Painting depicting the execution of the Russian ex-Tsarist Romanov family, July 17, 1918..." WORLD WAR 1"
Painting depicting the execution of the Russian ex-Tsarist Romanov family, July 17, 1918..." WORLD WAR 1"
Today 105 years ago, in the early hours of July 17, 1918, Russian ex-Tsar Nicholas, his wife and five children were executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries in the Ipatiev House basement in Yekaterinburg.
On March 15, 1917, upon the outbreak of the Russian February Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne, ending 304 years of the House of Romanov's reign over Russia. On March 20, 1917, the new Russian Provisional Government decided to hold the Romanov family under house arrest at the Alexander Palace near St. Petersburg.
The Romanov family, consisting of Tsar Nicholas, his wife the Empress Alexandra, their four daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and their son Alexei, was eventually moved to Tobolsk in Western Siberia in August 1917. In April 1918 they were moved again to the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, where they were essentially imprisoned and kept under strict conditions by Bolshevik guards.
By then the Russian Civil War was fully under way, and by June 1918 the Czechoslovak Legion, siding with the counter-revolutionary White Army, was steadily approaching Yekaterinburg. Fearing that these forces were on a rescue mission for the Romanovs, in late June the decision was made to execute the family.
On July 16, the Bolshevik guards, led by Yakov Yurovsky, was given the order to execute the ex-Tsar family by firing squad.
At around 2 AM on July 17, 1918, the family was awakened and got dressed under the impression they were being moved to a safer location. Yurovsky and his guards then led the family down into the half-basement room of the Ipatiev House.
A few minutes later, an execution squad was brought in and Yurovsky read aloud his order of execution, reportedly prompting a stunned Nicholas to exclaim: "What? What did you say? You know not what you do!"
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Yurovsky raised his Colt pistol and lethally fired at least 3 bullets into Nicholas' torso and chest. Yurovsky claimed credit for killing the ex-Tsar, though another executioner later claimed a guard named Pavel Medvedev was the one who fired the bullet which killed Nicholas.
Utter chaos erupted in the dark basement as the Empress Alexandra and her children began screaming and praying. The executioners began frantically firing into the darkness, though the family survived the first wave of bullets as their diamond-covered clothing provided some protection.
By then the room was reportedly so filled with smoke and dust that one could barely see a thing in the darkness. As things cleared up this became apparent, so in order to keep noise levels down, the executioners then stabbed the family with bayonetted rifles before firing bullets at close range into their heads.
The Empress Alexandra was the first to be killed by Yurovsky with a bullet to the head, followed by Alexei. One executioner filled the son Alexei with an entire magazine before Yurovsky put two bullets to his head.
Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia crouched up against the wall and covered their heads in terror until they were shot dead. The servants were also killed in the onslaught.
The execution lasted about 20 minutes with future investigations calculating that around 70 bullets were fired.
The bodies were looted for valuables before being loaded onto a truck, where they were taken to a marshy ground inside the Koptyaki forest for their disposal. Upon discovering the pit was too shallow, the bodies were dug up again and eventually buried and dissolved in sulphuric acid under a road 15 km north of Yekaterinburg.
In order to confuse anyone who might discover the mass grave, Alexei and one of his sisters, believed to be Maria, were exempt and their bodies burned in a bonfire instead, tossed into a smaller pit.
Years passed with the burial site staying unknown until 1979, when the mass grave was discovered and the bodies later confirmed to be the remains of the Romanovs in 1991. The small pit containing Alexei and Maria's remains were also found in 2007.

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