Yankel Khaimovich Yurovsky... This man is better known under the name Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky. He went down in history as the immediate leader of the execution of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family.
Emperor Nicholas II with his family. Photo from the Internet
Once upon a time there lived a very ordinary man of mediocre abilities. Illiterate. From a very poor family. Until a certain point, nothing outstanding happened in his life.
Time will pass, and either due to circumstances or chance, fate will take a sharp turn. Which will be followed by the path first to the glory of a hero (this is how some saw him), then to the shameful stigma of an executioner-murderer (this is how others see him), and then to almost complete oblivion...
Yakov Yurovsky. Photo from the Internet
In 1967, at a meeting of the presidium of the Tomsk City Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, a proposal was considered to recommend to the City Executive Committee that one of the Tomsk streets be named after Ya. M. Yurovsky. The basis was the appeal of a group of old Bolsheviks to Secretary General The Central Committee of the CPSU to L. I. Brezhnev about the need to perpetuate the memory of Yakov Yurovsky, a party member since 1905. A copy of the letter of appeal is stored in the State Archives of the Tomsk Region.
Here is his text:
The letter indicated that Yurovsky’s name had been undeservedly forgotten. It was proposed to name streets in his honor in Moscow, Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) and Tomsk. Publish memoirs and biography of a prominent revolutionary. With honors, transfer the urn with Yurovsky’s ashes from the Moscow columbarium to Novodevichy Cemetery and install a tombstone.
In that already distant 1967, Tomsk archivists and historians began to identify addresses related to the life and work of Yakov Yurovsky. As a result of studying the documents, a list was compiled, which included per. Protopopovsky (Pionersky), per. Belozersky, st. Magistratskaya (R. Luxembourg), Bolshaya Korolevskaya (Maxim Gorky), etc. Well, the most famous address was and remains the house on the street. Tatarskaya, 6.
House on Tatarskaya street, 6.
Indeed, in April 1912, it was in this house that the gendarmes arrested Yakov Yurovsky and his two fellow illegal immigrants. We will return to the circumstances of the arrest of the revolutionaries in a safe house, but for now you can find out how the modern inhabitants of the almost legendary house live.
Be patient, reader! Together we will take a journey into the world of old Tomsk. It so happened that local historians mostly studied the details of Yakov Yurovsky’s presence in our city. They were less interested in information about people close to him. But many facts are very colorful, interesting and allow us not only to understand the everyday life of the Jewish family in which the regicide grew up, but also the features of some laws of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries that shaped this way of life.
Document from the funds State Archives Tomsk region
On May 5, 1897, something happened in the fate of the Cain tradesman Khaim Itskovich Yurovsky an important event: The title of exile was removed from him and he was given a passport. After 20 years spent in Siberia, he could count on receiving the right to live in Tomsk without restrictions, but at the same time constantly register at his place of residence. Chaim is a little over forty years old. His wife Esther is three years younger. In their marriage they had nine children. Chaim, like all members of his household, professes Judaism and observes religious ceremonies, visits the synagogue on the street. Magistratskaya (the modern name is Rosa Luxemburg Street).
Tomsk synagogue at the beginning of the twentieth century. Photo from the Internet
In archival files you can see information that Chaim Yurovsky was exiled to Siberia in 1876. For what? For theft committed in the Poltava province, where he lived before trial and punishment. Having appeared in Kainsk (Kuibyshev, Novosibirsk region), Chaim soon moved to Tomsk and began to engage in glass and painting crafts. Sometimes he had to trade at the Tomsk flea market. The wife, Esther Moiseevna, raised the children and worked as a seamstress at home. All property consisted of wretched home and economic furnishings. However, if we consider the future wealth of the offspring of this family, poverty seems exaggerated.
Photo from the Internet
Extending permission for unhindered residence in the provincial capital, Chaim Yurovsky invariably emphasized “that a long, unblemished stay in Siberia, engaging in honest work guarantee his trustworthiness and approving, from the point of view of the police, behavior.” All petitions were not drawn up in his hand, but papers were signed on his behalf by other people.
Document from the funds of the State Archive of the Tomsk Region
In 1878, the Yurovskys had a son, Yankel, who would later write in his autobiography: “By the grace of tsarism, I was born in prison.” The expression is too pretentious, figurative and far from reality. Although childhood was indeed difficult. WITH early age the boy was working. But things didn’t work out with education. Course of study in primary school at the synagogue was never completed. By the way, the appearance of the religious building in the 70s of the 19th century is very different from the usual appearance of the Choral Synagogue, rebuilt at the beginning of the 20th century.
Tomsk synagogue on Magistratskaya street from a lithograph by artist M. Kolosov, 1871. From the funds of the Tomsk Regional Museum of Local Lore
In his autobiography, Yakov Yurovsky mentions that on for a long time left Tomsk. Lived and worked in Tyumen, Tobolsk and Ekaterinodar (Krasnodar). At the same time, personal life circumstances young man- vague. In 1898, in Feodosia he had a daughter, Rimma. In 1904, the first son Alexander was born in Batumi. The mother of the children was Maria Kaganer, whose marriage was concluded in the same year. Perhaps already in Berlin, where Yakov’s family will end up in an unknown way and for unknown reasons. In the capital of Germany, Yakov Yurovsky accepted Lutheranism and in 1905 returned to Tomsk.
Parents of Yakov Yurovsky with his wife and son . Photo from the Internet
The news about the renunciation of the Jewish religion will not be the only cause of conflicts between Jacob and his relatives. He really has changed a lot. He got a lot of money and his own business. On Ushayki Embankment Street, Yakov Yurovsky will open a watch shop, a photo studio, and will also master jewelry making.
Ushayki Embankment Street. Modern look
Leib’s younger brother recalled: “At that time, Yakov was already rich. The goods in his store cost ten thousand. But Yankel’s character is hot-tempered. I learned watchmaking from him. He loved to oppress people."
At this point we will interrupt the story. Events in family chronicle There will be many more regicides to come. So, to be continued...
Tags: Tomsk, history of Tomsk, Nicholas II, Yakov Yurovsky, regicide, history royal family, GATO, TV-2
early years
Yakov Yurovsky was born in the city of Tomsk into a large working-class Jewish family, the eighth of ten children. His father Mikhail Ilyich was a glazier, his mother was a seamstress. He studied at an elementary school in the river area, then (from 1890) at a craft. In exile in Germany, together with his entire family (wife Maria Yakovlevna, three children, one of whom, Alexander Yakovlevich, later became a rear admiral of the USSR fleet) converted to Lutheranism.
Revolutionary activities
Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky is a native of Kainsk (Tomsk province), where he was born in 1878. Like many other proletarian leaders (Marx, Sverdlov, etc.), he was the grandson of a rabbi, and began revolutionary activities in 1905 in Tomsk. He himself does not say, but according to some indirect data it is clear that at first he participated in the military organizations of the Bund, and then, following the example of Sverdlov, he joined the Bolsheviks. At first, Yurovsky was involved in distributing Marxist literature, and after the failure of the underground printing house, when other revolutionaries were sent to prison, he remained in charge of the Tomsk workers, and in 1912 he was expelled from Tomsk for “harmful activities,” for some reason with permission to choose his place of residence. So he found himself “exiled” from ordinary Tomsk to Yekaterinburg, where he immediately started a watch workshop and photography with some funds, and, as he describes it, “he was in full view of the gendarmes and the police, where I was often dragged,” and “the gendarmerie nagged him,” forcing him to take photographs of suspicious persons and prisoners. Nevertheless, his workshop was simultaneously a headquarters for the Bolsheviks and a laboratory for the production of passports for them. In 1916, he was called to serve as a paramedic at a local hospital (he specially studied medicine - like his full namesake Sverdlov: they believed that a proletarian revolutionary should know poisons to exterminate the opponents of the proletarians). So Yurovsky became an active agitator among the soldiers, and after February Revolution sold his photo workshop, and with the proceeds he organized the Bolshevik printing house "Ural Worker" (the business clearly promised greater benefits - as it turned out), became a member of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, a prominent Bolshevik and one of the main leaders of the Bolshevik revolution in the Urals, about which he described in detail at a meeting of participants in revolutionary events in January 1934. As he said, in April 1917, Sverdlov came to Yekaterinburg from the Central Committee of the “beks” (as they were then called) and began organizing delegates to the All-Russian Conference of Beks (it took place on April 24, and at it Lenin announced a plan for the transition to a socialist revolution). At the same time, Sverdlov, attracting the personnel he trained here, was preparing an alternative coup in the Urals - in case there was a failure in St. Petersburg, and then the beks would take revenge in the Urals. Aron Solts did the same in Tyumen, Samuil Zwilling in Chelyabinsk, and so on. Under the Ural Council, a Military Department was organized for this purpose, headed by Filipp Goloshchekin (aka Shaya Isaakovich), sent by Sverdlov, and Yurovsky became his deputy. To arm the workers, they confiscated weapons from trains going to the front. During the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, they organized the Military Revolutionary Committee, which also included some anarchists and left Socialist Revolutionaries, and from the beks Vayner, Krestinsky, Voikov, Branitsky and Yurovsky. And they announced the transfer of power to this Military Revolutionary Committee, and soon this Military Revolutionary Committee transferred power to the Urals Council. At the end of November, in the wake of the euphoria of the proletarian revolution, re-elections were held to the Urals Council (led by Yurovsky and Khokhryakov), as a result of which the majority of this council turned out to be supporters of the beks, and soon Pavel Bykov, Sverdlov’s personal militant, was “elected” as chairman of the Council, whom he appointed a member of the St. Petersburg VRK. In October, Bykov organized the shelling Winter Palace from the Peter and Paul Fortress and participated in its assault, led operations to suppress the uprising of the cadets, at the Second Congress of Soviets that took power, he was elected to the Central Executive Committee, and then went to the Urals with the mandate of a representative of the central government, which Sverdlov gave him - to replace the chairman of the Urals Council Sosnovsky, who refused this honor because he was afraid... Having established its power, the Urals Council immediately imposed an indemnity of 10 million rubles on the rich and factory owners - for the maintenance of their power, and in response to the sabotage of the bourgeoisie, it announced the transfer of plant management to the control of workers' committees. This was first carried out at the Nadezhdinsky plant, which the Ural Bolsheviks proudly boast of: they sent a deputation to Lenin, who received them on December 5 and approved their actions, but began to scold them for not arresting the enemies of the revolution: “the scoundrels who are killing starving working families, saboteurs closing factories must be immediately arrested... and the factories taken away. And manage things ourselves” (quote from B. Krupatkin’s article “With Lenin in the Heart”). On December 7, at the Commissariat of Labor, they were given the first-ever act on the transfer of plant management to a collective of workers, and on December 9, the Council of People’s Commissars issued a decree “On confiscation and declaration of property Russian Republic all property joint stock company Theological Mountain Society". And they took a subscription from the Urals themselves with an obligation to diligently preserve proletarian property and increase labor productivity... But the seizure of the factories did not bring dividends to the Bolsheviks (then, in 1925, many of them were transferred to the concession of the English company Lena Goldfields and other bourgeois companies), and when Lenin was forced to conclude the obscene, as he himself said, Brest Peace, the Urals Soviet announced that it did not recognize the decision of the central government and declared revolutionary war on Germany. The nationalization of banks was announced and carried out, and in order to ensure the military operations of the Urals Council against the Germans, the beks began searching for hidden valuables. Yurovsky was then a Member of the Board of the Regional Cheka and Chairman of the Investigative Commission of the Revolutionary Tribunal, he and Khokhryakov with detachments of Red Guards went to the houses of the rich and took away valuables for the revolutionary struggle with Germany: as he describes, in one house they found 10 pounds (160 kilograms) of gold, in another several pounds, then from the breeder Agafurov Yurovsky confiscated about 2 pounds of gold and many jewelry... All this was taken as if for storage in the national bank and transferred to the Commissioner of the State Bank Voikov. They took another half a pound of diamonds (8 kilograms) from the bodies of the royal daughters they killed - but their story is complicated. Bykov, in his memoirs about Sverdlov, writes that he had a connection with Sverdlov, and Sverdlov, under the threat of the capture of the Romanovs by Kolchak’s men, “resolved the issue without a formal people’s court, proposing to shoot Romanov in Yekaterinburg.” Previously, he and Goloshchekin organized the transfer of the Romanovs to Yekaterinburg, and Yurovsky was appointed commandant of the house where the royal family was kept. Yurovsky writes that on July 16 a telegram was received to conventional language , containing an order for the extermination of the Romanovs, and Pyotr Ermakov (also a militant of Sverdlov and the head of the security of the special purpose house) writes that the directive from the center about the execution of the Tsar (but not the Tsar’s family) was signed by Sverdlov, and the Urals Council, influenced by the opinion of the workers, decided shoot everyone. Goloshchekin (Military Commissar and Commissioner of Justice of the Ural Region) at 6 pm ordered Yurovsky to carry out the order. Yurovsky claims that he personally shot Romanov with his Mauser, other participants (Ermakov, Medvedev, and some Magyars) shot the rest, and bayoneted those who were not killed. In total, they killed 12 people, including servants and family doctor Botkin. The destruction of the corpses was entrusted to Ermakov, but Yurovsky allegedly did not trust him, considering him sloppy, and decided to also participate. It can be assumed that through the Tsarina’s personal jeweler Rabinovich (who had access to her through Rasputin), Yurovsky, a jeweler himself, somehow knew that the Tsarina was buying diamonds and wanted to find them. They threw the bodies of the dead into an abandoned mine, and a day later they returned and began to burn them with acid and fire, trying to destroy any possibility of leaving any relics. At the same time, as Ermakov writes, it was discovered that diamonds were sewn into the clothes of the princesses - with a total weight of about half a pound... Although at the same time they sent a train with the valuables of the State Bank to Moscow, about the diamonds found on the bodies of the princesses, Yurovsky writes that all this “was buried in the Alapaevsky plant, in one of the houses in the underground, dug up in 19 and brought to Moscow.” However, in the inventory of the valuables of the royal family, only fur coats, silver cutlery, icons in silver frames, and similar things are described, but diamonds do not appear, and their true fate is not known... They sent other valuables stored in the State Bank by train to Moscow through Perm, and Yurovsky fled from the White Guards on the second train with party archives. A participant in the removal of valuables, Semyon Glukhikh, a member of the control board at the regional commissariat of finance (and he was also a guard of the Romanovs), writes that they were carrying gold, platinum and banknotes worth 100 million rubles, minted in chromo-lithography by the Bolsheviks (he calls them banknotes of the Ural region), and they surrendered all this in Perm, since the path to Moscow was then blocked due to the Socialist Revolutionary uprising in Yaroslavl. Then it was all transported to Moscow. The removal of Ural valuables caused outrage and an uprising in Yekaterinburg: a rally began at the Verkh-Isetsky plant (then a suburb of Yekaterinburg) under the slogans “Down with the commissars! "," Long live the Constituent Assembly! knows Lenin personally, and he should be shot, since he “undoubtedly brings evil to Russia.” Goloshchekin and Yurovsky with a detachment of Red Guards and machine guns came to suppress them, and they, according to Ermakov’s assistant Alexander Medvedev, “were unarmed and could not respond.” The rebels were dispersed and shot, and about the fate of Ardashev, Medvedev claims (TsDOOSO, fund 221, inventory 2, No. 816, sheet 82) that he lured him into a trap by deception and handed him over to the Cheka, and he was shot, like many others. This was dealt with by a specially organized revolutionary tribunal, in which Yurovsky was a member and chairman of the investigative commission. Yurovsky does not report the number of his victims, but according to Medvedev, they “mercilessly shot everyone who showed anti-Soviet activity,” and “after that the city became quiet and the population took the position of ‘my hut is on the edge’...”
It is still unclear whether there was a direct order from the center to kill the royal family or whether there was a local initiative. It is only obvious that no one, including Lenin and Sverdlov, allegedly the author of the telegram about the need to eliminate Nicholas II and others like him, condemned the execution in the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. According to a member of the firing squad, Mikhail Medvedev (Kudrin), Yurovsky saved the “kitchen boy,” the cook Lenya Sednev, who was playing with the heir Alexei Romanov. The commandant allegedly removed him from the list of those subject to liquidation. However, this “charitable” action is also attributed to other participants in the bloody bacchanalia; there is generally too much “allegedly” in this story.
But it is obvious that Lenya was the only survivor of those imprisoned in the Ipatiev House (at the time the decision to shoot was made). Mikhail Medvedev admitted that at first he confused Sednev with the Tsarevich and actively objected to the fact that it was inappropriate to kill a 13-year-old boy. Sednev did not live to see the years when the murderers of the royal family made their memories public (1960s). The circumstances and causes of his death are also shrouded in secrecy today.
Both representatives of the Ural Cheka and Latvian Red Army soldiers took part in the execution. Not everyone, by the way, agreed to kill. Judging by the memoirs of the same Medvedev, three refused, and their revolvers were taken away from them. Those Latvians who were not against it, in addition to rifles with fixed bayonets, also had other firearms. The arsenal of the killers of the royal family and those close to it was quite rich: each had two or even three weapons (revolvers handed over by Latvian refuseniks also went into use). Mikhail Medvedev mentions his Belgian Browning and seven-shot revolver, as well as the American Colt. Yurovsky also had a German ten-shot Mauser.
Yakov Yurovsky, whose biography is described in this article, Soviet statesman, revolutionary, security officer and murderer of the royal family. Until 1905, he bore the name Yankel, patronymic Khaimovich. Subsequently he began to be called Yakov Mikhailovich. His biography and life path are presented below.
Childhood
Yakov Yurovsky was born on June 21 (07/03 according to the new style), 1878 in the Tomsk province, in Kainsk. Since 1935, the city was renamed Kuibyshev. His grandfather came from Poltava, and his father, Mikhail Ilyich, was sent to Siberian exile for theft. There he worked as a glazier. Yakov's mother, Esther Moiseevna, was engaged in sewing at home. The family was large, Jewish, Orthodox. The couple had ten children, Yankel Khaimovich was born the eighth.
Education
In 1985, he began going to the Talmateiro River District School, which was organized at the synagogue. But without even finishing the first year, he became an apprentice tailor. At the same time he studied watchmaking.
Job
After acquiring these two specialties, Yankel Khaimovich got a job as an apprentice in Tobolsk, then worked in Tomsk, Feodosia and several other cities. In 1904, he and one of his brothers left to work in America. After marriage he moved to Yekaterinodar.
The beginning of revolutionary activity
There he first became involved in revolutionary activities. At first he stored and distributed relevant literature and leaflets produced in an underground printing house. In 1905 he joined the RSDLP and became a friend of Sverdlov. In the same year, he was forced to go to live in Germany, in Berlin. There he was baptized and became Lutheran. Changed his name to Yakov Mikhailovich.
Own business
In 1907, Yankel Khaimovich returned to Yekaterinodar, and in 1908 he moved to Tomsk. There Yakov Yurovsky opened his own watch shop. In 1912 he was detained for revolutionary activities and sent into exile from Tomsk. At the same time, he was allowed to choose his place of stay independently.
Yakov Mikhailovich stopped in Yekaterinburg. Arriving there, he immediately opened his own photo studio. The gendarmes began to take advantage of the opportunity to take free photographs of prisoners or suspects, so Yurovsky became a frequent visitor to the police.
Continuation of revolutionary activities
The photo studio simultaneously became a meeting place for the Bolsheviks. The workshop was used to produce counterfeit documents. During the First World War, Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky was sent to the army, where he trained as a paramedic. He was left to work in the local hospital with the rank of company commander.
Yakov Mikhailovich never managed to get to the front. After the February Revolution, he sold the workshop. With the funds received, he founded the Bolshevik printing house “Ural Worker”. In 1917 he joined the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Since October of this year he became a member of the Military Department of Yekaterinburg.
He worked as chairman of the Investigative Commission of the Regional Revolutionary Tribunal in the Urals. Then he served as the region's commissioner of justice and was a member of the Cheka Board. Yurovsky was one of the leaders of the revolutionary process in the Urals. After the Bolsheviks established power, an indemnity of 10 million rubles was imposed on the rich and factory owners.
The bourgeoisie began to rebel against such laws. Then the Urals Council entrusted the management of enterprises to working committees. Lenin approved these actions. Soon the first historical act on the transfer of bourgeois property to the workers appeared. But the seizure of enterprises did not bring the expected income. When Russia concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Urals Council did not agree with this decision and announced the continuation of the revolutionary war in Germany.
At that time, Yurovsky was a member of the Board of the Regional Cheka and was the chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Yakov Mikhailovich, together with the Red Guards, went around the houses of wealthy people and confiscated all the valuables found.
Execution of the royal family
In June 1918, Yakov Yurovsky became commandant of the Ipatiev House, where the Romanov family was temporarily imprisoned. In 1918, on the night of July 16-17, he shot all members of the imperial dynasty. Yurovsky claimed that he received an order to kill the tsar signed by Sverdlov, and decided to shoot all imperial family Urals Council.
Yakov Mikhailovich claims that he personally shot only the Tsar. All other members of the royal family were killed by other participants in the bloodshed. A total of 12 people were shot, including Botkin, the royal family doctor, and servants. As a result, Yakov Yurovsky went down in history as one of the participants in the murder of Nicholas II and members of his family.
There is a version that the document on the basis of which the entire royal family died was forged. And it was Yurovsky who made the “linden”. He also appointed a cleanup team. As a result, historical research was carried out. It showed that the document was most likely indeed fabricated. But the real list of participants in the murder was not reflected in it.
The descendants of Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky died under strange and mysterious circumstances. There is an opinion that this is the effect of the royal curse. The monstrous evil committed by Yurovsky continues to affect the lives of his descendants to this day.
Diamond Epic
After the execution of the imperial family, Ermakov had to remove the corpses. Yakov Mikhailovich decided to take part in this under the pretext that he would make sure that everything was done carefully. But the reason for this decision lay elsewhere. Yurovsky knew that the queen was buying jewelry and diamonds, and decided to find them while examining the corpses.
The bodies were thrown into a deep abandoned mine. They were destroyed a day later by burning them with fire, so that not even the relics remained. Then the diamonds were found. They were sewn into the princesses' clothes. Total weight half a pound of jewelry. Yurovsky wrote that all the diamonds were buried in the basement of one of the houses on the territory of the Alapaevsky plant.
They supposedly arrived in Moscow later. But the inventory of the royal family’s valuables did not include any jewelry. The list included only fur coats, cutlery, and icons. The true fate of the jewelry remained unknown for some time. Some of them were transported to the Moscow State Bank.
Local residents rebelled, accusing the Bolsheviks of theft. As a result, Yurovsky took part in suppressing the riot. The rebels were mercilessly shot. This bloodshed was led by Yakov Yurovsky. He himself set an example by killing the rebels. The royal jewels were found only in July 1920. They were handed over to the Kremlin commandant personally by Yurovsky, who moved to Moscow.
Shameful secret deal
In 1921, Yakov Mikhailovich began to manage the gold department in the State Repository. Presumably, in 1923 he led the shameful act of transporting the Russian crown and scepter to Chita, to the Japanese mission. Next, the royal things were planned to be sold to America or Europe.
The deal was kept secret, but accidentally became public knowledge. As a result, the Soviet government managed to return the Russian treasures to Moscow and, in order to calm people down, the crown and scepter were put on display in the House of Unions, in the Hall of Columns. After this attempt to sell the jewelry, Yurovsky was fired from the State Repository under the People's Commissariat of Finance.
Personal life
Yakov Mikhailovich was married to Mana Yankelevna Kaganer. Subsequently, she changed her name to Maria Yakovlevna. The Yurovskys had three children. Daughter Rimma became an active Komsomol figure. In 1938 she was arrested and sent to serve her sentence in Karaganda.
Yakov Mikhailovich's first son, Alexander, became a rear admiral of the Navy. In 1852 he was subjected to repression, but after Stalin's death he was released. Yurovsky's second son, Evgeniy, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was a political worker in the Navy.
Death of Yurovsky
Yakov Yurovsky, whose photo is in this article, retired from civil service in 1933. By this time he was already very worried about his health. He spent the rest of his life in the Kremlin hospital, suffering from stomach ulcers. Doctors were unable to cure her.
When did Yakov Yurovsky die, where was the participant in the execution of the royal family buried? He died in suffering on August 2, 1938. The urn with his ashes is kept in the columbarium of the New Don Cemetery (Southern Administrative Okrug). Many do not even know where Yakov Yurovsky is buried, whose grave is of more interest to modern historians.
Yurovsky's character
Yurovsky's character was most accurately described by his relatives. Jacob was considered the smartest among the brothers. He had a strong and hot-tempered character. He always persistently achieved his goals and loved to command. Some relatives spoke of Yurovsky as a despot.
On the evening of July 16, new style, 1918, in the building of the Ural Regional Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution (located in the American Hotel in the city of Yekaterinburg - now the city of Sverdlovsk), the regional Council of the Urals met in part. When I, a Yekaterinburg security officer, was called there, I saw comrades familiar to me in the room: Chairman of the Council of Deputies Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov, Chairman Regional Committee Bolshevik Party Georgy Safarov, Military Commissar of Yekaterinburg Philip Goloshchekin, Council member Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov, Chairman of the regional Cheka Fyodor Lukoyanov, my friends - members of the board of the Ural Regional Cheka Vladimir Gorin, Isai Idelevich (Ilyich) Rodzinsky (now a personal pensioner, lives in Moscow) and Commandant of the Special Purpose House (Ipatiev House) Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky.
When I entered, those present were deciding what to do with the former Tsar Nicholas II Romanov and his family. A report about a trip to Moscow to Ya. M. Sverdlov was made by Philip Goloshchekin. Goloshchekin failed to obtain sanctions from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to execute the Romanov family. Sverdlov consulted with V.I. Lenin, who spoke out in favor of bringing the royal family to Moscow and an open trial of Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna, whose betrayal during the First World War cost Russia dearly.
It is the All-Russian court! - Lenin argued to Sverdlov: - with publication in newspapers. Calculate the human and material damage the autocrat inflicted on the country during the years of his reign. How many revolutionaries were hanged, how many died in hard labor, nobody knows necessary war! To answer before all the people! You think that only a dark peasant believes in our good father-tsar. Not only, my dear Yakov Mikhailovich! How long has it been since your advanced St. Petersburg workers walked to the Winter Palace with banners? Just some 13 years ago! It is this incomprehensible “racial” gullibility that the open trial of Nicholas the Bloody should dispel into smoke...
Y. M. Sverdlov tried to present Goloshchekin’s arguments about the dangers of transporting the royal family by train through Russia, where counter-revolutionary uprisings broke out in cities every now and then, about the difficult situation on the fronts near Yekaterinburg, but Lenin stood his ground:
So what if the front is retreating? Moscow is now deep in the rear, so evacuate them to the rear! And here we will arrange a trial for them for the whole world.
At parting, Sverdlov said to Goloshchekin:
Tell me so, Philip, to your comrades - the All-Russian Central Executive Committee does not give official sanction for execution.
After Goloshchekin’s story, Safarov asked the military commissar how many days, in his opinion, Yekaterinburg would hold out? Goloshchekin replied that the situation was threatening - the poorly armed volunteer detachments of the Red Army were retreating, and in three days, maximum five, Yekaterinburg would fall. A painful silence reigned. Everyone understood that evacuating the royal family from the city not only to Moscow, but simply to the North meant giving the monarchists the long-desired opportunity to kidnap the Tsar. Ipatiev’s house was, to a certain extent, a fortified point: two high wooden fences around, a system of external and internal security posts made up of workers, and machine guns. Of course, we could not provide such reliable security to a moving car or crew, especially outside the city limits.
There could be no question of leaving the tsar to the white armies of Admiral Kolchak - such “mercy” posed a real threat to the existence of the young Soviet Republic, surrounded by a ring of enemy armies. Hostile to the Bolsheviks, whom he considered traitors to the interests of Russia after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, Nicholas II would become the banner of counter-revolutionary forces outside and inside the Soviet Republic. Admiral Kolchak, using the age-old faith in the good intentions of the kings, could win over to his side the Siberian peasantry, who had never seen landowners, did not know what serfdom was, and therefore did not support Kolchak, who imposed landowner laws on the land he had captured (thanks to the uprising of the Czechoslovak buildings) territory. The news of the “salvation” of the tsar would have increased tenfold the strength of the embittered kulaks in the provinces of Soviet Russia.
We, the security officers, had fresh memories of the attempts of the Tobolsk clergy, led by Bishop Hermogenes, to free the royal family from arrest. Only the resourcefulness of my friend, sailor Pavel Khokhryakov, who arrested Hermogenes in time and transported the Romanovs to Yekaterinburg under the protection of the Bolshevik Council, saved the situation. Given the deep religiosity of the people in the province, it was impossible to allow even the remains of the royal dynasty to be left to the enemy, from which the clergy would immediately fabricate “holy miraculous relics” - also a good flag for the armies of Admiral Kolchak.
But there was another reason that decided the fate of the Romanovs differently than Vladimir Ilyich wanted.
The relatively free life of the Romanovs (the mansion of the merchant Ipatiev did not even remotely resemble a prison) in such an alarming time, when the enemy was literally at the gates of the city, caused understandable indignation among the workers of Yekaterinburg and the surrounding area. At meetings and rallies at the factories of Verkh-Isetsk, workers directly said:
Why are you Bolsheviks babysitting Nikolai? It's time to finish! Otherwise we’ll smash your advice to pieces!
Such sentiments seriously complicated the formation of units of the Red Army, and the threat of reprisals itself was serious - the workers were armed, and their word and deed did not differ. Other parties also demanded the immediate execution of the Romanovs. Back at the end of June 1918, members of the Yekaterinburg Council, the Socialist-Revolutionary Sakovich and the left Socialist-Revolutionary Khotimsky (later a Bolshevik, security officer, died during the years of Stalin’s personality cult, posthumously rehabilitated) at a meeting insisted on the speedy liquidation of the Romanovs and accused the Bolsheviks of inconsistency. The anarchist leader Zhebenev shouted to us in the Council:
If you do not destroy Nicholas the Bloody, then we will do it ourselves!
Without the sanction of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the execution, we could not say anything in response, and the position of delaying without explaining the reasons embittered the workers even more. To further postpone the decision on the fate of the Romanovs in a military situation meant to further undermine the people's trust in our party. Therefore, it was the Bolshevik part of the Regional Council of the Urals who finally gathered to decide the fate of the royal family in Yekaterinburg, Perm and Alapaevsk (the tsar’s brothers lived there). It practically depended on our decision whether we would lead the workers to the defense of the city of Yekaterinburg or whether the anarchists and left Socialist Revolutionaries would lead them. There was no third way.
For the last month or two, some “curious” people have been constantly climbing up to the fence of the House for Special Purposes - mostly shady individuals who came, as a rule, from St. Petersburg and Moscow. They tried to send notes, food, and sent letters by mail, which we intercepted: all of them were assurances of loyalty and offers of services. We, the security officers, had the impression that there was some kind of White Guard organization in the city that was persistently trying to get into contact with the Tsar and Tsarina. We even stopped allowing priests and nuns into the house who were carrying food from the nearby monastery.
But not only the monarchists who secretly came to Yekaterinburg hoped to free the captive tsar on occasion - the family itself was ready for abduction at any moment and did not miss a single opportunity to contact the will. Yekaterinburg security officers found out this readiness quite in a simple way. Beloborodov, Voikov and the security officer Rodzinsky drew up a letter on behalf of the Russian officer organization, which reported the imminent fall of Yekaterinburg and suggested preparing to escape at night a certain day. Note translated into French Voikov and rewritten completely in red ink beautiful handwriting Isai Rodzinsky, through one of the guard soldiers, was handed over to the queen. The answer was not long in coming. We composed and sent a second letter. Observation of the rooms showed that the Romanov family spent two or three nights dressed - they were fully prepared to escape. Yurovsky reported this to the Regional Council of the Urals.
Having discussed all the circumstances, we make a decision: that very night to deliver two blows: to liquidate two monarchist underground officer organizations that can stab in the back the units defending the city (the security officer Isai Rodzinsky is assigned to this operation), and to destroy the royal Romanov family.
Yakov Yurovsky offers to make leniency for the boy.
Which one? An heir? I'm against! - I object.
No, Mikhail, the kitchen boy Lenya Sednev needs to be taken away. Why the scullion... He was playing with Alexei.
What about the rest of the servants?
From the very beginning we suggested that they leave the Romanovs. Some left, and those who remained declared that they wanted to share the fate of the monarch. Let them share...
They decided to save the life of only Lena Sednev. Then they began to think about who to allocate for the liquidation of the Romanovs from the Ural Regional Extraordinary Commission. Beloborodov asks me:
Will you take part?
By decree of Nicholas II, I was tried and imprisoned. Of course I will!
We still need a representative from the Red Army,” says Philip Goloshchekin: “I propose Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov, military commissar of Verkh-Isetsk.”
Accepted. And from you, Yakov, who will participate?
“Me and my assistant Grigory Petrovich Nikulin,” Yurovsky answers. - So, four: Medvedev, Ermakov, Nikulin and me.
The meeting ended. Yurovsky, Ermakov and I went together to the House of Special Purposes, went up to the second floor to the commandant’s room - here the security officer Grigory Petrovich Nikulin (now a personal pensioner, lives in Moscow) was waiting for us. They closed the door and sat for a long time, not knowing where to start. It was necessary to somehow hide from the Romanovs that they were being led to execution. And where to shoot? In addition, there are only four of us, and the Romanovs with their physician, cook, footman and maid are 11 people!
Hot. We can't think of anything. Maybe when they fall asleep, throw grenades into the rooms? It’s not good - the whole city will roar, they’ll think that the Czechs have broken into Yekaterinburg. Yurovsky proposed the second option: to kill everyone with daggers in their beds. They even decided who should finish off whom. We are waiting for them to fall asleep. Yurovsky several times goes out to the rooms of the Tsar and Tsarina, the Grand Duchesses, and the servants, but everyone is awake - it seems they are alarmed by the removal of the kitchen boy.
It was past midnight and it was getting cooler. Finally, the lights went out in all the rooms of the royal family, apparently they fell asleep. Yurovsky returned to the commandant’s office and suggested a third option: wake up the Romanovs in the middle of the night and ask them to go down to the room on the first floor under the pretext that an anarchist attack was being prepared on the house and bullets during a shootout might accidentally fly to the second floor, where the Romanovs lived (the Tsar with the Tsarina and Alexei - in the corner, and my daughters - in the next room with windows overlooking Voznesensky Lane). There was no longer a real threat of an anarchist attack that night, since shortly before this Isai Rodzinsky and I dispersed the anarchist headquarters in the mansion of engineer Zheleznov (former Commercial Assembly) and disarmed the anarchist squads of Pyotr Ivanovich Zhebenev.
We chose a room on the ground floor next to the storage room, just one barred window towards Voznesensky Lane (the second from the corner of the house), ordinary striped wallpaper, a vaulted ceiling, a dim light bulb under the ceiling. We decide to park a truck in the yard outside the house (the yard is formed by an additional external fence on the side of the avenue and alley) and start the engine before the execution in order to drown out the noise from the shots in the room. Yurovsky had already warned the outside guards not to worry if they heard shots inside the house; then we distributed revolvers to the Latvians of the internal security - we considered it reasonable to involve them in the operation so as not to shoot some members of the Romanov family in front of others. Three Latvians refused to participate in the execution. The head of security, Pavel Spiridonovich Medvedev, returned their revolvers to the commandant’s room. There were seven Latvians left in the detachment.
Long after midnight, Yakov Mikhailovich goes into the rooms of Doctor Botkin and the Tsar, asks them to dress, wash and be ready to go down to the semi-basement shelter. It takes about an hour for the Romanovs to get themselves in order after sleep, and finally - around three o'clock in the morning - they are ready. Yurovsky invites us to take the remaining five revolvers. Pyotr Ermakov takes two revolvers and puts them in his belt; Grigory Nikulin and Pavel Medvedev each take a revolver. I refuse, since I already have two pistols: an American Colt in a holster on my belt, and a Belgian Browning behind my belt (both historical pistols - Browning No. 389965 and a Colt 45 caliber, government model "C" No. 78517 - I saved until today). Yurovsky first takes the remaining revolver (he has a ten-round Mauser in his holster), but then gives it to Ermakov, and he tucks a third revolver into his belt. We all involuntarily smile, looking at his warlike appearance.
We go out onto the landing of the second floor. Yurovsky goes to the Tsar’s chambers, then returns - following him in single file: Nicholas II (he is carrying Alexei in his arms, the boy has blood clotting, he has bruised his leg somewhere and cannot yet walk on his own), following the Tsar, rustling their skirts, a queen dressed in a corset, followed by four daughters (of whom I know by sight only the youngest, plump Anastasia and the older one, Tatyana, who, according to Yurovsky’s dagger version, was entrusted to me until I fought the tsar himself from Ermakov), men follow the girls: doctor Botkin, cook, footman, the queen's tall maid carries white pillows. On the landing there is a stuffed bear with two cubs. For some reason, everyone crosses themselves when passing by the scarecrow before going down. Following the procession, Pavel Medvedev, Grisha Nikulin, seven Latvians (two of them have rifles with fixed bayonets on their shoulders) follow the stairs; Ermakov and I complete the procession.
When everyone entered the lower room (the house has a very strange arrangement of passages, so we first had to go out into the courtyard of the mansion and then re-enter the first floor), it turned out that the room was very small. Yurovsky and Nikulin brought three chairs - the last thrones of the condemned dynasty. On one of them, closer to the right arch, the queen sat on a cushion, followed by her three eldest daughters. For some reason, the youngest, Anastasia, went to the maid, who was leaning against the frame of the locked door to the next storage room. A chair was placed in the middle of the room for the heir, Nicholas II sat on the chair to the right, and Doctor Botkin stood behind Alexei’s chair. The cook and footman respectfully moved to the arch pillar in the left corner of the room and stood against the wall. The light from the light bulb is so weak that the two female figures standing at the opposite closed door at times seem to be silhouettes, and only in the hands of the maid do two large pillows become clearly white.
The Romanovs are completely calm - no suspicions. Nicholas II, the Tsarina and Botkin carefully examine me and Ermakov, as if they were new people in this house. Yurovsky calls Pavel Medvedev away, and both go into the next room. Now to my left, opposite Tsarevich Alexei, stands Grisha Nikulin, opposite me is the Tsar, to my right is Pyotr Ermakov, behind him is an empty space where a detachment of Latvians should stand.
Yurovsky quickly enters and stands next to me. The king looks at him questioningly. I hear the loud voice of Yakov Mikhailovich:
I ask everyone to stand up!
Nicholas II stood up easily, in a military manner; Alexandra Feodorovna reluctantly rose from her chair, her eyes flashing angrily. A detachment of Latvians entered the room and lined up just opposite her and her daughters: five people in the first row, and two with rifles in the second. The queen crossed herself. It became so quiet that from the yard through the window you could hear the rumble of a truck engine. Yurovsky steps forward half a step and addresses the Tsar:
Nikolai Alexandrovich! The attempts of 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 chops the air with his hand: - ... we have been entrusted with the mission of putting an end to the house of the Romanovs!
Women's screams: “Oh my God! Oh! Oh!" Nicholas II quickly mutters:
Oh my God! Oh my God! What is this?!
But what is it! - says Yurovsky, taking the Mauser out of his holster.
So they won't take us anywhere? - Botkin asks in a dull voice.
Yurovsky wants to answer him something, but I’m already pulling the trigger on my Browning and putting the first bullet into the Tsar. Simultaneously with my second shot, the first volley of Latvians and my comrades is heard from right and left. Yurovsky and Ermakov also shoot in the chest of Nicholas II, almost in the ear. On my fifth shot, Nicholas II falls in a sheaf on his back.
Female squeals and moans; I see Botkin fall, the footman slumps against the wall and the cook collapses on his knees. The white pillow moved from the door to the right corner of the room. In the powder smoke from the screaming women's group rushed towards the closed door female figure and immediately falls, struck by the shots of Ermakov, who is firing from the second revolver. You can hear bullets ricocheting off stone pillars and limestone dust flying. Nothing is visible in the room because of the smoke - the shooting is already on the barely visible falling silhouettes in the right corner. The screams have died down, but the shots are still roaring - Ermakov is firing from the third revolver. Yurovsky's voice is heard:
Stop! Stop shooting!
Silence. Ringing in my ears. One of the Red Army soldiers was wounded in the finger and in the neck - either by a ricochet, or in the powder fog, the Latvians from the second row burned with bullets from rifles. The veil of smoke and dust is thinning. Yakov Mikhailovich invites Ermakov and me, as representatives of the Red Army, to witness the death of every member of the royal family. Suddenly, from the right corner of the room, where the pillow moved, a woman’s joyful cry:
God bless! God saved me!
Staggering, the surviving maid rises - she covered herself with pillows, in the fluff of which the bullets were stuck. The Latvians have already shot all their cartridges, then two people with rifles approach her through the lying bodies and pin the maid with bayonets. From her dying cry, the slightly wounded Alexei woke up and began to moan frequently - he was lying on a chair. Yurovsky approaches him and fires the last three bullets from his Mauser. The guy fell silent and slowly slid to the floor at his father’s feet. Ermakov and I feel Nikolai’s pulse - he is all riddled with bullets, dead. We inspect the rest and finish shooting Tatyana and Anastasia, still alive, from the Colt and the Ermakov revolver. Now everyone is lifeless.
Security chief Pavel Spiridonovich Medvedev approaches Yurovsky and reports that shots were heard in the courtyard of the house. He brought the Red Army internal guards to carry the corpses and blankets on which to carry them to the car. Yakov Mikhailovich instructs me to oversee the transfer of corpses and loading into the car. We lay the first one on a blanket, lying in a pool of blood, Nicholas II. Red Army soldiers carry the remains of the emperor into the courtyard. I'm going after them. In the passage room I see Pavel Medvedev - he is deathly pale and vomiting, I ask if he is wounded, but Pavel is silent and waves his hand.
I meet Philip Goloshchekin near the truck.
Where have you been? - I ask him.
I walked around the square. I heard shots. It was audible. - He bent over the king.
The end, you say, of the Romanov dynasty?! Yes... The Red Army soldier brought Anastasia's lap dog on a bayonet - when we walked past the door (to the stairs to the second floor), a long, plaintive howl was heard from behind the doors - the last salute to the All-Russian Emperor. The dog's corpse was thrown next to the king's.
Dogs - dog death! - Goloshchekin said contemptuously.
I asked Philip and the driver to stand by the car while they carried the corpses. Someone dragged a roll of soldier's cloth, one end of it was spread on sawdust in the back of a truck - they began to lay the executed people on the cloth.
I accompany each corpse: now they have already figured out how to tie some kind of stretcher from two thick sticks and blankets. I notice that in the room, during the laying down, the Red Army soldiers remove rings and brooches from the corpses and hide them in their pockets. After everyone is put in the back, I advise Yurovsky to search the porters.
Let’s make it easier,” he says and orders everyone to go up to the second floor to the commandant’s room. He lines up the Red Army soldiers and says: “He suggested putting all the jewelry taken from the Romanovs out of their pockets on the table.” Half a minute to think. Then I will search everyone I find - shot on the spot! I will not allow looting. Do you understand everything?
Yes, we just took it as a souvenir of the event,” the Red Army soldiers make an embarrassed noise. - So that it doesn’t disappear.
Every minute a pile of gold things appears on the table: diamond brooches, pearl necklaces, wedding rings, diamond pins, gold pocket watches of Nicholas II and Doctor Botkin and other items.
The soldiers went to wash the floors in the lower room and adjacent to it. I go down to the truck, count the corpses again - all eleven are in place - and cover them with the free end of the cloth. Ermakov sits down with the driver, and several security men with rifles climb into the back. The car moves off, drives out of the wooden gate of the outer fence, turns right and carries the remains of the Romanovs out of town along Voznesensky Lane through the sleeping city.
Beyond Verkh-Isetsk, a few miles from the village of Koptyaki, the car stopped in a large clearing, in which some overgrown holes appeared black. They lit a fire to warm themselves up; those riding in the back of the truck were chilled. Then they began to take turns carrying the corpses to the abandoned mine and tearing off their clothes. Ermakov sent Red Army soldiers onto the road so that no one from the nearby village would be allowed through. Those shot were lowered onto ropes into the shaft of the mine - first the Romanovs, then the servants. The sun had already come out when they began to throw bloody clothes into the fire. ...Suddenly a stream of diamonds sprayed out of one of the ladies' bras. They trampled the fire and began to pick out jewelry from the ashes and from the ground. In two more bras, diamonds, pearls, and some colored precious stones were found sewn into the lining.
A car rattled on the road. Yurovsky and Goloshchekin drove up in a passenger car. We looked into the mine. At first they wanted to cover the corpses with sand, but then Yurovsky said that let them drown in the water at the bottom - anyway, no one would look for them here, since this is an area of abandoned mines, and there are a lot of shafts here. Just in case, we decided to collapse top part cage (Yurovsky brought a box of grenades), but then they thought: explosions would be heard in the village, and fresh destruction would be noticeable. They simply filled the mine with old branches, twigs, and rotten boards found nearby. Ermakov's truck and Yurovsky's car set off on their way back. It was a hot day, everyone was exhausted to the limit, they had difficulty fighting sleep, no one had eaten anything for almost a day.
The next day - July 18, 1918 - the Ural Regional Cheka received information that all of Verkh-Isetsk was talking only about the execution of Nicholas II and that the corpses were thrown into abandoned mines near the village of Koptyaki. So much for conspiracy! It could only be that one of the participants in the burial told his wife in secret, and she told the gossip, and it went around the whole district.
Yurovsky was summoned to the Cheka board. They decided to send the car with Yurovsky and Ermakov to the mine that same night, pull out all the corpses and burn them. From the Ural Regional Cheka, my friend, board member Isai Idelevich Rodzinsky, was assigned to the operation.
So, the night came from July 18 to 19, 1918. At midnight, a truck with security officers Rodzinsky, Yurovsky, Ermakov, sailor Vaganov, sailors and Red Army soldiers (six or seven people in total) left for the area of abandoned mines. In the back were barrels of gasoline and boxes of concentrated sulfuric acid in bottles for disfiguring corpses.
Everything that I will tell about the re-burial operation, I say from the words of my friends: the late Yakov Yurovsky and the now living Isai Rodzinsky, whose detailed memories must certainly be recorded for history, since Isai is the only person who survived from the participants in this operation, who today can identify the place where the remains of the Romanovs are buried. It is also necessary to record the memories of my friend Grigory Petrovich Nikulin, who knows the details of the liquidation of the Grand Dukes in Alapaevsk and Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich Romanov in Perm.
We drove up to the mine, lowered two sailors on ropes - Vaganov and another - to the bottom of the mine shaft, where there was a small platform-ledge. When all those shot were pulled out of the water by the feet with ropes to the surface and laid in a row on the grass, and the security officers sat down to rest, it became clear how frivolous the first burial was. Before them lay ready-made “miraculous relics”: ice water The mines not only washed away the blood completely, but also froze the bodies so much that they looked as if they were alive - a blush even appeared on the faces of the king, girls and women. Undoubtedly, the Romanovs could have been preserved in such excellent condition in a mine refrigerator for more than one month, and, let me remind you, there were only a few days left before the fall of Yekaterinburg.
It was beginning to get light. Along the road from the village of Koptyaki, the first carts headed to the Verkh-Isetsky bazaar. The sent outposts of Red Army soldiers blocked the road at both ends, explaining to the peasants that the passage was temporarily closed because criminals had escaped from prison, the area was cordoned off by troops and the forest was being combed. The carts were turned back.
The guys didn’t have a ready-made burial plan, where to take the corpses, and no one knew where to hide them either. Therefore, we decided to try to burn at least some of those executed so that their number would be less than eleven. They took the bodies of Nicholas II, Alexei, the Tsarina, and Doctor Botkin, doused them with gasoline and set them on fire. The frozen corpses smoked, stank, hissed, but did not burn. Then they decided to bury the remains of the Romanovs somewhere. They put all eleven bodies (four of them burnt) into the back of the truck, drove onto the Koptyakovskaya road and turned towards Verkh-Isetsk. Not far from the crossing (apparently, through the Gorno-Uralskaya railway, - on the map, check the location with I. I. Rodzinsky) in a swampy lowland, the car skidded in the mud - neither forward nor backward. No matter how much they fought, they didn’t move. They brought boards from the railway guard's house at the crossing and with difficulty pushed the truck out of the resulting swampy hole. And suddenly someone (Ya. M. Yurovsky told me in 1933 that it was Rodzinsky) had an idea: this hole on the road itself is an ideal secret mass grave for the last Romanovs!
We deepened the hole with shovels until it reached black peat water. There, the corpses were lowered into a swampy bog, doused with sulfuric acid, and covered with earth. The moving truck brought a dozen old impregnated railroad sleepers - they made a flooring out of them over the pit, and drove the car over it several times. The sleepers were pressed a little into the ground and became dirty, as if they had always been there.
Thus, in a random swampy hole, the last members of the royal Romanov dynasty, a dynasty that tyrannized Russia for three hundred and five years, found a worthy rest! The new revolutionary government made no exception for the crowned robbers of the Russian land: they were buried the way highway robbers were buried in Rus' from ancient times - without a cross or a tombstone, so as not to stop the gaze of those walking along this road to a new life.
On the same day, Ya. M. Yurovsky and G. P. Nikulin went to Moscow through Perm to V. I. Lenin and Ya. M. Sverdlov with a report on the liquidation of the Romanovs. In addition to a bag of diamonds and other jewelry, they carried all the diaries and correspondence of the royal family found in Ipatiev’s house, photo albums of the royal family’s stay in Tobolsk (the king was a passionate amateur photographer), as well as those two letters in red ink that were compiled by Beloborodov and Voikov to ascertain the mood royal family. According to Beloborodov, now these two documents were supposed to prove to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee the existence of an officer organization whose goal was to kidnap the royal family. Alexander feared that V.I. Lenin would bring him to justice for his arbitrariness in executing the Romanovs without the sanction of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In addition, Yurovsky and Nikulin had to personally tell Ya. M. Sverdlov the situation in Yekaterinburg and the circumstances that forced the Ural Regional Council to make a decision to liquidate the Romanovs.
At the same time, Beloborodov, Safarov and Goloshchekin decided to announce the execution of only one Nicholas II, adding that the family had been taken away and hidden in a safe place
On the evening of July 20, 1918, I saw Beloborodov, and he told me that he had received a telegram from Ya. M. Sverdlov. At a meeting on July 18, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided: to consider the decision of the Ural Regional Council to liquidate the Romanovs correct. Alexander and I hugged and congratulated each other, which means that Moscow understood the complexity of the situation, and therefore Lenin approved of our actions. That same evening, Philip Goloshchekin publicly announced for the first time at a meeting of the Regional Council of the Urals the execution of Nicholas II. There was no end to the jubilation of the listeners; the workers' spirits rose.
A day or two later, a message appeared in Yekaterinburg newspapers that Nicholas II had been shot by the verdict of the people, and the royal family had been taken out of the city and hidden in a safe place. I don’t know the true goals of Beloborodov’s maneuver, but I assume that the regional Council of the Urals did not want to inform the city population about the execution of women and children. Perhaps there were some other considerations, but neither I nor Yurovsky (with whom I often saw each other in Moscow in the early 1930s, and we talked a lot about Romanov history) were aware of them. One way or another, this deliberately false report in the press gave rise to rumors among the people that persist to this day about the rescue of the royal children, the flight abroad of the king’s daughter Anastasia and other legends.
Thus ended the secret operation to rid Russia of the Romanov dynasty. It was so successful that to this day neither the secret of Ipatiev’s house nor the burial place of the royal family has been revealed.