Russia as an ordinary citizen. This request was granted. But the last Russian emperor was not destined to live "quietly" for long. Already in March 1918 he was arrested. There is no reason for the arrest. So far, no historian has been able to find a single historical document explaining the reason for the arrest of Mikhail Romanov.

After his arrest, on March 17 he was sent to Perm, where he lived for several months in a hotel. On the night of July 13, 1918, he was taken away from the hotel and shot. This was the first victim of the Romanov family by the Bolsheviks. The official reaction of the USSR to this event was ambivalent:

• It was announced to its citizens that Mikhail shamefully fled from Russia abroad. Thus, the authorities got rid of unnecessary questions, and, most importantly, received legitimate reason to toughen the maintenance of other members of the royal family.
• For foreign countries, it was announced through the media that Mikhail was missing. They say he went out on the night of July 13 for a walk and did not return.

The execution of the family of Nicholas 2

The backstory here is quite interesting. Immediately after the October Revolution, the Romanov royal family was arrested. The investigation did not reveal the guilt of Nicholas 2, so the charges were dropped. At the same time, it was impossible to let the family go to England (the British refused), and the Bolsheviks really did not want to send them to the Crimea, because there were “whites” very close by. Yes, and throughout almost the entire Civil War, Crimea was under control white movement, and all the Romanovs, who are on the peninsula, were saved by moving to Europe. Therefore, they decided to send them to Tobolsk. The fact of secrecy of the dispatch is noted in his diaries by Nikolay 2, who writes that they were taken to ONE of the cities in the depths of the country.

Until March, the royal family lived relatively calmly in Tobolsk, but on March 24 an investigator arrived here, and on March 26 a reinforced detachment of Red Army soldiers arrived. In fact, since that time, enhanced security measures have begun. The basis is the imaginary flight of Michael.

Subsequently, the family was moved to Yekaterinburg, where she settled in the Ipatiev house. On the night of July 17, 1918, the Romanov royal family was shot. Together with them, their servants were also shot. In total that day died:

• Nicholas 2,
• His wife, Alexandra
• The emperor's children are Tsarevich Alexei, Maria, Tatiana and Anastasia.
• Family doctor - Botkin
• Maid - Demidova
• Personal chef - Kharitonov
• Footman - Troupe.

In total, 10 people were shot. The corpses, according to the official version, were thrown into the mine and filled with acid.

Who killed the family of Nicholas 2?

I have already said above that since March, the protection of the royal family has been significantly increased. After moving to Yekaterinburg, it was already a full-fledged arrest. The family was settled in the house of Ipatiev, and a guard was presented to them, the head of the garrison of which was Avdeev. On July 4, almost the entire composition of the guard was replaced, as was his chief. In the future, it was these people who were accused of murdering the royal family:

• Yakov Yurovsky. Supervised the execution.
• Grigory Nikulin. Yurovsky's assistant.
• Peter Ermakov. Head of the Emperor's Guard.
• Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin. Cheka representative.

These are the main persons, but there were also ordinary performers. It is noteworthy that all of them significantly survived this event. Most later took part in the Second World War, received a pension from the USSR.

Reprisal against the rest of the family

Since March 1918, other members of the royal family have been gathering in Alapaevsk (Perm province). In particular, Princess Elizabeth Feodorovna, Princes John, Konstantin and Igor, as well as Vladimir Paley are imprisoned here. The latter was the grandson of Alexander 2, but had a different surname. Subsequently, all of them were transported to Vologda, where on July 19, 1918 they were thrown alive into the mine.

The latest events in the destruction of the Romanov dynastic family date back to January 19, 1919, when princes Nikolai and Georgy Mikhailovich, Pavel Alexandrovich and Dmitry Konstantinovich were shot in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Reaction to the assassination of the Romanov imperial family

The murder of the family of Nicholas 2 had the greatest resonance, which is why it needs to be studied. There are many sources indicating that when Lenin was informed about the murder of Nicholas 2, he did not seem to even react to it. It is impossible to verify such judgments, but one can refer to archival documents. In particular, we are interested in Protocol No. 159 of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars of July 18, 1918. The protocol is very short. Heard the question of the murder of Nicholas 2. Decided - to take note. That's it, just take note. There are no other documents regarding this case! This is complete absurdity. In the yard of the 20th century, but not a single document is preserved regarding such an important historical event, except for one note "Take note" ...

However, the underlying reaction to the murder is investigation. They started

Investigations into the murder of the family of Nicholas 2

The leadership of the Bolsheviks, as expected, began an investigation into the murder of the family. The official investigation began on 21 July. She conducted an investigation quickly enough, since Kolchak's troops approached Yekaterinburg. The main conclusion of this official investigation is that there was no murder. Only Nikolai 2 was shot by the verdict of the Yekaterinburg Soviet. But there are a number of very weak points that still cast doubt on the veracity of the investigation:

• The investigation began a week later. In Russia, the former emperor is being killed, and the authorities react to this a week later! Why was this week of pause?
• Why conduct an investigation if there was a shooting on the orders of the Soviets? In this case, right on July 17, the Bolsheviks were supposed to report that “the execution of the Romanov royal family took place on the orders of the Yekaterinburg Soviet. Nikolai 2 was shot, but his family was not touched.
• There are no supporting documents. Even today, all references to the decision of the Yekaterinburg Council are oral. Even in Stalin's times, when they were shot by the millions, documents remained, they say, "by the decision of the troika and so on" ...

On the 20th of July 1918, Kolchak's army entered Yekaterinburg, and one of the first orders was to begin an investigation into the tragedy. Today everyone is talking about investigator Sokolov, but before him there were 2 more investigators with the names Nametkin and Sergeev. No one has officially seen their reports. Yes, and Sokolov's report was published only in 1924. According to the investigator, the entire royal family was shot. By this time (back in 1921), the Soviet leadership had voiced the same data.

The sequence of the destruction of the Romanov dynasty

In the story of the execution of the royal family, it is very important to observe the chronology, otherwise it is very easy to get confused. And the chronology here is this - the dynasty was destroyed in the order of contenders for succession to the throne.

Who was the first pretender to the throne? That's right, Mikhail Romanov. I remind you again - back in 1917, Nicholas 2 abdicated the throne for himself and for his son in favor of Mikhail. Therefore, he was the last emperor, and he was the first claimant to the throne, in the event of the restoration of the Empire. Mikhail Romanov was killed on July 13, 1918.

Who was next in line of succession? Nicholas 2 and his son, Tsarevich Alexei. The candidacy of Nicholas 2 is controversial here, in the end he renounced power on his own. Although in his attitude everyone could play the other way, because in those days almost all laws were violated. But Tsarevich Alexei was a clear contender. The father had no legal right to relinquish the throne for his son. As a result, the entire family of Nicholas 2 was shot on July 17, 1918.

Next in line were all the other princes, of whom there were quite a few. Most of them were gathered in Alapaevsk and killed on July 19, 1918. As they say, rate the speed: 13, 17, 19. If we were talking about random murders that were not related to each other, then there would simply not be such a similarity. In less than 1 week, almost all pretenders to the throne were killed, and in order of succession, but history today considers these events isolated from each other, and absolutely not paying attention to disputed places.

Alternative versions of the tragedy

A key alternative version of this historical event is set forth in Tom Mangold and Anthony Summers' book The Murder That Wasn't. It hypothesizes that there was no execution. In general terms, the situation is as follows ...

• The reasons for the events of those days should be sought in the Brest peace treaty between Russia and Germany. The argument is that despite the fact that the secrecy stamp was removed from the documents a long time ago (it was 60 years old, that is, there should have been a publication in 1978), there is not a single full version this document. An indirect confirmation of this is that the “executions” began precisely after the signing of the peace treaty.
• It is a well-known fact that the wife of Nicholas 2, Alexandra, was a relative of the German Kaiser Wilhelm 2. It is assumed that Wilhelm 2 introduced a clause into the Treaty of Brest, according to which Russia undertakes to ensure the safe departure to Germany of Alexandra and her daughters.
• As a result, the Bolsheviks extradited women to Germany, and Nicholas 2 and his son Alexei were left hostage. Subsequently, Tsarevich Alexei grew up in Alexei Kosygin.

A new round of this version was given by Stalin. It is a well-known fact that one of his favorites was Alexei Kosygin. There are no big reasons to believe this theory, but there is one detail. It is known that Stalin always called Kosygin nothing more than "tsarevich".

Canonization of the royal family

In 1981, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad canonized Nicholas 2 and his family as great martyrs. In 2000, this happened in Russia as well. To date, Nicholas 2 and his family are great martyrs and innocently killed, therefore they are saints.

A few words about the Ipatiev house

The Ipatiev House is the place where the family of Nicholas 2 was imprisoned. There is a very well-reasoned hypothesis that it was possible to escape from this house. Moreover, unlike the unfounded alternative version, there is one significant fact. So, the general version is that there was an underground passage from the basement of the Ipatiev house, which no one knew about, and which led to a factory located nearby. Proof of this has already been provided in our day. Boris Yeltsin gave the order to demolish the house and build a church in its place. This was done, but one of the bulldozers during the work fell into this same underground passage. There is no other evidence of a possible escape of the royal family, but the fact itself is curious. At the very least, it leaves room for thought.

To date, the house has been demolished, and the Church on the Blood has been erected in its place.

Summarizing

In 2008 the Supreme Court Russian Federation recognized the family of Nicholas 2 as a victim of repression. Case is closed.

At one in the morning on July 17, 1918, the former Russian Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, their five children and four servants, including a doctor, were taken to the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, where they were held in custody, where they were brutally shot by the Bolsheviks, and subsequently burned body.

The eerie scene continues to haunt us to this day, and their remains, which for most of the century lay in unmarked graves, the location of which was known only to the Soviet leadership, are still surrounded by an aura of mystery. In 1979, enthusiastic historians discovered the remains of some members of the royal family, and in 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, their identity was confirmed using DNA analysis.

The remains of two more royal children, Alexei and Maria, were discovered in 2007 and subjected to a similar analysis. However, the ROC questioned the results of the DNA tests. The remains of Alexei and Maria were not buried, but transferred to a scientific institution. In 2015, they were again subjected to analysis.

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore recounts these events in detail in his book 'The Romanovs, 1613-1618', published this year. El Confidential has already written about her. In the Town & Country magazine, the author recalls that the official investigation into the murder of the royal family was resumed last fall, and the remains of the king and queen were exhumed. This gave rise to conflicting statements from the government and representatives of the Church, again putting this question into the public eye.

According to Sebag, Nikolai was good-looking, and apparent weakness hid an imperious man who despised the ruling class, a fierce anti-Semite who did not doubt his sacred right to power. She and Alexandra married for love, which was then a rare occurrence. She brought into family life paranoid thinking, mystical fanaticism (just remember Rasputin) and another danger - hemophilia, which was passed on to her son, heir to the throne.

Wounds

In 1998, the reburial of the remains of the Romanovs took place in a solemn official ceremony designed to heal the wounds of Russia's past.

President Yeltsin said that political change should never again be forced. Many Orthodox again expressed their disagreement and perceived this event as an attempt by the president to impose a liberal agenda in the former USSR.

In 2000, the Orthodox Church canonized royal family, as a result of which the relics of its members became a shrine, and according to the statements of its representatives, it was necessary to conduct their reliable identification.

When Yeltsin stepped down and promoted an obscure Vladimir Putin, a KGB lieutenant colonel who considered the collapse of the USSR "the biggest catastrophe of the 20th century," the young leader began to consolidate power, block foreign influence, promote the Orthodox faith, and pursue an aggressive foreign policy. . It seemed—Sebag reflects ironically—he decided to continue the political line of the Romanovs.

Putin is a political realist and he is following the path outlined by the leaders strong Russia: from Peter I to Stalin. These were bright personalities who opposed the international threat.

The position of Putin, who questioned the results of scientific research (weak echo cold war: there were many Americans among the researchers), calmed the Church and created a breeding ground for conspiracy, nationalist and anti-Semitic hypotheses regarding the remains of the Romanovs. One of them was that Lenin and his followers, many of whom were Jews, moved the bodies to Moscow with orders to mutilate them. Was it really the king and his family? Or did someone manage to escape?

Context

How the tsars returned to Russian history

Atlantico 19.08.2015

304 years of Romanov rule

Le Figaro 05/30/2016

Why both Lenin and Nicholas II are “good”

Radio Prague 14.10.2015

What did Nicholas II give the Finns?

Helsingin Sanomat 07/25/2016 During the Civil War, the Bolsheviks declared the Red Terror. They took the family away from Moscow. It was a terrible journey by train and horse-drawn carts. Tsarevich Alexei suffered from hemophilia, and some of his sisters were sexually abused on the train. Finally, they ended up in the house where their life path. It, in fact, was turned into a fortified prison and machine guns were installed around the perimeter. Be that as it may, the royal family tried to adapt to the new conditions. The eldest daughter Olga was depressed, and those who were younger played, not really understanding what was happening. Maria had an affair with one of the guards, and then the Bolsheviks replaced all the guards, tightening the rules of the internal order.

When it became obvious that the White Guards were about to take Yekaterinburg, Lenin issued an unspoken decree on the execution of the entire royal family, entrusting the execution to Yakov Yurovsky. At first it was supposed to secretly bury everyone in the nearby forests. But the assassination was poorly planned and even worse executed. Each member of the firing squad had to kill one of the victims. But when the basement of the house was filled with smoke from the shots and the screams of people being shot, many of the Romanovs were still alive. They were wounded and wept in terror.

The fact is that diamonds were sewn into the clothes of the princesses, and the bullets bounced off them, which confused the killers. The wounded were finished off with bayonets and shots to the head. One of the executioners later said that the floor was slippery with blood and brains.

scars

Having completed their work, drunken executioners robbed the corpses, loaded them onto a truck that stalled along the way. In addition, at the last moment it turned out that all the bodies did not fit in the graves dug in advance for them. The dead were stripped of their clothes and burned. Then the frightened Yurovsky came up with another plan. He left the bodies in the forest and went to Yekaterinburg for acid and gasoline. For three days and nights, he brought containers of sulfuric acid and gasoline into the forest to destroy the bodies, which he decided to bury in different places in order to confuse those who set out to find them. No one was supposed to know about what happened. The bodies were doused with acid and gasoline, they were burned, and then buried.

Sebag wonders how 2017 will mark the 100th anniversary of October revolution. What will happen to the royal remains? The country does not want to lose its former glory. The past is always viewed in a positive light, but the legitimacy of autocracy continues to generate controversy. New research, initiated by the Russian Orthodox Church and carried out by the Investigative Committee, led to the re-exhumation of the bodies. A comparative DNA analysis was carried out with living relatives, in particular, with the British Prince Philip, one of whose grandmothers was Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna Romanova. Thus, he is the great-great-grandson of Tsar Nicholas II.

The fact that the Church is still making decisions on such important issues has attracted attention in the rest of Europe, as well as the lack of openness and a chaotic series of burials, exhumations, DNA tests of various members of the royal family. Most political observers believe that Putin will make the final decision on what to do with the remains on the 100th anniversary of the revolution. Will he finally be able to reconcile the image of the revolution of 1917 with the barbaric massacre of 1918? Will he have to hold two separate events to please each side? Will the Romanovs be given royal or ecclesiastical honors like saints?

In Russian textbooks, many Russian tsars are still presented as heroes covered in glory. Gorbachev and last king Romanov recanted, Putin said he would never do this.

The historian claims that in his book he did not omit anything from the materials he studied on the execution of the Romanov family ... with the exception of the most disgusting details of the murder. When the bodies were taken to the forest, the two princesses groaned, and they had to be finished off. Whatever the future of the country, it will be impossible to erase this terrible episode from memory.

Over the past decades, this event has been described in great detail, which, however, does not prevent the cultivation of old and the birth of new myths.

Let's analyze the most famous of them.

Myth one. The family of Nicholas II, or at least some of its members, escaped execution

The remains of five members of the imperial family (as well as their servants) were found in July 1991 near Yekaterinburg, under the embankment of the Old Koptyakovskaya road. Numerous examinations have shown that among the dead there are all family members, with the exception of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria.

The latter circumstance gave rise to various speculations, but in 2007 the remains of Alexei and Maria were found during new searches.

Thus, it became clear that all the stories about the “surviving Romanovs” were fake.

Myth two. “The execution of the royal family is a crime that has no analogues”

The authors of the myth do not pay attention to the fact that the events in Yekaterinburg took place against the background of the Civil War, which was characterized by extreme cruelty on both sides. The "Red Terror" is spoken about very often today, in contrast to the "White Terror".

But here's what he wrote general Graves, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia: "In Eastern Siberia terrible murders were committed, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as was usually thought. I will not be mistaken if for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were a hundred killed by anti-Bolshevik elements.

From memories the headquarters of the captain of the dragoon squadron of the corps Kappel Frolov: “The villages of Zharovka and Kargalinsk were carved into walnut, where for sympathy with Bolshevism they had to shoot all the men from 18 to 55 years old, after which they let the “cock” go.

April 4, 1918, that is, even before the execution of the royal family, the Cossacks of the village of Nezhinskaya, led by military foreman Lukin and Colonel Korchakov made a night raid on the Orenburg city council, located in the former cadet school. The Cossacks cut down the sleeping people, who did not have time to get up from the bed, who did not offer resistance. 129 people were killed. Among the dead were six children and several women. The children's corpses were cut in half, the murdered women lay with their breasts cut out and their bellies torn open.

There are a great many examples of inhuman cruelty on both sides. Both the children from the royal family and those who were hacked to death by the Cossacks in Orenburg are victims of a fratricidal conflict.

Myth three. "The execution of the royal family was carried out by order of Lenin"

For almost a hundred years, historians have been trying to find confirmation that the execution order came to Yekaterinburg from Moscow. But convincing facts in favor of this version have not been found for a century.

Senior investigator for especially important cases of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation Vladimir Solovyov, who during the 1990s and 2000s was involved in the case of the execution of the royal family, came to the conclusion that the execution of the Romanovs was carried out by order of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council workers', peasants' and soldiers' deputies without the sanction of the Bolshevik government in Moscow.

“No, this is not the Kremlin's initiative. Lenin he himself became, in a certain sense, a hostage to the radicalism and obsession of the leaders of the Ural Council. I think that in the Urals they understood that the execution of the royal family could give the Germans a reason to continue the war, for new seizures and indemnities. But go for it!” - Soloviev expressed this opinion in an interview.

Myth four. The Romanov family was shot by Jews and Latvians

According to information available today, the firing squad consisted of 8-10 people, including: Ya. M. Yurovsky, G. P. Nikulin, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), P. S. Medvedev, P. Z. Ermakov, S. P. Vaganov, A. G. Kabanov, V. N. Netrebin. There is only one Jew among them: Yakov Yurovsky. Also, a Latvian could take part in the execution Jan Celms. The rest of the participants in the execution were Russians.

For the revolutionaries, speaking from the positions of internationalism, this circumstance did not matter, they did not divide each other along national lines. Subsequent stories about the "Jewish-Masonic conspiracy", which appeared in the emigre press, were built on a deliberate distortion of the lists of participants in the execution.

Myth five. “Lenin kept the severed head of Nicholas II on his desktop”

One of the strangest myths was launched almost immediately after the death of the Romanovs, but continues to live to this day.

Here, for example, is the material of the Trud newspaper for 2013 with the characteristic headline “The emperor’s head stood in Lenin’s office”: “According to some noteworthy information, the heads Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna really were in the Kremlin office of Lenin. Among the ten questions sent at one time from the patriarchate to state commission, dealing with the case of the remains found in the Urals, there was also a point concerning these heads. However, the answer received turned out to be written in the most general terms, and a copy of the documented inventory of the situation in Lenin's office was not sent.

But here is what the already mentioned investigator Vladimir Solovyov said in October 2015: “Another question arose: there are old legends that after the execution the head of the sovereign was brought to the Kremlin, to Lenin. This "tale" is still in the book of a prominent monarchist Lieutenant General Mikhail Diterikhs, the organizer of the excavations at the site of the alleged burial of the royal family in Ganina Yama, which were carried out by investigator Nikolai Sokolov. Dieterikhs wrote: “There are anecdotes that supposedly they brought the head of the king and will put it in cinematographs.” All this sounded like black humor, but it was picked up, there was talk of a ritual murder. Already in our time there were publications in the media that supposedly this head was discovered. We checked this information, but could not find the author of the note. The information is completely “yellow” and indecent, but nevertheless, these rumors have been circulating for many years, especially among the emigrant environment abroad. Opinions were also expressed that once the burial was opened by representatives of the Soviet special services and brought something there. That is why the patriarch proposed to conduct research again to confirm or debunk these legends... For this, small fragments of the skulls of the emperor and empress were taken.”

And here is what the Russian criminologist and forensic doctor, doctor of medical sciences, professor Vyacheslav Popov, who was directly involved in the examination of the remains of the royal family: “Now I will touch on the next point regarding the version Hieromonk Iliodor about severed heads. I can firmly state, hand on heart, that the head of the remains of No. 4 (it is assumed that this is Nicholas II) was not separated. We found the entire cervical spine in remains no. 4. All seven cervical vertebrae show no trace of any sharp object with which to separate the head from the neck. It’s impossible to cut off the head just like that, because you need to somehow cut the ligaments and intervertebral cartilages with a sharp object. But no such traces were found. In addition, we once again returned to the burial scheme drawn up in 1991, according to which remains No. 4 lie in the southwestern corner of the burial. The head is located at the edge of the burial, and all seven vertebrae are visible. Therefore, the version of severed heads does not hold water.”

Myth six. “The murder of the royal family was ritual”

Part of this myth is the statements we have previously analyzed about some "Jewish murderers" and severed heads.

But there is also a myth about a ritual inscription in the basement of a house. Ipatiev, which was mentioned again recently State Duma deputy Natalya Poklonskaya: “Mr. Uchitel, is there an inscription in your film that was discovered in the basement of the Ipatiev House a hundred years ago, just in time for the anniversary of which you prepared the premiere of the mocking film “Matilda”? Let me remind you of the content: “Here, by order of the dark forces, the Tsar was sacrificed for the destruction of Russia. All nations are made aware of this."

So what's wrong with this inscription?

Immediately after the occupation of Yekaterinburg by the Whites, an investigation was launched into the alleged murder of the Romanov family. In particular, the basement of the Ipatiev house was also examined.

General Dieterichs wrote about it this way: “The appearance of the walls of this room was ugly and disgusting. Someone's dirty and depraved natures with illiterate and rude hands dotted the wallpaper with cynical, obscene, meaningless inscriptions and drawings, hooligan rhymes, swear words, and especially, apparently, the names of the creators of Khitrovskaya painting and literature, apparently relish signed.

Well, as we know, in terms of hooligan graffiti, the situation in Russia has not changed even after 100 years.

But what kind of records did the investigators find on the walls? Here is the data from the case file:

"Long live the world revolution. Down with International Imperialism and capital and to hell with the whole monarchy"

“Nikola, he’s not Romanov, but a native of the Chukhones The family of the Romanovs ended Peter III here went all Chukhonskaya breed "

There were inscriptions and frankly obscene content.

Ipatiev House (Museum of the Revolution), 1930

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- these are 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: “to shoot and bury them so that no one ever found their corpses” was fulfilled, 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 the royal family out of Tobolsk, since the Socialist-Revolutionaries headed the council there.

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, as a captured soldier Austrian army was sent to Siberia, but the Bolsheviks released him, and he joined the Red Guard. Since Meyer knew foreign languages, then 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.

State-of-the-art methods were used to identify the remains, including DNA testing assisted by certain current royalty and other genetic relatives. 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 another controversial issue related to 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, is currently not traced.

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, the three of us 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. Various options were offered: to stab the arrested with daggers during sleep, to throw grenades into the room with them, to 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 render Nikolai's last words 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 transferred 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 Ural Regional Council V. Vorobyov, later claimed that they “were very uneasy when they approached the apparatus: the former tsar was shot by a decree of the Presidium of the Regional Council, and it was not known how he would react to this“ arbitrariness ” central government... 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. Greed was so great that, by the way, Alexandra Fedorovna 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 Voikov, the Commissar of Supply of the Urals, 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, a large fire was lit again and all traces were hidden with ashes.

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

The execution of the royal family(former Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family) was carried out in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 16-17, 1918 in pursuance of the decision of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, headed by the Bolsheviks. Together with the royal family, members of her retinue were also shot.

Most modern historians agree that the fundamental decision to execute Nicholas II was made in Moscow (in this case, they usually point to the leaders of Soviet Russia, Sverdlov and Lenin). However, there is no unity among modern historians on the issues of whether the sanction was given for the execution of Nicholas II without trial (which actually happened), and whether the sanction was given for the execution of the entire family.

There is also no unity among lawyers as to whether the execution was sanctioned by the highest Soviet leadership. If forensic expert Yu. Zhuk considers it an undeniable fact that the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council acted in accordance with the instructions of the first persons of the Soviet state, then the senior investigator for especially important cases of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation V.N. investigation into the circumstances of the murder of the royal family, in his interviews in 2008-2011, he argued that the execution of Nicholas II and his family was carried out without the sanction of Lenin and Sverdlov.

Since, before the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of Russia dated October 1, 2008, it was believed that the Ural Regional Council was not a judicial or other body that had the authority to pass a sentence, the events described for a long time were considered from a legal point of view not as political repressions, but as a murder, which prevented the posthumous rehabilitation of Nicholas II and his family.

The remains of five members of the imperial family, as well as their servants, were found in July 1991 near Yekaterinburg under the embankment of the Old Koptyakovskaya road. During the investigation of the criminal case, which was conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, the remains were identified. On July 17, 1998, the remains of members of the imperial family were buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. In July 2007, the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria were found.

background

As a result of the February Revolution, Nicholas II abdicated the throne and, together with his family, was under house arrest in Tsarskoye Selo. As A.F. Kerensky testified, when he, the Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government, only 5 days after his abdication, ascended the rostrum of the Moscow Soviet, he was showered with a hail of shouts from the place demanding the execution of Nicholas II. He wrote in his memoirs: The death penalty Nicholas II and sending his family from the Alexander Palace to the Peter and Paul Fortress or Kronstadt - these are the furious, sometimes frantic demands of hundreds of all sorts of delegations, deputations and resolutions that appeared and presented them to the Provisional Government ... ". In August 1917, Nicholas II and his family were deported to Tobolsk by decision of the Provisional Government.

After the Bolsheviks came to power, in early 1918, the Soviet government discussed a proposal to hold an open trial of Nicholas II. The historian Latyshev writes that the idea of ​​a trial of Nicholas II was supported by Trotsky, but Lenin expressed doubts about the timeliness of such a trial. According to the People's Commissar of Justice Steinberg, the issue was postponed indefinitely, which never came.

According to the historian V. M. Khrustalev, by the spring of 1918, the Bolshevik leaders developed a plan to gather all representatives of the Romanov dynasty in the Urals, where they would be kept at a considerable distance from external dangers in the face of the German Empire and the Entente, and on the other hand, the Bolsheviks who have strong political positions here, could keep the situation with the Romanovs under their control. In such a place, as the historian wrote, the Romanovs could be destroyed if they found a suitable reason for this. In April - May 1918, Nicholas II, together with his relatives, was taken under guard from Tobolsk to the "red capital of the Urals" - Yekaterinburg - where by that time there were already other representatives of the Romanov imperial house. It was here that in mid-July 1918, in the midst of a rapid offensive by anti-Soviet forces (the Czechoslovak Corps and the Siberian Army), approaching Yekaterinburg (and actually capturing it eight days later), the royal family was massacred.

As one of the reasons for the execution, the local Soviet authorities called the disclosure of a conspiracy, allegedly aimed at the release of Nicholas II. However, according to the memoirs of I. I. Rodzinsky and M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), members of the collegium of the Ural Regional Cheka, this conspiracy was actually a provocation organized by the Ural Bolsheviks in order, according to modern researchers, to obtain grounds for extrajudicial reprisals.

Course of events

Link to Yekaterinburg

The historian A.N. Bokhanov writes that there are many hypotheses why the tsar and his family were transferred from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg and whether he was going to flee; at the same time, A. N. Bokhanov considers it a fact that the move to Yekaterinburg stemmed from the desire of the Bolsheviks to toughen the regime and prepare for the liquidation of the tsar and his family.

At the same time, the Bolsheviks did not represent a homogeneous force.

On April 1, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to transfer the royal family to Moscow. The Ural authorities, who categorically objected to this decision, offered to transfer her to Yekaterinburg. Perhaps, as a result of the confrontation between Moscow and the Urals, a new decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of April 6, 1918 appeared, according to which all those arrested were sent to the Urals. Ultimately, the decisions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee were reduced to orders to prepare an open litigation over Nicholas II and about the transfer of the royal family to Yekaterinburg. The organization of this move was entrusted to the specially authorized All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Vasily Yakovlev, whom Sverdlov knew well from joint revolutionary work during the years of the first Russian revolution.

Sent from Moscow to Tobolsk, Commissar Vasily Yakovlev (Myachin) led a secret mission to take the royal family to Yekaterinburg with a view to its subsequent transfer to Moscow. In view of the illness of the son of Nicholas II, it was decided to leave all the children, except for Mary, in Tobolsk in the hope of reuniting with them later.

On April 26, 1918, the Romanovs, guarded by machine gunners, left Tobolsk; on April 27, they arrived in Tyumen in the evening. On April 30, a train from Tyumen arrived in Yekaterinburg, where Yakovlev handed over the imperial couple and daughter Maria to the head of the Ural Council, A. G. Beloborodov. Together with the Romanovs, Prince V. A. Dolgorukov, E. S. Botkin, A. S. Demidova, T. I. Chemodurov, and I. D. Sednev arrived in Yekaterinburg.

There is evidence that during the move of Nicholas II from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, the leadership of the Ural region tried to carry out his assassination. Later, Beloborodov wrote in his unfinished memoirs:

According to P. M. Bykov, at the 4th Ural Regional Conference of the RCP (b) taking place at that time in Yekaterinburg, “in a private meeting, the majority of delegates from the field spoke in favor of the need for the speedy execution of the Romanovs” in order to prevent attempts to restore the monarchy in Russia.

The confrontation that arose during the move from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg between the detachments sent from Yekaterinburg and Yakovlev, who became aware of the intention of the Urals to destroy Nicholas II, was resolved only through negotiations with Moscow, which were conducted by both sides. Moscow, in the person of Sverdlov, demanded from the Ural leadership guarantees for the security of the royal family, and only after they were given, Sverdlov confirmed the order previously given to Yakovlev to take the Romanovs to the Urals.

On May 23, 1918, the rest of the children of Nicholas II arrived in Yekaterinburg, accompanied by a group of servants and officials of the retinue. A. E. Trupp, I. M. Kharitonov, I. D. Sednev’s nephew Leonid Sednev and K. G. Nagorny were admitted to Ipatiev’s house.

Immediately upon arrival in Yekaterinburg, the Chekists arrested four people from among the persons accompanying the royal children: the adjutant of the tsar, Prince I. L. Tatishchev, the valet Alexandra Fedorovna A. A. Volkov, her chamber-maid of honor, Princess A. V. Gendrikova and the court lecturer E. A. Schneider. Tatishchev and Prince Dolgorukov, who arrived in Yekaterinburg with the royal couple, were shot in Yekaterinburg. Gendrikova, Schneider and Volkov, after the execution of the royal family, were transferred to Perm due to the evacuation of Yekaterinburg. There they were sentenced by the organs of the Cheka to execution as hostages; On the night of September 3-4, 1918, Gendrikova and Schneider were shot, Volkov managed to escape directly from the place of execution.

According to the work of a participant in the events of the communist P. M. Bykov, Prince Dolgorukov, who, according to Bykov, behaved suspiciously, was found to have two maps of Siberia with the designation of waterways and “some special marks”, as well as a significant amount of money. His testimony convinced that he intended to organize the escape of the Romanovs from Tobolsk.

Most of the remaining members of the retinue were ordered to leave the Perm province. The doctor of the heir, V. N. Derevenko, was allowed to remain in Yekaterinburg as a private person and examine the heir twice a week under the supervision of Avdeev, the commandant of the Ipatiev house.

Imprisonment in the Ipatiev House

The Romanov family was placed in a "house of special purpose" - the requisitioned mansion of a retired military engineer N. N. Ipatiev. Doctor E. S. Botkin, the chamber footman A. E. Trupp, the maid of the Empress A. S. Demidov, the cook I. M. Kharitonov and the 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, the three of us in the bedroom, a shared bathroom, in the dining room - N[yuta] Demidova, in the hall - Botkin, Chemodurov and Sednev. Near the entrance there is a guard [aul] 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 guardroom. 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”.

Investigator Sokolov, who was instructed by A. V. Kolchak in February 1919 to continue the case of the murder of the Romanovs, managed to recreate a picture of the last months of the life of the royal family with the remnants of the retinue in the Ipatiev house. In particular, Sokolov reconstructed the system of posts and their placement, compiled a list of external and internal guards.

One of the sources for investigator Sokolov was the testimony of a miraculously surviving member of the royal retinue, valet T.I. Not entirely trusting his testimony “I admitted that Chemodurov might not be completely frank in his testimony to the authorities, and found out that he was telling other people about life in the Ipatiev House”), Sokolov rechecked them through the former head of the royal guard Kobylinsky, valet Volkov, as well as Gilliard and Gibbs. Sokolov also studied the testimony of several other former members of the royal retinue, including Pierre Gilliard, a French teacher originally from Switzerland. Gilliard himself was transported by the Latvian Svikke (Rodionov) to Yekaterinburg with the remaining royal children, but he was not placed in the Ipatiev house.

In addition, after Yekaterinburg passed into the hands of the Whites, some of the former guards of the Ipatiev house were found and interrogated, including Suetin, Latypov and Letemin. Detailed testimony was given by the former security guard Proskuryakov and the former guard guard Yakimov.

According to T. I. Chemodurov, immediately after the arrival of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna at the Ipatiev house, they were searched, and “one of those who carried out the search snatched the reticule from the hands of the Empress and caused the Emperor’s remark:“ Until now, I have dealt with honest and decent people."

According to Chemodurov, the former head of the tsarist guard, Kobylinsky, said: “a bowl was placed on the table; spoons, knives, forks were missing; the Red Army men also participated in the dinner; some one will come and climb into the bowl: “Well, that’s enough for you.” The princesses slept on the floor, as they did not have beds. There was a roll call. When the princesses went to the restroom, the Red Army soldiers, supposedly for guard duty, followed them ... ". Witness Yakimov (at the time of the events - leading the guard) said that the guards sang songs, "which, of course, were not pleasant for the tsar": "Together, comrades, in step", "Let's renounce the old world", etc. Investigator Sokolov also writes that “the Ipatiev house itself speaks more eloquently than any words, how the prisoners lived here. Unusual in terms of cynicism, inscriptions and images with the same theme: about Rasputin. To top it off, according to the testimony of witnesses interviewed by Sokolov, the working boy Faika Safonov defiantly sang indecent ditties right under the windows of the royal family.

Sokolov very negatively characterizes part of the guards of the Ipatiev house, calling them "propagandized scum from among the Russian people", and the first commandant of the Ipatiev house Avdeev - "the most prominent representative of these dregs of the working environment: a typical rally screamer, extremely stupid, deeply ignorant, a drunkard and a thief".

There are also reports of the theft of royal things by the guards. The guards also stole food sent to the arrested by the nuns of the Novo-Tikhvin convent.

Richard Pipes writes that the thefts of royal property that had begun could not but disturb Nicholas and Alexandra, since, among other things, there were boxes with their personal letters and diaries in the barn. In addition, writes Pipes, there are many stories about the rough treatment of members of the royal family by the guards: that the guards could afford to enter the princesses' rooms at any time of the day, that they took away food and even that they pushed the former king. " Although such stories are not unfounded, they are much exaggerated. The commandant and guards were no doubt rude, but there is no evidence to support open abuse."Noted by a number of authors, the amazing calmness with which Nikolai and members of his family endured the hardships of captivity, Pipes explains with a feeling dignity and " fatalism rooted in their deep religiosity».

Provocation. Letters from an "officer of the Russian army"

On June 17, those arrested were informed that the nuns of the Novo-Tikhvin Monastery were allowed to bring eggs, milk and cream to their table. As R. Pipes writes, on June 19 or 20, the royal family found in a cork in one of the bottles of cream a note on French:

Friends do not sleep and hope that the hour they have been waiting for has come. The uprising of the Czechoslovaks poses an increasingly serious threat to the Bolsheviks. Samara, Chelyabinsk and all of eastern and western Siberia are under the control of the National Provisional Government. The friendly army of the Slavs is already eighty kilometers from Yekaterinburg, the resistance of the Red Army soldiers is unsuccessful. Be attentive to everything that happens outside, wait and hope. But at the same time, I beg you, be careful, because the Bolsheviks, while they have not yet been defeated, they represent a real and serious danger to you. Be ready at all times, day and night. Make a blueprint your two rooms: location, furniture, beds. Write down the exact time you all go to bed. One of you must be awake from 2 to 3 every night from now on. Answer in a few words, but give, I beg you, the necessary information to your friends outside. Give the answer to the same soldier who will hand you this note, in writing, but don't say a word. Someone who is willing to die for you. Officer of the Russian army.

Original note Les amis ne dorment plus et espèrent que l'heure si longtemps attendue est arrivée. La revolte des tschekoslovaques menace les bolcheviks de plus en plus sérieusement. Samara, Tschelabinsk et toute la Sibirie orientale et occidentale est au pouvoir de gouvernement national provisoir. L'armée des amis slaves est à quatre-vingt kilometres d'Ekaterinbourg, les soldats de l armée rouge ne résistent pas efficassement. Soyez attentifs au tout mouvement de dehors, attendez et esperez. Mais en meme temps, je vous supplie, soyez prudents, parce que les bolcheviks avant d'etre vaincus represent pour vous le peril reel et serieux. Soyez prêts toutes les heures, la journée et la nuit. Faite le croquis des vos deux chambres, les places, des meubles, des lits. Écrivez bien l'heure quant vous allez coucher vous tous. L un de vous ne doit dormir de 2 à 3 heure toutes les nuits qui suivent. Répondez par quelques mots mais donnez, je vous en prie, tous les renseignements utiles pour vos amis de dehors. C'est au meme soldat qui vous transmet cette note qu'il faut donner votre reponse par écrit mais pas un seul mot. Un qui est prêt à mourir pour vous L'officier de l'armée Russe.

In the diary of Nicholas II, there is even an entry dated June 14 (27), which reads: “The other day we received two letters, one after the other, [in which] we were told to get ready to be kidnapped by some loyal people!”. The research literature mentions four letters from the "officer" and the answers of the Romanovs to them.

In the third letter, received on June 26, the "Russian officer" asked to be on the alert and wait for the signal. On the night of June 26-27, the royal family did not go to bed, "they were awake dressed." In Nikolai's diary, an entry appears that "the expectation and uncertainty were very painful."

We do not want and cannot RUN. We can only be kidnapped by force, as we were brought from Tobolsk by force. Therefore, do not count on any of our active help. The commandant has many assistants, they often change and become anxious. They vigilantly guard our prison and our lives and treat us well. We would not want them to suffer because of us or you to suffer for us. Most importantly, for God's sake, avoid shedding blood. Gather information about them yourself. It is absolutely impossible to go down from the window without the help of a ladder. But even if we go down, there remains a huge danger, because the window of the commandant's room is open and on the lower floor, the entrance to which leads from the courtyard, there is a machine gun. [Crossed out: "Therefore, leave the thought of kidnapping us."] If you are watching us, you can always try to save us in case of imminent and real danger. We do not know at all what is happening outside, since we do not receive any newspapers or letters. After we were allowed to open the window, the surveillance intensified and we cannot even put our head out the window without the risk of getting shot in the face.

Richard Pipes draws attention to obvious oddities in this correspondence: the anonymous "Russian officer" clearly had to be a monarchist, but he addressed the tsar with "you" ("vous") instead of "Your Majesty" ( "Votre Majeste"), and it is not clear how the monarchists could slip the letters into the traffic jam. The memoirs of the first commandant of the Ipatiev house, Avdeev, have been preserved, who reports that the Chekists allegedly found the real author of the letter, the Serbian officer Magic. In reality, as Richard Pipes emphasizes, there was no Magic in Yekaterinburg. There was indeed a Serbian officer with a similar surname, Mičić Jarko Konstantinovich, in the city, but it is known that he arrived in Yekaterinburg only on July 4, when most of the correspondence had already ended.

The declassification in 1989-1992 of the memoirs of the participants in the events finally clarified the picture with the mysterious letters of the unknown "Russian officer". M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), a participant in the execution, admitted that the correspondence was a provocation organized by the Ural Bolsheviks in order to test the readiness of the royal family to flee. After the Romanovs spent two or three nights dressed, according to Medvedev, this readiness became apparent to him.

The author of the text was P. L. Voikov, who lived for some time in Geneva (Switzerland). Letters were copied cleanly by I. Rodzinsky, since he had better handwriting. Rodzinsky himself in his memoirs states that " my handwriting is there in these documents».

Replacing Commandant Avdeev with Yurovsky

On July 4, 1918, the protection of the royal family was transferred to a member of the collegium of the Ural Regional Cheka, Ya. M. Yurovsky. In some sources, Yurovsky is erroneously called the chairman of the Cheka; in fact, this position was held by F. N. Lukoyanov.

G. P. Nikulin, an employee of the regional Cheka, became the assistant to the commandant of the “special purpose house”. The former commandant Avdeev and his assistant Moshkin were removed, Moshkin (and, according to some sources, Avdeev as well) was imprisoned for theft.

At the first meeting with Yurovsky, the tsar mistook him for a doctor, as he advised the doctor V.N. Derevenko to put a plaster cast on the leg of the heir; Yurovsky was mobilized in 1915 and, according to N. Sokolov, graduated from the medical assistant's school.

Investigator N. A. Sokolov explained the replacement of commandant Avdeev by the fact that communication with prisoners had changed something in his “drunk soul”, which became noticeable to the authorities. When, according to Sokolov, preparations began for the execution of those in the house for special purposes, Avdeev's guards were removed as unreliable.

Yurovsky described his predecessor Avdeev extremely negatively, accusing him of “decomposition, drunkenness, theft”: “there is a mood of complete licentiousness and laxity all around”, “Avdeev, referring to Nikolai, calls him Nikolai Alexandrovich. He offers him a cigarette, Avdeev takes it, they both light up, and this immediately showed me the established “simplicity of morals.”

The brother of Yurovsky Leib, interviewed by Sokolov, described Ya. M. Yurovsky as follows: “Yankel's character is quick-tempered, persistent. I studied watchmaking with him and I know his character: he likes to oppress people.” According to Leya, the wife of another brother of Yurovsky (Ele), Ya. M. Yurovsky is very persistent and despotic, and his characteristic phrase was: "Whoever is not with us is against us." At the same time, as Richard Pipes points out, soon after his appointment, Yurovsky harshly suppresses the theft that has spread under Avdeev. Richard Pipes considers this action to be appropriate from a security point of view, since theft-prone guards could be bribed, including to escape; as a result, for some time the content of those arrested even improved, since the theft of products from the Novo-Tikhvinsky monastery stopped. In addition, Yurovsky compiles an inventory of all the arrested jewelry (according to historian R. Pipes - except for those that women secretly sewed into underwear); the jewels are placed by him in a sealed box, which Yurovsky gives them for safekeeping. Indeed, in the diary of the king there is an entry dated June 23 (July 6), 1918:

At the same time, Yurovsky's arrogance soon began to irritate the tsar, who noted in his diary that "we like this type less and less." Alexandra Feodorovna described Yurovsky in her diary as a "vulgar and unpleasant" person. However, Richard Pipes notes:

Last days

Bolshevik sources preserved evidence that the "working masses" of the Urals expressed concern about the possibility of the release of Nicholas II and even demanded his immediate execution. Doctor of Historical Sciences G.Z. Ioffe believes that these testimonies are probably true, and characterize the situation, which was then not only in the Urals. As an example, he cites the text of a telegram from the Kolomna District Committee of the Bolshevik Party, received by the Council of People's Commissars on July 3, 1918, with the message that the local party organization "unanimously decided to demand from the Council of People's Commissars the immediate destruction of the entire family and relatives of the former tsar, because the German bourgeoisie, together with Russian restore the tsarist regime in the captured cities. “In case of refusal,” it was reported in it, “it was decided to enforce this decision on our own.” Ioffe suggests that such resolutions coming from below were either organized at meetings and rallies, or were the result of general propaganda, an atmosphere filled with calls for class struggle and class revenge. The "lower classes" readily picked up the slogans emanating from the Bolshevik orators, especially those representing the left currents of Bolshevism. Almost the entire Bolshevik elite of the Urals was on the left. According to the memoirs of Chekist I. Rodzinsky, A. Beloborodov, G. Safarov and N. Tolmachev were left communists among the leaders of the Ural Regional Council.

At the same time, the left Bolsheviks in the Urals had to compete in radicalism with the left SRs and anarchists, whose influence was significant. As Ioffe writes, the Bolsheviks could not afford to give their political rivals a pretext for reproaches of "sliding to the right." And there were such accusations. Later, Spiridonova reproached the Bolshevik Central Committee for "dissolving the tsars and sub-tsars in ... the Ukraine, Crimea and abroad" and "only at the insistence of the revolutionaries", that is, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists, raised his hand against Nikolai Romanov. According to A. Avdeev, in Yekaterinburg a group of anarchists tried to pass a resolution on the immediate execution of the former tsar. According to the memoirs of the Urals, the extremists tried to organize an attack on the Ipatiev house in order to destroy the Romanovs. Echoes of this are preserved in the diaries of Nicholas II for May 31 (June 13) and Alexandra Feodorovna for June 1 (14).

On June 13, the murder of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich was committed in Perm. Immediately after the assassination, the authorities of Perm announced that Mikhail Romanov had fled and put him on the wanted list. On June 17, the message about the "flight" of Mikhail Alexandrovich was reprinted in the newspapers of Moscow and Petrograd. In parallel, there are rumors that Nicholas II was killed by a Red Army soldier who arbitrarily burst into Ipatiev's house. In fact, Nikolai was still alive at that time.

Rumors about the lynching of Nicholas II and the Romanovs generally spread beyond the Urals.

On June 18, the Presovnarkom, Lenin, in an interview with the liberal newspaper Nashe Slovo, which was opposed to Bolshevism, stated that Mikhail, according to his information, allegedly really fled, and nothing was known about the fate of Nikolai Lenin.

On June 20, V. Bonch-Bruyevich, head of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars, asked Yekaterinburg: “Information has spread in Moscow that the former Emperor Nicholas II has allegedly been killed. Please provide any information you have."

Moscow sends to Yekaterinburg for inspection the commander of the Severoural group of Soviet troops, the Latvian R. I. Berzin, who visited the Ipatiev house on June 22. Nikolai in his diary, in an entry dated June 9 (22), 1918, reports the arrival of "6 people", and the next day there is an entry that they turned out to be "commissars from Petrograd". On June 23, representatives of the Council of People's Commissars again reported that they still did not have information about whether Nicholas II was alive or not.

R. Berzin in telegrams to the Council of People's Commissars, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs reported that “all members of the family and Nicholas II himself are alive. All information about his murder is a provocation.” On the basis of the responses received, the Soviet press refuted the rumors and reports that appeared in some newspapers about the execution of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg several times.

According to the testimony of three telegraph operators from the Yekaterinburg post office, later received by the Sokolov commission, Lenin, in a conversation with Berzin over a direct wire, ordered "to take the entire royal family under his protection and prevent any violence against her, answering in this case with his own life" . According to the historian A. G. Latyshev, the telegraph connection maintained by Lenin with Berzin is one of the proofs of Lenin's desire to save the life of the Romanovs.

According to the official Soviet historiography, the decision to execute the Romanovs was made by the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council, while the central Soviet leadership was notified after the event. During the period of perestroika, this version began to be criticized, and by the beginning of the 1990s an alternative version was formed, according to which the Ural authorities could not make such a decision without a directive from Moscow and assumed this responsibility in order to create a political alibi for the Moscow leadership. In the post-perestroika period, the Russian historian A. G. Latyshev, who was investigating the circumstances surrounding the execution of the royal family, expressed the opinion that Lenin really could have secretly organized the murder in such a way as to shift responsibility to the local authorities, in much the same way as, according to According to Latyshev, this was done a year and a half later in relation to Kolchak. And yet in this case, the historian believes, the situation was different. In his opinion, Lenin, not wanting to spoil relations with the German Emperor Wilhelm II, a close relative of the Romanovs, did not authorize execution.

In early July 1918, the Ural military commissar F. I. Goloshchekin went to Moscow to resolve the issue of the future fate of the royal family. According to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, he was in Moscow from July 4 to 10; July 14 Goloshchekin returned to Yekaterinburg.

Based on the available documents, the fate of the royal family as a whole was not discussed in Moscow at any level. Only the fate of Nicholas II, who was supposed to be judged, was discussed. According to a number of historians, there was also a principled decision, according to which the former king was to be sentenced to death. According to the investigator V.N. Solovyov, Goloshchekin, referring to the complexity of the military situation in the Yekaterinburg region and the possibility of the capture of the royal family by the White Guards, proposed to shoot Nicholas II without waiting for the trial, but received a categorical refusal.

According to a number of historians, the decision to destroy the royal family was made upon Goloshchekin's return to Yekaterinburg. S. D. Alekseev and I. F. Plotnikov believe that it was adopted on the evening of July 14 "by a narrow circle of the Bolshevik part of the executive committee of the Ural Council." In the fund of the Council of People's Commissars state archive The Russian Federation has preserved a telegram sent on July 16, 1918 to Moscow from Yekaterinburg via Petrograd:

Thus, the telegram was received in Moscow on July 16 at 21:22. G. Z. Ioffe suggested that the “trial” referred to in the telegram meant the execution of Nicholas II or even the Romanov family. No response from the central leadership to this telegram was found in the archives.

Unlike Ioffe, a number of researchers understand the word “judgment” used in the telegram in a literal sense. In this case, the telegram refers to the trial of Nicholas II, regarding which there was an agreement between the central government and Yekaterinburg, and the meaning of the telegram is as follows: “inform Moscow that the court agreed with Philip due to military circumstances ... we cannot wait. The execution is urgent." This interpretation of the telegram allows us to consider that the issue of the trial of Nicholas II has not yet been removed on July 16. The investigation believes that the brevity of the question posed in the telegram indicates that the central authorities were familiar with this issue; at the same time, there is reason “to believe that the issue of the execution of members of the royal family and servants, excluding Nicholas II, was not agreed with either V. I. Lenin or Ya. M. Sverdlov.”

A few hours before the execution of the royal family, on July 16, Lenin prepared a telegram as a response to the editors of the Danish newspaper National Tidende, who asked him about the fate of Nicholas II, in which rumors about his death were refuted. At 4 pm the text was sent to the telegraph, but the telegram was never sent. According to A. G. Latyshev, the text of this telegram “ means that Lenin did not even imagine the possibility of the execution of Nicholas II (not to mention the whole family) the next night».

Unlike Latyshev, according to whom the decision to execute the royal family was made by the local authorities, a number of historians believe that the execution was carried out at the initiative of the Center. This point of view was defended, in particular, by D. A. Volkogonov and R. Pipes. As an argument, they cited a diary entry by L. D. Trotsky, made on April 9, 1935, about his conversation with Sverdlov after the fall of Yekaterinburg. According to this entry, by the time of this conversation, Trotsky knew neither about the execution of Nicholas II, nor about the execution of his family. Sverdlov informed him about what had happened, saying that the decision was made by the central government. However, the reliability of this testimony of Trotsky is criticized, since, firstly, Trotsky is listed among those present in the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars of July 18, at which Sverdlov announced the execution of Nicholas II; secondly, Trotsky himself in his book "My Life" wrote that until August 7 he was in Moscow; but this means that he could not have been unaware of the execution of Nicholas II, even if his name was in the protocol by mistake.

According to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, the official decision to execute Nicholas II was made on July 16, 1918 by the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies. The original of this decision has not been preserved. However, a week after the execution, the official text of the verdict was published:

Decree of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Red Army Deputies: In view of the fact that Czecho-Slovak gangs threaten the capital of the Red Urals, Yekaterinburg; in view of the fact that the crowned executioner can avoid the court of the people (a conspiracy of the White Guards had just been discovered, which had the aim of kidnapping the entire Romanov family), the Presidium of the Regional Committee, in pursuance of the will of the people, decided: to shoot the former Tsar Nikolai Romanov, guilty before the people of countless bloody crimes. The Romanov family was transferred from Yekaterinburg to another, more correct place. Presidium of the Regional Council of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies of the Urals

Sending cook Leonid Sednev

As R. Wilton, a member of the investigative team, stated in his work “The Murder of the Tsar’s Family”, before the execution, “the cook Leonid Sednev, the playmate of the Tsarevich, was removed from the Ipatiev House. He was placed at the Russian guards in Popov's house, opposite Ipatiev. Memoirs of participants in the execution confirm this fact.

Commandant Yurovsky, according to M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), a participant in the execution, allegedly, on his own initiative, offered to send the cook Leonid Sednev, who was in the royal retinue, under the pretext of a meeting with his uncle who allegedly arrived in Yekaterinburg. In fact, the uncle of Leonid Sednev, the footman of the Grand Duchesses I. D. Sednev, who accompanied the royal family in exile, was under arrest from May 27, 1918 and in early June (according to other sources, in late June or early July 1918) was shot.

Yurovsky himself claims that he received an order to release the cook from Goloshchekin. After the execution, according to Yurovsky, the cook was sent home.

It was decided to liquidate the remaining members of the retinue along with the royal family, since they “declared that they wanted to share the fate of the monarch. Let them share." Thus, four people were appointed for liquidation: the life physician E. S. Botkin, the chamber footman A. E. Trupp, the cook I. M. Kharitonov and the maid A. S. Demidova.

Of the members of the retinue, valet T. I. Chemodurov managed to escape, on May 24 he fell ill and was placed in a prison hospital; during the evacuation of Yekaterinburg in turmoil, he was forgotten by the Bolsheviks in prison and released by the Czechs on July 25.

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. Various options were offered: to stab the arrested with daggers during sleep, to throw grenades into the room with them, to 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.

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 render Nikolai's last words 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 executioners was slightly wounded ( “A bullet from one of those who shot from behind buzzed past my head, and one, I don’t remember, either an arm, a palm, or a finger touched and shot through”).

According to T. Manakova, during the execution, two dogs of the royal family, who raised a howl, were also killed - Tatyana's French bulldog Ortino and Anastasia's royal spaniel Jimmy (Jammy) Anastasia. The third dog, Aleksey Nikolayevich's spaniel named Joy, was spared his life because she didn't 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.

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 Yakimov, the guard guard, 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:

In the memoirs of Yurovsky's assistant G.P. Nikulin, this episode is described as follows:

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 Ural Regional Council V. Vorobyov, later claimed that they “were very uneasy when they approached the apparatus: the former tsar was shot by a decree of the Presidium of the Regional Council, and it was not known how he would react to this“ arbitrariness ” central government... 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. The next day, the Izvestia newspaper reported:

On July 18, the first meeting of the Presidium of the Central I.K. of the 5th convocation took place. Comrade presided. Sverdlov. Members of the Presidium were present: Avanesov, Sosnovsky, Teodorovich, Vladimirsky, Maksimov, Smidovich, Rozengolts, Mitrofanov and Rozin. Chairman comrade. Sverdlov announces a message just received via a direct wire from the Regional Ural Council about the execution of the former Tsar Nikolai Romanov. In recent days, the capital of the Red Urals, Yekaterinburg, was seriously threatened by the danger of the approach of Czechoslovak bands. At the same time, a new conspiracy of counter-revolutionaries was uncovered, with the aim of wresting the crowned executioner from the hands of Soviet power. In view of this, the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council decided to shoot Nikolai Romanov, which was carried out on July 16th. The wife and son of Nikolai Romanov were sent to a safe place. Documents about the revealed conspiracy were sent to Moscow with a special courier. Having made this message, comrade. Sverdlov recalls the story of the transfer of Nikolai Romanov from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg after the disclosure of the same organization of the White Guards, which was preparing the escape of Nikolai Romanov. In recent times, it has been proposed to bring the former king to justice for all his crimes against the people, and only the events of recent times have prevented this from being carried out. The Presidium of the Central I.K., having discussed all the circumstances that forced the Ural Regional Council to decide on the execution of Nikolai Romanov, decided: The All-Russian Central I.K., represented by its Presidium, recognizes the decision of the Ural Regional Council as correct.

On the eve of this official press release, on July 18 (perhaps on the night of July 18 to 19), a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars was held, at which this decision of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was "taken into account."

The telegram, about which Sokolov writes, is not in the files of the Council of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. “Some foreign authors,” writes historian G.Z. Ioffe, “carefully even expressed doubts about its authenticity.” ID Kovalchenko and GZ Ioffe left open the question whether this telegram was received in Moscow. According to a number of other historians, including Yu. A. Buranov and V. M. Khrustalev, L. A. Lykov, this telegram is genuine and was received in Moscow before the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars.

On July 19, Yurovsky took "documents of the conspiracy" to Moscow. The time of Yurovsky's arrival in Moscow is not exactly known, but it is known that the diaries of Nicholas II brought by him on July 26 were already with the historian M.N. Pokrovsky. On August 6, with the participation of Yurovsky, the entire archive of the Romanovs was delivered to Moscow from Perm.

Question about the composition of the firing squad

Memoirs of a participant in the execution Nikulin G.P.

... Comrade Ermakov, who behaved rather indecently, assigning himself the leading role after that, that he did it all, so to speak, on his own, without any help ... In fact, there were 8 performers of us: Yurovsky, Nikulin, Mikhail Medvedev, Pavel Medvedev four, Ermakov Peter five, so I'm not sure that Ivan Kabanov is six. And two more I can't remember their names.

When we went down to the basement, we didn’t even think at first to put chairs there to sit down, because this one was ... he didn’t go, you know, Alexei, we had to put him down. Well, then immediately, so they brought it. It’s like when they went down to the basement, they began to look at each other in bewilderment, immediately brought in, which means chairs, sat down, which means Alexandra Fedorovna, they planted the heir, and Comrade Yurovsky uttered such a phrase that: “Your friends are advancing on Yekaterinburg and therefore you are condemned to death.” It didn’t even dawn on them what was the matter, because Nikolai said only immediately: “Ah!”, And at that time, our volley was immediately already one, second, third. Well, there is someone else, so, so to speak, well, or something, was not quite completely killed yet. Well, then I had to shoot someone else ...

The Soviet researcher M. Kasvinov, in his book “23 Steps Down”, first published in the Zvezda magazine (1972-1973), actually attributed the leadership of the execution not to Yurovsky, but to Ermakov:

However, later the text was changed, and in the following editions of the book, published after the death of the author, Yurovsky and Nikulin were named the leaders of the execution:

The materials of the investigation of N. A. Sokolov in the case of the murder of Emperor Nicholas II and his family contain numerous testimonies that the direct perpetrators of the murder were "Latvians" led by a Jew (Yurovsky). However, as Sokolov notes, the Russian Red Army called "Latvians" all non-Russian Bolsheviks. Therefore, opinions about who these “Latvians” were differ.

Sokolov further writes that an inscription in Hungarian "Verhas Andras 1918 VII/15 e örsegen" and a fragment of a letter in Hungarian written in the spring of 1918 were found in the house. The inscription on the wall in Hungarian translates as "Vergazi Andreas 1918 VII/15 stood on the clock" and is partially duplicated in Russian: "No. 6. Vergash Karau 1918 VII/15". The name in different sources varies as “Vergazi Andreas”, “Verhas Andras”, etc. (according to the rules of Hungarian-Russian practical transcription, it should be translated into Russian as “Verhas Andras”). Sokolov referred this person to the number of "executioners-Chekists"; researcher I. Plotnikov believes that this was done "recklessly": post number 6 belonged to the external guard, and the unknown Vergazi Andras could not participate in the execution.

General Dieterichs "by analogy" also included the Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war Rudolf Lasher among the participants in the execution; according to the researcher I. Plotnikov, Lasher was actually not involved in the protection at all, being engaged only in economic work.

In the light of Plotnikov’s research, the list of those who shot may look like this: Yurovsky, Nikulin, member of the board of the regional Cheka M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), P. Z. Ermakov, S. P. Vaganov, A. G. Kabanov, P. S. Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, possibly 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 that consisted almost entirely of Russians in terms of national composition, with the participation of one Jew (Ja. M. Yurovsky) and, probably, one Latvian (Ja. M. Celms). According to surviving information, two or three Latvians refused to participate in the execution.

There is another list of supposedly a firing squad, compiled by the Tobolsk Bolshevik, who transported the royal children who remained in Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, by the Latvian J. M. Svikke (Rodionov) and consisting almost entirely of Latvians. All the Latvians mentioned in the list actually served with Svikke in 1918, but apparently did not participate in the execution (with the exception of Celms).

In 1956, the German media published documents and testimonies of a certain I.P. Meyer, a former Austrian prisoner of war, in 1918 a member of the Ural Regional Council, which stated that seven former Hungarian prisoners of war, including a man whom some authors have identified as Imre Nagy, the future politician and statesman of Hungary. These testimonies, however, were subsequently found to be falsified.

disinformation campaign

The official report of the Soviet leadership on the execution of Nicholas II, published in the newspapers Izvestia and Pravda on July 19, stated that the decision to shoot Nicholas II ("Nikolai Romanov") was made in connection with the extremely difficult military situation that had developed in the Yekaterinburg region. , and the disclosure of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy aimed at the release of the former tsar; that the decision to execute was taken by the presidium of the Ural Regional Council independently; that only Nicholas II was killed, and his wife and son were transferred to a “safe place”. The fate of other children and persons close to the royal family was not mentioned at all. For a number of years, the authorities stubbornly defended the official version that the family of Nicholas II was alive. This misinformation fueled rumors that some family members managed to escape and escape.

Although the central authorities should have learned from a telegram from Yekaterinburg on the evening of July 17, "... that the whole family suffered the same fate as the head", in the official resolutions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of July 18, 1918, only the execution of Nicholas II was mentioned. On July 20, negotiations between Ya. M. Sverdlov and A. G. Beloborodov took place, during which Beloborodov was asked the question: “ … can we notify the population with a known text?". After that (according to L.A. Lykova, on July 23; according to other sources, on July 21 or 22), a message was published in Yekaterinburg about the execution of Nicholas II, repeating the official version of the Soviet leadership.

On July 22, 1918, information about the execution of Nicholas II was published by the London Times, on July 21 (due to the difference in time zones) - by the New York Times. The basis for these publications was official information from the Soviet government.

Disinformation of the world and Russian public continued in official seal and through diplomatic channels. Materials have been preserved about the negotiations between the Soviet authorities and representatives of the German embassy: on July 24, 1918, adviser K. Ritzler received information from People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G. V. Chicherin that Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters were transported to Perm and nothing threatens them. The denial of the death of the royal family continued further. Negotiations between the Soviet and German governments on the exchange of the royal family were conducted until September 15, 1918. The Ambassador of Soviet Russia in Germany A. A. Ioffe was not informed about what happened in Yekaterinburg on the advice of V. I. Lenin, who instructed: “... do not tell A. A. Ioffe anything, so that it would be easier for him to lie”.

In the future, official representatives of the Soviet leadership continued to misinform the world community: diplomat M. M. Litvinov declared that the royal family was alive in December 1918; G. Z. Zinoviev in an interview with the newspaper San Francisco Chronicle July 11, 1921 also claimed that the family was alive; People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G. V. Chicherin continued to give false information about the fate of the royal family - so, already in April 1922, during the Genoa Conference, to the question of a newspaper correspondent Chicago Tribune about the fate of the Grand Duchesses, he replied: “The fate of the daughters of the king is unknown to me. I read in the papers that they were in America.". A prominent Bolshevik, one of the participants in the decision to execute the royal family, P. L. Voikov allegedly declared in the ladies' society in Yekaterinburg, "that the world will never know what they did to the royal family."

P. M. Bykov told the truth about the fate of the entire royal family in the article “The Last Days of the Last Tsar”; the article was published in the collection "Workers' Revolution in the Urals", published in Yekaterinburg in 1921 in 10,000 copies; shortly after its release, the collection was "withdrawn from circulation". Bykov's article was reprinted in the Moscow newspaper Communist Trud (the future Moskovskaya Pravda). In 1922, the same newspaper published a review of the collection The Workers' Revolution in the Urals. Episodes and facts”; in it, in particular, it was said about P. Z. Ermakov as the main executor of the execution of the royal family on July 17, 1918.

The Soviet authorities recognized that Nicholas II was shot not alone, but together with his family, when the materials of the Sokolov investigation began to circulate in the West. After Sokolov's book was published in Paris, Bykov received the task from the CPSU(b) to present the history of the Yekaterinburg events. This is how his book “The Last Days of the Romanovs” appeared, published in Sverdlovsk in 1926. The book was republished in 1930.

According to the historian L. A. Lykova, lies and disinformation about the murder in the basement of the Ipatiev house, its official registration in the relevant decisions of the Bolshevik Party in the first days after the events and silence for more than seventy years gave rise to distrust of the authorities in society, which continued to affect and in post-Soviet Russia.

The fate of the Romanovs

In addition to the family of the former emperor, in 1918-1919, “a whole group of Romanovs” was destroyed, who for one reason or another remained in Russia by that time. The Romanovs survived, who were in the Crimea, whose lives were guarded by the commissioner F. L. Zadorozhny (the Yalta Soviet was going to execute them so that they would not be with the Germans, who occupied Simferopol in mid-April 1918 and continued the occupation of Crimea). After the occupation of Yalta by the Germans, the Romanovs found themselves outside the power of the Soviets, and after the arrival of the Whites, they were able to emigrate.

Two grandchildren of Nikolai Konstantinovich, who died in 1918 in Tashkent from pneumonia (some sources mistakenly mention his execution), also survived - the children of his son Alexander Iskander: Natalya Androsova (1917-1999) and Kirill Androsov (1915-1992) who lived in Moscow.

Thanks to the intervention of M. Gorky, Prince Gabriel Konstantinovich also managed to escape, who later emigrated to Germany. On November 20, 1918, Maxim Gorky addressed V.I. Lenin with a letter stating:

The prince was released.

The murder of Mikhail Alexandrovich in Perm

The first of the Romanovs to die was Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. He and his secretary Brian Johnson were killed in Perm, where they were exiled. According to available evidence, on the night of June 12-13, 1918, several armed men came to the hotel where Mikhail lived, took Mikhail Alexandrovich and Brian Johnson into the forest and shot him dead. The remains of those killed have not yet been found.

The murder was presented as the kidnapping of Mikhail Alexandrovich by his supporters or a secret escape, which was used by the authorities as a pretext for tightening the regime for the detention of all the exiled Romanovs: the royal family in Yekaterinburg and the grand dukes in Alapaevsk and Vologda.

Alapaevskoe murder

Almost simultaneously with the execution of the royal family, the murder of the grand dukes, who were in the city of Alapaevsk, 140 kilometers from Yekaterinburg, was committed. On the night of July 5 (18), 1918, the arrested were taken to an abandoned mine 12 km from the city and thrown into it.

At 3:15 in the morning, the executive committee of the Alapaevsky Soviet telegraphed to Yekaterinburg that the princes had allegedly been kidnapped by an unknown gang that had raided the school where they were kept. On the same day, the chairman of the Ural Regional Council, Beloborodov, conveyed the corresponding message to Sverdlov in Moscow and to Zinoviev and Uritsky in Petrograd:

The handwriting of the Alapaevsky murder was similar to that of Yekaterinburg: in both cases, the victims were thrown into an abandoned mine in the forest, and in both cases, attempts were made to bring down this mine with grenades. At the same time, the Alapaevsk murder differed significantly O more cruelty: the victims, with the exception of Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, who resisted and was shot dead, were thrown into the mine, presumably after being hit with a blunt object on the head, while some of them were still alive; according to R. Pipes, they died of thirst and lack of air, probably after a few days. However, the investigation conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation concluded that their death occurred immediately.

G. Z. Ioffe agreed with the opinion of the investigator N. Sokolov, who wrote: "Both the Yekaterinburg and Alapaevsk murders are the product of the same will of the same persons."

Execution of the Grand Dukes in Petrograd

After the "escape" of Mikhail Romanov, the Grand Dukes Nikolai Mikhailovich, Georgy Mikhailovich and Dmitry Konstantinovich, who were in exile in Vologda, were arrested. Grand Dukes Pavel Alexandrovich and Gabriel Konstantinovich, who remained in Petrograd, were also transferred to the position of prisoners.

After the announcement of the Red Terror, four of them ended up in the Peter and Paul Fortress as hostages. January 24, 1919 (according to other sources - January 27, 29 or 30) Grand Dukes Pavel Alexandrovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich and Georgy Mikhailovich were shot. On January 31, the Petrograd newspapers briefly reported that the Grand Dukes were shot “by order of the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Profiteering of the Union of the Commune of the Northern O[blast]”.

It was announced that they were shot as hostages in response to the murders in Germany of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. On February 6, 1919, the Moscow newspaper Always Forward! published an article by Y. Martov “Shameful!” with a sharp condemnation of this extrajudicial execution of the “four Romanovs”.

Testimony of contemporaries

Memoirs of Trotsky

According to the historian Yu. Felshtinsky, Trotsky, already abroad, adhered to the version according to which the decision to execute the royal family was made by the local authorities. Later, using the memoirs of the Soviet diplomat Besedovsky, who defected to the West, Trotsky tried, in the words of Yu. Felshtinsky, "to shift the blame for regicide" onto Sverdlov and Stalin. In the drafts of the unfinished chapters of the biography of Stalin, which Trotsky worked on in the late 1930s, there is the following entry:

In the mid-1930s, entries about the events connected with the execution of the royal family appeared in Trotsky's diary. According to Trotsky, back in June 1918, he proposed to the Politburo to still organize a show trial over the deposed tsar, and Trotsky was interested in wide propaganda coverage of this process. However, the proposal did not meet with great enthusiasm, since all the Bolshevik leaders, including Trotsky himself, were too busy. current affairs. With the uprising of the Czechs, the physical survival of Bolshevism was in question, and it would be difficult to organize a trial of the tsar under such conditions.

In his diary, Trotsky claimed that the decision to execute was made by Lenin and Sverdlov:

The white press once very heatedly debated the question, by whose decision the royal family was put to death ... The liberals seemed to be inclined to the fact that the Ural executive committee, cut off from Moscow, acted independently. This is not true. The decision was made in Moscow. (…) 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 his family is with him. Everything? I asked, apparently with a hint of surprise. Everything, - Sverdlov answered, - but what? He was waiting for my reaction. I didn't answer. And who decided? I asked. We have decided here. Ilyich believed that it was impossible to leave us a living banner for them, especially in the present difficult conditions.

The historian Felshtinsky, commenting on Trotsky's memoirs, believes that the diary entry of 1935 is much more credible, since the entries in the diary were not intended for publicity and publication.

The senior investigator for particularly important cases of the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia, V.N. Solovyov, who led the investigation of the criminal case into the death of the royal family, drew attention to the fact that in the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, at which Sverdlov announced the execution of Nicholas II, the surname appears among those present Trotsky. This contradicts his recollections of a conversation “after arriving from the front” with Sverdlov about Lenin. Indeed, Trotsky, according to the protocol of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars No. 159, was present on July 18 at the announcement by Sverdlov about the execution. According to some sources, he, as Commissar of the Navy, was on the front near Kazan on July 18. At the same time, Trotsky himself writes in his work “My Life” that he left for Sviyazhsk only on August 7th. It should also be noted that Trotsky's said statement refers to 1935, when neither Lenin nor Sverdlov was alive. Even if Trotsky's name was entered into the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars by mistake, automatically, information about the execution of Nicholas II was published in the newspapers, and he could not know only about the execution of the entire royal family.

Historians are critical of Trotsky's testimony. So, the historian V.P. Buldakov wrote that Trotsky had a tendency to simplify the description of events for the sake of the beauty of the presentation, and the historian-archivist V.M. Khrustalev, pointing out that Trotsky, according to the protocols preserved in the archives, was among the participants in that very meeting Council of People's Commissars, suggested that Trotsky in his mentioned memoirs was only trying to distance himself from the decision taken in Moscow.

From the diary of V. P. Milyutin

V. P. Milyutin wrote:

“I returned late from the Council of People's Commissars. There were "current" cases. During the discussion of the draft on public health, Semashko's report, 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 has been received that Nikolai was shot in Yekaterinburg by order of the regional Soviet ... Nikolai wanted to run away. The Czechoslovaks advanced. The Presidium of the CEC decided to approve... “Now let’s move on to the article-by-article reading of the project,” suggested Ilyich ... " Quoted from: Sverdlov K. Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov

Memories of participants in the execution

The memoirs of the direct participants in the events of Ya. M. Yurovsky, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), G. P. Nikulin, P. Z. Ermakov, and also A. A. Strekotin (during the execution, apparently, provided external protection at home), V. N. Netrebin, P. M. Bykov (apparently, he did not personally participate in the execution), I. Rodzinsky (he did not personally participate in the execution, participated in the destruction of corpses), Kabanova, P. L. Voikov, G. I. Sukhorukov (participated only in the destruction of corpses), Chairman of the Ural Regional Council A. G. Beloborodov (personally did not participate in the execution).

One of the most detailed sources is the work of the Bolshevik figure in the Urals P. M. Bykov, who until March 1918 was the chairman of the Yekaterinburg Council, a member of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council. In 1921, Bykov published the article "The Last Days of the Last Tsar", and in 1926 - the book "The Last Days of the Romanovs", in 1930 the book was republished in Moscow and Leningrad.

Other detailed sources are the memoirs of M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), who personally participated in the execution, and, in relation to the execution, the memoirs of Ya. M. Yurovsky and his assistant G. P. Nikulin addressed to N. S. Khrushchev. More brief are the memoirs of I. Rodzinsky, an employee of the Cheka Kabanov, and others.

Many participants in the events had their own personal claims against the tsar: M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), judging by his memoirs, was in prison under the tsar, P. L. Voikov participated in the revolutionary terror in 1907, P. Z. Ermakov for participating in expropriations and the murder of a provocateur was exiled, Yurovsky's father was exiled on charges of theft. In his autobiography, Yurovsky claims that he himself was exiled to Yekaterinburg in 1912 with a ban on settling "in 64 points in Russia and Siberia." In addition, among the Bolshevik leaders of Yekaterinburg was Sergei Mrachkovsky, who was generally born in prison, where his mother was imprisoned for revolutionary activities. The phrase uttered by Mrachkovsky “by the grace of tsarism, I was born in prison” was subsequently erroneously attributed to Yurovsky by the investigator Sokolov. Mrachkovsky during the events was engaged in selecting the guards of the Ipatiev House from among the workers of the Sysert plant. The chairman of the Ural Regional Council, A. G. Beloborodov, was in prison before the revolution for issuing a proclamation.

The memories of the participants in the execution, while mostly coinciding with each other, differ in a number of details. Judging by them, Yurovsky personally finished off the heir with two (according to other sources - three) shots. Yurovsky's assistant G. P. Nikulin, P. Z. Ermakov, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) and others also take part in the execution. According to Medvedev's memoirs, Yurovsky, Ermakov and Medvedev personally shot at Nikolai. In addition, Ermakov and Medvedev finish off the Grand Duchesses Tatyana and Anastasia. Yurovsky, M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) (not to be confused with another participant in the events P.S. Medvedev) and Ermakov, Yurovsky and Medvedev (Kudrin) seem to be the most likely in Yekaterinburg itself during the events it was believed that the tsar was shot by Yermakov.

Yurovsky, in his memoirs, claimed that he personally killed the tsar, while Medvedev (Kudrin) attributes this to himself. Medvedev’s version was also partially confirmed by another participant in the events, an employee of the Cheka Kabanov. At the same time, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) in his memoirs claims that Nikolai “fell from my fifth shot”, and Yurovsky that he killed him with one shot.

Ermakov himself in his memoirs describes his role in the execution as follows (spelling preserved):

... I was told that it was your lot to shoot and bury ... I accepted the order and said that it would be carried out exactly, prepared the place where to lead and how to hide, taking into account all the circumstances of the importance of the political moment. When I reported to Beloborodov what I could do, he said to make sure that everyone was shot, we decided this, I didn’t enter into arguments further, I began to do it the way it was necessary ... ... When everything was in order, then I gave the commandant of the house in the office a decree of the regional executive committee to Yurovsky, then he doubted why everyone was, but I told him above all and there was nothing to talk about for a long time, time is short, it's time to start .... ... I took Nikalai himself, Alexandra, daughters, Alexei, because I had a Mauser, they can work faithfully, the astal ones were revolvers. After the descent, we waited a little on the lower floor, then the commandant waited for everyone to get up, everyone stood up, but Aleksey was sitting on a chair, then he began to read the verdict of the decree, which said, on the decision of the executive committee, to shoot. Then a phrase broke out from Nikolai: how they wouldn’t take us anywhere, it was impossible to wait any longer, I fired a shot at him point-blank, he fell immediately, but the rest also, at that time a cry arose between them, then they gave several shots to one another brasalis on the neck, and everyone fell.

As you can see, Ermakov contradicts all the other participants in the execution, completely attributing to himself all the leadership of the execution, and the liquidation of Nikolai personally. According to some sources, at the time of the execution, Yermakov was drunk, and armed with a total of three (according to other sources, even four) pistols. At the same time, investigator Sokolov believed that Yermakov did not actively participate in the execution, he supervised the destruction of the corpses. In general, Ermakov's memoirs stand apart from the memoirs of other participants in the events; the information reported by Ermakov is not confirmed by most other sources.

On the issue of coordinating the execution by Moscow, the participants in the events also disagree. According to the version set out in Yurovsky's note, the order "to exterminate the Romanovs" came from Perm. “Why from Perm? - asks the historian G. Z. Ioffe. - Was there no direct connection with Yekaterinburg then? Or was Yurovsky, writing this phrase, guided by some considerations known only to him? Back in 1919, investigator N. Sokolov established that shortly before the execution, due to the deterioration of the military situation in the Urals, Goloshchekin, a member of the Presidium of the Council, went to Moscow, where he tried to agree on this issue. Nevertheless, a participant in the execution, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), in his memoirs, claims that the decision was made by Yekaterinburg and was approved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee already retroactively, on July 18, as Beloborodov told him, and during Goloshchekin’s trip to Moscow, Lenin did not agree execution, demanding to take Nikolai to Moscow for trial. At the same time, Medvedev (Kudrin) notes that the Uraloblsovet was under powerful pressure from both embittered revolutionary workers who demanded the immediate execution of Nikolai, and fanatical Left Social Revolutionaries and anarchists who began to accuse the Bolsheviks of inconsistency. There is similar information in Yurovsky's memoirs.

According to the story of P. L. Voikov, known in the presentation of the former adviser to the Soviet embassy in France, G. Z. Besedovsky, the decision was made by Moscow, but only under the stubborn pressure of Yekaterinburg; according to Voikov, Moscow was going to “cede the Romanovs to Germany”, “... they especially hoped for the opportunity to bargain for a reduction in the indemnity of three hundred million rubles in gold, imposed on Russia under the Brest Treaty. This indemnity was one of the most unpleasant points of the Brest Treaty, and Moscow would very much like to change this point”; in addition, “some of the members of the Central Committee, in particular Lenin, also objected on principled grounds to the execution of children,” while Lenin cited the Great French Revolution as an example.

According to P. M. Bykov, when shooting the Romanovs, the local authorities acted “at their own peril and risk.”

G. P. Nikulin testified:

The question often arises: “Was it known ... to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov or other leading our central workers in advance about the execution of the royal family?” Well, it’s hard for me to say whether they knew beforehand, but I think that since ... Goloshchekin ... traveled to Moscow twice to negotiate the fate of the Romanovs, then, of course, it should be concluded that this was exactly what was discussed. ... it was supposed to organize a trial of the Romanovs, at first ... in such a broad, or something, order, like such a nationwide court, and then, when all kinds of counter-revolutionary elements were already grouping around Yekaterinburg, the question arose of organizing such a narrow, revolutionary court. But this was not done either. The trial as such did not take place, and, in essence, the execution of the Romanovs was carried out by decision of the Ural Executive Committee of the Ural Regional Council ...

Yurovsky's memories

Yurovsky's memoirs are known in three versions:

• a brief “Yurovsky note” dated 1920;
• a detailed version dated April-May 1922, signed by Yurovsky;
• the abridged edition of the memoirs, which appeared in 1934, created on the instructions of the Uralistpart, includes a transcript of Yurovsky's speech and a text prepared on its basis, which differs in some details from it.

The reliability of the first source is questioned by some researchers; investigator Solovyov considers it authentic. In the Note, Yurovsky writes about himself in the third person ( "commandant"), which is apparently explained by the insertions of the historian Pokrovsky M.N., recorded by him from the words of Yurovsky. There is also an expanded second edition of the "Notes", dated 1922.

The Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yu. I. Skuratov believed that “Yurovsky’s note” “is an official report on the execution of the royal family, prepared by Ya. M. Yurovsky for the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.”

Diaries of Nicholas and Alexandra

The diaries of the tsar and tsarina themselves have also reached our time, which, among other things, were kept right in the Ipatiev House. The last entry in the diary of Nicholas II is dated Saturday June 30 (July 13 - Nicholas kept a diary according to the old style) 1918 entry “Alexei took the first bath after Tobolsk; his knee is recovering, but he cannot straighten it completely. The weather is warm and pleasant. We have no news from outside.”. The diary of Alexandra Feodorovna reaches the last day - Tuesday, July 16, 1918 with the entry: “... Every morning the Komend[ant] comes to our rooms. Finally, after a week, eggs were again brought for Baby [the heir]. ... They suddenly sent for Lenka Sednev to go and see his uncle, and he hurriedly ran away, wondering if all this is true and whether we will see the boy again ... "

The tsar in his diary describes a number of everyday details: the arrival of the tsar’s children from Tobolsk, changes in the composition of the retinue (“ I decided to let my old man Chemodurov go for a rest and instead take the Troupe for a while”), the weather, the books read, the features of the regime, my impressions of the guards and the conditions of detention ( “It’s unbearable to be so shut up and not be able to go out into the garden when you want and spend a good evening in the open air! Prison mode!!”). The tsar inadvertently mentioned a correspondence with an anonymous “Russian officer” (“the other day we received two letters, one after the other, in which we were informed that we should prepare to be kidnapped by some loyal people!”).

From the diary, you can find out Nikolai's opinion about both commandants: he called Avdeev a "bastard" (entry dated April 30, Monday), who once was "a little tipsy." The king also expressed dissatisfaction with the plundering of things (entry dated May 28 / June 10):

However, the opinion about Yurovsky remained not the best: “We like this type less and less!”; about Avdeev: "It's a pity for Avdeev, but he is to blame for not keeping his people from stealing from the chests in the barn"; “According to rumors, some of the Avdeevites are already under arrest!”

The entry dated May 28 / June 10, according to the historian Melgunov, reflects the echoes of events that took place outside the Ipatiev House:

In the diary of Alexandra Feodorovna there is an entry regarding the change of commandants:

Destruction and burial of the remains

Death of the Romanovs (1918-1919)

• The murder of Mikhail Alexandrovich
• The execution of the royal family
• Alapaevsk martyrs
• Execution in the Peter and Paul Fortress

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 there are so many of them, I still don’t know, I heard only separate 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):

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 an 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 Voikov, the Commissar of Supply of the Urals, 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.

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:

Analysis of the investigator Solovyov

V. N. Solovyov, Senior Criminal Prosecutor of the Main Investigation Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, conducted a comparative analysis Soviet sources(memoirs of participants in the events) and materials of the Sokolov investigation.

Based on these materials, investigator Solovyov made the following conclusion:

A comparison of the materials of the participants in the burial and destruction of corpses and documents from the investigation file of Sokolov N.A. on the routes of movement and manipulations with corpses give grounds for the assertion that the same places are described, near mine # 7, at crossing # 184. Indeed , Yurovsky and others burned clothes and shoes at the site investigated by Magnitsky and Sokolov, sulfuric acid was used for burial, two corpses, but not all, were burned. A detailed comparison of these and other materials of the case gives grounds for asserting that there are no significant, mutually exclusive contradictions in the “Soviet materials” and the materials of N. A. Sokolov, there is only a different interpretation of the same events. Solovyov also pointed out that, according to the study, "... 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 indicated in the investigation file of N. A. Sokolov and the memoirs of the participants in the events."

Reaction to the shooting

The collection The Revolution is Defending (1989) says that the execution of Nicholas II complicated the situation in the Urals, and mentions the riots that broke out in a number of areas of the Perm, Ufa and Vyatka provinces. It is argued that under the influence of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, the petty bourgeoisie, a significant part of the middle peasantry and certain sections of the workers revolted. The rebels brutally cracked down on communists, civil servants and their families. So, in the Kizbangashevskaya volost of the Ufa province, 300 people died at the hands of the rebels. Some rebellions were quickly suppressed, but more often the rebels put up a long resistance.

Meanwhile, the historian G.Z. Ioffe in the monograph “The Revolution and the Fate of the Romanovs” (1992) writes that, according to reports from many contemporaries, including those from the anti-Bolshevik environment, the news of the execution of Nicholas II “generally went unnoticed, without manifestations protest." Ioffe quotes the memoirs of V. N. Kokovtsov: “... 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...”

A similar opinion is expressed by the historian V.P. Buldakov. In his opinion, at that time few people were interested in the fate of the Romanovs, and long before their death there were rumors that none of the members of the imperial family were already alive. According to Buldakov, the townspeople received the news of the assassination of the tsar "with stupid indifference", and the wealthy peasants - with amazement, but without any protest. Buldakov cites a fragment from the diaries of Z. Gippius as a typical example of a similar reaction of the non-monarchist intelligentsia: “It’s not a pity for the frail officer, of course, ... he has been with the dead for a long time, but the disgusting ugliness of all this is unbearable.”

Investigation

On July 25, 1918, eight days after the execution of the royal family, units of the White Army and detachments of the Czechoslovak Corps occupied Yekaterinburg. The military authorities launched a search for the disappeared royal family.

On July 30, an investigation into the circumstances of her death began. For the investigation, by the decision of the Yekaterinburg District Court, an investigator for the most important cases, A.P. Nametkin, was appointed. On August 12, 1918, the investigation was entrusted to a member of the Yekaterinburg District Court, I. A. Sergeev, who examined the Ipatiev house, including the basement room where the royal family was shot, collected and described the material evidence found in the "Special Purpose House" and at the mine. Since August 1918, A. F. Kirsta, appointed head of the criminal investigation department of Yekaterinburg, joined the investigation.

On January 17, 1919, to oversee the investigation into the murder of the royal family, the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral A. V. Kolchak, appointed the commander-in-chief Western Front Lieutenant General M.K. Dieterikhs. On January 26, Diterichs received the original materials of the investigation conducted by Nametkin and Sergeev. By order of February 6, 1919, the investigation was entrusted to the investigator for especially important cases of the Omsk District Court N. A. Sokolov (1882-1924). It was thanks to his painstaking work that the details of the execution and burial of the royal family became known for the first time. Sokolov continued his investigation even in exile, until his sudden death. Based on the materials of the investigation, he wrote the book "The Murder of the Royal Family", which was published in French in Paris during the author's lifetime, and after his death, in 1925, published in Russian.

An investigation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries

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. Forensic scientist Sergei Nikitin in 1994 performed a reconstruction of the appearance of the owners of the found skulls using the Gerasimov method.

The investigator for especially important cases of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation V.N. the conclusion that in the description of the execution they do not contradict each other, differing only in minor details.

Solovyov said that he did not find any documents that would directly prove the initiative of Lenin and Sverdlov. At the same time, when asked whether Lenin and Sverdlov were guilty of the execution of the royal family, he replied:

Meanwhile, the historian A. G. Latyshev notes that if the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, chaired by Sverdlov, approved (recognized as correct) the decision of the Ural Regional Council to execute Nicholas II, then the Council of People's Commissars headed by Lenin only "took note" of this decision.

Solovyov completely rejected the "ritual version", pointing out that most of the participants in the discussion of the method of murder were Russians, only one Jew (Yurovsky) took part in the murder itself, and the rest were Russians and Latvians. Also, the investigation refuted the version promoted by M.K. Diterhis about “chopping off heads” for ritual purposes. According to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination, the neck vertebrae of all the skeletons show no signs of post-mortem amputation of heads.

In October 2011, Solovyov handed over to the representatives of the Romanov dynasty a decision to close the investigation of the case. The official conclusion of the Investigative Committee of Russia, announced in October 2011, indicated that the investigation did not have documentary evidence of the involvement of Lenin or someone else from the top leadership of the Bolsheviks in the execution of the royal family. Modern Russian historians point to the inconsistency of the conclusions about the alleged non-involvement of the Bolshevik leaders in the murder on the basis of the absence of documents of direct action in modern archives: Lenin practiced the personal adoption and delivery of the most cardinal orders to the places secretly and in the highest degree conspiratorially. According to A. N. Bokhanov, neither Lenin nor his entourage gave and would never give written orders on the issue related to the murder of the royal family. In addition, A.N. Bokhanov noted that "very many events in history are not reflected in documents of direct action", which is not surprising. The historian-archivist V. M. Khrustalev, having analyzed the correspondence between various government departments of that period concerning representatives of the Romanov dynasty, which is available to historians, wrote that it is quite logical to assume that the Bolshevik government had “double record keeping” in the semblance of “double bookkeeping”. Director of the Office of the House of Romanov Alexander Zakatov on behalf of the Romanovs also commented on this decision in such a way that the leaders of the Bolsheviks could not give written orders, but verbal orders.

After analyzing the attitude of the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government to resolving the issue of the fate of the royal family, the investigation noted the extreme aggravation of the political situation in July 1918 in connection with a number of events, including the murder on July 6 by the left SR Ya. G. Blyumkin of the German ambassador V. Mirbach in order to lead to a break in the Brest Peace and an uprising of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Under these conditions, the execution of the royal family could have a negative impact on further relations between the RSFSR and Germany, since Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters were German princesses. The possibility of the extradition of one or more members of the royal family of Germany in order to mitigate the severity of the conflict that arose as a result of the assassination of the ambassador was not ruled out. According to the investigation, the leaders of the Urals had a different position on this issue, the Presidium of the Regional Council of which was ready to destroy the Romanovs back in April 1918 during their transfer from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg.

V. M. Khrustalev wrote that the fact that historians and researchers still do not have the opportunity to study archival materials relating to the death of representatives of the Romanov dynasty contained in the special stores of the FSB, both central and regional level. The historian suggested that someone's experienced hand purposefully "cleaned out" the archives of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the collegium of the Cheka, the Ural Regional Executive Committee and the Yekaterinburg Cheka for the summer and autumn of 1918. Looking through the scattered agendas of the meetings of the Cheka, available to historians, Khrustalev came to the conclusion that documents were seized that mentioned the names of representatives of the Romanov dynasty. The archivist wrote that these documents could not be destroyed - they were probably transferred for storage to the Central Party Archive or "special depositories". The funds of these archives at the time the historian wrote his book were not available to researchers.

The further fate of the persons involved in the execution

Members of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council:

• Beloborodov, Alexander Georgievich - in 1927 he was expelled from the CPSU (b) for participation in the Trotskyist opposition, in May 1930 he was reinstated, in 1936 he was again expelled. In August 1936, he was arrested, on February 8, 1938, by the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was sentenced to death, and the next day he was shot. In 1919, Beloborodov wrote: "... The basic rule in the reprisal against counter-revolutionaries is that the captured are not tried, but massacres are carried out with them." G. Z. Ioffe notes that after some time the Beloborodov rule regarding counter-revolutionaries began to be applied by some Bolsheviks against others; this Beloborodov “apparently could no longer understand. In the 1930s, Beloborodov was repressed and shot. The circle is closed."
• Goloshchekin, Philip Isaevich - in 1925-1933 - Secretary of the Kazakh Regional Committee of the CPSU (b); carried out violent measures aimed at changing the lifestyle of nomads and collectivization, which led to huge casualties. On October 15, 1939 he was arrested, on October 28, 1941 he was shot.
• Didkovsky, Boris Vladimirovich - worked at the Ural State University, the Ural Geological Trust. On August 3, 1937, he was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR as an active participant in the anti-Soviet terrorist organization of the right in the Urals. Shot. In 1956 he was rehabilitated. A mountain peak in the Urals is named after Didkovsky.
• Safarov, Georgy Ivanovich - in 1927, at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b), he was expelled from the party "as an active member of the Trotskyist opposition", exiled to the city of Achinsk. After the announcement of a break with the opposition, by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he was reinstated in the party. In the 30s he was again expelled from the party, was repeatedly arrested. In 1942 he was shot. Posthumously rehabilitated.
• Tolmachev, Nikolai Gurevich - in 1919, in a battle with the troops of General N. N. Yudenich near Luga, he fought, being surrounded; in order not to be captured, he shot himself. Buried in the Field of Mars.

Direct performers:

• Yurovsky, Yakov Mikhailovich - died in 1938 in the Kremlin hospital. Yurovsky's daughter Yurovskaya Rimma Yakovlevna was repressed on false charges, from 1938 to 1956 she was imprisoned. Rehabilitated. Yurovsky's son, Yurovsky Alexander Yakovlevich, was arrested in 1952.
• Nikulin, Grigory Petrovich (Yurovsky's assistant) - survived the purge, left memories (recording of the Radio Committee on May 12, 1964).
• Ermakov, Pyotr Zakharovich - retired in 1934, survived the purge.
• Medvedev (Kudrin), Mikhail Alexandrovich - survived the purge, left detailed memories of the events before his death (December 1963). He died on January 13, 1964, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
• Medvedev, Pavel Spiridonovich - February 11, 1919 was arrested by an agent of the White Guard Criminal Investigation S. I. Alekseev. He died in prison on March 12, 1919, according to some sources, from typhus, according to others - from torture.

• Voikov, Pyotr Lazarevich - was killed on June 7, 1927 in Warsaw by a white emigrant Boris Koverda. In honor of Voikov, the Voikovskaya metro station in Moscow and a number of streets in the cities of the USSR were named.

Perm murder:

• Myasnikov, Gavriil Ilyich - in the 1920s he joined the "workers' opposition", in 1923 he was repressed, in 1928 he fled the USSR. Shot in 1945; according to other sources, he died in prison in 1946.

Canonization and church veneration of the royal family

In 1981, the royal family was glorified (canonized) by the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and in 2000 - by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Alternative theories

There are alternative versions regarding the death of the royal family. These include versions about saving someone from the royal family and conspiracy theories. According to one of these theories, the murder of the royal family was ritual, carried out by "Jewish Masons", as allegedly evidenced by "kabbalistic signs" in the room where the execution took place. In some versions of this theory, it is said that after the execution, the head of Nicholas II was separated from the body and alcoholized. According to another, the execution was carried out at the direction of the German government after Nicholas refused to create a pro-German monarchy in Russia headed by Alexei (this theory is given in R. Wilton's book).

The fact that Nicholas II was killed, the Bolsheviks announced to everyone immediately after the execution, however, that his wife and children were also shot, Soviet authority was silent for the first time. The secrecy of the murder and burial sites led a number of individuals to subsequently claim to be one of the "miraculously saved" family members. One of the most famous imposters was Anna Anderson, who posed as a miraculously survived Anastasia. Several feature films have been made based on Anna Anderson's story.

Rumors about the "miraculous salvation" of all or part of the royal family, and even the king himself, began to spread almost immediately after the execution. Thus, the adventurer B. N. Solovyov, the former husband of Rasputin’s daughter Matryona, claimed that allegedly “the Sovereign escaped by flying to Tibet to the Dalai Lama”, and the witness Samoilov, referring to the guard of the Ipatiev House A. S. Varakusheva, claimed that allegedly the royal family was not shot, but "loaded into a wagon."

American journalists A. Summers and T. Mangold in the 1970s. studied a previously unknown part of the archives of the investigation of 1918-1919, found in the 1930s. in the USA, and published the results of their investigation in 1976. In their opinion, N. A. Sokolov’s conclusions about the death of the entire royal family were made under pressure from A. V. Kolchak, who, for some reason, was beneficial to declare all family members dead. They consider the investigations and conclusions of other investigators of the White Army (A.P. Nametkina, I.A. Sergeev and A.F. Kirsta) to be more objective. In their (Summers and Mangold) opinion, it is most likely that only Nicholas II and his heir were shot in Yekaterinburg, while Alexandra Fedorovna and her daughters were transported to Perm and their further fate is unknown. A. Summers and T. Mangold are inclined to believe that Anna Anderson was indeed Grand Duchess Anastasia.

Exhibitions

• Exhibition “The death of the family of Emperor Nicholas II. A century-long investigation." (May 25 - July 29, 2012, Exhibition Hall of the Federal Archives (Moscow); from July 10, 2013, Center for Traditional Folk Culture of the Middle Urals (Yekaterinburg)).

In art

The theme, unlike other revolutionary plots (for example, "The Capture of the Winter Palace" or "Lenin's Arrival in Petrograd") was in little demand in the Soviet fine arts of the twentieth century. However, there is an early Soviet painting by V. N. Pchelin “Transfer of the Romanov family to the Ural Council”, written in 1927.

Much more often it is found in the cinema, including in the films: "Nikolai and Alexandra" (1971), "The Tsar Killer" (1991), "Rasputin" (1996), "The Romanovs. Crowned family "(2000), the television series" White Horse "(1993). The film "Rasputin" begins with the scene of the execution of the royal family.

The play "House of Special Purpose" by Edvard Radzinsky is devoted to the same topic.