1918
Murder of the Romanovs
A revolution in February 1917 overthrew the house of Romanov and ended the tsarist autocracy in Russia. Tsar Nicholas II was a decent man but a stubborn and incompetent ruler; he and his German-born wife had grown increasingly unpopular and their deposition at the hands of democratic revolutionaries was well-received in the country. The provisional government imprisoned the royal couple, their chronically-ill son, and four daughters in relative comfort in the Urals, with the hope of sending them into exile. However, the Bolshevik coup dropped the family into the hands of people with little thought of mercy. For Lenin’s Communists, Nicholas was a class enemy whose presence abroad would only encourage opposition to world revolution.
On the night of July 16-17, the royal family, a doctor, and three servants were led to a basement and a death sentence was pronounced against them. Seven executioners then shot, bludgeoned, and bayoneted the victims and disposed of their mutilated bodies in crude fashion. A press release by the local soviet read:
In view of the enemy’s proximity to Yekaterinburg and the exposure by the Cheka [Bolshevik secret police] of a serious White Guard plot with the goal of abducting the former Tsar and his family… In light of the approach of counterrevolutionary bands toward the Red capital of the Urals and the possibility of the crowned executioner escaping trial by the people (a plot among the White Guards to try to abduct him and his family was exposed and the compromising documents will be published), the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, resolved to shoot the former Tsar, Nikolai Romanov, who is guilty of countless, bloody, violent acts against the Russian people.
In 1979, the bodies of Nicholas, Alexandra, their servants and four children were discovered but it was not until 2007 that the bodies of Alexei and Maria were identified. The royal family is now entombed together in Peter and Paul Cathedral, St Petersburg.
Many of the execution squad met their own grisly ends, either killed by angry peasants or shot by their own party in purges of the Stalin era. A cathedral has been erected over the site of the murders.
