Page 31 - All About History - Issue 33-15

Murder In The House Of Romanov

A few hours later, she was “It took 20 tripod,butafiringsquad.There
woken from her slumber. weresixHungariansandfive
Yurovsky, it transpired, was not minutes for Russians. As the men crowded
a harbinger of hope. He roused intotheroomandconfusionran
the family and their servants at the Bolsheviks across the faces of the family,
about midnight, reporting that to murder the Yurovsky stood in the front of
the anti-Bolshevik White Army Nicholas holding a small piece of
was approaching and that the royal family paper from which he read their
family might be in danger from death sentence.
heavy shelling. They were urged and toss their “Inviewofthefactthat
to dress as quickly as possible. mangled bodies your relatives are continuing
The women wrapped themselves theirattackonSovietRussia,
in clothes sewn full of precious into a truck” theUralExecutiveCommittee
stones, hoping, perhaps, that this has decided to execute you.”
night might yet end in liberation. Nicholas’sjawdropped.He
At 2.15am on 17 July, the seven couldn’t believe what he was
Romanovs along with their hearing. “What?” he said to
doctor, Eugene Botkin, and three Yurovsky. ”What?”
other servants – the valet, a maid and the cook – Yurovsky repeated the statement and pulled a
hurried into the cool night air. Yurovsky led them pistol from his pocket. He shot Nicholas at point-
from the main house across a courtyard to a small blank range. The tsar crumpled to the floor. The
basement room at the far corner of the house. firing squad then opened fire. Each man had been
According to one source, Nicholas was heard assigned a target but, in the constrained space, and
to say to his daughters reassuringly: “Well, we’re with plenty of vodka running through the shooters’
going to get out of this place.” Some believe he veins, a melee ensued.
was simply acting as a comforting father knowing The men shot poorly. Alexandra and her eldest
full well the fate that lay ahead. Others believe daughter Olga each tried to make the sign of the
he was speaking what he perceived as the truth. cross but they did not have time. The tsarina
After all, if the approaching White Army were to took a bullet in the left side of her skull and died
take the town, perhaps they could be returned to immediately. The doctor and two of the servants
more favourable circumstances. There were some also died swiftly.
monarchists among the White ranks. As the gun smoke cleared, groans from the
The room into which the Romanovs were blood-spattered floor testified to a bungled
ushered was a tight space, less than 13 square feet, execution. It was the tsar’s children who suffered
with iron bars covering the one window. There was most horribly. They had not died quickly. Some of
no furniture. A single bulb hanging overhead cast the executioners had been temporarily deafened
a weak light. “What, no chairs?” asked Alexandra. by the gunfire and their clothing streaked with
“May we not sit?” powder burns from where their comrades had shot
Two chairs were brought in and Alexandra and over their shoulders.
Alexei sat down. Yurovsky told the 11 captives that Alexei, at least three of the daughters and the
he needed a photograph of the group to send to maid all remained alive. Their clothes stuffed with
Moscow, where there were concerns that the family jewels had, apparently, acted like bulletproof vests.
might have escaped. He set them up in two rows, According to the scholar Robert Massie, “barely
Nicholas standing front and centre with his son visible through the smoke, Marie and Anastasia
seated next to him. Alexandra sat in her chair close pressed against the wall, squatting, covering their
to the wall and her daughters gathered around her. heads with their arms until bullets cut them down.”
The servants, meanwhile, lined up behind Nicholas Another scholar, Helen Rappaport, writing more
and Alexei. recently, contends that the sisters were finished off
Yakov Yurovsky, a close friend The family was then left in peace for 30 minutes with bayonets, Olga having been shot in the jaw,
of Lenin’s, was charged with the as they awaited the photographer. When Yurovsky and Tatiana in the back of the head as she tried
execution of the royal family
returned, however, he brought not a camera and to escape. Last of the women to die, she says, was

June 1907 January 1912 July 1914 November 1915 February 1917 March 1917 October 1917
As unrest abates, Social Democrats World War I breaks Nicholas takes Workers and Nicholas abdicates Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Prime Minister split into two out and Russia, personal command soldiers in the throne in favour leads the Bolshevik
Stolypin launches a camps, the entering the war in of the armed forces, Petrograd take to of his brother, coup, which topples
coup against the duma, relatively moderate support of Serbia, a task for which he the streets and the Michael. Aware it is the Provisional

limiting its power Menshiviks and suffers a string is ill suited. Infl ation duma establishes a poisoned chalice, Government
and reducing peasant the more radical of demoralising rises and food the Provisional Michael renounces and leads to the
representation. Bolsheviks. defeats. shortages ensue. Government. his claim the next day. outbreak of civil war.
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