Back Moord op die Romanofs Afrikaans إعدام عائلة رومانوف Arabic Asesinatu de la familia Romanov AST Romanovlar ailəsinin qətli Azerbaijani Расстрэл імператарскай сям’і Раманавых Byelorussian Расстрэл сям’і Раманавых BE-X-OLD Разстрел на семейство Романови Bulgarian রাশিয়ার জার পরিবারের হত্যাকাণ্ড Bengali/Bangla Zavraždění carské rodiny Czech Ermordung der Zarenfamilie German

Murder of the Romanov family

Murder of the Romanov family
Part of the Red Terror during the Russian Civil War
The basement where the Romanov family was killed. The wall had been torn apart in search of bullets and other evidence by investigators in 1919. The double doors leading to a storeroom were locked during the murders.[1]
LocationIpatiev House, Yekaterinburg, Russian SFSR
Coordinates56°50′39″N 60°36′35″E / 56.84417°N 60.60972°E / 56.84417; 60.60972
Date16–17 July 1918, 106 years ago
TargetRomanov family
Attack type
Regicide, mass murder, extrajudicial killing, execution
Deaths11
PerpetratorsBolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on instructions from the Ural Regional Soviet[a]

The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were shot and bayoneted to death[2][3] by Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Also murdered that night were members of the imperial entourage who had accompanied them: court physician Eugene Botkin; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and head cook Ivan Kharitonov.[4] The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped, mutilated with grenades to prevent identification, and buried.[3][5]

Following the February Revolution in 1917, the Romanovs and their servants had been imprisoned in the Alexander Palace before being moved to Tobolsk, Siberia, in the aftermath of the October Revolution. They were next moved to a house in Yekaterinburg, near the Ural Mountains, before their execution in July 1918. The Bolsheviks initially announced only Nicholas's death;[6][7] for the next eight years,[8] the Soviet leadership maintained a systematic web of disinformation relating to the fate of the family,[9] from claiming in September 1919 that they were murdered by left-wing revolutionaries,[10] to denying outright in April 1922 that they were dead.[9] The Soviets finally acknowledged the murders in 1926 following the publication in France of a 1919 investigation by a White émigré but said that the bodies were destroyed and that Lenin's Cabinet was not responsible.[11] The Soviet cover-up of the murders fuelled rumors of survivors.[12] Various Romanov impostors claimed to be members of the Romanov family, which drew media attention away from activities of Soviet Russia.[9]

In 1979, amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin discovered the burial site.[13] The Soviet Union did not acknowledge the existence of these remains publicly until 1989 during the glasnost period.[14] The identities of the remains were confirmed by forensic and DNA analysis and investigation in 1994, with the assistance of British experts. In 1998, eighty years after the executions, the remains of the Romanovs were reinterred in a state funeral in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.[15] The funeral was not attended by key members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who disputed the authenticity of the remains.[16] In 2007, a second, smaller grave which contained the remains of two of the Romanov children, missing from the larger grave, was discovered by amateur archaeologists;[17][13] they were confirmed to be the remains of Alexei and a sister—either Anastasia or Maria—by DNA analysis. In 2008, after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian prosecutor general's office rehabilitated the Romanov family as "victims of political repressions".[18] A criminal case was opened by the Russian government in 1993, but nobody was prosecuted on the basis that the perpetrators were dead.[19]

According to the official state version of the Soviet Union, ex-tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, were executed by firing squad by order of the Ural Regional Soviet.[20][21] Historians have debated whether the execution was sanctioned by Moscow leadership.[22] Some Western historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the ongoing Russian Civil War.[23][24] This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky's diary.[25] However, other historians have cited documented orders from the All-Russian Central Committee of the Soviets preferring a public trial for Nicholas II with Trotsky as chief prosecutor and his family spared.[26][27]

A 2011 investigation concluded that, despite the opening of state archives in the post-Soviet years, no written document has been found which proves Lenin or Sverdlov ordered the executions.[28] However, they endorsed the murders after they occurred.[29]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference rappaport176 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Sokolov, Nikolai A. (1925). Ubiistvo Tsarskoi Sem'i (Убийство царской семьи). Berlin: Slowo-Verlag. p. 191.
  3. ^ a b William H. Honan (12 August 1992), "A Playwright Applies His Craft To Czar Nicholas II's Last Days", The New York Times, retrieved 25 February 2017
  4. ^ Massie, Robert K. (2012). The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. Random House. pp. 3–24. ISBN 978-0307873866.
  5. ^ Rappaport, p. 198.
  6. ^ "From the archive, 22 July 1918: Ex-tsar Nicholas II executed", The Guardian, 22 July 2015, retrieved 29 September 2016
  7. ^ Joshua Hammer (November 2010), Resurrecting the Czar, Smithsonian, retrieved 29 September 2016
  8. ^ Massie, p. 16.
  9. ^ a b c Rappaport, p. 218.
  10. ^ Photographic scans of Sokolov's investigation, published in 1924, 18 December 2015, retrieved 9 March 2017
  11. ^ Massie, p. 19.
  12. ^ Erin Blakemore (18 October 2018), Why the Romanov Family's Fate Was a Secret Until the Fall of the Soviet Union, History, retrieved 20 October 2018
  13. ^ a b Michael D. Coble (26 September 2011), "The identification of the Romanovs: Can we (finally) put the controversies to rest?", Investigative Genetics, 2 (1): 20, doi:10.1186/2041-2223-2-20, PMC 3205009, PMID 21943354, S2CID 11339084
  14. ^ Rappaport, p. 220.
  15. ^ The mystery of the Romanovs' untimely demise, Russia Beyond the Headlines, p. 4, archived from the original on 16 January 2017, retrieved 15 January 2017
  16. ^ "Romanovs laid to rest". BBC News. 17 July 1998.
  17. ^ Clifford J. Levy (25 November 2007), "Sleuths say they've found the last Romanovs", The New York Times, retrieved 30 September 2016
  18. ^ Rappaport, Four Sisters (2014), p. 381.
  19. ^ Alec Luhn (23 September 2015), "Russia reopens criminal case on 1918 Romanov royal family murders", The Guardian, retrieved 30 September 2016
  20. ^ «17/VII 1918 в Екатеринбурге (ныне Свердловск), в связи с угрозой занятия города белыми, по постановлению Уральского областного совета бывший царь Николай Романов вместе с членами его семьи и приближенными был расстрелян». – Большая советская энциклопедия / гл. ред. О. Ю. Шмидт. – Москва : Советская энциклопедия, 1926–. Т. 49: Робер – Ручная граната. – 1941. / статья: «Романовы» / кол. 134
  21. ^ «3 (16)/VII 1918 при приближении к Екатеринбургу чехословацких контрреволюционных войск Николай II со всей семьей был расстрелян». – Большая советская энциклопедия / гл. ред. О. Ю. Шмидт. – Москва : Советская энциклопедия, 1926–. Т. 42: Нидерланды – Оклагома. – 1939. / статья: «Николай II» / кол. 137
  22. ^ Daly, Jonathan; Trofimov, Leonid (9 February 2023). Seven Myths of the Russian Revolution. Hackett Publishing. p. 79. ISBN 978-1-64792-106-4.
  23. ^ Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1-4000-4005-1 p. 65.
  24. ^ Figes, Orlando (1997). A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924. Penguin Books. p. 638. ISBN 0-19-822862-7.
  25. ^ King, G. (1999). The Last Empress, Replica Books, p. 358. ISBN 0735101043.
  26. ^ Mayer, Arno J. (16 May 2013). The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton University Press. p. 276. ISBN 978-1-4008-2343-7.
  27. ^ Stone, Bailey (2020). Rethinking Revolutionary Change in Europe: A Neostructuralist Approach. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 106. ISBN 978-1-5381-3138-1.
  28. ^ Rappaport, p. 142.
  29. ^ The Daily Telegraph (17 January 2011). "No proof Lenin ordered last Tsar's murder". Archived from the original on 12 January 2022.


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