Nicholas II is the last Russian emperor to go down in history as the weakest tsar. According to historians, governing the country for the monarch was a "heavy burden", but this did not prevent him from making a feasible contribution to the industrial and economic development of Russia, despite the fact that the country was actively increasing during the reign of Nicholas II. revolutionary movement, and the foreign policy situation became more complicated. V modern history the Russian emperor is mentioned with the epithets "Nicholas the Bloody" and "Nicholas the Martyr", as assessments of the tsar's activities and character are ambiguous and contradictory.

Born Nicholas II on May 18, 1868 in Tsarskoe Selo Russian Empire in the imperial family. For his parents, and, he became the eldest son and the only heir to the throne, who from an early age was taught the future work of his entire life. The upbringing of the future king from birth was the Englishman Karl Heath, who taught young Nikolai Alexandrovich to speak English fluently.

The childhood of the heir to the royal throne passed within the walls of the Gatchina Palace under the clear guidance of his father Alexander III, who raised his children in the traditional religious spirit - he allowed them to play and fool around in moderation, but at the same time did not allow the manifestation of laziness in their studies, suppressing all the thoughts of his sons about future throne.

At the age of 8, Nikolai II began to receive a general education at home. His training was carried out within the framework of the general gymnasium course, but the future tsar did not show much zeal and desire for study. His passion was military affairs - at the age of 5 he became the chief of the Life Guards of the Reserve Infantry Regiment and happily mastered military geography, jurisprudence and strategy. Lectures to the future monarch were read by the best world-famous scientists who were personally selected for his son by the king Alexander III and his wife Maria Fedorovna.

The heir was especially successful in learning foreign languages, therefore, in addition to English, he was fluent in French, German and Danish. After eight years of the general gymnasium program, Nicholas II began to teach the necessary higher sciences for the future statesman, included in the course of the economic department of the University of Law.

In 1884, upon reaching adulthood, Nicholas II took the oath in the Winter Palace, after which he entered active military service, and three years later began regular military service, for which he was awarded the rank of colonel. Fully surrendering to military affairs, the future tsar easily adapted to the inconveniences of army life and endured military service.

The first acquaintance with state affairs from the heir to the throne took place in 1889. Then he began to attend meetings of the State Council and the Cabinet of Ministers, at which his father brought him up to date and shared his experience on how to govern the country. In the same period, Alexander III made numerous travels with his son, which began from the Far East. Over the next 9 months, they traveled by sea to Greece, India, Egypt, Japan and China, and then across Siberia returned by land to the Russian capital.

Ascent to the throne

In 1894, after the death of Alexander III, Nicholas II ascended the throne and solemnly promised to protect the autocracy as firmly and unswervingly as his late parent. The coronation of the last Russian emperor took place in 1896 in Moscow. These solemn events were marked by tragic events on the Khodynskoye field, where during the distribution of royal gifts, riots took place, which took the lives of thousands of citizens.

Due to the massive crush, the monarch who came to power even wanted to cancel the evening ball on the occasion of his accession to the throne, but later decided that Khodynskaya catastrophe is a real misfortune, but not worth it to darken the coronation. The educated society perceived these events as a challenge, which became the laying of the foundation for the creation of liberation movement in Russia from the tsar-dictator.

Against this background, the emperor introduced a tough domestic politics, according to which any dissent among the people was persecuted. In the first few years of the reign of Nicholas II, a population census was carried out in Russia, as well as a monetary reform that established the gold standard for the ruble. The gold ruble of Nicholas II was equal to 0.77 grams of pure gold and was half the "heavier" mark, but twice "lighter" than the dollar at the rate of international currencies.

In the same period in Russia were held "Stolypin" agrarian reforms, factory legislation was introduced, several laws were passed on compulsory workers' insurance and universal primary education, and the tax levy on Polish landowners was abolished and penalties such as exile to Siberia were abolished.

In the Russian Empire during the reign of Nicholas II, large-scale industrialization took place, the rate of agricultural production increased, and coal and oil production began. At the same time, thanks to the last Russian emperor, more than 70 thousand kilometers of the railway were built in Russia.

Rule and abdication

The reign of Nicholas II at the second stage took place in the years of aggravation of the internal political life of Russia and a rather difficult foreign policy situation. At the same time, the Far Eastern direction was in the first place. The main obstacle to the dominance of the Russian monarch in the Far East was Japan, which without warning in 1904 attacked a Russian squadron in the port city of Port Arthur and, due to the inaction of the Russian leadership, defeated the Russian army.

As a result of the failure of the Russian-Japanese war, a revolutionary situation began to develop rapidly in the country, and Russia had to cede the southern part of Sakhalin to Japan and the rights to the Liaodong Peninsula. It was after this that the Russian emperor lost his credibility in the country's intellectual and ruling circles, who accused the tsar of defeat and ties with the unofficial “adviser” of the monarch, but considered in society a charlatan and swindler who had full influence over Nicholas II.

The turning point in the biography of Nicholas II became the First World War 1914 of the year. Then the emperor with all his might, on the advice of Rasputin, tried to avoid a bloody massacre, but Germany went to war against Russia, which was forced to defend itself. In 1915, the monarch took over the military command of the Russian army and personally traveled to the fronts, inspecting military units. At the same time, he made a number of fatal military mistakes, which led to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty and the Russian Empire.

The war aggravated the internal problems of the country, all military failures in the environment of Nicholas II were assigned to him. Then, treason began to nest in the government of the country, but despite this, the emperor, together with England and France, developed a plan for a general offensive of Russia, which should have triumphantly ended the military confrontation for the country by the summer of 1917.

The plans of Nicholas II were not destined to come true - at the end of February 1917, mass uprisings began in Petrograd against royal dynasty and the current government, which he originally intended to suppress by force. But the military did not obey the orders of the king, and members of the monarch's retinue persuaded him to abdicate the throne, which supposedly would help suppress the unrest. After several days of painful deliberation, Nicholas II decided to abdicate in favor of his brother, Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich, who refused to accept the crown, which meant the end of the Romanov dynasty.

Execution of Nicholas II and his family

After the tsar signed a manifesto on abdication, the Provisional Government of Russia issued an arrest order royal family and his entourage. Then many betrayed the emperor and fled, so only a few close people from his entourage agreed to share the tragic fate with the monarch, who, together with the tsar, were exiled to Tobolsk, from where, allegedly, the family of Nicholas II was to be transported to the United States.

After the October Revolution and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, led by the royal family, they were transported to Yekaterinburg and imprisoned in a "special purpose house". Then the Bolsheviks began to hatch a plan for the trial of the monarch, but the Civil War did not allow their plan to be realized.

Because of this, in the upper echelons of Soviet power, it was decided to shoot the tsar and his family. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the family of the last Russian emperor was shot in the basement of the house in which Nicholas II was held captive. The king, his wife and children, as well as several of his entourage were taken to the basement under the pretext of evacuation and without explanation were shot at point-blank range, after which the victims were taken outside the city, their bodies were burned with kerosene, and then buried in the ground.

Personal life and royal family

The personal life of Nicholas II, unlike many other Russian monarchs, was the standard of the highest family virtue. In 1889, during the visit of the German princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt to Russia, Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich converted Special attention on the girl and asked his father for a blessing to marry her. But the parents did not agree with the choice of the heir, so they refused their son. This did not stop Nicholas II, who did not lose hope of marriage with Alice. They were assisted by the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the sister of the German princess, who arranged secret correspondence for the young lovers.

After 5 years, Tsarevich Nikolai again insistently asked his father's consent to marry a German princess. Alexander III, in view of the sharply deteriorating health, allowed his son to marry Alice, who became after chrismation. In November 1894, the wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra took place in the Winter Palace, and in 1896 the couple accepted the coronation and officially became the rulers of the country.

In the marriage of Alexandra Fedorovna and Nicholas II, 4 daughters were born (Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia) and the only heir, Alexei, who had a serious hereditary disease - hemophilia associated with the process of blood coagulation. The illness of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich forced the royal family to meet Grigory Rasputin, widely known at that time, who helped the royal heir to fight the attacks of the disease, which allowed him to gain tremendous influence on Alexandra Feodorovna and Emperor Nicholas II.

Historians report that the family for the last Russian emperor was the most important meaning of life. Most he always spent time in the family circle, did not like secular pleasures, especially valued his peace, habits, health and well-being of his relatives. At the same time, worldly hobbies were not alien to the emperor - he went hunting with pleasure, participated in horse riding competitions, skated with passion and played hockey.

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

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

Many books have been written about the execution of the royal family of the Romanovs. To this day, discussions continue about whether the murder of the Romanovs was planned in advance 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 the murder of the royal family of the Romanovs was an excellent trump card against the Bolsheviks, giving grounds to accuse them of inhumanity. Is this why most of the documents and testimonies that tell about the last days of the Romanovs appeared and continues to appear in Western countries? But some researchers believe that the crime of which the Bolshevik Russia was accused was not committed at all ...

In the investigation into the circumstances of the execution of the Romanovs, there were many secrets from the very beginning. In relatively hot pursuit, two investigators were engaged in it. The first investigation began a week after the alleged murder. The investigator concluded that the emperor was in fact executed on the night of July 16-17, but 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 irrefutable evidence that the entire Romanov family was killed in Yekaterinburg? Hard to say…

While examining 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 that the prince used as a fishing hook, gems, which were sewn up in the belts of the Grand Duchesses, and the skeleton of a tiny dog, probably the favorite of Princess Tatiana. If we recall the circumstances of the death of the royal family, it is difficult to imagine that the dog's corpse was also transported from place to place in order to hide it ... Falcons did not find human remains, except for several fragments of bones and a 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 given the many emigrants who were interested in the fate of the Romanovs. According to Sokolov, all the Romanovs were killed on the fatal night. True, he was not the first to suggest that the empress and the 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 the hopes that any of the Romanovs survived. But both in Europe and in Russia, numerous impostors and impostors constantly appeared, who declared themselves the children of the emperor. So there were doubts all the same?

The first argument of the supporters of the revision of 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 it was more profitable for the Bolsheviks at that time to exchange Alexandra Feodorovna for political prisoners held in German captivity. Rumors about negotiations on this topic circulated. Sir Charles Eliot, the British consul in Siberia, visited Yekaterinburg shortly after the emperor's death. He met with the first investigator in the Romanov case, after which he informed his superiors that, in his opinion, the former queen and her children left Yekaterinburg by train on July 17.

At almost the same time, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, Alexandra's brother, allegedly informed his second sister, the Marquis of Milford Haven, that Alexandra was safe. Of course, he could simply console his sister, to whom rumors about the massacre of the Romanovs could not help but reach. If Alexandra and her children were actually exchanged for political prisoners (Germany would willingly take this step in order to save her princess), all the newspapers of both the Old and New World would trumpet about this. This would mean that the dynasty, tied by blood ties to many of the oldest monarchies in Europe, did not end. But no articles followed, because the version that the entire royal family was killed was recognized as official.

In the early 1970s, British journalists Anthony Summers and Tom Menschld got acquainted with the official documents of the Sokolov investigation. And they found many inaccuracies and shortcomings in them, which cast doubt on this version. First, a coded 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 first investigator was removed. Secondly, the bodies have not yet been found. And to judge the death of the empress by the only fragment of the body - the severed finger - was not entirely correct.

1988 - it would seem that irrefutable proof of the death of the emperor, his wife and children appeared. Former investigator The Interior Ministry 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 his search. He was able to find greenish-black bones with burn marks left by acid. 1988 - He published a report on his find. 1991, July - Russian archaeologists-professionals came to the place where the remains, presumably belonging to the Romanovs, were found.

9 skeletons were recovered from the ground. 4 of them belonged to Nikolai's servants and their family doctor. Another 5 - to the king, his wife and children. It was not easy to establish the identity of the remains. The skulls were first compared to surviving photographs of members of the imperial family. One of them was identified as the skull of the emperor. Was later held comparative analysis DNA prints. This required the blood of a person related to the deceased. The blood sample was provided by the British Prince Philip. His own maternal grandmother was the sister of the empress's grandmother.

The result of the analysis showed a complete coincidence of DNA in four skeletons, which gave grounds to officially recognize the remains of Alexandra and her three daughters in them. The bodies of the Tsarevich and Anastasia were not found. On this occasion, two hypotheses were put forward: either two descendants of the Romanov family still managed to stay alive, or their bodies were burned. It seems that Sokolov was still right, and his report turned out not to be a provocation, but a real coverage of the facts ...

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

2006 - performed another DNA analysis. This time, the 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 L. Zhivotovsky, Doctor of Science, an employee of the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His American colleagues helped him. The results of this analysis were completely unexpected: the DNA of Elizabeth and the alleged empress did not match. The first thought that came to the researchers' mind was that the relics stored in the cathedral, in fact, did not belong to Elizabeth, but to someone else. However, this version had to be ruled out: 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 rest of the remains. On the skull, which was previously identified as the skull of the emperor, there was no callus, which could not disappear even after so many years after death. This mark appeared on the skull of Nicholas II after an attempt on his life in Japan. In the Yurovsky protocol it was said that the tsar was killed by a point-blank shot, while the executioner shot in the head. Even taking into account the imperfection of the weapon, at least one bullet hole must have remained in the skull. However, it lacks both inlets and outlets.

It is possible that the 1993 reports were fake. Need to find the remains of the royal family? Please, here they are. To carry out an examination to prove their authenticity? Here is the result of the examination! In the 1990s, there were all the conditions for myth-making. No wonder the Russian was so cautious Orthodox Church, not wanting to recognize the discovered bones and rank the emperor and his family among the martyrs ...

Again, talk began 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 an assumed name with his family? On the one hand, this option cannot be ruled out. The country is huge, there are many corners in it, in which no one would recognize Nikolai. The Romanov family could also be accommodated in some kind of shelter, where they would be completely isolated from contacts with the outside world, which means they are not dangerous.

On the other hand, even if the remains found near Yekaterinburg are the result of falsification, this does not mean at all that there was no execution. 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 the dead are buried by the method of burning. So would the killers, who had an unlimited supply of firewood and a fair amount of acid, not be able to 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 the places where the killers hid acid jugs. If there was no execution, where did they come from in the Ural wilderness?

Attempts to restore the events that preceded the execution were carried out several times. 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 infamous Ipatiev House.

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

At work, Peter often visited the Ipatius house. Apparently, the elderly employees felt trust in him, because one evening they showed him a small closet, in which she hung on the wall on rusty nails. white glove, ladies' fan, a ring, a few buttons different sizes... On a chair lay a small Bible on French and a couple of old-bound books. According to one of the women, all these things once belonged to members of the royal family.

She also told about the last days of the life of the Romanovs, 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 Chekists explained that these measures were taken for security reasons, but the interlocutor Duzya was convinced that this was one of thousands of ways to humiliate the "ex." It should be noted that the Chekists had reasons for concern. According to the recollections of the archivist, every morning (!) The Ipatiev House was besieged by local residents and monks, who tried to convey notes to the tsar and his relatives, offered to help with chores around the house.

Of course, this does not justify the behavior of the Chekists, 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 only to "excluding" sympathizers from the members of the Romanov family. Many of their antics were downright outrageous. They took particular pleasure in shocking Nikolai's daughters. They wrote obscene words on the fence and outhouse located in the courtyard, tried to watch the girls in the dark corridors. Nobody has mentioned such details yet. Therefore, Duz listened attentively to the story of the interlocutor. O last minutes the life of the imperial family, she also reported a lot of new things.

The Romanovs were ordered to go down to the basement. The emperor asked for 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 volleys. But the inhabitants of the Ipatiev house recalled that the shots were chaotic.

Nicholas was killed immediately. But his wife and princesses were destined for a more difficult death. The fact is that diamonds were sewn into their corsets. In some places, they were arranged in several layers. 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 one of them began to be lifted to load the body into the car, the princess groaned and stirred. Therefore, the Chekists 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, the attempts to destroy the bodies took a lot of time. A week later, the Chekists allowed several nuns to enter the house - the premises had to be cleaned up. Among them was the interlocutor Dusya. According to him, she recalled with horror the picture that had opened in the basement of the Ipatiev house. The walls were full of bullet holes, and the floor and walls in the room where the shooting was carried out were covered in blood.

Subsequently, experts from the Main state center forensic and forensic examinations of the Ministry of Defense of Russia restored the picture of the shooting with an accuracy of the minute and to the millimeter. With the help of 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 protect Nicholas from bullets.

Ballistic examination established many details: from which weapon the members of the imperial family were eliminated, how many shots were fired approximately. The security officers needed to pull the trigger at least 30 times ...

Every year the chances of discovering the real remains of the royal family of Romanovs (if the Yekaterinburg skeletons are recognized as fakes) are fading. This means that the hope of ever finding an exact answer to the questions is melting: who died in the basement of the Ipatiev house, did any of the Romanovs manage to escape and what was further destiny heirs to the Russian throne ...

The family of the emperor was executed on one of the summer July nights from 16 to 17 in the largest city in Russia - Yekaterinburg. The place was chosen appropriately: the basement of an ordinary house for those times, of one of the local residents - an engineer of the mining industry Nikolai Ipatiev. Not only the whole family, including children, but also those close to them fell under execution: Yevgeny Botkin, who served as a physician for the tsar; Alexey Trup, known as a valet; Anna Demidova - servant; Ivan Kharitonov - at that time he served the king in the person of a cook. Did Nicholas II contemplate the execution, did he know about imminent death, was he really able to save the family, did the tsar's family manage to escape? These questions are still troubling historians, but there is documentary evidence that is difficult to refute.

Nicholas 2: shooting of the royal family, events before the bloody massacre in stages

1. The date of the beginning of the armed uprising that affected Petrograd is subsidized on March 12 (if we take into account the Old Russian calendar, then in those years it fell on February 27). The consequence of it was the abdication of the throne on March 15 of Tsar Nicholas 2 (as well as his son Alexei). The refusal was in favor of his brother Mikhail, who was younger than Nikolai. It happened in 1917, a year before the tragedy.

2. The abdication presupposed the arrest of the family, therefore, from the end of the summer (August) of 1917, the tsar and his family arrived at the Alexander Palace, which was located in Tsarskoe Selo. The interim government created a special commission to search for materials to bring the emperor's family to justice for high treason. Evidence or evidence of this was never found, so a decision was made in favor of the exile of Nicholas 2 with his entire family to the region of Great Britain.

3. However, plans quickly changed: in the same August, the tsar and his relatives were sent to Tobolsk. This decision was made with the aim of holding an open trial of the prisoners, but it never took place in fact, and only in the spring (April) of 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to transfer the tsarist charges to Moscow. Despite the fact that Lenin was at the head of the decision, fears from the "White Guard conspiracies" did not give the interim government rest. There was a high likelihood that the imperial family would be kidnapped. That is why the prisoners were transported to the Urals in the city of Yekaterinburg and placed in the house of an unknown Ipatiev.

It is not known how long the family would have been in captivity on the territory of Yekaterinburg, if not for the beginning of the White Czech uprising, which entailed the offensive of the White Guards on the city. This only hastened the decision on the massacre of the king.

Everything happened in a hurry, so it was entrusted to Yakov Yurovsky, then he acted as commandant of the House of Special Purpose. Documentary evidence (sources) of that terrible night with detailed description events. They said that the decree on the execution of the tsar and his relatives was delivered to their place of residence after midnight (at 1:30 am) from July 16 to July 17, 1918. When the document was delivered, the physician-in-chief Botkin woke up the royal family. The collection took about 40 minutes, then all the prisoners were taken to a semi-basement room. Everyone, except for his son Nikolai (Alexei), went down to the execution room on their own. The father carried the child in his arms due to illness. Two chairs were brought into the basement at the insistence of Alexandra Fyodorovna (for herself and her husband), all the rest were placed along the wall. The commandant first started firing squad, and then read the death sentence.

Later, Yurovsky, in his own words, will describe in detail the scene of the Tsar's execution, adding details and details. Based on his words, it happened like this ... Yurovsky insisted that the prisoners get up from their chairs and occupy the central and side walls of the basement, tk. the room was very small in size. Tsar Nicholas had his back to the commandant. The verdict by Yurovsky was read out and then the command to be shot. From the first shot, Nikolai was killed, and then firing was heard for a long time. She took a turn of disorder, given the ricochets from wooden walls, thanks to which it had to be stopped for some time. During this short period, it was possible to understand that not all of the prisoners are dead: Botkin, already lying down, had to be finished off with a shot from a revolver, among the living were Alexei, Anastasia, Olga, Tatyana and Demidova. They decided to end them with a bayonet, but failed because of the diamond accessories, shaped like underwear (bodice). They were shot each in turn after a few minutes.

This video contains documentary photographs of the life of the royal family during the period of their arrest.

Documentation shows that the corpses of all those shot were loaded onto a truck and at about 4 am and taken out. Remains only in 1991 were found near Yekaterinburg. It was possible to identify by them: Nicholas 2, Alexandra Fedorovna, Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia, and the tsar's entourage was also found among the remains. After appropriate examinations, they were buried within the walls of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998. A little later, it was possible to find and identify the remains of Mary and Alexei: July 2007.

But today there are a lot of theories that do not agree with the documentary evidence and the execution of the family of Nicholas 2. There are hypotheses about his staging, with the aim of removing the emperor. Is there any confirmation of this?

One hypothesis is based on the fact that in those days there was a factory in the immediate vicinity of the house where the prisoners were. Its owner back in 1905, fearing capture by the revolutionaries, made under it underground tunnel... Its existence was confirmed by the failure of the bulldozers, in the years when Yeltsin made the decision to destroy the building.

A theory appeared that Stalin and intelligence officers helped with the export of the royal family, identifying them in different provinces. This could have taken place during the offensive of the White Guards on Yekaterinburg, during the evacuation of Soviet institutions. In those days, first of all, documents, valuables and property were saved, where the property of the Romanovs ended up.

The Provisional Government feared a simulation of execution and instructed Captain Malinovsky to investigate Ganina Yama. He led him for a week, together with the officers, after which, a year later, he expressed his suspicion that all the facts that he observed during the investigation spoke of a staged execution.

In this video, suggestions are made about where and how the royal family lived after the salvation. Be sure to leave your questions and wishes for the article.

The Bolsheviks and the execution of the royal family

Over the past decade, the topic of the execution of the royal family has become relevant in connection with the discovery of many new facts. Documents and materials reflecting this tragic event began to be actively published, causing various comments, questions, doubts. This is why it is important to analyze the available written sources.

Emperor Nicholas II

Perhaps the earliest historical source is the materials of the investigator for special important matters Omsk District Court during the period of activity of the Kolchak army in Siberia and the Urals N.A. Sokolov, who, in hot pursuit, conducted the first investigation of this crime.

Nikolay Alekseevich Sokolov

He found traces of fireplaces, fragments of bones, pieces of clothing, jewelry, and other fragments, but he did not find the remains of the royal family.

According to the modern investigator, V.N. Solovyov, manipulations with the corpses of the royal family because of the slovenliness of the Red Army would not fit into any schemes of the smartest investigator on especially important cases. The subsequent offensive of the Red Army reduced the search time. The version of N.A. Sokolova was that the corpses were dismembered and burned. Those who deny the authenticity of the royal remains rely on this version.

Another group of written sources is the memoirs of participants in the execution of the royal family. They often contradict each other. They clearly show the desire to exaggerate the role of the authors in this atrocity. Among them - “note by Ya.M. Yurovsky ", which was dictated by Yurovsky to the chief keeper of party secrets, academician M.N. Pokrovsky back in 1920, when information about the investigation of N.A. Sokolov has not yet appeared in print.

Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky

In the 60s, the son of Ya.M. Yurovsky transferred copies of his father's memoirs to the museum and archive so that his "feat" would not be lost in the documents.
Also preserved are the memories of the head of the Ural workers' squad, a member of the Bolshevik party since 1906, an employee of the NKVD since 1920 P.Z. Ermakov, who was entrusted with organizing the burial, for he, as a local resident, knew the surroundings well. Ermakov said that the corpses were burnt to ashes, and the ashes were buried. His memoirs contain many factual errors that are refuted by the testimony of other witnesses. Memories date back to 1947. It was important for the author to prove that the instruction of the Yekaterinburg Executive Committee: “to shoot and bury so that no one ever finds their corpses,” has been fulfilled, the grave does not exist.

The Bolshevik leadership also created considerable confusion, trying to cover up the traces of the crime.

Initially, it was assumed that the Romanovs would be awaiting trial in the Urals. Materials were collected in Moscow, and L.D. Trotsky. But the civil war exacerbated the situation.
At the beginning of the summer of 1918, it was decided to take the royal family out of Tobolsk, since the local council was headed by the Social Revolutionaries.

transfer of the Romanov family to the Yekaterinburg security officers

This was done on behalf of Ya.M. Sverdlov, Extraordinary Commissar of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Myachin (aka - Yakovlev, Stoyanovich).

Nicholas II with his daughters in Tobolsk

In 1905 he rose to fame as a member of one of the most daring train robbery gangs. Subsequently, all the militants - Myachin's comrades-in-arms - were arrested, imprisoned or shot. He also managed to escape abroad with gold and jewelry. Until 1917, he lived in Capri, where he was acquainted with Lunacharsky and Gorky, sponsored underground schools and printing houses of the Bolsheviks in Russia.

Myachin tried to send the tsarist train from Tobolsk to Omsk, but a detachment of Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks accompanying the train, having learned about the route change, blocked the road with machine guns. The Ural Council has repeatedly demanded that the royal family be placed at its disposal. Myachin, with the approval of Sverdlov, was forced to concede.

Konstantin Alekseevich Myachin

Nicholas II and his family were taken to Yekaterinburg.

This fact reflects the confrontation in the Bolshevik environment over the question of who and how will decide the fate of the royal family. Whatever the balance of power, one could hardly hope for a humane outcome, given the mood and track record of the people who made the decisions.
Another memory appeared in 1956 in Germany. They belong to I.P. Meyer, who was sent to Siberia as a captured soldier in the Austrian army, but the Bolsheviks freed him, and he joined the Red Guard. Since Meyer knew foreign languages, then he became a confidant of the international brigade in the Ural military district and worked in the mobilization department of the Soviet Ural administration.

I.P. Meyer witnessed the execution of the royal family. His memoirs supplement the picture of the execution with essential details, details, including the names of the participants, their role in this atrocity, but do not resolve the contradiction that arose in previous sources.

Later, written sources began to be supplemented with material ones. So, in 1978 the geologist A. Avdonin found a burial place. In 1989, he and M. Kochurov, as well as screenwriter G. Ryabov, spoke about their discovery. In 1991, the ashes were recovered. On August 19, 1993, the prosecutor's office of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case in connection with the discovery of the Yekaterinburg remains. The investigation began to be conducted by the prosecutor-criminalist of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation V.N. Soloviev.

In 1995 V.N. Solovyov managed to get 75 negatives in Germany, which were made hot on the heels in the Ipatiev house by the investigator Sokolov and were considered lost forever: the toys of Tsarevich Alexei, the bedroom of the grand duchesses, the execution room and other details. Unknown originals of N.A.'s materials were also delivered to Russia. Sokolov.

Material sources made it possible to answer the question whether there was a burial of the royal family, and whose remains were found near Yekaterinburg. For this, numerous Scientific research, in which more than a hundred of the most authoritative Russian and foreign scientists took part.

The latest methods were used to identify the remains, including DNA testing, which was assisted by some of the now reigning persons and other genetic relatives. Russian emperor... To remove any doubts about the conclusions of numerous examinations, the remains of Georgy Alexandrovich, the brother of Nicholas II, were exhumed.

Georgy Alexandrovich Romanov

Modern advances in science have helped to restore the picture of events, despite some discrepancies in written sources. This made it possible for the government commission to confirm the identity of the remains and to bury Nicholas II, the Empress, three great princesses and courtiers.

There is one more controversial issue, associated with the tragedy of July 1918. For a long time it was believed that the decision to shoot the royal family was made in Yekaterinburg by the local authorities at their own peril and risk, and Moscow learned about this after the fact. This needs to be clarified.

According to the memoirs of I.P. Meyer, on July 7, 1918, a meeting of the revolutionary committee was held, chaired by A.G. Beloborodov. He proposed to send F. Goloshchekin to Moscow and receive a decision from the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, since the Ural Council cannot decide on its own the fate of the Romanovs.

It was also proposed to give Goloshchekin an accompanying paper outlining the position of the Ural authorities. However, the majority of votes adopted F. Goloshchekin's resolution that the Romanovs deserve death. Goloshchekin as an old friend of Ya.M. Sverdlov, was nevertheless sent to Moscow for consultations with the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov.

Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov

On July 14, F. Goloshchekin, at a meeting of the revolutionary tribunal, made a report on his trip and on negotiations with Ya.M. Sverdlov about the Romanovs. The Central Executive Committee did not want the tsar and his family to be taken to Moscow. The Ural Soviet and the local revolutionary headquarters must decide for themselves what to do with them. But the decision of the Ural Revolutionary Committee had already been made in advance. This means that Moscow did not object to Goloshchekin.

E.S. Radzinsky published a telegram from Yekaterinburg, in which V.I. Lenin, Ya.M. Sverdlov, G.E. Zinoviev. G. Safarov and F. Goloshchekin, who sent this telegram, asked to urgently inform if there were any objections. Judging by further events, there were no objections.

The answer to the question, but whose decision the royal family was put to death, was also given by L.D. Trotsky in his memoirs relating to 1935: “The liberals were inclined, as if, to the fact that the Ural executive committee, cut off from Moscow, acted independently. This is not true. The decision was made in Moscow. " Trotsky reported that he was proposing an open trial in order to achieve widespread propaganda effect. The process was to be broadcast throughout the country and commented on every day.

IN AND. Lenin reacted positively to this idea, but expressed doubts about its feasibility. There might not be enough time. Later, Trotsky learned from Sverdlov about the execution of the royal family. To the question: "Who decided?" Ya.M. Sverdlov replied: “We decided here. Ilyich believed that we should not leave them a living banner, especially in the current difficult conditions. " These diary entries by L.D. Trotsky was not intended for publication, did not respond to "the news of the day", and were not expressed in polemics. The degree of reliability of the presentation in them is great.

Lev Davydovich Trotsky

There is another clarification of L.D. Trotsky, concerning the authorship of the idea of ​​regicide. In the drafts of the unfinished chapters of the biography of I.V. Stalin, he wrote about the meeting between Sverdlov and Stalin, where the latter spoke in favor of the death sentence to the tsar. At the same time, Trotsky did not rely on his own memories, but quoted the memoirs of the Soviet functionary Besedovsky, who had fled to the West. These data need to be verified.

Message from Ya.M. Sverdlov at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18 about the execution of the Romanov family was greeted with applause and recognition that in the current situation the Ural Regional Council did the right thing. And at the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars Sverdlov announced this incidentally, without causing any discussion.

The most complete ideological substantiation of the shooting by the Bolsheviks of the royal family with elements of pathos was presented by Trotsky: “In essence, the decision was not only expedient, but also necessary. The severity of the reprisals showed everyone that we would fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the royal family was needed not only to confuse, horrify, and deprive the enemy of hope, but also to shake up their own ranks, to show that there was no retreat, that there was a complete victory or complete death ahead. In the intellectual circles of the party, there were probably doubts and shaking their heads. But the masses of workers and soldiers did not hesitate for a minute: they would not have understood or accepted any other decision. Lenin felt this well: the ability to think and feel for the masses and with the masses was in the highest measure characteristic of him, especially at great political turns ... "

For some time, the Bolsheviks tried to hide the fact of the execution not only of the tsar, but also of his wife and children, and even from their own. So, one of the prominent diplomats of the USSR, A.A. Ioffe, officially reported only about the execution of Nicholas II. He knew nothing about the king's wife and children and thought that they were alive. His inquiries to Moscow did not yield any results, and only from an unofficial conversation with F.E. Dzerzhinsky, he managed to find out the truth.

“Let Ioffe know nothing,” Vladimir Ilyich said, according to Dzerzhinsky, “it will be easier for him there, in Berlin, to lie ...” The text of the telegram about the execution of the royal family was intercepted by the White Guards who entered Yekaterinburg. Investigator Sokolov deciphered and published it.

The royal family from left to right: Olga, Alexandra Fedorovna, Alexey, Maria, Nicholas II, Tatiana, Anastasia

The fate of the people involved in the liquidation of the Romanovs is of interest.

F.I. Goloshchekin (Isai Goloshchekin), (1876-1941), secretary of the Ural regional committee and member of the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), military commissar of the Ural military district, was arrested on October 15, 1939 at the direction of L.P. Beria and was shot as an enemy of the people on October 28, 1941.

A.G. Beloborodoe (1891-1938), chairman of the executive committee of the Ural regional council, participated in the twenties in the internal party struggle on the side of L.D. Trotsky. Beloborodoy provided Trotsky with his housing when the latter was evicted from the Kremlin apartment. In 1927 he was expelled from the CPSU (b) for factional activity. Later, in 1930, Beloborodov was reinstated in the party as a repentant oppositionist, but this did not save him. In 1938 he was repressed.

As for the direct participant in the execution, Ya.M. Yurovsky (1878-1938), a member of the collegium of the regional Cheka, it is known that his daughter Rimma suffered from repression.

Yurovsky's assistant in the "House of Special Purpose" P.L. Voikov (1888-1927), People's Commissar for Supply in the Ural government, when appointed in 1924 as the USSR ambassador to Poland, for a long time could not get an agreman from the Polish government, since his personality was associated with the execution of the royal family.

Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov

G.V. Chicherin gave the Polish authorities a characteristic explanation on this matter: “... Hundreds and thousands of fighters for the freedom of the Polish people who perished over the course of a century on the tsar's gallows and in Siberian prisons, otherwise they would have reacted to the fact of the destruction of the Romanovs, than this could be concluded from Your messages ". In 1927 P.L. Voikov was killed in Poland by one of the monarchists for participating in the massacre of the royal family.

Another name in the list of persons who took part in the shooting of the royal family is of interest. This is Imre Nagy. The leader of the Hungarian events of 1956 was in Russia, where in 1918 he joined the RCP (b), then served in the Special Department of the Cheka, and later collaborated with the NKVD. However, his autobiography says about his stay not in the Urals, but in Siberia, in the region of Verkhneudinsk (Ulan-Ude).

Until March 1918 he was in a prisoner of war camp in Berezovka, in March he joined the Red Guard, took part in the battles on Lake Baikal. In September 1918, his detachment, located on the Soviet-Mongolian border, in Troitskosavsk, was then disarmed and arrested by the Czechoslovakians in Berezovka. Then he ended up in a military town near Irkutsk. From curriculum vitae you can see how the future leader of the Hungarian Communist Party led a mobile lifestyle on the territory of Russia during the period of the execution of the royal family.

In addition, the information indicated in his autobiography did not always correspond to the personal data. However, direct evidence of the involvement of Imre Nagy, and not his probable namesake, in the execution of the royal family, on this moment are not traceable.

Imprisonment in the Ipatiev house

Ipatiev's house

The Romanovs and their servants in the Ipatiev house

The Romanov family was placed in a "special purpose house" - the requisitioned mansion of a retired military engineer NN Ipatiev. Doctor E.S.Botkin, chamberlaine A.E. Trup, maid of Empress A.S.Demidov, cook I.M.Kharitonov and cook Leonid Sednev lived here with the Romanov family.

The house is nice, clean. We were allocated four rooms: a corner bedroom, a dressing room, next to a dining room with windows to the garden and overlooking the low-lying part of the city, and, finally, a spacious hall with an arch without doors. They were positioned as follows: Alix [the empress], Maria and I three of us in the bedroom, a shared lavatory, in the dining room - N [Yuta] Demidova, in the hall - Botkin, Chemodurov and Sednev. Near the entrance there is a guard officer's room. The guard was placed in two rooms near the dining room. To go to the bathroom and W.C. [water closet], you need to go past the sentry at the door of the guardhouse. A very high plank fence was built around the house, two fathoms from the windows; there was a chain of sentries, in the kindergarten too.

The royal family spent 78 days in their last house.

AD Avdeev was appointed commandant of the "special purpose house".

Firing squad

It is known from the memoirs of the participants in the execution that they did not know in advance how the "execution" would be carried out. Various options were proposed: to stab the arrested with daggers while sleeping, 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 am on July 16-17, a truck arrived at Ipatiev's house to transport corpses, which was one and a half hours late. After that, the doctor Botkin was woken up, who was informed of the need for everyone to urgently 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.

Evgeny Botkin, medical life Ivan Kharitonov, cook Alexey Trup, valet Anna Demidova, maid

went to the basement room (Nicholas II was carrying Alexei, who could not walk). There were no chairs in the basement, then, at the request of Alexandra Fedorovna, two chairs were brought. Alexandra Fedorovna and Alexei sat on them. The rest were placed along the wall. Yurovsky introduced a firing squad and read out the verdict. Nicholas II only had time to ask: "What?" (other sources report last words Nikolay as "Huh?" or “How, how? Reread "). Yurovsky gave the command and indiscriminate shooting began.

The gunmen did not succeed in immediately killing Alexei, the daughters of Nicholas II, the maid A.S. Demidova, and Dr. E.S. Botkin. Anastasia screamed, Demidov's maid rose to her feet, Alexei remained alive for a long time. 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 memoirs, the shooting was indiscriminate: many probably fired from a nearby room, through the threshold, and the bullets bounced off stone wall... At the same time, one of the gunmen was slightly wounded (“A bullet from one of the shooters from behind buzzed past my head, and one, I don’t remember, either a hand, a palm, or a finger touched and shot through”).

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

after the shooting

The basement of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg, where the royal family was shot. GA RF

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

The younger generation may not understand us. They can reproach that we killed the girls, killed the boy heir. But by now girls-boys would have grown ... into who?

In order to muffle the shots, a truck was started near the Ipatiev House, but shots were still heard in the city. In the materials of Sokolov there are, in particular, testimony about this by two incidental witnesses, the peasant Buyvyd and the night watchman Tsegov.

According to Richard Pipes, immediately after that, Yurovsky harshly suppresses attempts by the guards to plunder the jewelry they discovered, threatening to be shot. After that, he instructed PS Medvedev to organize the cleaning of the premises, and he himself left to destroy the corpses.

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

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

Mikhail Alexandrovich Medvedev-Kudrin

- Nikolai Alexandrovich! The attempts of your associates to save you were unsuccessful! And so, in a difficult time for the Soviet Republic ... - Yakov Mikhailovich raises his voice and chops the air with his hand: - ... we are entrusted with the mission of ending the house of the Romanovs!

In the memoirs of Yurovsky's assistant G.P. Nikulin, this episode is described as follows: Comrade Yurovsky uttered such a phrase that:

"Your friends are attacking Yekaterinburg, and therefore you are sentenced to death."

Yurovsky himself could not remember the exact text: “… right there, as far as I remember, I 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 July 17, in the afternoon, several members of the executive committee of the Uraloblsovet contacted Moscow by telegraph (the telegram indicates 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 Uralsky Rabochy, a member of the executive committee of the Uraloblsovet V. Vorobyov later claimed that they “were very uncomfortable when they approached the apparatus: former king was shot by a resolution of the Presidium of the Regional Council, and it was not known how the central government would react to this “arbitrariness” ... ”. The reliability of this testimony, wrote G.Z. Ioffe, cannot be verified.

Investigator N. Sokolov claimed that he had found an encrypted telegram from the chairman of the Uraloblispolkom A. Beloborodov to Moscow, dated July 17 at 21:00, which was allegedly deciphered only in September 1920. It said: “To the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars, NP 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 only mention the execution of Nicholas II.

Destruction and burial of remains

Ganinsky ravines - the burial place of the Romanovs

Jurowski's version

According to Yurovsky's recollections, he went to the mine at three o'clock in the morning on July 17. Yurovsky reports that Goloshchekin must have instructed P.Z. Ermakov to carry out the burial. However, things did not go as smoothly as they would have liked: Ermakov brought in too many people as the funeral team (“Why are there so many, I still don’t know , I heard only individual cries - we thought that they would be given to us here alive, but here, it turns out, they are dead "); the truck is stuck; jewelry was found sewn into the clothes of the grand duchesses, some of Ermakov's people began to appropriate them. Yurovsky ordered to put security guards on the truck. The bodies were loaded onto bays. On the way and near the mine planned for burial, strangers met. Yurovsky assigned people to cordon off the area, as well as to report to the village that Czechoslovakians are active in the area and that it is forbidden to leave the village 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 to make fires to burn clothes as possible physical evidence.

From the memoirs of Yurovsky (spelling preserved):

The daughters wore bodices, so well made of solid diamond and other valuable stones, which were not only containers for valuables, but also protective armor.

That is why neither the bullet nor the bayonet gave results when shooting and bayonet strikes. In these death throes, by the way, except for themselves, no one is to blame. These values ​​turned out to be only about (half) a pound. The greed was so great that on Alexandra Feodorovna, by the way, there was just a huge piece of round gold wire, bent in the form of a bracelet, weighing about a pound ... in the ashes of the fires.

After the confiscation of valuables and the burning of clothes on bonfires, the bodies were thrown into the mine, but “... a new hassle. The water slightly covered the bodies, what can I do here? " 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 find and, in addition, there were witnesses that something was happening here ... Leaving the guards and taking the valuables, at about two o'clock in the afternoon (in the earlier version of his memoirs - “at 10-11 am”) on July 17, Yurovsky drove to the city. I came to the Uraloblispolkom and reported on the situation. Goloshchekin summoned Ermakov and sent him to retrieve the corpses. Yurovsky went to the city executive committee to its chairman S.E. Chutskaev for advice on the place of burial. Chutskaev reported about deep abandoned mines on the Moscow highway. Yurovsky went to inspect these mines, but he could not get to the place immediately due to a breakdown of the car, he had to walk. Returned on requisitioned horses. During this time, another plan appeared - to burn the corpses.

Yurovsky was not entirely sure that the incineration would be successful, so the plan for burial of corpses in the mines of the Moscow highway was still an option. In addition, he had an idea, in case of any failure, to bury the bodies in groups in different places on the muddy road. Thus, there were three options for action. Yurovsky went to the Ural supply commissar Voikov to get gasoline or kerosene, as well as sulfuric acid to disfigure faces, and shovels. Having received this, they were loaded onto carts and sent to the location of the corpses. A truck was sent there. Yurovsky himself stayed to wait 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 found out, fell from his horse and injured his leg. At about 12 in the morning, 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 site 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. Waiting for the evening, they loaded onto a cart (the truck was waiting in a place where it shouldn't have gotten stuck). Then we were driving a truck and it got stuck. Midnight was approaching, and Yurovsky decided that it was necessary to bury somewhere here, since it was dark and no one could be a witness to the burial.

... everyone was so devilishly tired that they didn't want to dig a new grave, but, as always in such cases, two or three got down to business, then others started, immediately lit a fire, and while the grave was being prepared, we burned two corpses: Alexei and by mistake instead of Alexandra Feodorovna they burned, obviously, Demidova. A hole was dug at the site of the burning, the bones were laid, they were leveled, a large fire was re-lit and all traces were hidden with ashes.

Before putting the rest of the corpses into the pit, we doused them with sulfuric acid, the pit was filled up, the sleepers were closed, the truck drove through empty, the sleepers were rammed a little and put an end to it.

I. Rodzinsky and M.A.Medvedev (Kudrin) also left their memories of the burial of 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:

The place where the remains of the alleged bodies of the Romanovs were found

We have immediately opened this quagmire. She is deep, God knows where. Well, then some of these same darlings were decomposed and they began to pour sulfuric acid, disfigure everything, and then all this into a quagmire. There was a railway nearby. We brought in rotten sleepers, laid a pendulum through the bog. They laid out these sleepers in the form of a bridge so thrown through the bog, and the rest at some distance began to be burned.

But now, I remember, Nikolai was burned, there was this same Botkin, now I can't tell you for sure, here is the memory. How many we burned, whether four, or five, or six people were burned. Whom, I don’t remember exactly. I remember exactly Nicholas. Botkin and, in my opinion, Alexei.

Shooting without trial and investigation of the king, his wife, children, including minors, was another step on the path of lawlessness, neglect of human life, terror. Many problems of the Soviet state began to be solved with the help of violence. The Bolsheviks who unleashed the terror themselves often became its victims.
The burial of the last Russian emperor eighty years after the execution of the royal family is another indicator of the inconsistency and unpredictability of Russian history.

"Church on blood" on the site of the Ipatiev house

He was not shot, and the entire female half of the royal family was taken to Germany. But the documents are still classified ...

For me, this story began in November 1983. I was then working as a photojournalist for a French agency and was sent to a summit of heads of state and government in Venice. There I met by chance an Italian colleague who, upon learning that I was Russian, showed me a newspaper (I think it was "La Repubblica") dated the day of our meeting. In the article to which the Italian drew my attention, it was said that in Rome, at a very old age, a certain nun, Pascalina's sister, had died. Later, I learned that this woman held an important position in the Vatican hierarchy under Pope Pius XII (1939 -1958), but that is not the point.

The secret of the "iron lady" of the Vatican

THIS sister of Pascalina, who earned the honorary nickname "Iron Lady" of the Vatican, before her death called a notary with two witnesses and in their presence dictated information that she did not want to take with her to the grave: one of the daughters of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II - Olga - was not shot by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 16-17, 1918, and lived long life and was buried in a cemetery in the village of Marcotte in northern Italy.

After the summit, my Italian friend, who was my driver and translator, went to this village. We found a cemetery and this grave. On the slab it was written in German: "Olga Nikolaevna, the eldest daughter of the Russian Tsar Nikolai Romanov" - and the dates of life: "1895 - 1976". We talked with the cemetery watchman and his wife: they, like all the villagers, remembered Olga Nikolaevna very well, knew who she was, and were sure that the Russian Grand Duchess was under the protection of the Vatican.

This strange find interested me extremely, and I decided to figure out all the circumstances of the execution myself. And in general, was he?

I have every reason to believe that there was no execution. On the night of July 16-17, all the Bolsheviks and their sympathizers left by rail to Perm. The next morning in Yekaterinburg, leaflets were pasted up with the message that the royal family had been taken away from the city - and so it was. Soon the city was occupied by whites. Naturally, a commission of inquiry was formed "on the case of the disappearance of Tsar Nicholas II, Empress, Tsarevich and Grand Duchesses," which did not find any convincing traces of the execution.

In 1919, investigator Sergeev said in an interview with an American newspaper: “I don’t think everyone was executed here - both the tsar and his family. In my opinion, the Empress, the Tsarevich and the Grand Duchesses were not executed in the Ipatiev house.” Such a conclusion did not suit Admiral Kolchak, who by that time had already proclaimed himself "the supreme ruler of Russia." Indeed, why does the "supreme" need some kind of emperor? Kolchak ordered to assemble a second investigative team, which got to the bottom of the fact that in September 1918 the Empress and the Grand Duchesses were kept in Perm. Only the third investigator, Nikolai Sokolov (conducted the case from February to May 1919), turned out to be clearer and issued the well-known conclusion that the whole family was shot, the corpses were dismembered and burned at the stake. "The units that did not succumb to the action of fire," wrote Sokolov, "were destroyed with the help of sulfuric acid." What, then, was buried in 1998 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral? Let me remind you that soon after the start of perestroika, some skeletons were found on Porosyonkovy Log near Yekaterinburg. In 1998, in the ancestral tomb of the Romanovs, they were solemnly reburied, before that they had carried out numerous genetic examinations. Moreover, the guarantor of the authenticity of the royal remains was the secular power of Russia in the person of President Boris Yeltsin. But the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the bones as the remains of the royal family.

But let's go back to the times of the Civil War. According to my information, the royal family was divided into Perm. The path of the female part lay in Germany, while the men - Nikolai Romanov himself and Tsarevich Alexei - were left in Russia. Father and son were kept for a long time near Serpukhov at the former dacha of the merchant Konshin. Later, in the reports of the NKVD, this place was known as "Object No. 17". Most likely, the prince died in 1920 from hemophilia. I cannot say anything about the fate of the last Russian emperor. Except for one thing: in the 1930s, "Object No. 17" was visited by Stalin twice. Does this mean that in those years Nicholas II was still alive?

The men were left hostage

TO understand why such incredible events from the point of view of a person of the XXI century became possible and to find out who needed them, you will have to return to 1918. Remember from school course stories about the Brest Peace? Yes, on March 3 in Brest-Litovsk between Soviet Russia on the one hand, a peace treaty was concluded by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey on the other. Russia lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic States and part of Belarus. But it was not because of this that Lenin called the Brest Peace "humiliating" and "obscene". By the way, full text the treaty has not yet been published either in the East or in the West. I believe it is because of the secret conditions it has. Probably, the Kaiser, who was a relative of Empress Maria Feodorovna, demanded that all the women of the royal family be transferred to Germany. The girls did not have the right to the Russian throne and, therefore, could not threaten the Bolsheviks in any way. The men, however, remained hostage - as guarantors that the German army would not thrust further east than it was written in the peace treaty.

What happened next? What was the fate of the women exported to the West? Was their silence a prerequisite for their immunity? Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers.

by the way

Romanovs and false Romanovs

V DIFFERENT YEARS more than a hundred "miraculously saved" Romanovs appeared in the world. Moreover, in some periods and in some countries there were so many of them that they even arranged meetings. The most famous false Anastasia is Anna Anderson, who declared herself the daughter of Nicholas II in 1920. The Supreme Court of the Federal Republic of Germany finally denied her this only after 50 years. The most recent "Anastasia" is the centenary Natalia Petrovna Bilikhodze, who continued to play this old play already in 2002!