Eyewitness accounts of how the Romanov royal family was shot. Execution of the royal family: the last days of the last emperor

Historically, Russia is a monarchical state. First there were princes, then kings. The history of our state is old and diverse. Russia has known many monarchs with different characters, human and managerial qualities. However, it was the Romanov family that became the brightest representative of the Russian throne. The history of their reign goes back about three centuries. And the end Russian Empire is also inextricably linked with this surname.

Romanov family: history

The Romanovs, an old noble family, did not immediately have such a surname. For centuries they were first called Kobylins, a little bit later Koshkins, then Zakharyins. And only after more than 6 generations they acquired the surname Romanov.

For the first time to approach the Russian throne this noble family allowed the marriage of Tsar Ivan the Terrible with Anastasia Zakharyina.

There is no direct connection between the Rurikovichs and the Romanovs. It has been established that Ivan III is the great-great-grandson of one of Andrei Kobyla’s sons, Fedor, on his mother’s side. While the Romanov family became a continuation of Fyodor’s other grandson, Zakhary.

However, this fact played a key role when in 1613, at the Zemsky Sobor, the grandson of Anastasia Zakharyina’s brother, Mikhail, was elected to reign. So the throne passed from the Rurikovichs to the Romanovs. After this, rulers of this family succeeded each other for three centuries. During this time, our country changed its form of power and became the Russian Empire.

Peter I became the first emperor. A last Nikolai II, who abdicated power as a result of the February Revolution of 1917 and was shot with his family the following July.

Biography of Nicholas II

In order to understand the reasons for the pitiful end of the imperial reign, it is necessary to take a closer look at the biography of Nikolai Romanov and his family:

1. Nicholas II was born in 1868. From childhood I was brought up in best traditions royal court. WITH youth became interested in military affairs. From the age of 5 he took part in military training, parades and processions. Even before taking the oath, he had various ranks, including being a Cossack chieftain. As a result, the highest military rank of Nicholas became the rank of colonel. Nicholas came to power at the age of 27. Nicholas was an educated, intelligent monarch;
2. To Nicholas's fiancée, a German princess who accepted Russian name- Alexandra Fedorovna, at the time of the marriage she was 22 years old. The couple loved each other very much and treated each other reverently all their lives. However, those around him had a negative attitude towards the empress, suspecting that the autocrat was too dependent on his wife;
3. Nicholas's family had four daughters - Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia, and the youngest son, Alexei, was born - a possible heir to the throne. Unlike his strong and healthy sisters, Alexey was diagnosed with hemophilia. This meant that the boy could die from any scratch.

Why were the Romanov family shot?

Nikolai made several fatal mistakes, which ultimately led to a tragic end:

• The stampede on the Khodynka field is considered the first ill-considered mistake of Nikolai. In the first days of his reign, people went to Khodynska Square to buy gifts promised by the new emperor. The result was pandemonium and more than 1,200 people died. Nicholas remained indifferent to this event until the end of all the events dedicated to his coronation, which lasted several more days. The people did not forgive him for such behavior and called him Bloody;
• During his reign, there were many strife and contradictions in the country. The Emperor understood that it was necessary to urgently take measures to raise the patriotism of Russians and unite them. Many believe that it was for this purpose that the Russo-Japanese War was launched, which as a result was lost, and Russia lost part of its territory;
• After the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, on the square in front of the Winter Palace, without the knowledge of Nicholas, the military shot people who had gathered for a rally. This event was called in history - “Bloody Sunday”;
• First world war Russian state entered also carelessly. The conflict began in 1914 between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. The Emperor considered it necessary to stand up for the Balkan state, as a result of which Germany came to the defense of Austria-Hungary. The war dragged on, which no longer suited the military.

As a result, a provisional government was created in Petrograd. Nicholas knew about the mood of the people, but was unable to take any decisive action and signed a paper about his abdication.

The Provisional Government placed the family under arrest, first in Tsarskoye Selo, and then they were exiled to Tobolsk. After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the whole family was transported to Yekaterinburg and, by decision of the Bolshevik council, executed to prevent a return to royal power.

Remains of the royal family in modern times

After the execution, all the remains were collected and transported to the mines of Ganina Yama. It was not possible to burn the bodies, so they were thrown into the mine shafts. The next day, village residents discovered bodies floating at the bottom of the flooded mines and it became clear that reburial was necessary.

The remains were again loaded into the car. However, having driven away a little, she fell into the mud in the Porosenkov Log area. There they buried the dead, dividing the ashes into two parts.

The first part of the bodies was discovered in 1978. However, due to the long process of obtaining permission for excavations, it was possible to get to them only in 1991. Two bodies, presumably Maria and Alexei, were found in 2007 a little away from the road.

Over the years, various groups of scientists have carried out many modern, high-tech examinations to determine the involvement of the remains in the royal family. As a result, the genetic similarity was proven, but some historians and the Russian Orthodox Church still disagree with these results.

Now the relics are reburied in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Living representatives of the genus

The Bolsheviks sought to exterminate as many representatives of the royal family as possible so that no one would even have the thought of returning to the previous power. However, many managed to escape abroad.

In the male line, living descendants descend from the sons of Nicholas I - Alexander and Mikhail. There are also descendants in the female line who originate from Ekaterina Ioannovna. For the most part, they all do not live on the territory of our state. However, representatives of the clan have created and are developing public and charitable organizations that operate in Russia as well.

Thus, the Romanov family is a symbol of a bygone empire for our country. Many are still arguing about whether it is possible to revive imperial power in the country and whether it is worth doing. Obviously, this page of our history has been turned, and its representatives are buried with appropriate honors.

Video: execution of the Romanov family

This video recreates the moment the Romanov family was captured and their subsequent execution:

Immediately behind, you can’t help but notice this tall temple and a number of other temple buildings. This is the "Holy Quarter". By the will of fate, three streets named after revolutionaries are limited. Let's head towards it.

On the way there is a monument to Saints Peter and Fevronia of Murom. Installed in 2012.

The Church on the Blood was built in 2000-2003. on the site where on the night of July 16 to July 17, 1918, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family were shot. There are photographs of them at the entrance to the temple.

In 1917, after February Revolution and abdication, the former Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family, by decision of the Provisional Government, were exiled to Tobolsk.

After the Bolsheviks came to power and the outbreak of the civil war, in April 1918, permission was received from the Presidium (All-Russian Central Executive Committee) of the fourth convocation to transfer the Romanovs to Yekaterinburg in order to take them from there to Moscow for the purpose of their trial.

In Yekaterinburg, a large stone mansion, confiscated from engineer Nikolai Ipatiev, was chosen as the place of imprisonment for Nicholas II and his family. On the night of July 17, 1918, in the basement of this house, Emperor Nicholas II, along with his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, children and close associates, were shot, and after that their bodies were taken to the abandoned Ganina Yama mine.

On September 22, 1977, on the recommendation of KGB Chairman Yu.V. Andropov and the instructions of B.N. Yeltsin's house, Ipatiev's, was destroyed. Later, Yeltsin would write in his memoirs: “...sooner or later we will all be ashamed of this barbarity. It will be a shame, but nothing can be corrected...”.

When designing, the plan of the future temple was superimposed on the plan of the demolished Ipatiev house in such a way as to create an analogue of the room where the Royal Family was shot. At the lower level of the temple, a symbolic place for this execution was provided. In fact, the place where the royal family was executed is located outside the temple in the area of ​​​​the roadway on Karl Liebknecht Street.

The temple is a five-domed structure with a height of 60 meters and a total area of ​​3000 m². The architecture of the building is designed in the Russian-Byzantine style. The vast majority of churches were built in this style during the reign of Nicholas II.

The cross in the center is part of a monument to the royal family going down to the basement before being shot.

Adjacent to the Church on the Blood is the temple in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker with the spiritual and educational center “Patriarchal Compound” and the museum of the royal family.

Behind them you can see the Church of the Ascension of the Lord (1782-1818).

And in front of him is the Kharitonov-Rastorguev estate of the early 19th century (architect Malakhov), which became Soviet years Palace of Pioneers. Nowadays it is the City Palace of Children and Youth Creativity “Talentedness and Technology”.

What else is located in the surrounding area? This is the Gazprom tower, which was built in 1976 as the Tourist Hotel.

The former office of the now defunct Transaero airline.

Between them are buildings from the middle of the last century.

Residential building-monument from 1935. Built for workers railway. Very beautiful! Fizkulturnikov Street, on which the building is located, was gradually built up since the 1960s, and as a result, by 2010 it was completely lost. This residential building is the only building listed on a virtually non-existent street; the house is number 30.

Well, now we go to the Gazprom tower - an interesting street begins from there.

Many traditions and values ​​of our centuries-old history have returned to the life of Russia, restored and historical memory about the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia for three hundred and four years.

A hundred years ago, the reign of the Romanovs ended.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and all members of his family were shot in Yekaterinburg.

The first king of this dynasty, Mikhail Romanov, was called by the people's representatives at the Zemsky Council in 1613 and the throne passed from the Rurikovichs to the Romanovs.

Succession to the throne for a long time was carried out by the order of direct male primogeniture, from father to eldest son, and in the absence of male offspring - to brothers in order of seniority.
But Peter I, due to a conflict with Tsarevich Alexei, changed this order.
In 1722, he issued a decree “On the Right of Succession to the Throne,” according to which the emperor could appoint his own heir and cancel an appointment already made in favor of another. After the death of Peter 1, Catherine I became empress.
The abolition of the legal order of succession to the throne led to a series of “palace coups” in the 18th century.
But in 1797, Paul I, by his act, changed the order of succession to the throne, which began to be carried out again on the right of male primogeniture, with a transition to the female line if the last dynastic male line ended.
In 1820, Emperor Alexander I supplemented this act with the provision that children born from morganitic (unequal) marriages of members of the imperial family do not have the right to inherit the throne.

On March 2, 1917, at 15.05, Nicholas II signed the text of abdication, according to which the throne passes to his son, 12-year-old Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich.
But after negotiations with the doctor, life surgeon S.P. Fedorov, who had been treating Tsarevich Alexei for several years, who assured him that his son was unlikely to be able to fulfill the duties of a monarch, Nicholas II decided to abdicate the throne in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich.
And at 23.40 on March 2, Nicholas II signed new text renunciation, but asked to put a different time on it - 3 hours 5 minutes of the day when he made the final decision to renounce. But Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, on March 3, having assessed the situation in Petrograd, signed an act of non-acceptance of the throne until this issue was resolved by the Constituent Assembly.
Thus ended the history of the monarchy in Russia.

And the defeated monarch himself and his family began their mournful journey to Golgotha..., to the basement of the Ipatiev House.

What was the fate of the members of the august family of the Romanovs, who by 1917 numbered about 60 people?

A third of them died in 1918-1919.
Of the fifteen Romanov Grand Dukes who remained in Russia in 1917, only eight managed to escape and flee abroad.
There were expectations that royal family will be taken out.

Indeed, in Russia, starting with Peter I, the Romanovs mostly married German women, and there were also family relationships with other European courts.
Nicholas II's mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, was the daughter of the King of Denmark. Her sister Alexandra, the Dowager Queen of England, was the mother of the English King George V and the aunt of Nicholas II.
English King George V and Nicholas II were maternal cousins ​​and very similar to each other.

Nicholas II (right) George V (left)

But the British brother was afraid to give asylum to his Russian brother, citing the official pretext that parliament had voted against it.
That's what English relatives were like back then!
So we shouldn’t be surprised at the dirty tricks that the British constantly present to us.
Doing dirty tricks on the English “aristocrats” is their genetic code.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk included an article stating that Germans and immigrants from Germany had the right to freely leave Russia for 10 years. German princesses, wives of grand dukes and their children fell under this article and many took advantage of this, managed to travel abroad and escaped.
There was a list of the imperial family, and arrests were made using it.
Such a decree was issued under the Provisional Government. Moreover, officially it only ordered the arrest of the royal family - i.e. Nicholas II, Alexandra and children, but behind the scenes all the Romanovs were also supposed to be in custody.

Immediately after the abdication of Nicholas II, the Provisional Government took measures to isolate the Romanovs and then to exile them.
Members of the Romanov dynasty then ended up in Tobolsk, Vologda, St. Petersburg, Crimea, Kislovodsk, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Alapaevsk.

After October 1917, arrests and then executions of members of the Russian Imperial House began.
On March 3, 1918, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Moses Solomonovich Uritsky, issued an order to all members of the Romanov family to report to the Cheka.

The Tsar's brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, was exiled to Perm in March 1918.
He was the first of the Romanovs to be executed.

On the night of June 12–13, 1918, Mikhail Alexandrovich and his secretary Brian Johnson were taken from the hotel where they lived into the forest and shot. The remains of those killed have not yet been found.
This murder was presented as the kidnapping of the Grand Duke by his supporters or as a secret escape, and was used by the authorities to tighten the regime of detention of all the exiled Romanovs: the royal family in Yekaterinburg and the Grand Dukes in Alapaevsk.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918. In Yekaterinburg, in the Ipatiev House, Emperor Nicholas 1, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, their daughters - the Grand Duchesses: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and their son - the heir to the throne - Tsarevich Alexei were shot.

The day after the execution, the Izvestia newspaper reported:

“On July 18, the first meeting of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the 5th convocation took place.
Chairman Comrade Sverdlov announces the message he has just received via direct wire from the Regional Ural Council about the execution of the former Tsar Romanov.
IN last days the capital of the Red Urals was seriously threatened by the approach of Czechoslovak gangs. At the same time, a new conspiracy of counter-revolutionaries was uncovered, whose goal was to wrest the crowned executioner from the hands of Soviet power. In view of this, the Presidium of the Ural Council decided to shoot Nikolai Romanov, which was carried out...
The wife and son of Nikolai Romanov were sent to a safe place..."

As we see, the style of the Bolsheviks is the same as in the case of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich - “the danger of conspiracy, kidnapping,” and the villainous murder without trial of the Emperor and his entire family, the execution of which was not even reported.
In the mid-30s of the last century, in the diary of L. Trotsky, who was expelled from the country, entries appeared about events related to the execution of the royal family and grand dukes.
According to him, back in June 1918, he proposed to the Politburo of the RCP (b) to organize a show trial of the Tsar. But this proposal of his was allegedly not supported, since all the Bolshevik leaders were very busy with business, and it was difficult to organize a court.

At the beginning of 1918, the great princes were arrested and imprisoned in Vologda prison: Nikolai Mikhailovich (grandson of Nicholas I, uncle of Nicholas II), Georgy Mikhailovich (grandson of Nicholas I), Dmitry Konstantinovich (grandson of Paul I, son of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich).
At the beginning of July 1918, they were transferred to Petrograd, to the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich (the sixth son of Emperor Alexander II and his wife Empress Maria Alexandrovna) and Prince of the Imperial Blood Gabriel Konstantinovich (son of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich) were soon placed there.

Prince Gabriel Konstantinovich, suffering from tuberculosis, was released from prison at the request of Gorky and emigrated to Finland.
M. Gorky also interceded for Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, who was the chairman of the Russian Historical Society and headed the Russian Geographical Society. The Academy of Sciences also interceded on his behalf.
Despite these petitions, Lenin confirmed the verdict with the wording “the revolution does not need historians.”

In April 1918, representatives of the Romanovs were sent from Petrograd to Vyatka, then to Yekaterinburg and then to Alapaevsk:

Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna is the sister of the wife of Nicholas II, the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the son of Alexander II. Founder of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent in Moscow;
- Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich (grandson of Nicholas I), artillery general, field artillery inspector general under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (1916-1917);
- Prince of the Imperial Blood Konstantin Konstantinovich (junior) great-grandson of Emperor Nicholas I. Captain of the Life Guards Izmailovsky Regiment, hero of the First World War).
- Prince of the Imperial Blood Igor Konstantinovich, great-grandson of Emperor Nicholas I. At the beginning of the First World War, he went to the front and was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 4th degree, with the inscription “For Bravery,” and St. Stanislaus, 3rd degree, with swords and a bow;[
- Prince of the Imperial Blood Ivan Konstantinovich, son of Alexander II’s nephew, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, was awarded the Arms of St. George for his bravery shown during the August battles of 1915.
(John Konstantinovich became the first “prince of the imperial blood” of the Russian Imperial House.
Before his birth (1886), a number of points in the “Institution on the Imperial Family” dated April 5, 1797 were revised.
According to the new decree, the Grand Dukes and Princesses, with the title " Imperial Highnesses", became the direct descendants of the emperor. But the great-grandchildren have already become “princes of the imperial blood”, with the title “Highness”);
- Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley - grandson of Alexander II, lieutenant of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment;
- Fyodor Semyonovich Remez - manager of the affairs of Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich;
- Varvara is a sister of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, a cell attendant of Elizabeth Feodorovna.

On the night of July 18, 1918, almost simultaneously with the execution of the royal family, the villainous murder of all these prisoners in Alapaevsk was committed.

They were taken from Alapaevsk to the abandoned Novo-Selimskaya mine, 14 km from the city, and dumped into it. After which grenades, which did not explode, and various debris were dropped on them. Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, who resisted, was initially shot.
When whites entered Alapaevsk on September 8, 1918, an investigation began. The bodies of those killed were discovered on October 19.

The executioners claimed that they threw high-ranking persons into the mine alive. But the investigation showed that each of them had a skull injury in the temporal or occipital region, that is, the murder was committed in an even more brutal way:

“..The unsuspecting victim was brought to the edge of the shaft, after which he was struck with the butt of an ax in the temporal or occipital region of the head. And then the victim killed in this way was dumped into the mine...”

“Alapaevsk heroes” of this atrocity pose at the edge of the mine
(participant on the left with an ax in his hand)

Moreover, the Alapaevsk Executive Committee staged a whole staging of the kidnapping of the Romanovs, which was reported to Moscow and Sverdlov that those arrested, despite the resistance of the guards, were kidnapped by an unknown gang, there are victims on both sides, searches are underway.
After which it was announced that the Romanovs had escaped.

As historians suggest, perhaps this was done due to the fact that the Germans pointed to the need to ensure the safety of princesses of “German blood,” to which Elizabeth Feodorovna belonged.
New conflicts with Germany could lead to the rupture of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the collapse of the new government.

In 1918-1919 Emperor Nicholas I and 18 representatives of the Romanov dynasty were shot.
These were crimes that could be justified even by the most “ higher goals for good” is basically impossible.

Truly the Bolsheviks did not know what they were doing...

In 2008, the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized all the executed Romanovs as victims of political repression.

Nineteen male and twenty-four female members of the House of Romanov ended up outside Russia in various ways, including seven born princesses of European Houses who married members of the Imperial House and seventeen born Grand Duchesses and Princesses of the blood who entered into equal or morganatic marriages.
So the Romanov dynasty did not end.

Those who managed to escape were those who left Russia before October 1917, or who found themselves far from the capitals by the February and October events of 1917, for example, managed to travel to the southern coast of Crimea.

Thus, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna lived in the Ai-Todor estate since the spring of 1917.
The estate belonged to her son-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (grandson of Nicholas I, cousin of Emperor Nicholas II) and Grand Duchess Xenia, the eldest daughter of Maria Feodorovna (sister of Nicholas II).
Her youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, and her husband, Colonel N.A. Kulikovsky, also lived with them.
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and his wife Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna lived in the Chair estate.
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (1856-1929) - grandson of Emperor Nicholas I. From July 1914 to August 1915 Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army.

Estate "Chair"

Park “Chair” (translated from the Crimean Tatar as “mountain garden or meadow”), known to many from the popular romance of the 30s of the 20th century “Roses bloom in Chair Park”:

Roses are blooming in Chaire Park
Almond trees bloom in Chaire Park
I dream of your golden braids
I dream of a cheerful, ringing distance...

Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich (grandson of Nicholas I, cousin of Nicholas II, adjutant general of the Russian army) with his wife, Grand Duchess Militsa Nikolaevna (daughter of the King of Montenegro) and children settled in the Dulber palace.
Prince Yusupov lived in Koreiz with his wife, Princess Irina Alexandrovna (daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna, niece of Nicholas II).

Despite the fact that all the Romanovs were under house arrest, their lives at first proceeded calmly.
But at the end of April 1917, the Provisional Government gave permission to search the South Coast estates.
A special team of 250 Black Sea sailors arrived in Yalta by car and by sea on the military transports “Dakia” and “Karl”.
Representatives of the Sevastopol trade union of ladies' employees were brought in to search the women.
The searches began at dawn on April 27.

Prince F.F. Yusupov, son-in-law of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, described what happened:
“Sailors sent by the Sevastopol Council burst into the house.
They demanded the key to his bureau and weapons from the Grand Duke. The elderly empress had to get up and let her bed be ransacked. Standing behind the screen, she saw, without being able to object, how the gang leader took away her papers and personal correspondence, as he had already done from her father-in-law. He even took away the old Bible that had always been with her since she left Denmark to become the king's wife. Alexandra III.
When asked to return the relic, the empress was given the answer that “this is a counter-revolutionary book, and such a respectable woman as you should not poison yourself with such nonsense.”

All subsequent events showed that, despite the assurances of the Provisional Government, the august persons were actually in the position of prisoners with all the ensuing consequences.

During May - October 1917, the regime of restrictions and oppression became the daily norm, and with the establishment of Bolshevik power, the regime of detention became even more stringent
In December 1917, a representative of the Sevastopol Council, Commissioner Zadorozhny, arrived at the Ai-Todor estate.
He stated that all members of the Romanov family should move to Dulber, because... representatives of the Yalta Council (in which the anarchists had a strong position) insisted on the immediate execution of all representatives of the Romanovs, threatening to seize them by force, and the Sevastopol Council decided to wait for a special order from Petrograd in this regard.
In order to prevent arbitrariness, Zadorozhny demanded that all the Romanovs move to the Dulber Palace, where it was easier to organize their security.
Representatives of the Yalta Council for six months constantly demanded the extradition of the Romanovs, trying to penetrate the palace..
But representatives of the Sevastopol Council remained adamant and guarded the prisoners, carrying out the corresponding order from Petrograd.
By preserving the lives of the hostages, the Soviet government intended to use them in the diplomatic struggle in peace negotiations with the countries of the Central Bloc.

The issue was resolved at the end of April 1918, with the arrival of the Germans in Crimea.
A paradoxical situation has arisen: former military opponents have become, in a way, liberators.
The immediate threat to the life of the Romanovs had passed.

Empress Maria Feodorovna, together with her daughter Olga, her husband and recently born grandson, moved to the Kharaks Palace in Gaspra,
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and his family returned to his estate “Ai-Todor”,
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and his wife settled in the Kichkine palace (translated from the Crimean Tatar language as “baby.” During the war of 1941-1945, when Crimea was occupied by German troops, the palace became the residence of Manstein, commander of the group of troops that captured the peninsula. Hitler gave this palace to him. Perhaps thanks to this, the palace was not damaged during the war).

The German occupation authorities in 1918 behaved very politely and helpfully towards the Romanovs.
Despite this, neither the former Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, nor the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna were willing to accept representatives of the German command.

At the end of November 1918, British warships appeared off the Crimean coast.
By this time, King George V apparently “saw the light” and decided to save his Russian relatives - the Romanovs.
The command of the squadron had an order from the English King George V and his mother, Queen Alexandra - sister of Maria Feodorovna, to take the Romanovs out of Crimea at the first threat to their lives.

At the beginning of April 1919, when the Red Army troops took northern Crimea, it became clear that there was no longer any time to delay.
On the morning of April 7, 1919, the commander of the British fleet in Sevastopol came to Maria Feodorovna. She was invited to sail to England aboard the cruiser Marlboro, which was stationed in the Yalta roadstead.

On April 11, the cruiser Marlboro departed from the shores of Yalta, forever taking representatives of the once most famous family of Russia to a foreign land.

Cruiser "Marlboro". Postcard with the Romanovs' autographs.

Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and Grand Duke
Nikolai Nikolaevich on board the cruiser Marlboro.

On board the cruiser were all the representatives of the Romanov dynasty who were in Crimea at that time, as well as others close to the royal court who lived there. There are about 70 people in total.
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna and her husband, Colonel Kulikovsky, who considered himself not entitled to leave his homeland, were not on board the cruiser. He wanted to join Volunteer Army. But after all sorts of misadventures, they left Russia in February 1920 from Novorossiysk, on the English ship Cardiff.
Grand Duchess Olga died in 1960 in Toronto.

Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich also went abroad separately from the whole family. On December 11, 1918, he went on the ship “Forsyth” to Paris, where he intended to make a report on the situation in Russia during the peace conference of the countries participating in the 1st World War.

After the execution in the summer of 1918 of Emperor Nicholas II, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, i.e. of all the male offspring of Emperor Alexander III, the rights to the throne by virtue of the “Basic State Laws of the Russian Empire” passed to the family of the next son of Emperor Alexander II - Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, who died in 1908.
The eldest representative of this family was Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, who left with his family for Finland in June 1917.
August 8, 1922 he issued an Act on the acceptance of the guardianship of the Imperial Throne, and on September 13, 1924 in Coburg (Germany) he issued a Manifesto on the acceptance of the title of All-Russian Emperor in exile, Cyril I.
This act meant that the Russian Imperial House of Romanov continues to exist in exile as a kind of historical institution.

After the death of Kirill Vladimirovich in 1938, his only son, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, became the head of the imperial house.
In 1969, the Grand Duke issued a dynastic act, according to which his daughter Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna was proclaimed guardian of the throne
In 1992, after the death of Kirill Vladimirovich, the inheritance of the throne passed into the female line, to his daughter Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who is now the head of the Russian Imperial House.

In addition to her, Grand Duke Georgy Mikhailovich (son of Maria Vladimirovna) is also a member of the Russian Imperial House.
All other relatives of the Romanovs, born from morganatic marriages, do not belong to the Russian Imperial House.

The process of bringing the House of Romanov back to life modern Russia began in 1991, when Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich and his wife visited St. Petersburg in connection with the return of the northern capital to its name.
When he died in 1992, he was buried in the princely tomb of the Romanovs in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna often visits Russia and takes part in various events held in connection with historical events.
The dynasty does not engage in politics and directs all its efforts to helping compatriots in the revival of faith, patriotism, and national unity, while remaining a living symbol of the bygone empire.

At one in the morning on July 17, 1918, the former Russian Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, their five children and four servants, including a doctor, were taken to the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, where they were detained, where they were brutally shot by the Bolsheviks and subsequently burned bodies.

The terrible scene continues to haunt us to this day, and their remains, which lay for most of a century in unmarked graves, the location of which only the Soviet leadership knew, are still surrounded by an aura of mystery. In 1979, enthusiastic historians discovered the remains of some members of the royal family, and in 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, their identity was confirmed using DNA analysis.

The remains of two more royal children, Alexei and Maria, were discovered in 2007 and subjected to similar analysis. However, the Russian Orthodox Church questioned the results of the DNA tests. The remains of Alexei and Maria were not buried, but were transferred to a scientific institution. They were analyzed again in 2015.

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore recounts these events in detail in his book “The Romanovs, 1613-1618,” published this year. El Confidencial already wrote about it. In Town & Country magazine, the author recalls that last fall the official investigation into the murder of the royal family was resumed, and the remains of the king and queen were exhumed. This gave rise to conflicting statements from the government and Church representatives, once again bringing the issue into the public spotlight.

According to Sebag, Nikolai was good-looking, and his apparent weakness hid a powerful man who despised ruling class, a rabid anti-Semite who did not doubt his sacred right to power. She and Alexandra married for love, what happened then a rare occurrence. She brought into family life paranoid thinking, mystical fanaticism (just remember Rasputin) and another danger - hemophilia, which was passed on to her son, the heir to the throne.

Wounds

In 1998, the reburial of the remains of the Romanovs took place in a solemn official ceremony designed to heal the wounds of Russia's past.

President Yeltsin said that political change should never again be carried out by force. Many Orthodox Christians again expressed their opposition and perceived the event as an attempt by the president to impose a liberal agenda in the former USSR.

In 2000, the Orthodox Church canonized the royal family, as a result of which the relics of its members became a shrine, and according to statements of its representatives, it was necessary to carry out reliable identification.

When Yeltsin left office and promoted the unknown Vladimir Putin, a KGB lieutenant colonel who considered the collapse of the USSR “the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century,” the young leader began to concentrate power in his hands, put up barriers to foreign influence, promote the strengthening of the Orthodox faith and carry out an aggressive foreign policy. It seemed - Sebag reflects with irony - that he decided to continue the political line of the Romanovs.

Putin is a political realist, and he is moving along the path outlined by the leaders of a strong Russia: from Peter I to Stalin. These were bright personalities who resisted the international threat.

The position of Putin, who questioned the results scientific research(faint echo cold war: there were many Americans among the researchers), calmed the Church and created nutrient medium for conspiracy theories, nationalist and anti-Semitic hypotheses regarding the remains of the Romanovs. One of them was that Lenin and his followers, many of whom were Jews, transported the bodies to Moscow, ordering their mutilation. Was it really the king and his family? Or did someone manage to escape?

Context

How the kings returned to Russian history

Atlantico 08/19/2015

304 years of Romanov rule

Le Figaro 05/30/2016

Why both Lenin and Nicholas II are “good”

Radio Praha 10/14/2015

What did Nicholas II give to the Finns?

Helsingin Sanomat 07/25/2016 During Civil War The Bolsheviks declared the Red Terror. They took the family away from Moscow. It was a terrifying journey by train and horse-drawn carriages. Tsarevich Alexei suffered from hemophilia, and some of his sisters were sexually abused on the train. Finally, they found themselves in the house where their life path. It was essentially turned into a fortified prison and machine guns were installed around the perimeter. Be that as it may, the royal family tried to adapt to the new conditions. The eldest daughter Olga was depressed, and the younger ones played, not really understanding what was happening. Maria had an affair with one of the guards, and then the Bolsheviks replaced all the guards, tightening the internal rules.

When it became obvious that the White Guards were about to take Yekaterinburg, Lenin issued an unspoken decree on the execution of the entire royal family, entrusting the execution to Yakov Yurovsky. At first it was planned to secretly bury everyone in the nearby forests. But the murder turned out to be poorly planned and even worse executed. Each member of the firing squad had to kill one of the victims. But when the basement of the house was filled with smoke from shots and the screams of people being shot, many of the Romanovs were still alive. They were wounded and crying in horror.

The fact is that diamonds were sewn into the clothes of the princesses, and the bullets bounced off them, which led to the confusion of the killers. The wounded were finished off with bayonets and shots to the head. One of the executioners later said that the floor was slippery with blood and brains.

Scars

Having completed their work, the drunken executioners robbed the corpses and loaded them onto a truck, which stalled along the way. On top of that, at the last moment it turned out that all the bodies did not fit into the graves dug in advance for them. The clothes of the dead were removed and burned. Then the frightened Yurovsky came up with another plan. He left the bodies in the forest and went to Yekaterinburg to buy acid and gasoline. For three days and nights, he carried containers of sulfuric acid and gasoline into the forest to destroy the bodies, which he decided to bury in different places to confuse those who intended to find them. No one should have known anything about what happened. They doused the bodies with acid and gasoline, burned them, and then buried them.

Sebag wonders how 2017 will mark the 100th anniversary of October revolution. What will happen to the royal remains? The country does not want to lose its former glory. The past is always seen in a positive light, but the legitimacy of the autocracy remains controversial. New research initiated by the Russian Orthodox Church and carried out by the Investigative Committee, led to the repeated exhumation of the bodies. Was held comparative analysis DNA with living relatives, in particular with the British Prince Philip, one of whose grandmothers was Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna Romanova. Thus, he is the great-great-grandson of Tsar Nicholas II.

The fact that the Church still makes decisions on such important issues has attracted attention in the rest of Europe, as well as the lack of openness and a chaotic series of burials, exhumations, and DNA tests of certain members of the royal family. Most political observers believe Putin will make the final decision on what to do with the remains on the 100th anniversary of the revolution. Will he finally be able to reconcile the image of the revolution of 1917 with the barbaric massacre of 1918? Will he have to hold two separate events to satisfy each party? Will the Romanovs be given royal honors or church honors, like saints?

In Russian textbooks, many Russian tsars are still presented as heroes covered in glory. Gorbachev and the last Tsar Romanov renounced, Putin said he would never do this.

The historian claims that in his book he omitted nothing from the materials he examined on the execution of the Romanov family... with the exception of the most disgusting details of the murder. When the bodies were taken to the forest, the two princesses moaned and had to be finished off. Whatever the future of the country, it will be impossible to erase this terrible episode from memory.

WHO GAVE THE ORDER?

Until now, historians cannot say for sure who exactly gave the order to execute the royal family. According to one version, this decision was made by Sverdlov and Lenin. According to another, they wanted to start by at least bringing Nicholas II to Moscow to judge in an official setting. Another version says that the party leaders did not want to kill the Romanovs at all - the Ural Bolsheviks made the decision to execute them independently, without consulting their superiors.

During the Civil War, confusion reigned, and local branches of the party had broad independence, explains Alexander Ladygin, teacher of Russian history at IGNI UrFU. - Local Bolsheviks advocated world revolution and were very critical of Lenin. In addition, during this period there was an active offensive of the White Czech corps on Yekaterinburg, and the Ural Bolsheviks believed that leaving such an important propaganda figure to the enemy as former king, unacceptable.

It is also not entirely known exactly how many people took part in the execution. Some “contemporaries” claimed that 12 people with revolvers were selected. Others that there were much fewer of them.

The identities of only five participants in the murder are known for certain. These are the commandant of the Special Purpose House Yakov Yurovsky, his assistant Grigory Nikulin, military commissar Pyotr Ermakov, head of the house security Pavel Medvedev and member of the Cheka Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin.

Yurovsky fired the first shot. This served as a signal for the rest of the security officers, says Nikolai Neuimin, head of the department of history of the Romanov dynasty at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore. - Everyone shot at Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna. Then Yurovsky gave the command to cease fire, since one of the Bolsheviks almost had his finger torn off from the indiscriminate shooting. All the Grand Duchesses were still alive at that time. They began to finish them off. Alexei was one of the last to be killed, as he was unconscious. When the Bolsheviks began to carry out the bodies, Anastasia suddenly came to life and had to be bayoneted to death.

Many participants in the murder of the royal family retained written memories of that night, which, by the way, do not coincide in all details. So, for example, Pyotr Ermakov stated that it was he who led the execution. Although other sources claim that he was only an ordinary performer. Probably, in this way the participants in the murder wanted to curry favor with the new leadership of the country. Although this did not help everyone.

ERMAKOV LECTURED ABOUT THE KILLING OF THE TSAR

The grave of Peter Ermakov is located almost in the very center of Yekaterinburg - at the Ivanovo cemetery. A tombstone with a large five-pointed star stands literally three steps from the grave of the Ural storyteller Pavel Petrovich Bazhov. After the end of the Civil War, Ermakov worked as a law enforcement officer, first in Omsk, then in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk. And in 1927, he achieved a promotion to the head of one of the Ural prisons. Many times Ermakov met with groups of workers to talk about how the royal family was killed. He was encouraged more than once. In 1930, the party bureau awarded him a Browning, and a year later Ermakov was given the title of honorary drummer and rewarded with a certificate for completing the five-year plan in three years. However, not everyone treated him favorably. According to rumors, when Marshal Zhukov headed the Ural Military District, Pyotr Ermakov met with him at one of the ceremonial meetings. As a sign of greeting, he extended his hand to Georgy Konstantinovich, but he refused to shake it, declaring: “I don’t shake hands with executioners!”

Ermakov lived quietly to the age of 68. And in the 1960s, one of the streets of Sverdlovsk was renamed in his honor. True, after the collapse of the USSR the name was changed again.

Pyotr Ermakov was only a performer. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that he escaped repression. Ermakov never held major leadership positions. His highest appointment is as an inspector of places of detention. No one had any questions for him,” says Alexander Ladygin. “But over the past two years, the monument to Pyotr Ermakov has been vandalized three times. A year ago, during the Royal Days, we cleaned it. But today he is in the paint again.

YUROVSKY DIED FROM STOMACH PROBLEMS

After the execution of the royal family, Yakov Yurovsky managed to work in the Moscow City Council, in the Cheka of the Vyatka province and as chairman of the provincial Cheka in Yekaterinburg. However, in 1920 he began to have stomach problems and moved to Moscow for treatment. During the capital stage of his life, Yurovsky changed more than one place of work. At first he was the manager of the organizational training department, then he worked in the gold department at the People's Commissariat of Finance, from where he later moved to the position of deputy director of the Bogatyr plant, which produced galoshes. Until the 1930s, Yurovsky changed several more leadership positions and even managed to work as director of the State Polytechnic Museum. And in 1933 he retired and died five years later in the Kremlin hospital from a perforated stomach ulcer.

Yurovsky’s ashes were buried in the church of the Donskoy Monastery of Seraphim of Sarov in Moscow, notes Nikolai Neuymin. - In the early 20s, the first crematorium in the USSR opened there, where they even published a magazine promoting the cremation of Soviet citizens as an alternative to pre-revolutionary burials. And there on one of the shelves there were urns with the ashes of Yurovsky and his wife.

MEDVEDEV-KUDRIN BECATED THE BROWNING, WHICH KILLED THE MONARCH, TO KHRUSHCHEV

After the Civil War, the assistant commandant of the Ipatiev house, Grigory Nikulin, worked for two years as the head of the criminal investigation department in Moscow, and then got a job at the Moscow water supply station, also in a leadership position. He lived to be 71 years old.

It is interesting that Grigory Nikulin was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. His grave is located next to the grave of Boris Yeltsin, they say in the regional museum of local lore. - And 30 meters from him, next to the grave of a friend of the poet Mayakovsky, lies another regicide - Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin.

The latter, by the way, lived another 46 years after the execution of the royal family. In 1938, he took a leadership position in the NKVD of the USSR and rose to the rank of colonel. He was buried with military honors on January 15, 1964. In his will, Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin asked his son to give Khrushchev the Browning gun from which the royal family was killed, and to give Fidel Castro the Colt that the regicide used in 1919.