In this case, we will talk about those gentlemen, thanks to whom, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, there was atrocity in Yekaterinburg The Romanov royal family was killed. These executioners have one name - regicides. Some of them made the decision, while others carried it out. As a result of this, Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna and their children died: Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Maria, Olga, Tatiana and Tsarevich Alexei. The service personnel were also shot along with them. This is the family's personal cook Ivan Mikhailovich Kharitonov, chamberlain Alexey Yegorovich Trupp, room girl Anna Demidova and family doctor Evgeny Sergeevich Botkin.
Criminals
The terrible crime was preceded by a meeting of the Presidium of the Urals Council, held on July 12, 1918. It was there that the decision was made to execute the royal family. A detailed plan was also developed for both the crime itself and the destruction of corpses, that is, concealing traces of the destruction of innocent people.
The meeting was headed by the chairman of the Urals Council, member of the presidium of the regional committee of the RCP (b) Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov (1891-1938). Together with him, the decision was made by: the military commissar of Yekaterinburg Filipp Isaevich Goloshchekin (1876-1941), the chairman of the regional Cheka Fyodor Nikolaevich Lukoyanov (1894-1947), Chief Editor newspaper "Ekaterinburg Worker" Georgy Ivanovich Safarov (1891-1942), supply commissar of the Ural Council Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov (1888-1927), commandant of the "House of Special Purpose" Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky (1878-1938).
The Bolsheviks called the house of engineer Ipatiev “a house of special purpose.” It was here that the Romanov royal family was kept in May-July 1918 after it was transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg.
But you have to be very a naive person to think that middle-level managers took responsibility and independently made the most important political decision to execute the royal family. They found it possible only to coordinate it with the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (1885-1919). This is exactly how the Bolsheviks presented everything in their time.
Here and there, in Lenin’s party, discipline was ironclad. Decisions came only from the very top, and lower-level employees carried them out unquestioningly. Therefore, we can say with full responsibility that the instructions were given directly by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who was sitting in the silence of the Kremlin office. Naturally, he discussed this issue with Sverdlov and the main Ural Bolshevik Evgeniy Alekseevich Preobrazhensky (1886-1937).
The latter, of course, was aware of all the decisions, although he was absent from Yekaterinburg on the bloody date of the execution. At this time, he took part in the work of the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Moscow, and then left for Kursk and returned to the Urals only in the last days of July 1918.
But, in any case, Ulyanov and Preobrazhensky cannot be officially blamed for the death of the Romanov family. Sverdlov bears indirect responsibility. After all, he imposed the “agreed” resolution. Such a soft-hearted leader. I resignedly took note of the decision of the grassroots organization and readily scribbled the usual formal reply on a piece of paper. Only a 5-year-old child could believe this.
The royal family in the basement of the Ipatiev house before execution
Now let's talk about the performers. About those villains who committed terrible sacrilege by raising their hands against God’s anointed and his family. To date, the exact list of killers is unknown. No one can name the number of criminals. There is an opinion that Latvian riflemen took part in the execution, since the Bolsheviks believed that Russian soldiers would not shoot at the Tsar and his family. Other researchers insist on the Hungarians who guarded the arrested Romanovs.
However, there are names that appear on all the lists of a wide variety of researchers. This is the commandant of the “House of Special Purpose” Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky, who led the execution. His deputy Grigory Petrovich Nikulin (1895-1965). The commander of the royal family's security Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov (1884-1952) and Cheka employee Mikhail Aleksandrovich Medvedev (Kudrin) (1891-1964).
These four people were directly involved in the execution of representatives of the House of Romanov. They carried out the decision of the Ural Council. At the same time, they showed amazing cruelty, since they not only shot at absolutely defenseless people, but also finished them off with bayonets, and then doused them with acid so that the bodies could not be recognized.
Each one will be rewarded according to his deeds
Organizers
There is an opinion that God sees everything and punishes the villains for what they have done. Regicides are among the most brutal part of the criminal elements. Their goal is to seize power. They walk towards her through the corpses, not at all embarrassed by this. At the same time, people are dying who are not at all to blame for the fact that they received their crowned title by inheritance. As for Nicholas II, this man was no longer emperor at the time of his death, since he voluntarily renounced the crown.
Moreover, there is no way to justify the death of his family and staff. What motivated the villains? Of course, rabid cynicism, devil-may-care attitude To human lives, lack of spirituality and rejection of Christian norms and rules. The most terrible thing is that, having committed a terrible crime, these gentlemen were proud of what they had done for the rest of their lives. They willingly told journalists, schoolchildren and simply idle listeners about everything.
But let's return to God and trace life path those who doomed innocent people to a terrible death for the sake of an insatiable desire to dominate others.
Ulyanov and Sverdlov
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. We all know him as the leader of the world proletariat. However, this people's leader was splashed to the top of his head with human blood. After the execution of the Romanovs, he lived only a little over 5 years. He died of syphilis, losing his mind. This is the most terrible punishment of heavenly powers.
Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. He left this world at the age of 33, 9 months after the crime committed in Yekaterinburg. In the city of Orel, he was severely beaten by workers. The very ones for whose rights he supposedly stood up. With multiple fractures and injuries, he was taken to Moscow, where he died 8 days later.
These are the two main criminals directly responsible for the death of the Romanov family. The regicides were punished and died not in old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren, but in the prime of life. As for the other organizers of the crime, here the heavenly forces delayed punishment, but God's judgment it was accomplished anyway, giving everyone what they deserved.
Goloshchekin and Beloborodov (right)
Philip Isaevich Goloshchekin- chief security officer of Yekaterinburg and adjacent territories. It was he who went to Moscow at the end of June, where he received verbal instructions from Sverdlov regarding the execution of crowned persons. After this, he returned to the Urals, where the Presidium of the Urals Council was hastily assembled, and a decision was made to secretly execute the Romanovs.
In mid-October 1939, Philip Isaevich was arrested. He was accused of anti-state activities and an unhealthy attraction to little boys. This perverted gentleman was shot at the end of October 1941. Goloshchekin outlived the Romanovs by 23 years, but retribution still overtook him.
Chairman of the Urals Council Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov- in modern times, this is the chairman of the regional Duma. It was he who headed the meeting at which the decision was made to execute the royal family. His signature was next to the word “affirm.” If we approach this issue officially, then it is he who bears the main responsibility for the murder of innocent people.
Beloborodov had been a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1907, joining it as a minor boy after the 1905 revolution. In all the positions that his senior comrades entrusted to him, he showed himself to be an exemplary and efficient worker. The best proof of this is July 1918.
After the execution of the crowned persons, Alexander Georgievich flew very high. In March 1919, his candidacy was considered for the post of president of the young Soviet republic. But preference was given to Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875-1946), since he knew peasant life well, and our “hero” was born into a working-class family.
But the former chairman of the Urals Council was not offended. He was appointed head of the political department of the Red Army. In 1921, he became the deputy of Felix Dzherzhinsky, who headed the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. In 1923 he replaced him in this high post. True, a further brilliant career did not develop.
In December 1927, Beloborodov was removed from his post and exiled to Arkhangelsk. Since 1930 he worked as a middle manager. In August 1936 he was arrested by NKVD workers. In February 1938, by decision of the military board, Alexander Georgievich was shot. At the time of his death he was 46 years old. After the death of the Romanovs, the main culprit did not live even 20 years. In 1938, his wife Franziska Viktorovna Yablonskaya was also shot.
Safarov and Voikov (right)
Georgy Ivanovich Safarov- editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Ekaterinburg Worker". This Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience was an ardent supporter of the execution of the Romanov family, although she did nothing wrong to him. He lived well until 1917 in France and Switzerland. He came to Russia together with Ulyanov and Zinoviev in a “sealed carriage.”
After the crime committed, he worked in Turkestan, and then in the executive committee of the Comintern. Then he became editor-in-chief of Leningradskaya Pravda. In 1927, he was expelled from the party and sentenced to 4 years of exile in the city of Achinsk ( Krasnoyarsk region). In 1928, the party card was returned and again sent to work in the Comintern. But after the murder of Sergei Kirov at the end of 1934, Safarov finally lost confidence.
He was again exiled to Achinsk, and in December 1936 he was sentenced to 5 years in the camps. Since January 1937, Georgy Ivanovich served his sentence in Vorkuta. He performed the duties of a water carrier there. He walked around in a prisoner's pea coat, belted with a rope. His family abandoned him after his conviction. For the former Bolshevik-Leninist, this was a severe moral blow.
After the end of his prison term, Safarov was not released. The time was difficult, wartime, and someone apparently decided that former comrade Ulyanov has nothing to do in the rear Soviet troops. He was shot by decision of a special commission on July 27, 1942. This “hero” outlived the Romanovs by 24 years and 10 days. He died at 51, having lost both his freedom and his family at the end of his life.
Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov- main supplier of the Urals. He was closely involved in food issues. How could he get food in 1919? Naturally, he took them away from the peasants and merchants who did not leave Yekaterinburg. With his tireless activities he brought the region to complete impoverishment. It was good that the troops of the White Army arrived, otherwise people would have started to die of hunger.
This gentleman also came to Russia in a “sealed carriage,” but not with Ulyanov, but with Anatoly Lunacharsky (the first People's Commissar of Education). Voikov was at first a Menshevik, but quickly figured out which way the wind was blowing. At the end of 1917, he broke with his shameful past and joined the RCP(b).
Pyotr Lazarevich not only raised his hand, voting for the death of the Romanovs, but also took an active part in hiding the traces of the crime. It was he who came up with the idea of dousing the bodies with sulfuric acid. Since he was in charge of all the city’s warehouses, he personally signed the invoice for receiving this very acid. By his order, transport was also allocated for transporting bodies, shovels, picks, and crowbars. The business owner is in charge of what you want.
Pyotr Lazarevich liked activities related to material values. Since 1919, he was involved in consumer cooperation, while serving as deputy chairman of the Central Union. Part-time, he organized the sale abroad of treasures of the House of Romanov and museum valuables of the Diamond Fund, the Armory Chamber, and private collections requisitioned from exploiters.
Priceless works of art and jewelry went to the black market, since at that time no one officially dealt with the young Soviet state. Hence the ridiculous prices that were given for items that had unique historical value.
In October 1924, Voikov left as plenipotentiary envoy to Poland. This was already big politics, and Pyotr Lazarevich began to settle into a new field with enthusiasm. But the poor guy was out of luck. On June 7, 1927, he was shot by Boris Kaverda (1907-1987). The Bolshevik terrorist fell at the hands of another terrorist belonging to the white emigrant movement. Retribution came almost 9 years after the death of the Romanovs. At the time of his death, our next “hero” was 38 years old.
Fedor Nikolaevich Lukoyanov- chief security officer of the Urals. He voted for the execution of the royal family, therefore he is one of the organizers of the crime. But in subsequent years this “hero” did not show himself in any way. The thing is that from 1919 he began to suffer from attacks of schizophrenia. Therefore, Fyodor Nikolaevich devoted his entire life to journalism. He worked for various newspapers, and died in 1947 at the age of 53, 29 years after the murder of the Romanov family.
Performers
As for the direct perpetrators of the bloody crime, God’s court treated them much more leniently than the organizers. They were forced people and were just following orders. Therefore, they have less guilt. At least that’s what you might think if you trace the fateful path of each criminal.
The main perpetrator of the terrible murder of defenseless women and men, as well as a sick boy. He boasted that he personally shot Nicholas II. However, his subordinates also applied for this role.
Yakov Yurovsky
After the crime was committed, he was taken to Moscow and sent to work for the Cheka. Then, after the liberation of Yekaterinburg from the white troops, Yurovsky returned to the city. Received the post of chief security officer of the Urals.
In 1921 he was transferred to Gokhran and began to live in Moscow. Was engaged in accounting of material assets. After that, he worked a little at the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.
In 1923 there was a sharp decline. Yakov Mikhailovich was appointed director of the Krasny Bogatyr plant. That is, our hero began to manage the production of rubber shoes: boots, galoshes, boots. Quite a strange profile after security and financial activities.
In 1928, Yurovsky was transferred to director of the Polytechnic Museum. This is a long building near the Bolshoi Theater. In 1938, the main perpetrator of the murder died of an ulcer at the age of 60. He outlived his victims by 20 years and 16 days.
But apparently regicides bring a curse on their offspring. This “hero” had three children. The eldest daughter Rimma Yakovlevna (1898-1980) and two younger sons.
The daughter joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and headed the youth organization (Komsomol) of Yekaterinburg. Since 1926 at party work. She made a good career in this field in the city of Voronezh in 1934-1937. Then she was transferred to Rostov-on-Don, where she was arrested in 1938. She stayed in the camps until 1946.
His son Alexander Yakovlevich (1904-1986) was also in prison. He was arrested in 1952, but, however, was soon released. But trouble happened to my grandchildren. All the boys died tragically. Two fell from the roof of the house, two were burned during the fire. The girls died in infancy. Yurovsky's niece Maria suffered the most. She had 11 children. Before adolescence only 1 boy survived. His mother abandoned him. The child was adopted by strangers.
Concerning Nikulina, Ermakova And Medvedev (Kudrina), then these gentlemen lived to old age. They worked, were honorably retired, and then buried with dignity. But regicides always get what they deserve. These three have escaped their well-deserved punishment on earth, but there is still judgment in heaven.
Grave of Grigory Petrovich Nikulin
After death, each soul rushes to heaven, hoping that the angels will let it into the Kingdom of Heaven. So the souls of the murderers rushed to the Light. But then a dark personality appeared in front of each of them. She politely took the sinner by the elbow and nodded unequivocally in the direction opposite to Paradise.
There, in the heavenly haze, a black mouth could be seen in the Underworld. And next to him stood disgusting grinning faces, nothing on heavenly angels not similar. These are devils, and they have only one job - to put a sinner on a hot frying pan and fry him forever over low heat.
In conclusion, it should be noted that violence always begets violence. The one who commits a crime himself becomes a victim of criminals. A clear proof of this is the fate of the regicides, about whom we tried to tell in as much detail as possible in our sad story.
Egor Laskutnikov
Exactly 100 years ago, on July 17, 1918, security officers shot royal family In Ekaterinburg. The remains were found more than 50 years later. There are many rumors and myths surrounding the execution. At the request of colleagues from Meduza, journalist and associate professor at RANEPA Ksenia Luchenko, the author of many publications on this topic, answered key questions about the murder and burial of the Romanovs
How many people were shot?
The royal family and their entourage were shot in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 17, 1918. In total, 11 people were killed - Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, their four daughters - Anastasia, Olga, Maria and Tatiana, son Alexei, the family doctor Yevgeny Botkin, cook Ivan Kharitonov and two servants - valet Aloysius Troupe and maid Anna Demidova.
The execution order has not yet been found. Historians have found a telegram from Yekaterinburg, in which it is written that the tsar was shot because the enemy was approaching the city and the discovery of a White Guard conspiracy. The decision to execute was made by the local government authority Uralsovet. However, historians believe that the order was given by the party leadership, and not the Urals Council. The commandant of the Ipatiev House, Yakov Yurovsky, was appointed the main person in charge of the execution.
Is it true that some members of the royal family did not die immediately?
Yes, according to the testimony of witnesses to the execution, Tsarevich Alexei survived the machine gun fire. He was shot by Yakov Yurovsky with a revolver. Security guard Pavel Medvedev spoke about this. He wrote that Yurovsky sent him outside to check if shots were heard. When he returned, the whole room was covered in blood, and Tsarevich Alexei was still moaning.
Photo: Grand Duchess Olga and Tsarevich Alexei on the ship "Rus" on the way from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. May 1918, last known photograph Yurovsky himself wrote that it was not only Alexei who had to be “finished”, but also his three sisters, the “maid of honor” (maid Demidova) and Doctor Botkin. There is also evidence from another eyewitness, Alexander Strekotin.
“The arrested were all already lying on the floor, bleeding, and the heir was still sitting on the chair. For some reason he did not fall from his chair for a long time and remained alive.”
They say that bullets bounced off the diamonds on the princesses' belts. This is true?
Yurovsky wrote in his note that the bullets ricocheted off something and jumped around the room like hailstones. Immediately after the execution, the security officers tried to appropriate the property of the royal family, but Yurovsky threatened them with death so that they would return the stolen property. Jewels were also found in Ganina Yama, where Yurovsky’s team burned the personal belongings of the murdered (the inventory includes diamonds, platinum earrings, thirteen large pearls, and so on).
Is it true that their animals were killed along with the royal family?
Photo: Grand Duchesses Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana in Tsarskoe Selo, where they were detained. With them are Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Jemmy and French bulldog Ortino. Spring 1917 The royal children had three dogs. After the night execution, only one survived - Tsarevich Alexei's spaniel named Joy. He was taken to England, where he died of old age in the palace of King George, cousin of Nicholas II. A year after the execution, the body of a dog was found at the bottom of a mine in Ganina Yama, which was well preserved in the cold. Her right leg was broken and her head was pierced. Teacher in English royal children Charles Gibbs, who helped Nikolai Sokolov in the investigation, identified her as Jemmy, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel of Grand Duchess Anastasia. The third dog, Tatiana's French bulldog, was also found dead.
How were the remains of the royal family found?
After the execution, Yekaterinburg was occupied by the army of Alexander Kolchak. He ordered to begin an investigation into the murder and find the remains of the royal family. Investigator Nikolai Sokolov studied the area, found fragments of burnt clothing of members of the royal family and even described a “bridge of sleepers”, under which a burial was found several decades later, but came to the conclusion that the remains were completely destroyed in Ganina Yama.
The remains of the royal family were found only in the late 1970s. Film writer Geliy Ryabov was obsessed with the idea of finding the remains, and Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “Emperor” helped him in this. Thanks to the poet’s lines, Ryabov got an idea of the Tsar’s burial place, which the Bolsheviks showed to Mayakovsky. Ryabov often wrote about his exploits Soviet police, therefore had access to classified documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Photo: Photo No. 70. An open mine at the time of its development. Ekaterinburg, spring 1919 In 1976, Ryabov came to Sverdlovsk, where he met local historian and geologist Alexander Avdonin. It is clear that even the scriptwriters favored by the ministers in those years were not allowed to openly search for the remains of the royal family. Therefore, Ryabov, Avdonin and their assistants secretly searched for the burial place for several years.
The son of Yakov Yurovsky gave Ryabov a “note” from his father, where he described not only the murder of the royal family, but also the subsequent scrambles of the security officers in attempts to hide the bodies. The description of the final burial site under a flooring of sleepers near a truck stuck on the road coincided with Mayakovsky’s “instructions” about the road. It was the old Koptyakovskaya road, and the place itself was called Porosenkov Log. Ryabov and Avdonin explored the space with probes, which they delineated by comparing maps and various documents.
In the summer of 1979, they found a burial and opened it for the first time, taking out three skulls. They realized that it would be impossible to conduct any examinations in Moscow, and keeping the skulls in their possession was dangerous, so the researchers put them in a box and returned them to the grave a year later. They kept the secret until 1989. And in 1991, the remains of nine people were officially found. Two more badly burnt bodies (by that time it was already clear that these were the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria) were found in 2007 a little further away.
Is it true that the murder of the royal family was ritual?
There is a typical anti-Semitic myth that Jews allegedly kill people for ritual purposes. And the execution of the royal family also has its own “ritual” version.
Finding themselves in exile in the 1920s, three participants in the first investigation into the murder of the royal family - investigator Nikolai Sokolov, journalist Robert Wilton and General Mikhail Diterichs - wrote books about it.
Sokolov cites an inscription he saw on the wall in the basement of the Ipatiev house where the murder took place: “Belsazar ward in selbiger Nacht Von seinen Knechten umgebracht.” This is a quote from Heinrich Heine and translates as “On this very night Belshazzar was killed by his slaves.” He also mentions that he saw there a certain “designation of four signs.” Wilton in his book concludes from this that the signs were “kabbalistic”, adds that among the members of the firing squad there were Jews (of those directly involved in the execution, only one Jew was Yakov Yurovsky, and he was baptized into Lutheranism) and comes to the version about the ritual murder of the royal family. Dieterichs also adheres to the anti-Semitic version.
Wilton also writes that during the investigation, Dieterichs assumed that the heads of the dead were severed and taken to Moscow as trophies. Most likely, this assumption was born in attempts to prove that the bodies were burned in Ganina Yama: teeth that should have remained after the burning were not found in the fire pit, therefore, there were no heads in it.
The version of ritual murder circulated in emigrant monarchist circles. Russian foreign Orthodox Church canonized the royal family in 1981 - almost 20 years earlier than the Russian Orthodox Church, so many of the myths that the cult of the martyr king managed to acquire in Europe were exported to Russia.
In 1998, the Patriarchate asked the investigation ten questions, which were fully answered by the senior prosecutor-criminologist of the Main Investigation Department who led the investigation. General Prosecutor's Office Russian Federation Vladimir Solovyov. Question No. 9 was about the ritual nature of the murder, question No. 10 was about the cutting off of heads. Soloviev replied that in Russian legal practice there are no criteria for “ritual murder,” but “the circumstances of the death of the family indicate that the actions of those involved in the direct execution of the sentence (choice of the place of execution, team, murder weapon, burial place, manipulation of corpses) , were determined by random circumstances. People of various nationalities (Russians, Jews, Magyars, Latvians and others) took part in these actions. The so-called “Kabbalistic writings have no analogues in the world, and their writing is interpreted arbitrarily, with essential details being discarded.” All the skulls of those killed were intact and relatively intact; additional anthropological studies confirmed the presence of all cervical vertebrae and their correspondence to each of the skulls and bones of the skeleton.
In 1894, succeeding his father Alexandra III, Nicholas II ascended the Russian throne. He was destined to become last emperor not only in the great Romanov dynasty, but also in the history of Russia. In 1917, at the proposal of the Provisional Government, Nicholas II abdicated the throne. He was exiled to Yekaterinburg, where in 1918 he and his family were shot.
mystery of the death of the royal Romanov family
The Bolsheviks feared that enemy troops might enter Yekaterinburg any day now: the Red Army clearly did not have enough strength to resist. In this regard, it was decided to shoot the Romanovs without waiting for their trial. On July 16, the people appointed to carry out the sentence came to Ipatiev’s house, where the royal family was under the strictest supervision. Closer to midnight, everyone was transferred to the room intended for the execution of the sentence, which was located on the ground floor. There, after the announcement of the resolution of the Ural Regional Council, Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, their children: Olga (22 years old), Tatyana (20 years old), Maria (18 years old), Anastasia (16 years old), Alexey (14 years old), and also doctor Botkin, cook Kharitonov, another cook (his name is unknown), footman Trupp and room girl Anna Demidova were shot.
That same night the corpses were carried in blankets to the courtyard of the house and laid in freight car, who drove out of the city onto the road leading to the village of Koptyaki. About eight versts from Yekaterinburg, the car turned left onto a forest path and reached abandoned mines in an area called Ganina Yama. The corpses were thrown into one of the mines, and the next day they were removed and destroyed...
The circumstances of the execution of Nicholas II and his family in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 16-17, 1918, as well as Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich in Perm on June 10 and a group of other members of the Romanov family in Alapaevsk on July 18 of the same year were investigated back in 1919-1921 N. A. Sokolov. He accepted the investigative case from the investigative group of General M.K. Diterichs, led it until the retreat of Kolchak’s troops from the Urals and subsequently published a complete selection of case materials in the book “The Murder of the Royal Family” (Berlin, 1925). The same factual material was covered from different angles: interpretations abroad and in the USSR differed sharply. The Bolsheviks did everything possible to hide information regarding the execution and the exact location of the burial of the remains. At first, they persistently adhered to the false version that everything was fine with Alexandra Fedorovna and her children. Even at the end of 1922, Chicherin stated that the daughters of Nicholas II were in America and they were completely safe. The monarchists clung to this lie, which was one of the reasons why there is still debate about whether any of the members of the royal family managed to avoid a tragic fate.
For almost twenty years, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences A. N. Avdodin was investigating the death of the royal family. In 1979, he, together with film-dramatist Geliy Ryabov, having established the place where the remains were supposed to be hidden, dug up part of them on the Koptyakovskaya road.
In 1998, in an interview with a correspondent for the newspaper “Arguments and Facts,” Geliy Ryabov said: “In 1976, when I was in Sverdlovsk, I came to Ipatiev’s house and walked around the garden among the old trees. I have a rich imagination: I saw them walking here, heard them talking - it was all imagination, a mess, but nevertheless it was strong impression. Then I was introduced to local historian Alexander Avdodin... I found Yurovsky’s son - he gave me a copy of his father’s note (who personally shot Nicholas II with a revolver - Author). Using it, we established the burial site, from which we took out three skulls. One skull remained with Avdodin, and I took two with me. In Moscow, he turned to one of the senior officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with whom he had once started his service, and asked him to conduct an examination. He did not help me because he was a convinced communist. For a year, the skulls were kept at my house... The next year we gathered again in Piglet Log and returned everything to its place.” During the interview, G. Ryabov noted that some of the events that took place in those days could not be called anything other than mysticism: “The next morning after we unearthed the remains, I came there again. I approached the excavation - believe it or not - the grass grew ten centimeters overnight. Nothing is visible, all traces are hidden. Then I transported these skulls in a service Volga to Nizhny Tagil. It started to rain mushrooms. Suddenly a man appeared out of nowhere in front of the car. Driver -
The steering wheel turned sharply to the left, and the car skidded downhill. They turned over many times, fell on the roof, and all the windows flew out. The driver has a small scratch, I have nothing at all... During another trip to Porosenkov Log, I saw a series of foggy figures at the edge of the forest...”
The story associated with the discovery of remains on the Koptyakovskaya road received public outcry. In 1991, for the first time in Russia, an attempt was officially made to reveal the secret of the death of the Romanov family. For this purpose, a government commission was created. During her work, the press, along with publishing reliable data, covered a lot of things in a biased manner, without any analysis, sinning against the truth. There were disputes all around about who actually owned the exhumed bone remains that had lain for many decades under the deck of the old Koptyakovskaya road? Who are these people? What caused their death?
The results of research by Russian and American scientists were heard and discussed on July 27-28, 1992 in the city of Yekaterinburg at the international scientific and practical conference “The Last Page of the History of the Royal Family: Results of the Study of the Yekaterinburg Tragedy.” This conference was organized and conducted by the Coordination Council. The conference was closed: only historians, doctors and criminologists, who had previously worked independently of each other, were invited to it. Thus, adjustment of the results of some studies to others was excluded. The conclusions that scientists from both countries came to independently of each other turned out to be almost the same and with a high degree of probability indicated that the discovered remains belonged to the royal family and its entourage. According to expert V.O. Plaksin, the results of research by Russian and American scientists coincided on eight skeletons (out of nine found), and only one turned out to be controversial.
After numerous studies both in Russia and abroad, after labor-intensive work with archival documents, the government commission concluded: the discovered bone remains indeed belong to members of the Romanov family. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding this topic does not subside. Some researchers still strongly refute the official conclusion of the government commission. They claim that the “Yurovsky note” is a fake, fabricated in the bowels of the NKVD.
On this occasion, one of the members of the government commission, the famous historian Edward Stanislavovich Radzinsky, giving an interview to a correspondent of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, expressed his opinion: “So, there is a certain note from Yurovsky. Let's say we don't know what it's about. We only know that it exists and that it talks about some corpses, which the author declares to be the corpses of the royal family. The note indicates the place where the corpses are located... The burial referred to in the note is opened, and as many corpses as indicated in the note are found there - nine. What follows from this?..” E. S. Radzinsky believes that this is not just a coincidence. In addition, he indicated that DNA analysis is -99.99999...% probability. British scientists, who spent a year studying fragments of bone remains using molecular genetic methods at the forensic center of the UK Ministry of Internal Affairs in the city of Aldermaston, came to the conclusion that that the bone remains found near Yekaterinburg belong specifically to the family of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II.
Before today From time to time, reports appear in the press about people who consider themselves descendants of members of the royal house. Thus, some researchers have suggested that in 1918, one of the daughters of Nicholas II, Anastasia, passed away. Her heirs immediately began to appear. For example, Afanasy Fomin, a Red Ufa resident, counts himself among them. He claims that in 1932, when his family lived in Salekhard, two military men came to them and began to interrogate all family members in turn. Children were brutally tortured. The mother could not stand it and admitted that she was Princess Anastasia. She was dragged out into the street, blindfolded and hacked to death with sabers. The boy was handed over to Orphanage. Afanasy himself learned about his belonging to the royal family from a woman named Fenya. She said that she served Anastasia. Besides everything, Fomin told the local newspaper unknown facts from the life of the royal family and presented his photographs.
It was also suggested that people loyal to the Tsar helped Alexandra Fedorovna cross the border (to Germany), and she lived there for more than one year.
According to another version, Tsarevich Alexei survived. He has as many as eight dozen “descendants”. But only one of them asked for an identification examination and trial. This person is Oleg Vasilyevich Filatov. He was born in the Tyumen region in 1953. Currently lives in St. Petersburg, works in a bank.
Among those who became interested in O.V. Filatov was Tatyana Maksimova, a correspondent for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. She visited Filatov and met his family. She was struck by the amazing resemblance eldest daughter Oleg Vasilyevich Anastasia with Grand Duchess Olga, sister Nicholas II. And the face youngest daughter Yaroslavna, says T. Maksimova, is strikingly reminiscent of Tsarevich Alexei. O. V. Filatov himself says that the facts and documents that he has suggest that Tsarevich Alexei lived under the name of his father Vasily Ksenofontovich Filatov. But, according to Oleg Vasilyevich, the final conclusion must be made by the court.
...His father met his future wife at the age of 48. They were both teachers in the village school. The Filatovs first had a son, Oleg, then daughters, Olga, Irina, and Nadezhda.
Eight-year-old Oleg first heard about Tsarevich Alexei from his father while fishing. Vasily Ksenofontovich told a story that began with Alexey waking up at night on a pile of dead bodies in a truck. It was raining and the car skidded. People got out of the cabin and, swearing, began to drag the dead to the ground. Someone's hand put a revolver into Alexei's pocket. When it became clear that the car could not be pulled out without a tow, the soldiers went to the city for help. The boy crawled under railroad bridge. By railway he reached the station. There, among the carriages, the fugitive was detained by a patrol. Alexey tried to escape and fired back. All this was seen by a woman who worked as a switchman. The patrolmen caught Alexei and drove him towards the forest with bayonets. The woman ran after them screaming, then the patrolmen began shooting at her. Fortunately, the switchwoman managed to hide behind the carriages. In the forest, Alexey was pushed into the first hole he came across, and then a grenade was thrown. He was saved from death by a hole in the pit where the boy managed to sneak through. However, a fragment hit the left heel.
The boy was pulled out by the same woman. Two men helped her. They took Alexei on a handcar to the station and called a surgeon. The doctor wanted to amputate the boy’s foot, but he refused. From Yekaterinburg, Alexey was transported to Shadrinsk. There he was settled with the shoemaker Filatov, laid on the stove together with the owner's son, who was in a fever. Of the two, Alexey survived. He was given the first and last name of the deceased.
In a conversation with Filatov, T. Maksimova noted: “Oleg Vasilyevich, but the Tsarevich suffered from hemophilia - I can’t believe that wounds from bayonets and grenade fragments left him a chance of survival.” To this Filatov replied: “I only know that the boy Alexei, as his father said, after Shadrinsk, was treated for a long time in the north near the Khanty-Mansi with decoctions of pine needles and reindeer moss, forced to eat raw venison, seal, bear meat, fish and as if bull's eyes." In addition, Oleg Vasilyevich also noted that hematogen and Cahors were never transferred to them at home. All his life, my father drank an infusion of bovine blood, took vitamins E and C, calcium gluconate, and glycerophosphate. He was always afraid of bruises and cuts. He avoided contact with official medicine, and had his teeth treated only by private dentists.
According to Oleg Vasilyevich, the children began to analyze the oddities of their father’s biography when they had already matured. So, he often transported his family from one place to another: from Orenburg region to Vologda, and from there to Stavropol. At the same time, the family always settled in remote rural areas. The children wondered: where did the Soviet geography teacher get his deep religiosity and knowledge of prayers? A foreign languages? He knew German, French, Greek and Latin. When the children asked where their father knew languages, he answered that he learned them at the workers' school. My father also played the keyboard very well and sang. He also taught his children to read and write music. When Oleg entered Nikolai Okhotnikov’s vocal class, the teacher did not believe that the young man was taught at home - the basics were taught so skillfully. Oleg Vasilyevich said that his father taught musical notation using the digital method. After the death of his father, in 1988, Filatov Jr. learned that this method was the property of the imperial family and was inherited.
In a conversation with a journalist, Oleg Vasilyevich spoke about another coincidence. From his father’s stories, the name of the Strekotin brothers, “Uncle Andrei” and “Uncle Sasha,” was etched into his memory. It was they, together with the switchwoman, who pulled the wounded boy out of the pit and then took him to Shadrinsk. In the State Archive, Oleg Vasilyevich found out that the Red Army brothers Andrei and Alexander Strekotin actually served as guards at Ipatiev’s house.
At the Research Center for Law at St. Petersburg State University, they combined portraits of Tsarevich Alexei, aged from one and a half to 14 years, and Vasily Filatov. A total of 42 photographs were examined. The studies carried out with a high degree of reliability suggest that these photographs of a teenager and a man depict the same person at different age periods of his life.
Graphologists analyzed six letters from 1916-1918, 5 pages of the diary of Tsarevich Alexei and 13 notes of Vasily Filatov. The conclusion was as follows: we can say with complete confidence that the studied records were made by the same person.
Doctoral student of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Military Medical Academy Andrey Kovalev compared the results of the study of the Yekaterinburg remains with the structural features of the spines of Oleg Filatov and his sisters. According to the expert, Filatov’s blood relationship with members of the Romanov dynasty cannot be ruled out.
For a final conclusion, additional research is needed, in particular DNA. In addition, the body of Oleg Vasilyevich’s father will need to be exhumed. O. V. Filatov believes that this procedure must certainly take place within the framework of a forensic medical examination. And for this you need a court decision and... money.
Moscow. July 17.. in Yekaterinburg, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and all members of his family were shot. Almost a hundred years later, the tragedy has been studied far and wide by Russian and foreign researchers. Below are the 10 most important facts about what happened in July 1917 in the Ipatiev House.
1. The Romanov family and their retinue were placed in Yekaterinburg on April 30, in the house of retired military engineer N.N. Ipatieva. Doctor E. S. Botkin, chamberlain A. E. Trupp, the Empress's maid A. S. Demidova, cook I. M. Kharitonov and cook Leonid Sednev lived in the house with the royal family. Everyone except the cook was killed along with the Romanovs.
2. In June 1917, Nicholas II received several letters allegedly from a White Russian officer. The anonymous author of the letters told the Tsar that supporters of the crown intended to kidnap the prisoners of the Ipatiev House and asked Nicholas to provide assistance - to draw plans of the rooms, inform the sleep schedule of family members, etc. The Tsar, however, in his response stated: “We do not want and cannot escape. We can only be kidnapped by force, just as we were brought from Tobolsk by force. Therefore, do not count on any of our active help," thereby refusing to assist the "kidnappers," but not giving up the very idea of being kidnapped.
It subsequently turned out that the letters were written by the Bolsheviks in order to test the royal family's readiness to escape. The author of the texts of the letters was P. Voikov.
3. Rumors about the murder of Nicholas II appeared back in June 1917 after the assassination of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. The official version of the disappearance of Mikhail Alexandrovich was an escape; at the same time, the tsar was allegedly killed by a Red Army soldier who broke into the Ipatiev house.
4. Exact text of the verdict, which the Bolsheviks brought out and read to the Tsar and his family, is unknown. At approximately 2 o'clock in the morning from July 16 to July 17, the guards woke up the doctor Botkin so that he would wake up the royal family, order them to get ready and go down to the basement. According to various sources, it took from half an hour to an hour to get ready. After the Romanovs and their servants came down, security officer Yankel Yurovsky informed them that they would be killed.
According to various recollections, he said:
“Nikolai Alexandrovich, your relatives tried to save you, but they didn’t have to. And we are forced to shoot you ourselves.”(based on materials from investigator N. Sokolov)
“Nikolai Alexandrovich! The attempts of your like-minded people to save you were not crowned with success! And now, in a difficult time for the Soviet Republic ... - Yakov Mikhailovich raises his voice and chopping the air with his hand: - ... we have been entrusted with the mission of putting an end to the house of the Romanovs.”(according to the memoirs of M. Medvedev (Kudrin))
"Your friends are advancing on Yekaterinburg, and therefore you are sentenced to death"(according to the recollections of Yurovsky’s assistant G. Nikulin.)
Yurovsky himself later said that he did not remember the exact words he said. “...I immediately, as far as I remember, told Nikolai something like the following: that his royal relatives and friends both in the country and abroad tried to free him, and that the Council of Workers’ Deputies decided to shoot them.”
5. Emperor Nicholas, having heard the verdict, asked again:"Oh my God, what is this?" According to other sources, he only managed to say: “What?”
6. Three Latvians refused to carry out the sentence and left the basement shortly before the Romanovs went down there. The weapons of the refuseniks were distributed among those who remained. According to the recollections of the participants themselves, 8 people took part in the execution. “In fact, there were 8 of us performers: Yurovsky, Nikulin, Mikhail Medvedev, four Pavel Medvedev, five Peter Ermakov, but I’m not sure that Ivan Kabanov is six. And I don’t remember the names of two more,” writes G. in his memoirs .Nikulin.
7. It is still unknown whether the execution of the royal family was sanctioned by the highest authority. By official version, the decision to “execute” was made by the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council, while the central Soviet leadership learned about what happened only after. By the beginning of the 90s. A version was formed according to which the Ural authorities could not make such a decision without a directive from the Kremlin and agreed to take responsibility for the unauthorized execution in order to provide the central government with a political alibi.
The fact that the Ural Regional Council was not a judicial or other body that had the authority to pass a sentence, execution of the Romanovs for a long time was not considered as political repression, but as a murder, which prevented the posthumous rehabilitation of the royal family.
8. After the execution, the bodies of the dead were taken out of town and burned, pre-watering with sulfuric acid to render the remains unrecognizable. Authorization for allocation large quantity sulfuric acid was issued by the Commissioner of Supply of the Urals P. Voikov.
9. Information about the murder of the royal family became known to society several years later; Initially, the Soviet authorities reported that only Nicholas II was killed, Alexander Fedorovna and her children were allegedly transported to safe place to Perm. The truth about the fate of the entire royal family was reported in the article " Last days the last tsar" by P. M. Bykov.
The Kremlin acknowledged the fact of the execution of all members of the royal family when the results of N. Sokolov’s investigation became known in the West in 1925.
10. The remains of five members of the imperial family and four of their servants were found in July 1991. not far from Yekaterinburg under the embankment of the Old Koptyakovskaya road. 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.
On the night of July 16-17, 1918 in the city of Yekaterinburg, in the basement of the house of mining engineer Nikolai Ipatiev, Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, their children - Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, heir Tsarevich Alexei, as well as life -medic Evgeny Botkin, valet Alexey Trupp, room girl Anna Demidova and cook Ivan Kharitonov.
The last Russian Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (Nicholas II) ascended the throne in 1894 after the death of his father, Emperor Alexander III, and ruled until 1917, until the situation in the country became more complicated. On March 12 (February 27, old style), 1917, an armed uprising began in Petrograd, and on March 15 (March 2, old style), 1917, at the insistence of the Provisional Committee State Duma Nicholas II signed an abdication of the throne for himself and his son Alexei in favor of his younger brother Mikhail Alexandrovich.
After his abdication, from March to August 1917, Nicholas and his family were under arrest in the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoye Selo. A special commission of the Provisional Government studied materials for the possible trial of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna on charges of treason. Having not found evidence and documents that clearly convicted them of this, the Provisional Government was inclined to deport them abroad (to Great Britain).
In August 1917, the arrested were transported to Tobolsk. The main idea of the Bolshevik leadership was an open trial of the former emperor. In April 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to transfer the Romanovs to Moscow. Vladimir Lenin spoke out for the trial of the former tsar; Leon Trotsky was supposed to be the main accuser of Nicholas II. However, information appeared about the existence of “White Guard conspiracies” to kidnap the Tsar, the concentration of “conspiratorial officers” in Tyumen and Tobolsk for this purpose, and on April 6, 1918, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to transfer the royal family to the Urals. The royal family was transported to Yekaterinburg and placed in the Ipatiev house.
The uprising of the White Czechs and the offensive of the White Guard troops on Yekaterinburg accelerated the decision to shoot the former tsar.
The commandant of the Special Purpose House, Yakov Yurovsky, was entrusted with organizing the execution of all members of the royal family, Doctor Botkin and the servants who were in the house.
© Photo: Museum of the History of Yekaterinburg
The execution scene is known from investigative reports, from the words of participants and eyewitnesses, and from the stories of the direct perpetrators. Yurovsky spoke about the execution of the royal family in three documents: “Note” (1920); "Memoirs" (1922) and "Speech at a meeting of old Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg" (1934). All the details of this crime, conveyed by the main participant in different time and under completely different circumstances, they agree on how the royal family and its servants were shot.
Based on documentary sources, it is possible to establish the time when the murder of Nicholas II, members of his family and their servants began. The car that delivered the last order to exterminate the family arrived at half past two on the night of July 16-17, 1918. After which the commandant ordered physician Botkin to wake up the royal family. It took the family about 40 minutes to get ready, then she and the servants were transferred to the semi-basement of this house, with a window overlooking Voznesensky Lane. Nicholas II carried Tsarevich Alexei in his arms because he could not walk due to illness. At Alexandra Feodorovna’s request, two chairs were brought into the room. She sat on one, and Tsarevich Alexei sat on the other. The rest were located along the wall. Yurovsky led the firing squad into the room and read the verdict.
This is how Yurovsky himself describes the execution scene: “I invited everyone to stand up. Everyone stood up, occupying the entire wall and one of the side walls. The room was very small. Nikolai stood with his back to me. I announced that the Executive Committee of the Councils of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies The Urals decided to shoot them. Nikolai turned and asked. I repeated the order and commanded: “Shoot.” I shot first and killed Nikolai on the spot. The shooting lasted a very long time and, despite my hopes that the wooden wall would not ricochet, the bullets bounced off it For a long time I was not able to stop this shooting, which had become careless. But when I finally managed to stop, I saw that many were still alive. For example, Doctor Botkin was lying with his elbow on his back. right hand, as if in a resting pose, finished off him with a revolver shot. Alexey, Tatyana, Anastasia and Olga were also alive. Demidova was also alive. Comrade Ermakov wanted to finish the matter with a bayonet. But, however, this did not work. The reason became clear later (the daughters were wearing diamond armor like bras). I was forced to shoot each one in turn."
After death was confirmed, all the corpses began to be transferred to the truck. At the beginning of the fourth hour, at dawn, the corpses of the dead were taken out of Ipatiev’s house.
The remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia Romanov, as well as people from their entourage, shot in the House of Special Purpose (Ipatiev House), were discovered in July 1991 near Yekaterinburg.
On July 17, 1998, the burial of the remains of members of the royal family took place in the Peter and Paul Cathedral of St. Petersburg.
In October 2008, the presidium Supreme Court The Russian Federation has decided to rehabilitate Russian Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office also decided to rehabilitate members of the imperial family - the Grand Dukes and Princes of the Blood, executed by the Bolsheviks after the revolution. Servants and associates of the royal family who were executed by the Bolsheviks or subjected to repression were rehabilitated.
In January 2009, the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation stopped investigating the case into the circumstances of the death and burial of the last Russian emperor, members of his family and people from his entourage, shot in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918, "due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution responsibility and death of persons who committed premeditated murder" (subparagraphs 3 and 4 of part 1 of article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR).
The tragic history of the royal family: from execution to reposeIn 1918, on the night of July 17 in Yekaterinburg, in the basement of the house of mining engineer Nikolai Ipatiev, Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and their children - Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and heir Tsarevich Alexei were shot.On January 15, 2009, the investigator issued a resolution to terminate the criminal case, but on August 26, 2010, the judge of the Basmanny District Court of Moscow decided, in accordance with Article 90 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, to recognize this decision as unfounded and ordered the violations to be eliminated. On November 25, 2010, the investigation decision to terminate this case was canceled by the Deputy Chairman of the Investigative Committee.
On January 14, 2011, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported that the resolution was brought in accordance with the court decision and the criminal case regarding the death of representatives of the Russian Imperial House and people from their entourage in 1918-1919 was discontinued. The identification of the remains of members of the family of the former Russian Emperor Nicholas II (Romanov) and persons from his retinue has been confirmed.
On October 27, 2011, a resolution was issued to terminate the investigation into the case of the execution of the royal family. The 800-page resolution outlines the main conclusions of the investigation and indicates the authenticity of the discovered remains of the royal family.
However, the question of authentication still remains open. Russian Orthodox Church in order to recognize the found remains as relics royal martyrs, The Russian Imperial House supports the position of the Russian Orthodox Church on this issue. The director of the chancellery of the Russian Imperial House emphasized that genetic testing is not enough.
The Church canonized Nicholas II and his family and on July 17 celebrates the day of remembrance of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources