“The world will never know what we did to them,” boasted one of the executioners, Peter Voikov. But it turned out differently. Over the next 100 years, the truth has found its way, and today a majestic temple has been built at the site of the murder.

Tells about the reasons and main characters of the murder of the royal family Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Lavrov.

Maria Pozdnyakova,« AiF“: It is known that the Bolsheviks were going to hold a trial of Nicholas II, but then abandoned this idea. Why?

Vladimir Lavrov: Indeed, the Soviet government, led by Lenin in January 1918 announced that the trial of the former emperor Nicholas II will. It was assumed that the main accusation would be Bloody Sunday - January 9, 1905. However, Lenin in the end could not help but realize that that tragedy did not guarantee a death sentence. Firstly, Nicholas II did not give the order to shoot the workers; he was not in St. Petersburg at all that day. And secondly, by that time the Bolsheviks themselves had soiled themselves with “Bloody Friday”: on January 5, 1918, a peaceful demonstration of many thousands in support of the Constituent Assembly was shot in Petrograd. Moreover, they were shot in the same places where people died on Bloody Sunday. How can one then throw it in the king’s face that he is bloody? And Lenin with Dzerzhinsky then which ones?

But let’s assume that you can find fault with any head of state. But what is my fault? Alexandra Fedorovna? Is that the wife? Why should the sovereign’s children be judged? The women and the teenager would have to be released from custody right there in the courtroom, admitting that the Soviet government repressed the innocent.

In March 1918, the Bolsheviks concluded a separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the German aggressors. The Bolsheviks gave up Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states, and pledged to demobilize the army and navy and pay indemnity in gold. Nicholas II, at a public trial after such a peace, could turn from an accused into an accuser, qualifying the actions of the Bolsheviks themselves as treason. In a word, Lenin did not dare to sue Nicholas II.

Izvestia of July 19, 1918 opened with this publication. Photo: Public Domain

- IN Soviet time The execution of the royal family was presented as an initiative of the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks. But who is really responsible for this crime?

— In the 1960s. former security guard of Lenin Akimov said that he personally sent a telegram from Vladimir Ilyich to Yekaterinburg with a direct order to shoot the Tsar. This evidence confirmed the memories Yurovsky, commandant of the Ipatiev House, and the head of his security Ermakova, who previously admitted that they had received a death telegram from Moscow.

Also revealed was the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated May 19, 1918 with instructions Yakov Sverdlov deal with the case of Nicholas II. Therefore, the tsar and his family were sent specifically to Yekaterinburg - Sverdlov’s patrimony, where all his friends from underground work in pre-revolutionary Russia were. On the eve of the massacre, one of the leaders of the Yekaterinburg communists Goloshchekin came to Moscow, lived in Sverdlov’s apartment, received instructions from him.

The day after the massacre, July 18, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee announced that Nicholas II had been shot, and his wife and children were evacuated to safe place. That is, Sverdlov and Lenin deceived the Soviet people by declaring that their wife and children were alive. They deceived us because they understood perfectly well: in the eyes of the public, killing innocent women and a 13-year-old boy is a terrible crime.

— There is a version that the family was killed because of the advance of the whites. They say that the White Guards could return the Romanovs to the throne.

- None of the leaders white movement did not intend to restore the monarchy in Russia. In addition, White's offensive was not lightning fast. The Bolsheviks themselves evacuated themselves perfectly and seized their property. So it was not difficult to take out the royal family.

The real reason for the destruction of the family of Nicholas II is different: they were a living symbol of the great millennium Orthodox Russia, which Lenin hated. In addition, in June-July 1918, a large-scale outbreak broke out in the country. Civil War. Lenin needed to unite his party. The murder of the royal family was a demonstration that the Rubicon had been passed: either we win at any cost, or we will have to answer for everything.

— Did the royal family have a chance of salvation?

- Yes, if their English relatives had not betrayed them. In March 1917, when the family of Nicholas II was under arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government Miliukov suggested the option of her going to the UK. Nicholas II agreed to leave. A George V, the English king and at the same time the cousin of Nicholas II, agreed to accept the Romanov family. But within a matter of days, George V took back his royal word. Although in letters George V swore to Nicholas II of his friendship until the end of days! The British betrayed not just the Tsar of a foreign power - they betrayed their close relatives, Alexandra Feodorovna is the beloved granddaughter of the English Queen Victoria. But George V, also Victoria’s grandson, obviously did not want Nicholas II to remain a living center of gravity for Russian patriotic forces. The revival of a strong Russia was not in Britain's interests. And the family of Nicholas II had no other options to save themselves.

— Did the royal family understand that its days were numbered?

- Yes. Even the children understood that death was approaching. Alexei once said: “If they kill, at least they don’t torture.” As if he had a presentiment that death at the hands of the Bolsheviks would be painful. But even the killers’ revelations do not tell the whole truth. No wonder the regicide Voikov said: “The world will never know what we did to them.”

It would seem difficult to find new evidence of the terrible events that occurred on the night of July 16-17, 1918. Even people far from the ideas of monarchism remember that this night became fatal for the Romanov royal family. That night, Nicholas II, who abdicated the throne, the former Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and their children - 14-year-old Alexei, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia - were shot.

Their fate was shared by the doctor E.S. Botkin, the maid A. Demidov, the cook Kharitonov and the footman. But from time to time there are witnesses who, after many years of silence, report new details of the murder of the royal family.

Many books have been written about the execution of the Romanov royal family. To this day, discussions continue about whether the murder of the Romanovs was pre-planned and whether it was part of Lenin’s plans. And in our time there are people who believe that at least the children of Nicholas II were able to escape from the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg.

The accusation of murdering the Romanov royal family was an excellent trump card against the Bolsheviks, giving grounds to accuse them of inhumanity. Is this why most of the documents and evidence that tell about the last days of the Romanovs appeared and continue to appear precisely in Western countries? But some researchers believe that the crime for which Bolshevik Russia was accused was not committed at all...

From the very beginning, there were many secrets in the investigation into the circumstances of the execution of the Romanovs. Two investigators were working on it relatively quickly. The first investigation began a week after the alleged murder. The investigator came to the conclusion that the emperor was in fact executed on the night of July 16-17, but the lives of the former queen, her son and four daughters were spared. At the beginning of 1919, a new investigation was carried out. It was headed by Nikolai Sokolov. Was he able to find indisputable evidence that the entire Romanov family was killed in Yekaterinburg? Hard to say…

While inspecting the mine where the bodies of the royal family were dumped, he found several things that for some reason did not catch the eye of his predecessor: a miniature pin, which the prince used as a fishing hook, gems, which were sewn into the belts of the Grand Duchesses, and the skeleton of a tiny dog, probably the favorite of Princess Tatiana. If we remember the circumstances of the death of the royal family, it is difficult to imagine that the corpse of the dog was also transported from place to place in order to hide... Sokolov did not find human remains, except for several fragments of bones and the severed finger of a middle-aged woman, presumably the empress.

1919 - Sokolov fled abroad, to Europe. But the results of his investigation were published only in 1924. Quite a long time, especially considering the many emigrants who were interested in the fate of the Romanovs. According to Sokolov, all the Romanovs were killed on that fateful night. True, he was not the first to suggest that the empress and her children could not escape. Back in 1921, this version was published by the Chairman of the Yekaterinburg Council Pavel Bykov. It would seem that one could forget about hopes that any of the Romanovs survived. But both in Europe and in Russia, numerous impostors and pretenders constantly appeared who declared themselves children of the emperor. So, there were still doubts?

The first argument of supporters of revising the version of the death of the entire Romanov family was the announcement of the Bolsheviks about the execution of Nicholas II, which was made on July 19. It said that only the tsar was executed, and Alexandra Feodorovna and her children were sent to a safe place. The second is that at that time it was more profitable for the Bolsheviks to exchange Alexandra Feodorovna for political prisoners held in German captivity. There were rumors about negotiations on this topic. Sir Charles Eliot, the British consul in Siberia, visited Yekaterinburg shortly after the death of the emperor. He met with the first investigator in the Romanov case, after which he informed his superiors that, in his opinion, the former Tsarina and her children left Yekaterinburg by train on July 17.

Almost at the same time, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, Alexandra's brother, allegedly informed his second sister, the Marchioness of Milford Haven, that Alexandra was safe. Of course, he could simply console his sister, who could not help but hear rumors about the reprisal against the Romanovs. If Alexandra and her children had actually been exchanged for political prisoners (Germany would have willingly taken this step to save its princess), all the newspapers of both the Old and New Worlds would have trumpeted about it. This would mean that the dynasty, linked by blood ties to many of the oldest monarchies in Europe, was not interrupted. But no articles followed, so the version that the entire royal family was killed was recognized as official.

In the early 1970s, English journalists Anthony Summers and Tom Menschld familiarized themselves with the official documents of the Sokolov investigation. And they found many inaccuracies and shortcomings in them that cast doubt on this version. Firstly, an encrypted telegram about the execution of the entire royal family, sent to Moscow on July 17, appeared in the case only in January 1919, after the dismissal of the first investigator. Secondly, the bodies have still not been found. And judging the death of the empress by a single fragment of her body - a severed finger - was not entirely correct.

1988 - seemingly irrefutable evidence of the death of the emperor, his wife and children appeared. Former investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, screenwriter Geliy Ryabov, received a secret report from the son of Yakov Yurovsky (one of the main participants in the execution). It contained detailed information about where the remains of members of the royal family were hidden. Ryabov began searching. He was able to discover greenish-black bones with burn marks left by the acid. 1988 - He published a report on his discovery. 1991, July - Russian professional archaeologists arrived at the place where the remains, presumably belonging to the Romanovs, were found.

9 skeletons were recovered from the ground. 4 of them belonged to Nicholas's servants and their family doctor. Another 5 - to the king, his wife and children. It was not easy to determine the identity of the remains. First, the skulls were compared with surviving photographs of members of the imperial family. One of them was identified as the emperor's skull. Later, a comparative analysis of DNA fingerprints was carried out. For this, the blood of a person who was related to the deceased was needed. The blood sample was provided by Britain's Prince Philip. His maternal grandmother was the sister of the empress’s grandmother.

The result of the analysis showed a complete DNA match between the four skeletons, which gave grounds to officially recognize them as the remains of Alexandra and her three daughters. The bodies of the crown prince and Anastasia were not found. Two hypotheses were put forward about this: either two descendants of the Romanov family still managed to survive, or their bodies were burned. It seems that Sokolov was right after all, and his report turned out to be not a provocation, but a real coverage of the facts...

1998 - the remains of the Romanov family were transported with honors to St. Petersburg and buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. True, there were immediately skeptics who were sure that the cathedral contained the remains of completely different people.

2006 – another DNA analysis was carried out. This time, samples of skeletons found in the Urals were compared with fragments of the relics of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. A series of studies was carried out by Doctor of Sciences, employee of the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences L. Zhivotovsky. His American colleagues helped him. The results of this analysis were a complete surprise: the DNA of Elizabeth and the would-be empress did not match. The first thought that came to the researchers’ minds was that the relics stored in the cathedral actually did not belong to Elizabeth, but to someone else. However, this version had to be excluded: Elizabeth’s body was discovered in a mine near Alapaevsk in the fall of 1918, she was identified by people who were closely acquainted with her, including the confessor of the Grand Duchess, Father Seraphim.

This priest subsequently accompanied the coffin with the body of his spiritual daughter to Jerusalem and would not allow any substitution. This meant that, as a last resort, one body no longer belonged to members of the Romanov family. Later, doubts arose about the identity of the remaining remains. The skull, which had previously been identified as the emperor's skull, was missing callus, which could not disappear even so many years after death. This mark appeared on the skull of Nicholas II after the assassination attempt on him in Japan. Yurovsky's protocol stated that the tsar was killed at point-blank range, with the executioner shooting in the head. Even taking into account the imperfection of the weapon, there would certainly have been at least one bullet hole left in the skull. However, it does not have both inlet and outlet holes.

It is possible that the 1993 reports were fraudulent. Need to discover the remains of the royal family? Please, here they are. Carry out an examination to prove their authenticity? Here is the result of the examination! In the 1990s, there were all conditions for myth-making. It is not for nothing that the Russian Orthodox Church was so cautious, not wanting to recognize the discovered bones and count the emperor and his family among the martyrs...

Conversations began again that the Romanovs were not killed, but hidden in order to be used in some kind of political game in the future. Could Nikolai live in the Soviet Union under a false name with his family? On the one hand, this option cannot be excluded. The country is huge, there are many corners in it where no one would recognize Nicholas. The Romanov family could have been placed in some kind of shelter, where they would have been completely isolated from contact with the outside world, and therefore not dangerous.

On the other hand, even if the remains discovered near Yekaterinburg are the result of falsification, this does not mean at all that the execution did not take place. They have been able to destroy the bodies of dead enemies and scatter their ashes since time immemorial. To burn a human body, you need 300–400 kg of wood - in India every day thousands of dead are buried using the burning method. So, really, the killers, who had an unlimited supply of firewood and a fair amount of acid, could not hide all traces? Relatively not so long ago, in the fall of 2010, during work in the vicinity of the Old Koptyakovskaya road in the Sverdlovsk region. discovered places where the killers hid jugs of acid. If there was no execution, where did they come from in the Ural wilderness?

Attempts to reconstruct the events that preceded the execution were made repeatedly. As you know, after the abdication, the royal family was settled in the Alexander Palace, in August they were transported to Tobolsk, and later to Yekaterinburg, to the notorious Ipatiev House.

Aviation engineer Pyotr Duz was sent to Sverdlovsk in the fall of 1941. One of his duties in the rear was the publication of textbooks and manuals to supply the country's military universities. While getting acquainted with the property of the publishing house, Duz ended up in the Ipatiev House, in which several nuns and two elderly female archivists then lived. While inspecting the premises, Duz, accompanied by one of the women, went down to the basement and drew attention to strange grooves on the ceiling, which ended in deep recesses...

As part of his work, Peter often visited the Ipatiev House. Apparently, the elderly employees felt confidence in him, because one evening they showed him a small closet, in which, right on the wall, on rusty nails, hung a white glove, a lady’s fan, a ring, several buttons of different sizes... On a chair lay a small Bible on French and a couple of books in antique bindings. According to one of the women, all these things once belonged to members of the royal family.

She also spoke about the last days of the Romanovs’ life, which, according to her, were unbearable. The security officers who guarded the prisoners behaved incredibly rudely. All the windows in the house were boarded up. The security officers explained that these measures were taken for security purposes, but Duzya’s interlocutor was convinced that this was one of a thousand ways to humiliate the “former”. It should be noted that the security officers had reasons for concern. According to the archivist’s recollections, the Ipatiev House was besieged every morning (!) by local residents and monks who tried to convey notes to the Tsar and his relatives and offered to help with household chores.

Of course, this does not justify the behavior of the security officers, but any intelligence officer entrusted with the protection of an important person is simply obliged to limit his contacts with the outside world. But the behavior of the guards was not limited to “not allowing sympathizers” to the members of the Romanov family. Many of their antics were simply outrageous. They took particular pleasure in shocking Nikolai's daughters. They wrote obscene words on the fence and the toilet located in the yard, and tried to watch for girls in the dark corridors. No one has mentioned such details yet. That’s why Duz listened carefully to his interlocutor’s story. She also reported a lot of new things about the last minutes of the life of the imperial family.

The Romanovs were ordered to go down to the basement. The emperor asked to bring a chair for his wife. Then one of the guards left the room, and Yurovsky took out a revolver and began to line everyone up in one line. Most versions say that the executioners fired in volleys. But the inhabitants of the Ipatiev house recalled that the shots were chaotic.

Nikolai was killed immediately. But his wife and the princesses were destined for a more difficult death. The fact is that diamonds were sewn into their corsets. In some places they were located in several layers. The bullets ricocheted off this layer and went into the ceiling. The execution dragged on. When the Grand Duchesses were already lying on the floor, they were considered dead. But when they began to lift one of them to load the body into the car, the princess groaned and moved. Therefore, the security officers began to finish off her and her sisters with bayonets.

After the execution, no one was allowed into the Ipatiev House for several days - apparently, attempts to destroy the bodies took a lot of time. A week later, the security officers allowed several nuns to enter the house - the premises needed to be restored to order. Among them was the interlocutor Duzya. According to him, she recalled with horror the picture that opened in the basement of the Ipatiev House. There were many bullet holes on the walls, and the floor and walls in the room where the execution took place were covered in blood.

Subsequently, experts from the Main State Center for Forensic Medical and Forensic Examinations of the Russian Ministry of Defense reconstructed the picture of the execution to the minute and to the millimeter. Using a computer, relying on the testimony of Grigory Nikulin and Anatoly Yakimov, they established where and at what moment the executioners and their victims were. Computer reconstruction showed that the Empress and the Grand Duchesses tried to shield Nicholas from the bullets.

Ballistic examination established many details: what weapons were used to kill the members of the imperial family, and approximately how many shots were fired. The security officers needed to pull the trigger at least 30 times...

Every year the chances of discovering the real remains of the Romanov royal family (if we recognize the Yekaterinburg skeletons as fakes) are dwindling. This means that the hope of ever finding an exact answer to the questions is fading: who died in the basement of the Ipatiev House, whether any of the Romanovs managed to escape, and what was the further fate of the heirs to the Russian throne...

Exactly 100 years ago, on July 17, 1918, security officers shot the royal family in Yekaterinburg. 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 the exploits of the Soviet police, so he 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. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad 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 had acquired 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 of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Solovyov, who led the investigation. 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.

Execution of the royal family(former Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family) was carried out in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 16-17, 1918 in pursuance of the resolution of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, headed by the Bolsheviks. Along with the royal family, members of her retinue were also shot.

Most modern historians agree that the fundamental decision to execute Nicholas II was made in Moscow (they usually point to the leaders of Soviet Russia, Sverdlov and Lenin). However, there is no unity among modern historians on the questions of whether sanction was given for the execution of Nicholas II without trial (which actually happened), and whether sanction was given for the execution of the entire family.

There is also no consensus among lawyers about whether the execution was sanctioned by the top Soviet leadership. If forensic expert Yu. Zhuk considers it an undeniable fact that the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council acted in accordance with the instructions of the top officials of the Soviet state, then the senior investigator for particularly important cases of the SKP Russian Federation V. N. Solovyov, who since 1993 led the investigation into the circumstances of the murder of the royal family, in his interviews in 2008-2011 claimed that the execution of Nicholas II and his family was carried out without the sanction of Lenin and Sverdlov.

Since before the decision of the Presidium Supreme Court Russia on October 1, 2008, it was believed that the Ural Regional Council was not a judicial or other body that had the authority to pass judgment on the events described for a long time were considered from a legal point of view not as political repression, but as murder, which prevented the posthumous rehabilitation of Nicholas II and his family.

The remains of five members of the imperial family, as well as their servants, were found in July 1991 near Yekaterinburg under the embankment of the Old Koptyakovskaya Road. During the investigation into the criminal case, which was conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, the remains were identified. 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.

Background

As a result February Revolution Nicholas II abdicated the throne and, together with his family, was under house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo. As A.F. Kerensky testified, when he, the Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government, just 5 days after the abdication, stood up to the podium of the Moscow Council, he was showered with a hail of shouts from the place demanding the execution of Nicholas II. He wrote in his memoirs: “The death penalty for Nicholas II and the sending of his family from the Alexander Palace to the Peter and Paul Fortress or Kronstadt - these were the furious, sometimes frantic demands of hundreds of all kinds of delegations, deputations and resolutions that appeared and presented them to the Provisional Government...”. In August 1917, Nicholas II and his family, by decision of the Provisional Government, were exiled to Tobolsk.

After the Bolsheviks came to power, at the beginning of 1918, the Soviet government discussed a proposal to hold an open trial of Nicholas II. Historian Latyshev writes that the idea of ​​​​trial Nicholas II was supported by Trotsky, but Lenin expressed doubts about the timeliness of such a trial. According to the People's Commissar of Justice Steinberg, the issue was postponed for an indefinite period, which never came.

According to historian V.M. Khrustalev, by the spring of 1918, the Bolshevik leaders had developed a plan to gather all representatives of the Romanov dynasty in the Urals, where they would be kept at a considerable distance from external dangers in the form of the German Empire and the Entente, and on the other hand, the Bolsheviks , who have strong political positions here, could keep the situation with the Romanovs under their control. In such a place, as the historian wrote, the Romanovs could be destroyed by finding a suitable reason for this. In April - May 1918, Nicholas II, together with his relatives, was taken under guard from Tobolsk to the “red capital of the Urals” - Yekaterinburg - where by that time other representatives of the imperial house of Romanov were already located. It was here in mid-July 1918, in the context of the rapid advance of anti-Soviet forces (the Czechoslovak Corps and the Siberian Army) approaching Yekaterinburg (and actually capturing it eight days later), the massacre of the royal family was carried out.

As one of the reasons for the execution, local Soviet authorities cited the discovery of a certain conspiracy, allegedly aimed at the release of Nicholas II. However, according to the recollections of members of the board of the Ural Regional Cheka I. I. Rodzinsky and M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), this conspiracy was in fact a provocation organized by the Ural Bolsheviks in order, according to modern researchers, to obtain grounds for extrajudicial reprisals.

Course of events

Link to Yekaterinburg

Historian A.N. Bokhanov writes that there are many hypotheses as to why the tsar and his family were transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg and whether he intended to flee; at the same time, A. N. Bokhanov considers it a definitely established fact that the move to Yekaterinburg stemmed from the Bolsheviks’ desire to tighten the regime and prepare for the liquidation of the tsar and his family.

At the same time, the Bolsheviks did not represent a homogeneous force.

On April 1, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to transfer the royal family to Moscow. The Ural authorities, who categorically objected to this decision, proposed to transfer her to Yekaterinburg. Perhaps as a result of the confrontation between Moscow and the Urals, a new decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of April 6, 1918 appeared, according to which all those arrested were sent to the Urals. Ultimately, the decisions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee boiled down to orders to prepare an open trial of Nicholas II and to move the royal family to Yekaterinburg. Vasily Yakovlev, specially authorized by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, was entrusted with organizing this move, whom Sverdlov knew well from joint revolutionary work during the years of the first Russian revolution.

Commissar Vasily Yakovlev (Myachin), sent from Moscow to Tobolsk, headed secret mission for the removal of the royal family to Yekaterinburg with the aim of subsequently transporting it to Moscow. Due to the illness of the son of Nicholas II, it was decided to leave all the children, except Maria, in Tobolsk in the hope of reuniting with them later.

On April 26, 1918, the Romanovs, guarded by machine gunners, left Tobolsk, and on April 27 in the evening they arrived in Tyumen. On April 30, a train from Tyumen arrived in Yekaterinburg, where Yakovlev handed over the imperial couple and daughter Maria to the head of the Urals Council A.G. Beloborodov. Together with the Romanovs, Prince V.A. Dolgorukov, E.S. Botkin, A.S. Demidova, T.I. Chemodurov, I.D. Sednev arrived in Yekaterinburg.

There is evidence that during the move of Nicholas II from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, the leadership of the Ural region tried to assassinate him. Beloborodov later wrote in his unfinished memoirs:

According to P. M. Bykov, at the 4th Ural Regional Conference of the RCP(b), which was taking place at that time in Yekaterinburg, “in a private meeting, the majority of local delegates spoke out for the need for the speedy execution of the Romanovs” in order to prevent attempts to restore the monarchy in Russia.

The confrontation that arose during the move from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg between the detachments sent from Yekaterinburg and Yakovlev, who became aware of the intention of the Urals to destroy Nicholas II, was resolved only through negotiations with Moscow, which were conducted by both sides. Moscow, represented by Sverdlov, demanded from the Ural leadership guarantees for the safety of the royal family, and only after they were given, Sverdlov confirmed the order previously given to Yakovlev to take the Romanovs to the Urals.

On May 23, 1918, the remaining children of Nicholas II arrived in Yekaterinburg, accompanied by a group of servants and retinue officials. A. E. Trupp, I. M. Kharitonov, I. D. Sednev’s nephew Leonid Sednev and K. G. Nagorny were allowed into Ipatiev’s house.

Immediately upon arrival in Yekaterinburg, the security officers arrested four people from among the persons accompanying the royal children: the Tsar’s adjutant Prince I.L. Tatishchev, Alexandra Fedorovna’s valet A.A. Volkov, her maid of honor Princess A.V. Gendrikova and the court lecturer E. A. Schneider. Tatishchev and Prince Dolgorukov, who arrived in Yekaterinburg along with the royal couple, were shot in Yekaterinburg. After the execution of the royal family, Gendrikova, Schneider and Volkov were transferred to Perm due to the evacuation of Yekaterinburg. There they were sentenced by the Cheka authorities to execution as hostages; On the night of September 3-4, 1918, Gendrikova and Schneider were shot; Volkov managed to escape straight from the place of execution.

According to the work of Communist P.M. Bykov, a participant in the events, Prince Dolgorukov, who, according to Bykov, behaved suspiciously, was found to have two maps of Siberia with the designation of waterways and “some special notes,” as well as a significant amount of money. His testimony convinced that he intended to organize the escape of the Romanovs from Tobolsk.

Most of the remaining members of the retinue were ordered to leave the Perm province. The heir's doctor, V.N. Derevenko, was allowed to stay in Yekaterinburg as a private person and examine the heir twice a week under the supervision of Avdeev, the commandant of the Ipatiev house.

Imprisonment in Ipatiev's house

The Romanov family was placed in a “special purpose house” - the requisitioned mansion of retired military engineer N. N. Ipatiev. Doctor E. S. Botkin, chamberlain A. E. Trupp, the Empress' maid A. S. Demidova, cook I. M. Kharitonov and cook Leonid Sednev lived here with the Romanov family.

The house is nice and clean. We were assigned four rooms: a corner bedroom, a restroom, next to it a dining room with windows into the garden and a view of the low-lying part of the city, and, finally, a spacious hall with an arch without doors.<…> We were accommodated as follows: Alix [the Empress], Maria and the three of me in the bedroom, a shared restroom, in the dining room - N[yuta] Demidova, in the hall - Botkin, Chemodurov and Sednev. Near the entrance is the room of the guard officer. The guard was located in two rooms near the dining room. To go to the bathroom and W.C. [water closet], you need to pass by the sentry at the door of the guardhouse. A very high board fence was built around the house, two fathoms from the windows; there was a chain of sentries there, and in the kindergarten too.

The royal family spent 78 days in their last home.

A.D. Avdeev was appointed commandant of the “special purpose house”.

Investigator Sokolov, who was entrusted by A.V. Kolchak in February 1919 to continue conducting the case of the murder of the Romanovs, was able to recreate a picture of the last months of the life of the royal family with the remnants of their retinue in Ipatiev’s house. In particular, Sokolov reconstructed the system of posts and their placement, and compiled a list of external and internal security.

One of the sources for investigator Sokolov was the testimony of the miraculously surviving member of the royal retinue, valet T.I. Chemodurov, who stated that “in the Ipatiev House, the regime was extremely difficult, and the attitude of the guards was downright outrageous.” Not fully trusting his testimony ( “I admitted that Chemodurov might not have been completely frank in his testimony to the authorities, and found out what he told other people about life in the Ipatiev House”), Sokolov double-checked them through the former head of the royal guard Kobylinsky, valet Volkov, as well as Gilliard and Gibbs. Sokolov also studied the testimony of some other former members of the royal retinue, including Pierre Gilliard, a French teacher originally from Switzerland. Gilliard himself was transported by the Latvian Svikke (Rodionov) to Yekaterinburg with the remaining royal children, but he was not placed in Ipatiev’s house.

In addition, after Yekaterinburg fell into the hands of the whites, some of the former guards of Ipatiev's house were found and interrogated, including Suetin, Latypov and Letemin. Detailed testimony was given by former security guard Proskuryakov and former guard guard Yakimov.

According to T. I. Chemodurov, immediately upon the arrival of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna at Ipatiev’s house, they were subjected to a search, and “one of those who carried out the search snatched the reticule from the hands of the Empress and caused the Sovereign to remark: “Until now I have dealt with honest and decent people."

The former head of the royal guard, Kobylinsky, according to Chemodurov, said: “a bowl was placed on the table; there were not enough spoons, knives, forks; Red Army soldiers also took part in the dinner; someone will come and reach into the bowl: “Well, that’s enough for you.” The princesses slept on the floor, since they did not have beds. A roll call was arranged. When the princesses went to the restroom, the Red Army soldiers, ostensibly on guard duty, followed them...” Witness Yakimov (who was leading the guard during the events) said that the guards sang songs “which, of course, were not pleasant for the Tsar”: “Together, comrades, in step,” “Let’s renounce the old world,” etc. Investigator Sokolov also writes that “the Ipatiev house itself speaks more eloquently than any words, how the prisoners lived here. Unusual in their cynicism, inscriptions and images with a constant theme: about Rasputin.” To top it all off, according to the testimony of witnesses interviewed by Sokolov, the working boy Faika Safonov defiantly sang obscene ditties right under the windows of the royal family.

Sokolov very negatively characterizes some of the guards of Ipatiev’s house, calling them “propagandaized scum from among the Russian people,” and the first commandant of Ipatiev’s house, Avdeev, “the most prominent representative of these scum of the working environment: a typical rally loudmouth, extremely clueless, deeply ignorant, a drunkard and a thief”.

There are also reports of the theft of royal belongings by guards. The guards also stole food sent to the arrested person by the nuns of the Novo-Tikhvin Convent.

Richard Pipes writes that the thefts of the royal property that began could not but worry Nicholas and Alexandra, since, among other things, there were boxes with their personal letters and diaries in the barn. In addition, writes Pipes, there are many stories about the rude treatment of members of the royal family by the guards: that the guards could afford to enter the princesses’ rooms at any time of the day, that they took away food and even that they pushed the former king. " Although such stories are not unfounded, they are much exaggerated. The commandant and the guards undoubtedly behaved rudely, but there is no evidence to support open abuse.“The amazing calm with which Nikolai and his family endured the hardships of captivity, noted by a number of authors, is explained by Pipes as a sense of self-esteem and “ fatalism rooted in their deep religiosity».

Provocation. Letters from an “Officer of the Russian Army”

On June 17, those arrested were informed that the nuns of the Novo-Tikhvin Monastery were allowed to deliver eggs, milk and cream to their table. As R. Pipes writes, on June 19 or 20, the royal family discovered a note in French in the cork of one of the bottles of cream:

Friends are not asleep and hope that the hour they have been waiting for so long has come. The Czechoslovak uprising poses an increasingly serious threat to the Bolsheviks. Samara, Chelyabinsk and all of eastern and western Siberia are under the control of the national Provisional Government. The friendly army of the Slavs is already eighty kilometers from Yekaterinburg, the resistance of the Red Army soldiers is unsuccessful. Be attentive to everything that happens outside, wait and hope. But at the same time, I beg you, be careful, because the Bolsheviks, while they have not yet been defeated, they pose a real and serious danger to you. Be ready at all times, day and night. Make a drawing your two rooms: location, furniture, beds. Write down the exact hour when you all go to bed. One of you must stay awake from 2 to 3 every night from now on. Answer in a few words, but please give the necessary information to your friends outside. Give the answer to the same soldier who will give you this note, in writing, but don't say a word. The one who is ready to die for you. Russian Army officer.

Original note Les amis ne dorment plus et espèrent que l'heure si longtemps attendue est arrivée. La révolte des tschekoslovaques menace les bolcheviks de plus en plus sérieusement. Samara, Tschelabinsk et toute la Sibirie orientale et occidentale est au pouvoir de gouvernement national provisoir. L'armée des amis slaves est à quatre-vingt kilometres d'Ekaterinbourg, les soldats de l armée rouge ne résistent pas efficassement. Soyez attentifs au tout mouvement de dehors, attendez et esperez. Mais en meme temps, je vous supplie, soyez prudents, parce que les bolcheviks avant d’etre vaincus represent pour vous le peril réel et serieux. Soyez prêts toutes les heures, la journée et la nuit. Faite le croquis des vos deux chambres, les places, des meubles, des lits. Écrivez bien l'heure quant vous allez coucher vous tous. L un de vous ne doit dormir de 2 à 3 heure toutes les nuits qui suivent. Répondez par quelques mots mais donnez, je vous en prie, tous les renseignements utiles pour vos amis de dehors. C’est au meme soldat qui vous transmet cette note qu’il faut donner votre reponse par écrit mais pas un seul mot. Un qui est prêt à mourir pour vous L'officier de l'armée Russe.

In the diary of Nicholas II, there even appears an entry dated June 14 (27), which reads: “The other day we received two letters, one after the other, [in which] we were informed that we should prepare to be kidnapped by some loyal people!” The research literature mentions four letters from the “officer” and the Romanovs’ responses to them.

In the third letter, received on June 26, the “Russian officer” asked to be on alert and wait for a signal. On the night of June 26-27, the royal family did not go to bed, “they stayed awake dressed.” In Nikolai’s diary there is an entry that “the waiting and uncertainty were very painful.”

We do not want and cannot RUN. We can only be kidnapped by force, just as we were brought from Tobolsk by force. Therefore, do not count on any active help from us. The commandant has many assistants, they change frequently and have become restless. They guard our prison and our lives vigilantly and treat us well. We wouldn't want them to suffer because of us or for you to suffer for us. Most importantly, for God's sake, avoid shedding blood. Collect information about them yourself. It is absolutely impossible to go down from the window without the help of a ladder. But even if we go down, there remains a huge danger, because the window of the commandant’s room is open and on the lower floor, the entrance to which leads from the yard, there is a machine gun. [Strikethrough: “Therefore, abandon the thought of kidnapping us.”] If you are watching us, you can always try to save us in case of imminent and real danger. We have absolutely no idea what is happening outside, since we do not receive any newspapers or letters. After they allowed us to open the window, the surveillance intensified and we cannot even stick our heads out of the window without the risk of getting a bullet in the face.

Richard Pipes draws attention to obvious oddities in this correspondence: the anonymous “Russian officer” was clearly supposed to be a monarchist, but addressed the Tsar as “vous” instead of “Your Majesty” ( "Votre Majesté"), and it is unclear how the monarchists could slip letters into traffic jams. The memoirs of the first commandant of the Ipatiev house, Avdeev, have been preserved, who reports that the security officers allegedly found the real author of the letter, the Serbian officer Magic. In reality, as Richard Pipes emphasizes, there was no Magic in Yekaterinburg. There was indeed a Serbian officer with a similar surname in the city, Micic Jarko Konstantinovich, but it is known that he arrived in Yekaterinburg only on July 4, when most of the correspondence had already ended.

The declassification of the memories of participants in the events in 1989-1992 finally clarified the picture of the mysterious letters of the unknown “Russian officer”. Participant in the execution M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) admitted that the correspondence was a provocation organized by the Ural Bolsheviks in order to test the readiness of the royal family to flee. After the Romanovs, according to Medvedev, spent two or three nights dressed, such readiness became obvious to him.

The author of the text was P. L. Voikov, who lived for some time in Geneva (Switzerland). The letters were copied out completely by I. Rodzinsky, since he had better handwriting. Rodzinsky himself states in his memoirs that “ my handwriting is in these documents».

Replacing Commandant Avdeev with Yurovsky

On July 4, 1918, the protection of the royal family was transferred to a member of the board of the Ural Regional Cheka, Ya. M. Yurovsky. Some sources mistakenly call Yurovsky the chairman of the Cheka; in fact, this position was held by F.N. Lukoyanov.

An employee of the regional Cheka, G. P. Nikulin, became the assistant commandant of the “special purpose house”. The former commandant Avdeev and his assistant Moshkin were removed, Moshkin (and, according to some sources, also Avdeev) was imprisoned for theft.

At the first meeting with Yurovsky, the tsar mistook him for a doctor, since he advised the doctor V.N. Derevenko to put a plaster cast on the heir’s leg; Yurovsky was mobilized in 1915 and, according to N. Sokolov, graduated from paramedic school.

Investigator N.A. Sokolov explained the replacement of commandant Avdeev by the fact that communication with prisoners changed something in his “drunken soul,” which became noticeable to his superiors. When, according to Sokolov, preparations began for the execution of those in the special purpose house, Avdeev’s security was removed as unreliable.

Yurovsky described his predecessor Avdeev extremely negatively, accusing him of “decay, drunkenness, theft”: “there is a mood of complete debauchery and laxity all around,” “Avdeev, addressing Nikolai, calls him Nikolai Alexandrovich. He offers him a cigarette, Avdeev takes it, they both light a cigarette, and this immediately showed me the established “simplicity of morals.”

Yurovsky’s brother Leiba, interviewed by Sokolov, described Ya. M. Yurovsky as follows: “Yankel’s character is quick-tempered and persistent. I studied watchmaking with him and I know his character: he loves to oppress people.” According to Leia, the wife of another brother of Yurovsky (Ele), Ya. M. Yurovsky is very persistent and despotic, and his characteristic phrase was: “Whoever is not with us is against us.” At the same time, as Richard Pipes points out, soon after his appointment, Yurovsky harshly suppressed the theft that had spread under Avdeev. Richard Pipes considers this action advisable from a security point of view, since guards prone to theft could be bribed, including for the purpose of escape; as a result, for some time the contents of those arrested even improved, since the theft of food from the Novo-Tikhvin Monastery stopped. In addition, Yurovsky compiles an inventory of all the jewelry in the possession of the arrested (according to the historian R. Pipes - except for those that the women secretly sewed into their underwear); They place the jewelry in a sealed box, which Yurovsky gives to them for safekeeping. Indeed, in the tsar’s diary there is an entry dated June 23 (July 6), 1918:

At the same time, Yurovsky’s unceremoniousness soon began to irritate the tsar, who noted in his diary that “we like this type less and less.” Alexandra Fedorovna described Yurovsky in her diary as a “vulgar and unpleasant” person. However, Richard Pipes notes:

Last days

Bolshevik sources preserve evidence that the “working masses” of the Urals expressed concern about the possibility of the release of Nicholas II and even demanded his immediate execution. Doctor of Historical Sciences G. Z. Ioffe believes that this evidence is probably true, and characterizes the situation that was then not only in the Urals. As an example, he cites the text of a telegram from the Kolomna district committee of the Bolshevik Party, received by the Council of People's Commissars on July 3, 1918, with the message that the local party organization “unanimously decided to demand from the Council of People’s Commissars the immediate destruction of the entire family and relatives of the former tsar, because the German bourgeoisie, together with Russians are restoring the tsarist regime in the captured cities.” “In case of refusal,” it said, “it was decided on our own carry out this decree." Joffe suggests that such resolutions coming from below were either organized at meetings and rallies, or were the result of general propaganda, an atmosphere filled with calls for class struggle and class revenge. The “lower classes” readily picked up slogans emanating from Bolshevik speakers, especially those representing the left wing of Bolshevism. Almost the entire Bolshevik elite in the Urals was leftist. According to the memoirs of the security officer I. Rodzinsky, among the leaders of the Ural Regional Council, the left communists were A. Beloborodov, G. Safarov and N. Tolmachev.

At the same time, the left Bolsheviks in the Urals had to compete in radicalism with the left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists, whose influence was significant. As Joffe writes, the Bolsheviks could not afford to give their political rivals a reason to accuse them of “sliding to the right.” And there were such accusations. Later, Spiridonova reproached the Bolshevik Central Committee for “dissolving the tsars and sub-tsars throughout... Ukraine, Crimea and abroad” and “only at the insistence of the revolutionaries,” that is, the left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists, raised his hand against Nikolai Romanov. According to A. Avdeev, in Yekaterinburg a group of anarchists tried to pass a resolution on the immediate execution of the former tsar. According to the recollections of Ural residents, extremists tried to organize an attack on Ipatiev’s house in order to destroy the Romanovs. Echoes of this were preserved in the diary entries of Nicholas II for May 31 (June 13) and Alexandra Fedorovna for June 1 (14).

On June 13, the murder of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich was committed in Perm. Immediately after the murder, the Perm authorities announced that Mikhail Romanov had fled and put him on the wanted list. On June 17, a message about the “escape” of Mikhail Alexandrovich was reprinted in newspapers in Moscow and Petrograd. At the same time, rumors appeared that Nicholas II was killed by a Red Army soldier who arbitrarily broke into Ipatiev’s house. In fact, Nikolai was still alive at that time.

Rumors about lynching of Nicholas II and the Romanovs in general spread beyond the Urals.

On June 18, before the Council of People's Commissars, Lenin, in an interview with the liberal newspaper Nashe Slovo, opposition to Bolshevism, stated that Mikhail, according to his information, allegedly really fled, and Lenin knew nothing about the fate of Nikolai.

On June 20, the manager of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars, V. Bonch-Bruevich, asked Yekaterinburg: “Information has spread in Moscow that the former Emperor Nicholas II was allegedly killed. Please provide the information you have."

Moscow sends the commander of the North Ural group to Yekaterinburg for inspection Soviet troops Latvian R.I. Berzin, who visited Ipatiev’s house on June 22. Nikolai, in his diary, in an entry dated June 9 (22), 1918, reports the arrival of “6 people,” and the next day an entry appears that they turned out to be “commissars from Petrograd.” On June 23, representatives of the Council of People's Commissars again reported that they still had no information about whether Nicholas II was alive or not.

R. Berzin, in telegrams to the Council of People's Commissars, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the People's Commissariat of Military Affairs, reported that “all family members and Nicholas II himself are alive. All information about his murder is a provocation.” Based on the responses received, the Soviet press several times refuted rumors and reports that appeared in some newspapers about the execution of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg.

According to the testimony of three telegraph operators from the Yekaterinburg post office, later received by the Sokolov commission, Lenin, in a conversation with Berzin over a direct wire, ordered “to take the entire royal family under his protection and not allow any violence against it, responding in this case with his own life.” . According to historian A.G. Latyshev, the telegraph communication that Lenin maintained with Berzin is one of the proofs of Lenin’s desire to save the life of the Romanovs.

According to official Soviet historiography, the decision to execute the Romanovs was made by the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council, while the central Soviet leadership was notified after the fact. During the period of perestroika, this version began to be criticized, and by the beginning of the 1990s, an alternative version had emerged, according to which the Ural authorities could not make such a decision without a directive from Moscow and took on this responsibility in order to create a political alibi for the Moscow leadership. In the post-perestroika period, the Russian historian A.G. Latyshev, who was investigating the circumstances surrounding the execution of the royal family, expressed the opinion that Lenin could indeed have secretly organized the murder in such a way as to shift responsibility to the local authorities - approximately the same as, according to Latyshev is convinced that this was done a year and a half later in relation to Kolchak. And yet in this case, the historian believes, the situation was different. In his opinion, Lenin, not wanting to spoil relations with the German Emperor Wilhelm II, a close relative of the Romanovs, did not authorize the execution.

At the beginning of July 1918, the Ural military commissar F.I. Goloshchekin went to Moscow to resolve the issue of the future fate of the royal family. According to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, he was in Moscow from July 4 to July 10; On July 14, Goloshchekin returned to Yekaterinburg.

Based on the available documents, the fate of the royal family as a whole was not discussed at any level in Moscow. Only the fate of Nicholas II, who was supposed to be tried, was discussed. According to a number of historians, there was also a fundamental decision according to which the former king should have been sentenced to death. According to investigator V.N. Solovyov, Goloshchekin, citing the complexity of the military situation in the Yekaterinburg region and the possibility of the capture of the royal family by the White Guards, proposed to shoot Nicholas II without waiting for trial, but received a categorical refusal.

According to a number of historians, the decision to destroy the royal family was made upon Goloshchekin’s return to Yekaterinburg. S. D. Alekseev and I. F. Plotnikov believe that it was adopted on the evening of July 14 “by a narrow circle of the Bolshevik part of the executive committee of the Urals Council.” In the fund of the Council of People's Commissars state archive The Russian Federation has preserved a telegram sent on July 16, 1918 to Moscow from Yekaterinburg via Petrograd:

Thus, the telegram was received in Moscow on July 16 at 21:22. G. Z. Ioffe suggested that the “trial” referred to in the telegram meant the execution of Nicholas II or even the Romanov family. No response from the central leadership to this telegram was found in the archives.

Unlike Ioffe, a number of researchers understand the word “court” used in the telegram in the literal sense. In this case, the telegram refers to the trial of Nicholas II, regarding which there was an agreement between the central government and Yekaterinburg, and the meaning of the telegram is as follows: “inform Moscow that the trial agreed with Philip due to military circumstances... we cannot wait. The execution cannot be delayed.” This interpretation of the telegram allows us to believe that the issue of the trial of Nicholas II had not yet been resolved on July 16. The investigation believes that the brevity of the question posed in the telegram indicates that the central authorities were familiar with this issue; At the same time, there is reason “to believe that the issue of shooting members of the royal family and servants, with the exception of Nicholas II, was not agreed upon with either V.I. Lenin or Ya.M. Sverdlov.”

A few hours before the execution of the royal family, on July 16, Lenin prepared a telegram as a response to the editors of the Danish newspaper National Tidende, who addressed him with a question about the fate of Nicholas II, which denied rumors of his death. At 16 o'clock the text was sent to the telegraph, but the telegram was never sent. According to A.G. Latyshev, the text of this telegram “ means that Lenin did not even imagine the possibility of shooting Nicholas II (not to mention the entire family) the following night».

Unlike Latyshev, according to whom the decision to execute the royal family was made by the local authorities, a number of historians believe that the execution was carried out on the initiative of the Center. This point of view was defended, in particular, by D. A. Volkogonov and R. Pipes. As an argument, they cited L. D. Trotsky’s diary entry, made on April 9, 1935, about his conversation with Sverdlov after the fall of Yekaterinburg. According to this recording, Trotsky at the time of this conversation knew neither about the execution of Nicholas II, nor about the execution of his family. Sverdlov informed him about what had happened, saying that the decision was made by the central government. However, the reliability of this testimony of Trotsky is criticized, since, firstly, Trotsky is listed among those present in the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars of July 18, at which Sverdlov announced the execution of Nicholas II; secondly, Trotsky himself wrote in his book “My Life” that until August 7 he was in Moscow; but this means that he could not have been unaware of the execution of Nicholas II even if his name was in the protocol by mistake.

According to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, the official decision to execute Nicholas II was made on July 16, 1918 by the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies. The original of this decision has not survived. However, a week after the execution, the official text of the verdict was published:

Resolution of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies: Due to the fact that Czech-Slovak gangs threaten the capital of the Red Urals, Yekaterinburg; in view of the fact that the crowned executioner can avoid the trial of the people (a conspiracy of the White Guards has just been discovered, with the goal of kidnapping the entire Romanov family), the Presidium of the regional committee, in fulfillment of the will of the people, decided to shoot the former Tsar Nikolai Romanov, guilty before the people of countless bloody crimes. The Romanov family was transferred from Yekaterinburg to another, more reliable place. Presidium of the Regional Council of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies of the Urals

Sending out the cook Leonid Sednev

As R. Wilton, a member of the investigative team, stated in his work “The Murder of the Royal Family,” before the execution, “the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev, the Tsarevich’s playmate, was removed from the Ipatiev House. He was placed with the Russian guards in Popov’s house, opposite Ipatievsky.” The memories of the participants in the execution confirm this fact.

Commandant Yurovsky, as stated by M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin), a participant in the execution, allegedly on his own initiative proposed to send away the cook Leonid Sednev, who was in the royal retinue, from the “House of Special Purpose”, under the pretext of a meeting with his uncle, who had allegedly arrived in Yekaterinburg. In fact, Leonid Sednev’s uncle, the footman of the Grand Duchesses I. D. Sednev, who accompanied the royal family in exile, was under arrest from May 27, 1918 and at the beginning of June (according to other sources, at the end of June or beginning of July 1918) was shot.

Yurovsky himself claims that he received an order to release the cook from Goloshchekin. After the execution, according to Yurovsky’s recollections, the cook was sent home.

It was decided to liquidate the remaining members of the retinue along with the royal family, since they “declared that they wished to share the fate of the monarch. Let them share." Thus, four people were assigned to liquidation: physician E. S. Botkin, chamberlain A. E. Trupp, cook I. M. Kharitonov and maid A. S. Demidova.

Of the members of the retinue, the valet T.I. Chemodurov managed to escape; on May 24, he fell ill and was placed in a prison hospital; During the evacuation of Yekaterinburg in the chaos, he was forgotten by the Bolsheviks in prison and released by the Czechs on July 25.

Execution

From the memoirs of the participants in the execution, it is known that they did not know in advance how the “execution” would be carried out. Various options were offered: to stab those arrested with daggers while they slept, to throw grenades into the room with them, to shoot them. According to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, the issue of the procedure for carrying out the “execution” was resolved with the participation of employees of the UraloblChK.

At 1:30 a.m. on July 16-17, a truck for transporting corpses arrived at Ipatiev’s house, one and a half hours late. After this, doctor Botkin was awakened and informed that everyone urgently needed to go downstairs due to the alarming situation in the city and the danger of staying on the top floor. It took about 30 - 40 minutes to get ready.

went to the semi-basement room (Alexei, who could not walk, was carried by Nicholas II in his arms). There were no chairs in the basement; then, at Alexandra Feodorovna’s request, two chairs were brought. Alexandra Fedorovna and Alexey sat on them. The rest were located along the wall. Yurovsky brought in the firing squad and read out the verdict. Nicholas II only had time to ask: “What?” (other sources report last words Nicholas like “Huh?” or “How, how? Re-read"). Yurovsky gave the command, and indiscriminate shooting began.

The executioners failed to immediately kill Alexei, the daughters of Nicholas II, the maid A.S. Demidova, and doctor E.S. Botkin. Anastasia's scream was heard, Demidova's maid rose to her feet, long time Alexei remained alive. Some of them were shot; the survivors, according to the investigation, were finished off with a bayonet by P.Z. Ermakov.

According to Yurovsky's recollections, the shooting was indiscriminate: many probably shot from the next room, through the threshold, and the bullets ricocheted off the stone wall. At the same time, one of the shooters was slightly wounded ( “A bullet from one of the shooters from behind buzzed past my head, and I don’t remember, it hit one of his arms, palms, or fingers and shot me through.”).

According to T. Manakova, during the execution, two dogs of the royal family, who started howling, were also killed - Tatiana's French bulldog Ortino and Anastasia's royal spaniel Jimmy (Jemmy). The life of the third dog, Aleksei Nikolayevich's spaniel named Joy, was saved because she did not howl. The spaniel was later taken in by the guard Letemin, who because of this was identified and arrested by the whites. Subsequently, according to the story of Bishop Vasily (Rodzianko), Joy was taken to Great Britain by an emigrant officer and handed over to the British royal family.

From the speech of Ya. M. Yurovsky to the old Bolsheviks in Sverdlovsk in 1934

The younger generation may not understand us. They may blame us for killing the girls and killing the boy heir. But to today girls-boys would grow up... into what?

In order to muffle the shots, a truck was driven near the Ipatiev House, but shots were still heard in the city. In Sokolov’s materials there are, in particular, testimonies about this from two random witnesses, the peasant Buivid and the night watchman Tsetsegov.

According to Richard Pipes, immediately after this, Yurovsky harshly suppresses the security guards’ attempts to steal the jewelry they discovered, threatening to shoot him. After that, he instructed P.S. Medvedev to organize the cleaning of the premises, and he himself went to destroy the corpses.

The exact text of the sentence pronounced by Yurovsky before the execution is unknown. In the materials of investigator N.A. Sokolov there is testimony from the guard guard Yakimov, who claimed, with reference to the guard Kleshchev who observed this scene, that Yurovsky said: “Nikolai Alexandrovich, your relatives tried to save you, but they didn’t have to. And we are forced to shoot you ourselves.".

M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) described this scene as follows:

In the memoirs of Yurovsky’s assistant G.P. Nikulin, this episode is described as follows:

Yurovsky himself could not remember the exact text: “...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.”.

On the afternoon of July 17, several members of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council contacted Moscow by telegraph (the telegram was marked that it was received at 12 o’clock) and reported that Nicholas II had been shot and his family had been evacuated. The editor of the Ural Worker, a member of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council, V. Vorobyov, later claimed that they “felt very uneasy when they approached the apparatus: the former tsar was shot by a resolution of the Presidium of the Regional Council, and it was unknown how they would react to this “arbitrariness” central government..." The reliability of this evidence, wrote G. Z. Ioffe, cannot be verified.

Investigator N. Sokolov claimed that he had found an encrypted telegram from the Chairman of the Ural Regional Executive Committee A. Beloborodov to Moscow, dated 21:00 on July 17, which was allegedly only deciphered in September 1920. It said: “To the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars N.P. Gorbunov: tell Sverdlov that the whole family suffered the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will die during the evacuation.” Sokolov concluded: this means that on the evening of July 17, Moscow knew about the death of the entire royal family. However, the minutes of the meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18 speak only about the execution of Nicholas II. The next day the Izvestia newspaper reported:

On July 18, the first meeting of the Presidium of the Central I.K. of the 5th convocation took place. Comrade presided. Sverdlov. Members of the Presidium were present: Avanesov, Sosnovsky, Teodorovich, Vladimirsky, Maksimov, Smidovich, Rosengoltz, Mitrofanov and Rozin. Chairman Comrade Sverdlov announces a message just received via direct wire from the Regional Ural Council about the execution of the former Tsar Nikolai Romanov. In recent days, the capital of the Red Urals, Yekaterinburg, was seriously threatened by the approach of Czech-Slovak gangs. At the same time it was revealed new conspiracy counter-revolutionaries, whose goal was to wrest the crowned executioner from the hands of Soviet power. In view of this, the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council decided to shoot Nikolai Romanov, which was carried out on July 16th. The wife and son of Nikolai Romanov were sent to a safe place. Documents about the uncovered conspiracy were sent to Moscow by special courier. Having made this message, Comrade. Sverdlov recalls the story of the transfer of Nikolai Romanov from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg after the discovery of the same organization of White Guards, which was preparing the escape of Nikolai Romanov. Recently it was intended to bring the former king to trial for all his crimes against the people, and only recent events prevented this from being carried out. The Presidium of the Central I.K., having discussed all the circumstances that forced the Ural Regional Council to decide to shoot Nikolai Romanov, decided: The All-Russian Central I.K., represented by its Presidium, recognizes the decision of the Ural Regional Council as correct.

On the eve of this official press release, on July 18 (possibly on the night from the 18th to the 19th), a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars was held, at which this resolution of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was “taken into account.”

The telegram that Sokolov writes about is not in the files of the Council of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. “Some foreign authors,” writes historian G. Z. Ioffe, “even cautiously expressed doubt about its authenticity.” I. D. Kovalchenko and G. Z. Ioffe left open the question of whether this telegram was received in Moscow. According to a number of other historians, including Yu. A. Buranov and V. M. Khrustalev, L. A. Lykov, this telegram is genuine and was received in Moscow before the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars.

On July 19, Yurovsky took “conspiracy documents” to Moscow. The time of Yurovsky’s arrival in Moscow is not known exactly, but it is known that the diaries of Nicholas II that he brought on July 26 were already in the possession of the historian M. N. Pokrovsky. On August 6, with the participation of Yurovsky, the entire Romanov archive was delivered to Moscow from Perm.

Question about the composition of the firing squad

Memoirs of G.P. Nikulin, a participant in the execution.

... comrade Ermakov, who behaved rather indecently, subsequently assuming the leading role for himself, that he did it all, so to speak, single-handedly, without any help... In fact, there were 8 of us who performed it: Yurovsky, Nikulin, Mikhail Medvedev, Pavel Medvedev four, Ermakov Petr five, but I’m not sure that Kabanov Ivan is six. And I don’t remember the names of two more.

When we went down to the basement, we also didn’t even think of putting chairs there at first to sit down, because this one was... didn’t walk, you know, Alexey, we had to sit him down. Well, then they brought it up instantly. When they went down to the basement, they began to look at each other in bewilderment, they immediately brought in chairs, sat down, which means Alexandra Fedorovna, the heir, was imprisoned, and Comrade Yurovsky uttered the following phrase: “Your friends are advancing on Yekaterinburg , and therefore you are condemned to death." They didn’t even realize what was going on, because Nikolai just said immediately: “Ah!”, and at that time our salvo was already one, two, three. Well, there’s someone else there, which means, so to speak, well, or something, they weren’t quite completely killed yet. Well, then I had to shoot someone else...

Soviet researcher M. Kasvinov, in his book “23 Steps Down,” first published in the magazine “Zvezda” (1972-1973), actually attributed the leadership of the execution not to Yurovsky, but to Ermakov:

However, later the text was changed, and in subsequent editions of the book, published after the author’s death, Yurovsky and Nikulin were named as the leaders of the execution:

The materials of the investigation by N. A. Sokolov in the case of the murder of Emperor Nicholas II and his family contain numerous testimony that the direct perpetrators of the murder were “Latvians” led by a Jew (Yurovsky). However, as Sokolov notes, the Russian Red Army soldiers called all non-Russian Bolsheviks “Latvians.” Therefore, opinions differ about who these “Latvians” were.

Sokolov further writes that an inscription in Hungarian “Verhas Andras 1918 VII/15 e örsegen” and a fragment of a letter in Hungarian written in the spring of 1918 were discovered in the house. The inscription on the wall in Hungarian translates as “Andreas Vergázy 1918 VII/15 stood on guard” and is partially duplicated in Russian: “No. 6. Vergás Karau 1918 VII/15.” The name varies in different sources as “Verhas Andreas”, “Verhas Andras”, etc. (according to the rules of Hungarian-Russian practical transcription, it should be translated into Russian as “Verhas Andras”). Sokolov classified this person as one of the “chekist executioners”; researcher I. Plotnikov believes that this was done “rashly”: post No. 6 belonged to external security, and the unknown Vergazi Andras could not have participated in the execution.

General Dieterichs, “by analogy,” also included the Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war Rudolf Lascher among the participants in the execution; according to researcher I. Plotnikov, Lasher was in fact not involved in security at all, doing only household work.

In the light of Plotnikov’s research, the list of those executed may look like this: Yurovsky, Nikulin, member of the board of the regional Cheka M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), P. Z. Ermakov, S. P. Vaganov, A. G. Kabanov, P. S. Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, possibly J. M. Tselms and, under a very big question, an unknown mining student. Plotnikov believes that the latter was used in Ipatiev’s house within only a few days after the execution and only as a jewelry specialist. Thus, according to Plotnikov, the execution of the royal family was carried out by a group consisting of national composition almost entirely from Russians, with the participation of one Jew (Ya. M. Yurovsky) and, probably, one Latvian (Ya. M. Tselms). According to surviving information, two or three Latvians refused to participate in the execution.

There is another list of the alleged firing squad, compiled by the Tobolsk Bolshevik, who transported the royal children remaining in Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, the Latvian J. M. Svikke (Rodionov) and consisting almost entirely of Latvians. All the Latvians mentioned in the list actually served with Svikke in 1918, but apparently did not participate in the execution (with the exception of Celms).

In 1956, the German media published documents and testimonies of a certain I.P. Meyer, a former Austrian prisoner of war, a member of the Ural Regional Council in 1918, which stated that seven former Hungarian prisoners of war participated in the execution, including a man whom some authors have identified as Imre Nagy, the future political and statesman Hungary. This evidence, however, was later found to be falsified.

Disinformation campaign

The official report of the Soviet leadership on the execution of Nicholas II, published in the newspapers Izvestia and Pravda on July 19, stated that the decision to shoot Nicholas II (“Nikolai Romanov”) was made in connection with the extremely difficult military situation in the Yekaterinburg region , and the discovery of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy aimed at freeing the former tsar; that the decision to execute was made independently by the presidium of the Ural Regional Council; that only Nicholas II was killed, and his wife and son were transported to a “safe place.” The fate of other children and people close to the royal family was not mentioned at all. For a number of years, the authorities stubbornly defended official version as if the family of Nicholas II were alive. This misinformation fueled rumors that some family members managed to escape and escape with their lives.

Although the central authorities should have learned from a telegram from Yekaterinburg on the evening of July 17, “...that the whole family suffered the same fate as the head”, in the official resolutions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of July 18, 1918, only the execution of Nicholas II was mentioned. On July 20, negotiations between Ya. M. Sverdlov and A. G. Beloborodov took place, during which Beloborodov was asked the question: “ ...can we notify the population with a known text?" After this (according to L.A. Lykova, July 23; according to other sources, July 21 or 22) a message about the execution of Nicholas II was published in Yekaterinburg, repeating the official version of the Soviet leadership.

On July 22, 1918, information about the execution of Nicholas II was published by the London Times, and on July 21 (due to the difference in time zones) by the New York Times. The basis for these publications was official information from the Soviet government.

Disinformation to the world and Russian public continued both in the official press and through diplomatic channels. Materials have been preserved about negotiations between the Soviet authorities and representatives of the German embassy: on July 24, 1918, Advisor K. Riezler received information from the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin that Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters had been transported to Perm and were not in danger. Denial of the death of the royal family continued further. Negotiations between the Soviet and German governments on the exchange of the royal family continued until September 15, 1918. The Ambassador of Soviet Russia to Germany A. A. Ioffe was not informed about what happened in Yekaterinburg on the advice of V. I. Lenin, who gave instructions: “...don’t tell A. A. Ioffe anything, so that it would be easier for him to lie”.

Subsequently, official representatives of the Soviet leadership continued to misinform the world community: diplomat M. M. Litvinov stated that the royal family was alive in December 1918; G. Z. Zinoviev in an interview with a newspaper San Francisco Chronicle July 11, 1921 also claimed that the family was alive; People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin continued to give false information about the fate of the royal family - for example, already in April 1922, during the Genoa Conference, to a question from a newspaper correspondent Chicago Tribune about the fate of the grand duchesses, he replied: “The fate of the king’s daughters is unknown to me. I read in the newspapers that they are in America.". A prominent Bolshevik, one of the participants in the decision to execute the royal family, P.L. Voikov, allegedly declared in a ladies’ society in Yekaterinburg, “that the world will never know what they did to the royal family.”

The truth about the fate of the entire royal family was reported in the article “The Last Days of the Last Tsar” by P. M. Bykov; the article was published in the collection “Workers' Revolution in the Urals,” published in Yekaterinburg in 1921 in a circulation of 10,000; shortly after its release, the collection was “withdrawn from circulation.” Bykov's article was reprinted in the Moscow newspaper Kommunisticheskiy Trud (future Moskovskaya Pravda). In 1922, the same newspaper published a review of the collection “Workers' Revolution in the Urals. Episodes and facts"; in it, in particular, it was said about P.Z. Ermakov as the main executor of the execution of the royal family on July 17, 1918.

The Soviet authorities admitted that Nicholas II was shot not alone, but together with his family, when materials from Sokolov’s investigation began to spread in the West. After Sokolov’s book was published in Paris, Bykov received from the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks the task of presenting the history of the Yekaterinburg events. This is how his book “The Last Days of the Romanovs” appeared, published in Sverdlovsk in 1926. In 1930, the book was republished.

According to historian L.A. Lykova, lies and disinformation about the murder in the basement of Ipatiev’s house, its official formulation in the relevant decisions of the Bolshevik Party in the first days after the events and silence for more than seventy years gave rise to distrust of the authorities in society, which continued to affect and in post-Soviet Russia.

The fate of the Romanovs

In addition to the family of the former emperor, in 1918-1919, “a whole group of Romanovs” were destroyed, who, for one reason or another, remained in Russia by this time. The Romanovs who were in Crimea survived, whose lives were protected by Commissar F.L. Zadorozhny (the Yalta Council was going to execute them so that they would not end up with the Germans, who occupied Simferopol in mid-April 1918 and continued the occupation of Crimea). After the occupation of Yalta by the Germans, the Romanovs found themselves outside the power of the Soviets, and after the arrival of the Whites they were able to emigrate.

Also surviving were two grandchildren of Nikolai Konstantinovich, who died in 1918 in Tashkent from pneumonia (some sources mistakenly say he was executed) - the children of his son Alexander Iskander: Natalya Androsova (1917-1999) and Kirill Androsov (1915-1992) who lived in Moscow.

Thanks to the intervention of M. Gorky, Prince Gabriel Konstantinovich, who later emigrated to Germany, also managed to escape. On November 20, 1918, Maxim Gorky addressed V.I. Lenin with a letter that said:

The prince was released.

Murder of Mikhail Alexandrovich in Perm

The first of the Romanovs to die Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. He and his secretary Brian Johnson were killed in Perm, where they were serving exile. According to available evidence, on the night of June 12-13, 1918, several armed men appeared at the hotel where Mikhail lived, took Mikhail Alexandrovich and Brian Johnson into the forest and shot them. The remains of those killed have not yet been found.

The murder was presented as the abduction of Mikhail Alexandrovich by his supporters or a secret escape, which was used by the authorities as a pretext to tighten the regime of detention of all exiled Romanovs: the royal family in Yekaterinburg and the grand dukes in Alapaevsk and Vologda.

Alapaevsk murder

Almost simultaneously with the execution of the royal family, the murder of the Grand Dukes, who were in the city of Alapaevsk, 140 kilometers from Yekaterinburg, was committed. On the night of July 5 (18), 1918, the arrested were taken to an abandoned mine 12 km from the city and thrown into it.

At 3:15 a.m. the executive committee of the Alapaevsk Council telegraphed to Yekaterinburg that the princes were allegedly kidnapped by an unknown gang who raided the school where they were kept. On the same day, the chairman of the Ural Regional Council, Beloborodov, conveyed the corresponding message to Sverdlov in Moscow and Zinoviev and Uritsky in Petrograd:

The style of the Alapaevsk murder was similar to that in Yekaterinburg: in both cases, the victims were thrown into an abandoned mine in the forest, and in both cases attempts were made to collapse this mine with grenades. At the same time, the Alapaevsk murder differed significantly b O greater cruelty: the victims, with the exception of Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, who resisted and was shot, were thrown into the mine, presumably after being hit on the head with a blunt object, while some of them were still alive; according to R. Pipes, they died of thirst and lack of air, probably a few days later. However, an investigation carried out by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation came to the conclusion that their death occurred immediately.

G.Z. Ioffe agreed with the opinion of investigator N. Sokolov, who wrote: “Both the Yekaterinburg and Alapaevsk murders are the product of the same will of the same individuals.”

Execution of the Grand Dukes in Petrograd

After the “escape” of Mikhail Romanov, the Grand Dukes Nikolai Mikhailovich, Georgiy Mikhailovich and Dmitry Konstantinovich, who were in exile in Vologda, were arrested. The Grand Dukes Pavel Alexandrovich and Gabriel Konstantinovich, who remained in Petrograd, were also transferred to the position of prisoners.

After the announcement of the Red Terror, four of them ended up in the Peter and Paul Fortress as hostages. On January 24, 1919 (according to other sources - January 27, 29 or 30) Grand Dukes Pavel Alexandrovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich and Georgy Mikhailovich were shot. On January 31, Petrograd newspapers briefly reported that the grand dukes were shot “by order of the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Profiteering of the Union of Communes of the Northern O[region].”

It was announced that they had been shot as hostages in response to the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany. February 6, 1919 Moscow newspaper “Always Forward!” published an article by Yu. Martov “Shame!” with a sharp condemnation of this extrajudicial execution of the “four Romanovs.”

Evidence from contemporaries

Memoirs of Trotsky

According to the historian Yu. Felshtinsky, Trotsky, already abroad, adhered to the version according to which the decision to execute the royal family was made by the local authorities. Later, using the memoirs of the Soviet diplomat Besedovsky, who defected to the West, Trotsky tried, in the words of Yu. Felshtinsky, to “shift the blame for the regicide” onto Sverdlov and Stalin. In the drafts of unfinished chapters of the biography of Stalin, which Trotsky was working on in the late 1930s, there is the following entry:

In the mid-1930s, entries appeared in Trotsky's diary about events related to the execution of the royal family. According to Trotsky, back in June 1918 he suggested that the Politburo still organize a show trial of the deposed tsar, and Trotsky was interested in broad propaganda coverage of this process. However, the proposal did not meet with much enthusiasm, since all the Bolshevik leaders, including Trotsky himself, were too busy with current affairs. With the Czech uprising, the physical survival of Bolshevism was in question, and it would have been difficult to organize a trial of the Tsar under such conditions.

In his diary, Trotsky claimed that the decision to execute was made by Lenin and Sverdlov:

The White press once very hotly debated the question of whose decision the royal family was put to death... Liberals seemed to be inclined to believe that the Ural executive committee, cut off from Moscow, acted independently. This is not true. The decision was made in Moscow. (...) My next visit to Moscow came after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing: Yes, where is the king? “It’s over,” he answered, “he was shot.” Where is the family? And his family is with him. All? - I asked, apparently with a tinge of surprise. That’s it,” Sverdlov answered, “but what?” He was waiting for my reaction. I didn't answer. Who decided? - I asked. We decided here. Ilyich believed that we should not leave them a living banner, especially in the current difficult conditions.

Historian Felshtinsky, commenting on Trotsky’s memoirs, believes that the diary entry of 1935 is much more credible, since the entries in the diary were not intended for publicity and publication.

Senior investigator for especially important cases of the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia V.N. Solovyov, who led the investigation of the criminal case into the death of the royal family, drew attention to the fact that in the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, at which Sverdlov reported on the execution of Nicholas II, the name of those present appears Trotsky. This contradicts his recollections of a conversation “after arriving from the front” with Sverdlov about Lenin. Indeed, Trotsky, according to the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars No. 159, was present on July 18 at Sverdlov's announcement of the execution. According to some sources, he, as the People's Commissar for Military Affairs, was at the front near Kazan on July 18. At the same time, Trotsky himself writes in his work “My Life” that he left for Sviyazhsk only on August 7. It should also be noted that Trotsky’s statement refers to 1935, when neither Lenin nor Sverdlov were already alive. Even if Trotsky’s name was entered into the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People’s Commissars by mistake, automatically, information about the execution of Nicholas II was published in the newspapers, and he could only have not known about the execution of the entire royal family.

Historians critically evaluate Trotsky's evidence. Thus, historian V.P. Buldakov wrote that Trotsky had a tendency to simplify the description of events for the sake of beauty of presentation, and historian-archivist V.M. Khrustalev, pointing out that Trotsky, according to the protocols preserved in the archives, was among the participants in that very meeting Council of People's Commissars, suggested that Trotsky in his mentioned memoirs was only trying to distance himself from the decision made in Moscow.

From the diary of V. P. Milyutin

V.P. Milyutin wrote:

“I returned late from the Council of People's Commissars. There were “current” matters. During the discussion of the health care project, Semashko's report, Sverdlov entered and sat down in his place on the chair behind Ilyich. Semashko finished. Sverdlov came up, leaned towards Ilyich and said something. - Comrades, Sverdlov asks for the floor for a message. “I must say,” Sverdlov began in his usual tone, “a message has been received that in Yekaterinburg, by order of the regional Council, Nikolai was shot... Nikolai wanted to escape. The Czechoslovaks were approaching. The Presidium of the Central Election Commission decided to approve... “Let’s now move on to an article-by-article reading of the draft,” Ilyich suggested...” Quoted from: Sverdlova K. Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov

Memoirs of participants in the execution

The memories of direct participants in the events of Ya. M. Yurovsky, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrina), G. P. Nikulin, P. Z. Ermakov, and also A. A. Strekotin (during the execution, apparently, provided external security) have been preserved home), V.N. Netrebin, P.M. Bykov (apparently, did not personally participate in the execution), I. Rodzinsky (personally did not participate in the execution, participated in the destruction of corpses), Kabanov, P.L. Voikov, G.I. Sukhorukov (participated only in the destruction of corpses), Chairman of the Ural Regional Council A.G. Beloborodov (personally did not participate in the execution).

One of the most detailed sources is the work of the Bolshevik leader of the Urals P. M. Bykov, who until March 1918 was the chairman of the Yekaterinburg Council and a member of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council. In 1921, Bykov published the article “The Last Days of the Last Tsar”, and in 1926 - the book “The Last Days of the Romanovs”; ​​in 1930 the book was republished in Moscow and Leningrad.

Other detailed sources are the memoirs of M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin), who personally participated in the execution, and, in relation to the execution, the memoirs of Ya.M. Yurovsky and his assistant G.P. Nikulin. The memoirs of Medvedev (Kudrin) were written in 1963 and addressed to N. S. Khrushchev More brief are the memoirs of I. Rodzinsky, an employee of the Cheka Kabanov and others.

Many participants in the events had their own personal grievances against the tsar: M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), judging by his memoirs, was in prison under the tsar, P. L. Voikov participated in the revolutionary terror in 1907, P. Z. Ermakov for his participation in expropriations and the murder of a provocateur he was exiled; Yurovsky’s father was exiled on charges of theft. In his autobiography, Yurovsky claims that in 1912 he himself was exiled to Yekaterinburg with a ban on settling “in 64 places in Russia and Siberia.” In addition, among the Bolshevik leaders in Yekaterinburg was Sergei Mrachkovsky, who was actually born in prison, where his mother was imprisoned for revolutionary activities. The phrase uttered by Mrachkovsky, “by the grace of tsarism, I was born in prison,” was subsequently erroneously attributed to Yurovsky by investigator Sokolov. During the events, Mrachkovsky was engaged in selecting the guards of the Ipatiev House from among the workers of the Sysert plant. Before the revolution, the Chairman of the Ural Regional Council, A.G. Beloborodov, was in prison for issuing a proclamation.

The recollections of the participants in the execution, while mostly coinciding with each other, differ in a number of details. Judging by them, Yurovsky personally finished off the heir with two (according to other sources - three) shots. Yurovsky’s assistant G.P. Nikulin, P.Z. Ermakov, M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) and others also took part in the execution. According to Medvedev’s recollections, Yurovsky, Ermakov and Medvedev personally shot at Nikolai. In addition, Ermakov and Medvedev are finishing off the Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Anastasia. The “honor” of the liquidation of Nikolai is actually being challenged by Yurovsky, M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) (not to be confused with another participant in the events P.S. Medvedev) and Ermakov; Yurovsky and Medvedev (Kudrin) seem to be the most likely, in Yekaterinburg itself During the events, it was believed that the Tsar was shot by Ermakov.

Yurovsky, in his memoirs, claimed that he personally killed the tsar, while Medvedev (Kudrin) attributes this to himself. Medvedev’s version was also partially confirmed by another participant in the events, an employee of the Cheka Kabanov. At the same time, M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) in his memoirs claims that Nikolai “fell with my fifth shot,” and Yurovsky - that he killed him with one shot.

Ermakov himself in his memoirs describes his role in the execution as follows (spelling preserved):

...they told me that it was your fate to be shot and buried... I accepted the order and said that it would be carried out precisely, prepared a place where to lead and how to hide, taking into account all the circumstances of the importance of the political moment. When I reported to Beloborodov that I could do it, he said to make sure that everyone was shot, we decided that, I didn’t enter into further discussions, I began to do it the way it was necessary... ...When everything was in order, then I gave the commandant of the house in the office a resolution from the regional executive committee to Yurovsky, he doubted why everyone, but I told him over everyone and there’s nothing for us to talk for a long time, time is short, it’s time to get started.... ...I took Nikalai himself, Alexandra, daughters, Alexey, because I had a Mauser, they could work faithfully, the rest were revolvers. After descending, we waited a little on the ground floor, then the commandant waited for everyone to get up, everyone stood up, but Alexey was sitting on a chair, then he began to read the verdict of the resolution, which said, by decision of the Executive Committee, to shoot. Then a phrase escaped Nikolai: how they won’t take us anywhere, there was no way to wait any longer, I fired a shot at him point-blank, he fell immediately, but so did the others, at that time crying arose between them, one threw a brasalis on the other’s neck, then they fired several shots, and everyone fell.

As you can see, Ermakov contradicts all the other participants in the execution, completely attributing to himself the entire leadership of the execution, and the liquidation of Nikolai personally. According to some sources, at the time of the execution Ermakov was drunk and armed himself with a total of three (according to other sources, even four) pistols. At the same time, investigator Sokolov believed that Ermakov did not actively participate in the execution and supervised the destruction of the corpses. In general, Ermakov’s memories stand apart from the memories of other participants in the events; the information reported by Ermakov is not confirmed by most other sources.

Participants in the events also disagree on the issue of Moscow coordinating the execution. According to the version set out in “Yurovsky’s note,” the order “to exterminate the Romanovs” came from Perm. “Why from Perm? - asks the historian G. Z. Ioffe. - Was there no direct connection with Yekaterinburg then? Or was Yurovsky, in writing this phrase, guided by some considerations known only to him?” Back in 1919, investigator N. Sokolov established that shortly before the execution, due to the deterioration of the military situation in the Urals, a member of the Presidium of the Council, Goloshchekin, traveled to Moscow, where he tried to coordinate this issue. However, M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin), a participant in the execution, claims in his memoirs that the decision was made by Yekaterinburg and was approved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee retroactively, on July 18, as Beloborodov told him, and during Goloshchekin’s trip to Moscow Lenin did not approve execution, demanding that Nikolai be taken to Moscow for trial. At the same time, Medvedev (Kudrin) notes that the Ural Regional Council was under powerful pressure from both embittered revolutionary workers who demanded that Nicholas be immediately shot, and fanatical left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists who began to accuse the Bolsheviks of inconsistency. There is similar information in Yurovsky’s memoirs.

According to the story of P. L. Voikov, known as presented by the former adviser to the Soviet embassy in France G. Z. Besedovsky, the decision was made by Moscow, but only under persistent pressure from Yekaterinburg; according to Voikov, Moscow was going to “cede the Romanovs to Germany,” “...they especially hoped for the opportunity to bargain for a reduction in the indemnity of three hundred million rubles in gold imposed on Russia under the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. This indemnity was one of the most unpleasant points of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and Moscow would very much like to change this point”; in addition, “some of the members Central Committee, in particular Lenin, also objected for reasons of principle to the shooting of children,” while Lenin cited the Great French Revolution as an example.

According to P. M. Bykov, when shooting the Romanovs, the local authorities acted “at their own peril and risk.”

G. P. Nikulin testified:

The question often arises: “Was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov or our other leading central workers aware of the execution of the royal family in advance?” Well, it’s hard for me to say whether they knew in advance, but I think that since... Goloshchekin... went to Moscow twice to negotiate the fate of the Romanovs, then, of course, one should conclude that this is exactly what was discussed. ...it was supposed to organize a trial of the Romanovs, first... in such a broad manner, like a nationwide trial, and then, when all sorts of counter-revolutionary elements were constantly grouping around Yekaterinburg, the question arose about organizing such a narrow, revolutionary court. But this was not carried out either. The trial as such did not take place, and, in essence, the execution of the Romanovs was carried out by decision of the Ural Executive Committee of the Ural Regional Council...

Memoirs of Yurovsky

Yurovsky's memoirs are known in three versions:

• a brief “note by Yurovsky” dating from 1920;
• a detailed version dating from April - May 1922, signed by Yurovsky;
• an abridged version of the memoirs, which appeared in 1934, created on the instructions of Uralistpart, includes a transcript of Yurovsky’s speech and a text prepared on its basis, differing in some details from it.

The reliability of the first source is questioned by some researchers; Investigator Solovyov considers it authentic. In the “Note” Yurovsky writes about himself in the third person ( "commandant"), which is apparently explained by the insertions of the historian M.N. Pokrovsky, recorded by him from the words of Yurovsky. There is also an expanded second edition of the Note, dated 1922.

The Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Yu. I. Skuratov, believed that “Yurovsky’s note” “represents an official report on the execution of the royal family, prepared by Ya. M. Yurovsky for the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.”

Diaries of Nicholas and Alexandra

The diaries of the Tsar and Tsarina themselves have also survived to this day, including those kept directly in the Ipatiev House. The last entry in the diary of Nicholas II is dated Saturday, June 30 (July 13 - Nicholas kept a diary according to the old style), 1918. “Alexey took his first bath after Tobolsk; his knee is getting better, but he cannot straighten it completely. The weather is warm and pleasant. We have no news from outside.". Alexandra Feodorovna’s diary reaches the last day - Tuesday, July 16, 1918 with the entry: “...Every morning the Commandant comes to our rooms. Finally, after a week, eggs were brought again for Baby [the heir]. ...Suddenly they sent for Lyonka Sednev to go and see his uncle, and he hastily ran away, we wonder if all this is true and whether we will see the boy again..."

The tsar in his diary describes a number of everyday details: the arrival of the tsar’s children from Tobolsk, changes in the composition of the retinue (“ I decided to let my old man Chemodurov go for a rest and instead take the Troupe for a while"), the weather, books read, features of the regime, your impressions of the guards and the conditions of detention ( “It’s intolerable to sit cooped up like this and not be able to go out into the garden when you want and spend a nice evening outdoors! Prison regime!!”). The Tsar inadvertently mentioned correspondence with an anonymous “Russian officer” (“the other day we received two letters, one after the other, telling us that we should prepare to be kidnapped by some loyal people!”).

From the diary you can find out Nikolai’s opinion about both commandants: he called Avdeev a “bastard” (entry dated April 30, Monday), who was once “a little tipsy.” The king also expressed dissatisfaction with the theft of things (entry dated May 28 / June 10):

However, the opinion about Yurovsky was not the best: “We like this guy less and less!”; about Avdeev: “It’s a pity for Avdeev, but he is to blame for not keeping his people from stealing from the chests in the barn”; “According to rumors, some of the Avdeevites are already under arrest!”

In the entry dated May 28 / June 10, as historian Melgunov writes, echoes of events that took place outside the Ipatiev House were reflected:

In Alexandra Feodorovna’s diary there is an entry regarding the change of commandants:

Destruction and burial of remains

Death of the Romanovs (1918-1919)

• Murder of Mikhail Alexandrovich
• Execution of the royal family
• Alapaevsk martyrs
• Execution in the Peter and Paul Fortress

Yurovsky's version

According to Yurovsky’s recollections, he went to the mine at about three in the morning on July 17. Yurovsky reports that Goloshchekin must have ordered the burial of P.Z. Ermakov. However, things did not go as smoothly as we would like: Ermakov brought too many people as the funeral team ( “Why there are so many of them, I still don’t know, I only heard isolated cries - we thought that they would be given to us here alive, but here, it turns out, they are dead.”); the truck got stuck; Jewels were discovered sewn into the clothes of the Grand Duchesses, and some of Ermakov’s people began to appropriate them. Yurovsky ordered guards to be assigned to the truck. The bodies were loaded onto carriages. On the way and near the mine designated for burial, strangers were encountered. Yurovsky allocated people to cordon off the area, as well as to inform the village that Czechoslovaks were operating in the area and that leaving the village was prohibited under threat of execution. In an effort to get rid of the presence of an overly large funeral team, he sends some of the people to the city “as unnecessary.” Orders fires to be built to burn clothing as possible evidence.

From Yurovsky’s memoirs (spelling preserved):

After the confiscation of valuables and burning of clothes on fires, the corpses were thrown into the mine, but “... a new hassle. The water barely covered the bodies, what should we do?” The funeral team unsuccessfully tried to bring down the mine with grenades (“bombs”), after which Yurovsky, according to him, finally came to the conclusion that the burial of the corpses had failed, since they were easy to detect and, in addition, there were witnesses that something was happening here . Leaving the guards and taking the valuables, at approximately two o'clock in the afternoon (in an earlier version of the memoirs - “at about 10-11 am”) on July 17, Yurovsky went to the city. I arrived at the Ural Regional Executive Committee and reported on the situation. Goloshchekin called Ermakov and sent him to retrieve the corpses. Yurovsky went to the city executive committee to its chairman S.E. Chutskaev for advice regarding the burial place. Chutskaev reported about deep abandoned mines on the Moscow highway. Yurovsky went to inspect these mines, but could not get to the place immediately due to a car breakdown, so he had to walk. He returned on requisitioned horses. During this time, another plan emerged - to burn the corpses.

Yurovsky was not entirely sure that the incineration would be successful, so the option still remained of burying the corpses in the mines of the Moscow Highway. In addition, he had the idea, in case of any failure, to bury the bodies in groups in different places on the clay road. Thus, there were three options for action. Yurovsky went to the Commissar of Supply of the Urals, Voikov, to get gasoline or kerosene, as well as sulfuric acid to disfigure faces, and shovels. Having received this, they loaded them onto carts and sent them to the location of the corpses. The truck was sent there. Yurovsky himself remained waiting for Polushin, the ““specialist” in burning,” and waited for him until 11 o’clock in the evening, but he never arrived, because, as Yurovsky later learned, he fell from his horse and injured his leg. At about 12 o'clock at night, Yurovsky, not counting on the reliability of the car, went to the place where the bodies of the dead were, on horseback, but this time another horse crushed his leg, so that he could not move for an hour.

Yurovsky arrived at the scene at night. Work was underway to extract the bodies. Yurovsky decided to bury several corpses along the way. By dawn on July 18, the pit was almost ready, but a stranger appeared nearby. I had to abandon this plan too. After waiting until evening, we loaded onto the cart (the truck was waiting in a place where it shouldn’t get stuck). Then we were driving a truck and it got stuck. Midnight was approaching, and Yurovsky decided that it was necessary to bury him somewhere here, since it was dark and no one could witness the burial.

I. Rodzinsky and M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) also left their memories of the burial of the corpses (Medvedev, by his own admission, did not personally participate in the burial and retold the events from the words of Yurovsky and Rodzinsky). According to the memoirs of Rodzinsky himself:

Analysis of investigator Solovyov

Senior prosecutor-criminologist of the Main Investigation Department of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation V.N. Solovyov conducted a comparative analysis of Soviet sources (memories of participants in the events) and Sokolov’s investigation materials.

Based on these materials, investigator Solovyov made the following conclusion:

A comparison of materials from participants in the burial and destruction of corpses and documents from N. A. Sokolov’s investigative file on travel routes and manipulations with corpses gives grounds for the assertion that the same places are being described, near mine # 7, at crossing # 184. Indeed , Yurovsky and others burned clothes and shoes at the site explored by Magnitsky and Sokolov, sulfuric acid was used during burial, two corpses, but not all, were burned. A detailed comparison of these and other case materials gives grounds for the assertion that there are no significant, mutually exclusive contradictions in the “Soviet materials” and the materials of N. A. Sokolov, there are only different interpretations of the same events. Solovyov also indicated that, according to the study, “... under the conditions in which the destruction of corpses was carried out, it was impossible to completely destroy the remains using sulfuric acid and flammable materials indicated in the investigative file of N. A. Sokolov and the memoirs of participants in the events.”

Reaction to the shooting

The collection “The Revolution Defends itself” (1989) states that the execution of Nicholas II complicated the situation in the Urals, and mentions the riots that broke out in a number of areas of the Perm, Ufa and Vyatka provinces. It is argued that under the influence of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, the petty bourgeoisie, a significant part of the middle peasantry and certain layers of workers rebelled. The rebels brutally killed communists, government officials and their families. Thus, in the Kizbangashevsky volost of the Ufa province, 300 people died at the hands of the rebels. Some rebellions were suppressed quickly, but more often the rebels put up long-term resistance.

Meanwhile, historian G. Z. Ioffe in the monograph “Revolution and the Fate of the Romanovs” (1992) writes that, according to reports of many contemporaries, including those from the anti-Bolshevik environment, the news of the execution of Nicholas II “in general went unnoticed, without any manifestations protest." Ioffe quotes the memoirs of V.N. Kokovtsov: “...On the day the news was published, I was on the street twice, rode a tram, and nowhere did I see the slightest glimmer of pity or compassion. The news was read loudly, with grins, mockery and the most merciless comments... Some kind of senseless callousness, some kind of boasting of bloodthirstiness..."

A similar opinion is expressed by historian V.P. Buldakov. In his opinion, at that time few people were interested in the fate of the Romanovs, and long before their death there were rumors that none of the members of the imperial family were alive. According to Buldakov, the townspeople received the news of the tsar’s murder “with stupid indifference,” and the wealthy peasants with amazement, but without any protest. Buldakov cites a fragment from the diaries of Z. Gippius as a typical example of a similar reaction of the non-monarchist intelligentsia: “I don’t feel sorry for the puny officer, of course...he was with the carrion for a long time, but the disgusting ugliness of all this is unbearable.”

Investigation

On July 25, 1918, eight days after the execution of the royal family, Yekaterinburg was occupied by units of the White Army and detachments of the Czechoslovak Corps. The military authorities began a search for the missing royal family.

On July 30, an investigation into the circumstances of her death began. For the investigation, by decision of the Yekaterinburg District Court, an investigator for the most important cases, A.P. Nametkin, was appointed. On August 12, 1918, the investigation was entrusted to a member of the Yekaterinburg District Court, I. A. Sergeev, who examined Ipatiev’s house, including the semi-basement room where the royal family was shot, collected and described the material evidence found in the “House of Special Purpose” and at the mine. Since August 1918, A.F. Kirsta, appointed head of the criminal investigation department of Yekaterinburg, joined the investigation.

On January 17, 1919, to oversee the investigation into the murder of the royal family, the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral A.V. Kolchak, appointed Lieutenant General M.K. Diterichs, Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front. On January 26, Diterikhs received the original materials of the investigation conducted by Nametkin and Sergeev. By order of February 6, 1919, the investigation was entrusted to the investigator for especially important cases of the Omsk District Court N. A. Sokolov (1882-1924). It was thanks to his painstaking work that the details of the execution and burial of the royal family became known for the first time. Sokolov continued the investigation even in exile, until his sudden death. Based on the investigation materials, he wrote the book “The Murder of the Royal Family,” which was published in French in Paris during the author’s lifetime, and after his death, in 1925, published in Russian.

Investigation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries

The circumstances of the death of the royal family were investigated as part of a criminal case initiated on August 19, 1993 at the direction of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. Materials of the government Commission to study issues related to the research and reburial of the remains of Russian Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family have been published. In 1994, criminologist Sergei Nikitin reconstructed the appearance of the owners of the found skulls using Gerasimov’s method.

Investigator for particularly important cases of the Main Investigation Department Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, V. N. Solovyov, who led the criminal case into the death of the royal family, having examined the memoirs of those who personally participated in the execution, as well as the testimony of other former guards of the Ipatiev House, came to the conclusion that in the description of the execution they do not contradict each other each other, differing only in small details.

Solovyov stated that he had not found any documents that would directly prove the initiative of Lenin and Sverdlov. At the same time, when asked whether Lenin and Sverdlov were to blame for the execution of the royal family, he answered:

Meanwhile, historian A.G. Latyshev notes that if the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, chaired by Sverdlov, approved (recognized as correct) the decision of the Ural Regional Council to execute Nicholas II, then the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin, only “took note” of this decision.

Solovyov completely rejected the “ritual version”, pointing out that most of the participants in the discussion of the method of murder were Russians, only one Jew (Yurovsky) took part in the murder itself, and the rest were Russians and Latvians. The investigation also refuted the version promoted by M. K. Diterkhis about “cutting off heads” for ritual purposes. According to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination, cervical vertebrae All skeletons lack traces of post-mortem decapitation.

In October 2011, Solovyov handed over to representatives of the House of Romanov a resolution to terminate the investigation of the case. The official conclusion of the Investigative Committee of Russia, announced in October 2011, indicated that the investigation did not have documentary evidence of the involvement of Lenin or anyone else from the top leadership of the Bolsheviks in the execution of the royal family. Modern Russian historians point out the inconsistency of conclusions about the alleged non-involvement of the Bolshevik leaders in the murder based on the absence of documents of direct action in modern archives: Lenin practiced personally accepting and issuing the most drastic orders to the localities secretly and in the highest degree conspiratorially. According to A.N. Bokhanov, neither Lenin nor his entourage gave and would never have given written orders on an issue related to the murder of the royal family. In addition, A. N. Bokhanov noted that “many events in history are not reflected in documents of direct action,” which is not surprising. Historian-archivist V. M. Khrustalev, having analyzed the correspondence available to historians between various government departments of that period concerning representatives of the House of Romanov, wrote that it is quite logical to assume the conduct of “double office work” in the Bolshevik government, similar to the conduct of “double bookkeeping.” The director of the office of the House of Romanov, Alexander Zakatov, on behalf of the Romanovs, also commented on this resolution in such a way that the Bolshevik leaders could give verbal orders rather than written orders.

Having analyzed the attitude of the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government to resolving the issue of the fate of the royal family, the investigation noted the extreme aggravation of the political situation in July 1918 in connection with a number of events, including the murder on July 6 by the left Socialist Revolutionary Ya. G. Blumkin of the German ambassador V. Mirbach with the aim of leading to the rupture of the Brest Peace Treaty and the uprising of the Left Social Revolutionaries. Under these conditions, the execution of the royal family could have had Negative influence on further relations between the RSFSR and Germany, since Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters were German princesses. The possibility of extraditing one or more members of the royal family to Germany was not excluded in order to soften the severity of the conflict that arose as a result of the assassination of the ambassador. According to the investigation, the leaders of the Urals had a different position on this issue, the Presidium of the regional council of which was ready to destroy the Romanovs back in April 1918 during their transfer from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg.

V. M. Khrustalev wrote that putting a definitive end to the investigation into the circumstances of the murder of the royal family is hampered by the fact that historians and researchers still do not have the opportunity to study archival materials relating to the death of representatives of the Romanov dynasty, contained in the special storage facilities of the FSB, both central and regional level. The historian suggested that someone’s experienced hand purposefully “cleaned out” the archives of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), the board of the Cheka, the Ural Regional Executive Committee and the Yekaternburg Cheka for the summer and autumn of 1918. Looking through the scattered agendas of the Cheka meetings available to historians, Khrustalev came to the conclusion that documents were seized that mentioned the names of representatives of the Romanov dynasty. The archivist wrote that these documents could not be destroyed - they were probably transferred for storage to the Central Party Archive or “special storage facilities.” The funds of these archives were not available to researchers at the time the historian wrote his book.

The further fate of those involved in the shooting

Members of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council:

• Beloborodov, Alexander Georgievich - in 1927 expelled from the CPSU (b) for participation in the Trotskyist opposition, reinstated in May 1930, expelled again in 1936. In August 1936 he was arrested, on February 8, 1938, by the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR he was sentenced to death, and executed the next day. In 1919, Beloborodov wrote: “...The basic rule when dealing with counter-revolutionaries is: those captured are not tried, but they are subject to mass reprisals.” G. Z. Ioffe notes that after some time Beloborodov’s rule regarding counter-revolutionaries began to be applied by some Bolsheviks against others; Beloborodov “apparently could no longer understand this. In the 30s, Beloborodov was repressed and executed. The circle is closed."
• Goloshchekin, Philip Isaevich - in 1925-1933 - secretary of the Kazakh regional committee of the CPSU (b); carried out violent measures aimed at changing the lifestyle of nomads and collectivization, which led to huge casualties. On October 15, 1939 he was arrested and executed on October 28, 1941.
• Didkovsky, Boris Vladimirovich - worked at the Ural State University, the Ural Geological Trust. On August 3, 1937, he was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR as an active participant in the anti-Soviet right-wing terrorist organization in the Urals. Shot. In 1956 he was rehabilitated. A mountain peak in the Urals is named after Didkovsky.
• Safarov, Georgy Ivanovich - in 1927, at the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he was expelled from the party “as an active participant in the Trotskyist opposition” and exiled to the city of Achinsk. After announcing a break with the opposition, by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he was reinstated in the party. In the 1930s he was again expelled from the party and was arrested several times. In 1942 he was shot. Posthumously rehabilitated.
• Tolmachev, Nikolai Guryevich - in 1919, in a battle with the troops of General N.N. Yudenich near Luga, he fought while surrounded; To avoid being captured, he shot himself. He was buried on the Champ de Mars.

Direct executors:

• Yurovsky, Yakov Mikhailovich - died in 1938 in the Kremlin hospital. Yurovsky's daughter Rimma Yakovlevna Yurovskaya was repressed on false charges and was imprisoned from 1938 to 1956. Rehabilitated. Yurovsky's son, Alexander Yakovlevich Yurovsky, was arrested in 1952.
• Nikulin, Grigory Petrovich (Yurovsky’s assistant) - survived the purge, left memories (recording of the Radio Committee on May 12, 1964).
• Ermakov, Pyotr Zakharovich - retired in 1934, survived the purge.
• Medvedev (Kudrin), Mikhail Alexandrovich - survived the purge, before his death he left detailed memories of the events (December 1963). He died on January 13, 1964, and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
• Medvedev, Pavel Spiridonovich - on February 11, 1919 he was arrested by an agent of the White Guard criminal investigation department S.I. Alekseev. He died in prison on March 12, 1919, according to some sources, from typhus, according to others, from torture.

• Voikov, Pyotr Lazarevich - killed on June 7, 1927 in Warsaw by the white emigrant Boris Koverda. The Voikovskaya metro station in Moscow and a number of streets in cities of the USSR were named in honor of Voikov.

Perm murder:

• Myasnikov, Gavriil Ilyich - in the 1920s he joined the “worker opposition”, was repressed in 1923, fled from the USSR in 1928. Shot in 1945; according to other sources, he died in custody in 1946.

Canonization and church veneration of the royal family

In 1981, the royal family was glorified (canonized) by the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and in 2000 - by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Alternative theories

There are alternative versions regarding the death of the royal family. These include versions about the rescue of someone from the royal family and conspiracy theories. According to one of these theories, the murder of the royal family was ritual, carried out by “Jew-Masons,” as allegedly evidenced by “Kabbalistic signs” in the room where the execution took place. Some versions of this theory say that after the execution, the head of Nicholas II was separated from the body and preserved in alcohol. According to another, the execution was carried out on the orders of the German government after Nicholas’s refusal to create a pro-German monarchy in Russia led by Alexei (this theory is given in R. Wilton’s book).

The Bolsheviks announced to everyone immediately after the execution that Nicholas II had been killed, but at first the Soviet authorities were silent about the fact that his wife and children had also been shot. The secrecy of the murder and burial sites led to the fact that a number of people subsequently declared that they were one of the “miraculously escaped” family members. One of the most famous impostors was Anna Anderson, who pretended to be the miraculously surviving Anastasia. Several feature films have been made based on the story of Anna Anderson.

Rumors about the “miraculous salvation” of all or part of the royal family, or even the king himself, began to spread almost immediately after the execution. So, adventurer B. N. Solovyov, ex-husband daughter of Rasputin Matryona, claimed that allegedly “the Emperor saved himself by flying to Tibet to see the Dalai Lama,” and witness Samoilov, with reference to the guard of the Ipatiev House A.S. Varakushev, claimed that allegedly the royal family was not shot, but “immersed in railway carriage".

American journalists A. Summers and T. Mangold in the 1970s. studied a previously unknown part of the investigation archives of 1918-1919, found in the 1930s. in the USA, and published the results of their investigation in 1976. In their opinion, N. A. Sokolov’s conclusions about the death of the entire royal family were made under pressure from A. V. Kolchak, who for some reasons found it beneficial to declare all family members dead. They consider the investigations and conclusions of other White Army investigators (A.P. Nametkin, I.A. Sergeev and A.F. Kirsta) more objective. In their (Summers and Mangold's) opinion, it is most likely that only Nicholas II and his heir were shot in Yekaterinburg, and Alexandra Fedorovna and her daughters were transported to Perm and their further fate is unknown. A. Summers and T. Mangold are inclined to believe that Anna Anderson really was Grand Duchess Anastasia.

Exhibitions

• Exhibition “The Death of the Family of Emperor Nicholas II. A century-long investigation." (May 25 - July 29, 2012, Exhibition Hall of the Federal Archives (Moscow); from July 10, 2013, Center for Traditional Folk Culture of the Middle Urals (Ekaterinburg)).

In art

The theme, unlike other revolutionary subjects (for example, “The Taking of Winter Palace” or “Lenin’s Arrival in Petrograd”) was of little demand in Soviet fine arts XX century. However, there is an early Soviet painting by V. N. Pchelin, “The Transfer of the Romanov Family to the Urals Council,” painted in 1927.

It is much more common in cinema, including in the films: “Nicholas and Alexandra” (1971), “The Regicide” (1991), “Rasputin” (1996), “The Romanovs. The Crowned Family" (2000), the television series "The White Horse" (1993). The film "Rasputin" begins with the scene of the execution of the royal family.

The play “House of Special Purpose” by Edward Radzinsky is dedicated to the same topic.

In Yekaterinburg on the night of July 17, 1918, the Bolsheviks shot Nicholas II, his entire family (wife, son, four daughters) and servants.

But the murder of the royal family was not an execution in the usual sense: a volley was fired and the condemned fell dead. Only Nicholas II and his wife died quickly - the rest, due to the chaos in the execution room, waited a few more minutes for death. The 13-year-old son of Alexei, the daughters and servants of the emperor were killed with shots to the head and stabbed with bayonets. HistoryTime will tell you how all this horror happened.

Reconstruction

The Ipatiev House, where the terrible events took place, was recreated in the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore in a 3D computer model. The virtual reconstruction allows you to walk through the premises of the “last palace” of the emperor, look into the rooms where he, Alexandra Feodorovna, their children, servants lived, go out into the courtyard, go to the rooms on the first floor (where the guards lived) and to the so-called execution room, in which the king and family suffered martyrdom.

The situation in the house was recreated to the smallest detail (down to the paintings on the walls, the sentry’s machine gun in the corridor and bullet holes in the “execution room”) on the basis of documents (including reports of the inspection of the house made by representatives of the “white” investigation), old photographs, and also interior details that have survived to this day thanks to museum workers: the Ipatiev House had a Historical and Revolutionary Museum for a long time, and before its demolition in 1977, its employees were able to remove and preserve some items.

For example, the pillars from the stairs to the second floor or the fireplace near which the emperor smoked (it was forbidden to leave the house) have been preserved. Now all these things are on display in the Romanov Hall of the Local History Museum. " The most valuable exhibit of our exposition is the bars that stood in the window of the “execution room”, says the creator of the 3D reconstruction, head of the history department of the Romanov dynasty of the museum, Nikolai Neuymin. - She is a mute witness to those terrible events.”

In July 1918, “red” Yekaterinburg was preparing for evacuation: the White Guards were approaching the city. Realizing that taking the Tsar and his family away from Yekaterinburg is dangerous for the young revolutionary republic (it would be impossible to ensure imperial family The same good security as in the house of Ipatiev and Nicholas II could easily be recaptured by the monarchists) the leaders of the Bolshevik party decide to destroy the tsar along with his children and servants.

On the fateful night, having waited for the final order from Moscow (the car brought him at half past two in the morning), the commandant of the “special purpose house” Yakov Yurovsky ordered Doctor Botkin to wake up Nikolai and his family.

Before last minute they did not know that they would be killed: they were informed that they were being transferred to another place for safety reasons, since the city had become restless - there was an evacuation due to the advance of white troops.

The room they were taken to was empty: there was no furniture - only two chairs were brought. The famous note from the commandant of the “House of Special Purpose” Yurovsky, who commanded the execution, reads:

Nikolai put Alexei on one, and Alexandra Fedorovna sat on the other. The commandant ordered the rest to stand in a line. ...Told the Romanovs that due to the fact that their relatives in Europe continued to attack Soviet Russia, the Urals Executive Committee decided to shoot them. Nikolai turned his back to the team, facing his family, then, as if coming to his senses, he turned around with the question: “What?” What?".

According to Neuimin, the short “Note of Yurovsky” (written in 1920 by the historian Pokrovsky under the dictation of a revolutionary) is important, but not best document. The execution and subsequent events are described much more fully in Yurovsky’s “Memoirs” (1922) and, especially, in the transcript of his speech at a secret meeting of old Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg (1934). There are also recollections of other participants in the execution: in 1963-1964, the KGB, on behalf of the CPSU Central Committee, interrogated all of them alive. " Their words echo the stories of Yurovsky different years: they all say about the same thing“, notes a museum employee.

Execution

According to Commandant Yurovsky, everything did not go at all as he had planned. " His idea was that in this room there is a wall plastered with wooden blocks, and there will be no rebound, says Neuimin. - But a little higher there are concrete vaults. The revolutionaries shot aimlessly, the bullets began to hit the concrete and bounce off. Yurovsky says that in the midst of it he was forced to give the command to cease fire: one bullet flew over his ear, and the other hit a comrade in the finger».

Yurovsky recalled in 1922:

For a long time I was unable 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 lay leaning on the elbow of his right hand, as if in a resting position, and finished off him with a revolver shot. Alexey, Tatyana, Anastasia and Olga were also alive. Demidova’s maid was also alive.

The fact that despite the prolonged shooting, members of the royal family remained alive is simply explained.

It was decided in advance who would shoot whom, but the majority of revolutionaries began to shoot at the “tyrant” - Nicholas. " In the wake of revolutionary hysteria, they believed that he was the crowned executioner, says Neuimin. - Liberal-democratic propaganda, starting from the 1905 revolution, wrote this about Nicholas! They issued postcards - Alexandra Fedorovna with Rasputin, Nicholas II with huge branchy horns, in Ipatiev’s house all the walls were covered with inscriptions on this topic».

Yurovsky wanted everything to be unexpected for the royal family, so those whom the family knew entered the room (most likely): Commandant Yurovsky himself, his assistant Nikulin, and security chief Pavel Medvedev. The rest of the executioners stood in the doorway in three rows

In addition, Yurovsky did not take into account the size of the room (approximately 4.5 by 5.5 meters): members of the royal family settled in it, but there was no longer enough space for the executioners, and they stood behind each other. There is an assumption that only three stood inside the room - those whom the royal family knew (commandant Yurovsky, his assistant Grigory Nikulin and security chief Pavel Medvedev), two more stood in the doorway, the rest behind them. Alexey Kabanov, for example, recalls that he stood in the third row and shot, sticking his hand with a pistol between the shoulders of his comrades.

He says that when he finally entered the room, he saw that Medvedev (Kudrin), Ermakov and Yurovsky were standing “above the girls” and were shooting at them from above. Ballistic examination confirmed that Olga, Tatiana and Maria (except Anastasia) had bullet wounds to the head. Yurovsky writes:

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 everyone in turn.

When the shooting stopped, it was discovered that Alexey was alive on the floor - it turns out that no one had shot at him (Nikulin was supposed to shoot, but he later said that he couldn’t, because he liked Alyoshka - a couple of days before the execution, he cut out a wooden pipe). The Tsarevich was unconscious, but breathing - and Yurovsky also shot him point-blank in the head.

Agony

When it seemed that everything was over, she stood up in the corner female figure(maid Anna Demidova) with a pillow in her hands. With a cry " God bless! God saved me!"(all the bullets got stuck in the pillow) she tried to run away. But the cartridges ran out. Later, Yurovsky said that Ermakov, supposedly a good fellow, was not taken aback - he ran out into the corridor where Strekotin was standing at the machine gun, grabbed his rifle and began to poke the maid with a bayonet. She wheezed for a long time and did not die.

The Bolsheviks began to carry the bodies of the dead into the corridor. At this time, one of the girls - Anastasia - sat down and screamed wildly, realizing what had happened (it turns out that she fainted during the execution). " Then Ermakov pierced her - she was the last one to die painful death "- says Nikolai Neuimin.

Kabanov says that he had “the hardest thing” - killing dogs (before the execution, Tatyana had a French bulldog in her arms, and Anastasia had a dog Jimmy).

Medvedev (Kudrin) writes that the “triumphant Kabanov” came out with a rifle in his hand, on the bayonet of which two dogs were dangling, and with the words “for dogs - a dog’s death,” he threw them into a truck, where the corpses of members of the royal family were already lying.

During interrogation, Kabanov said that he barely pierced the animals with a bayonet, but, as it turned out, he lied: in the well of mine No. 7 (where the Bolsheviks dumped the bodies of those killed that same night), the “white” investigation found the corpse of this dog with a broken skull: apparently, one he pierced the animal and finished off the other with the butt.

All this terrible agony lasted, according to various researchers, up to half an hour, and even some seasoned revolutionaries’ nerves could not stand it. Neuimin says:

There, in Ipatiev’s house, there was a guard, Dobrynin, who abandoned his post and ran away. There was the head of the external security, Pavel Spiridonovich Medvedev, who was put in command of the entire security of the house (he is not a security officer, but a Bolshevik who fought, and they trusted him). Medvedev-Kudrin writes that Pavel fell during the execution and then began to crawl out of the room on all fours. When his comrades asked what was wrong with him (whether he was wounded), he cursed dirtyly and began to feel sick.

The Sverdlovsk museum displays pistols used by the Bolsheviks: three revolvers (analogues) and Pyotr Ermakov’s Mauser. The last exhibit is an authentic weapon used to kill the royal family (there is an act from 1927, when Ermakov handed over his weapons). Another proof that this is the same weapon is a photograph of a group of party leaders at the site where the remains of the royal family were hidden in Porosenkov Log (taken in 2014).

On it are the leaders of the Ural Regional Executive Committee and the Regional Party Committee (most were shot in 1937-38). Ermakov’s Mauser lies right on the sleepers - above the heads of the murdered and buried members of the royal family, whose burial place the “white” investigation was never able to find and which only half a century later the Ural geologist Alexander Avdonin was able to discover.