How the family of Nicholas II died. Who shot the royal family

Ilya Belous

Today, the tragic events of July 1918, when the Royal Family died as martyrdom, are increasingly becoming a tool for various political manipulations and indoctrination of public opinion.

Many consider the leadership of Soviet Russia, namely V.I. Lenin and Ya.M. Sverdlov, to be the direct organizers of the execution. It is very important to understand the truth about who conceived and committed this brutal crime, and why. Let's look into everything in detail, objectively using verified facts and documents.

On August 19, 1993, in connection with the discovery of the alleged burial of the royal family on the old Koptyakovskaya road near Sverdlovsk, on the instructions of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, criminal case No. 18/123666-93 was opened.

Investigator for particularly important cases of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation V.N. Solovyov, who led the criminal case into the death of the royal family, testified that not a single piece of evidence was found that the execution was sanctioned by Lenin or Sverdlov, or of any involvement in the murder.

But first things first.

In August 1917 The provisional government sent the royal family to Tobolsk.

Kerensky initially intended to send Nicholas II to England via Murmansk, but this initiative did not meet with support from either the British or the Provisional Government.

It is not clear what made Kerensky send the Romanovs to peasant-revolutionary Siberia, which was then under the rule of the Socialist Revolutionaries.

According to Karabchevsky’s lawyer, Kerensky did not rule out a bloody outcome:

“Kerensky leaned back in his chair, thought for a second and, running the index finger of his left hand along his neck, made an energetic upward gesture with it. I and everyone understood that this was a hint of hanging. - Two, three victims are probably necessary! - said Kerensky, looking around us with his either mysterious or half-blind gaze thanks to the upper eyelids hanging heavily over his eyes.” //Karabchevsky N.P. Revolution and Russia. Berlin, 1921. T. 2. What my eyes saw. Ch. 39.

After the October Revolution, the Soviet government took the position of Nicholas II on the organization open court over the former emperor.

February 20, 1918 At a meeting of the commission under the Council of People's Commissars, the issue of “preparing investigative material on Nikolai Romanov” was considered. Lenin spoke out for the trial of the former tsar.

April 1, 1918 The Soviet government decided to transfer the royal family from Tobolsk to Moscow. This was categorically opposed by local authorities, who believed that the royal family should remain in the Urals. They offered to transfer her to Yekaterinburg. // Kovalchenko I.D. The age-old problem of Russian history // Journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, No. 10, 1994. P.916.

At the same time, Soviet leaders, including Yakov Sverdlov, the issue of the security of the Romanovs was studied. In particular, April 1, 1918 The All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued the following resolution:

“...Instruct the Commissioner for Military Affairs to immediately form a detachment of 200 people. (of which 30 people were from the Partisan detachment of the Central Executive Committee, 20 people from the detachment of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries) and send them to Tobolsk to reinforce the guard and, if possible, immediately transport all those arrested to Moscow. This resolution is not subject to publication in the press. Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Ya. Sverdlov. Secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee V. Avanesov.”

Academician-Secretary of the Department of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ivan Dmitrievich Kovalchenko in 1994 gives information similar to the testimony of investigator Solovyov:

“Judging by the documents we found, the fate of the royal family as a whole was not discussed in Moscow at any level. It was only about the fate of Nicholas II. It was proposed to hold a trial against him; Trotsky volunteered to be the prosecutor. The fate of Nicholas II was actually predetermined: the court could only sentence him to death. Representatives of the Urals took a different position.

They believed that it was urgent to deal with Nicholas II. A plan was even developed to kill him on the road from Tobolsk to Moscow. The Chairman of the Ural Regional Council Beloborodov wrote in his memoirs in 1920: “We believed that, perhaps, there was not even a need to deliver Nikolai to Yekaterinburg, that if favorable conditions were provided during his transfer, he should be shot on the road. Zaslavsky had such an order (commander of the Yekaterinburg detachment sent to Tobolsk - I.K.) and all the time tried to take steps to implement it, although to no avail." // Kovalchenko I.D. The age-old problem of Russian history // Journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, No. 10, 1994.

April 6, 1918 The All-Russian Central Executive Committee made a new decision - to transfer Nicholas II and his family to Yekaterinburg. Such a quick change of decision is the result of confrontation between Moscow and the Urals, says academician Kovalchenko.

In a letter from the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov Ya.M. The Ural Regional Council says:

“Yakovlev’s task is to deliver |Nicholas II| to Yekaterinburg alive and hand it over to either Chairman Beloborodov or Goloshchekin.” // Resolution to terminate criminal case No. 18/123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and persons from their entourage in the period 1918-1919”, paragraphs 5-6.

Yakovlev Vasily Vasilyevich is a professional Bolshevik with many years of experience, a former Ural militant. Real name - Myachin Konstantin Alekseevich, pseudonyms - Stoyanovich Konstantin Alekseevich, Krylov. Yakovlev was provided with 100 revolutionary soldiers in his detachment, and he himself was endowed with emergency powers.

By this time, the leadership of the Council in Yekaterinburg decided the fate of the Romanovs in their own way - they made an unspoken decision on the need to secretly exterminate all members of the family of Nicholas II without trial or investigation during their move from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg.

Chairman of the Urals Council A.G. Beloborodov recalled:

“...it is necessary to dwell on one extremely important circumstance in the line of conduct of the Regional Council. We believed that, perhaps, there was not even a need to deliver Nikolai to Yekaterinburg, that if favorable conditions were provided during his transfer, he should be shot on the road. This was the order given by the |commander of the Yekaterinburg detachment| Zaslavsky tried all the time to take steps towards its implementation, although to no avail. In addition, Zaslavsky obviously behaved in such a way that his intentions were guessed by Yakovlev, which to some extent explains the rather large-scale misunderstandings that later arose between Zaslavsky and Yakovlev.” // Resolution to terminate criminal case No. 18/123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and persons from their entourage in the period 1918-1919”, paragraphs 5-6.

At the same time, the Ural leadership was ready to enter into direct conflict with Moscow. An ambush was being prepared to kill Yakovlev's entire detachment.

Here is a statement from the statement of the Red Guardsman of the Ural detachment A.I. Nevolin to Commissioner Yakovlev V.V.

“... In Yekaterinburg he was a member of the Red Army in the 4th hundred... Gusyatsky... says that Commissar Yakovlev is traveling with the Moscow detachment, we need to wait for him... assistant instructor Ponomarev and instructor Bogdanov begin: “We... now decided this: on the way to Tyumen We'll make an ambush. When Yakovlev goes with Romanov, as soon as they catch up with us, you must use machine guns and rifles to cut Yakovlev’s entire detachment to the ground. And don't say anything to anyone. If they ask what kind of detachment you are, then say that you are from Moscow, and don’t say who your boss is, because this needs to be done in addition to the regional one and all the Soviets in general.” I then asked the question: “Do you mean to be robbers?” I personally don’t agree with your plans. If you need to kill Romanov, then let someone decide on his own, but I don’t allow such a thought in my head, bearing in mind that our entire armed force stands guard over the defense of Soviet power, and not for individual benefits, and people, if Commissar Yakovlev, sent behind him, is from the Council of People's Commissars, then he should present him where he was ordered. But we were not and cannot be robbers, so that because of Romanov alone we would shoot fellow Red Army soldiers like us. ... After this, Gusyatsky became even more angry with me. I see that this is starting to affect my life. Looking for exits, I finally decided to escape with Yakovlev’s detachment.” // Resolution to terminate criminal case No. 18/123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and persons from their entourage in the period 1918-1919”, paragraphs 5-6.

There was also a secretly approved plan by the Urals Council to liquidate the royal family by means of a train crash on the way from Tyumen to Yekaterinburg.

A set of documents related to the move of the royal family from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg indicates that the Urals Council was in sharp confrontation with the central authorities on issues related to the security of the royal family.

A telegram from the Chairman of the Urals Council A.G. Beloborodov, sent to V.I., has been preserved. Lenin, in which he complains in an ultimatum form about the actions of the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Ya.M. Sverdlov, in connection with his support for the actions of Commissioner V.V. Yakovlev (Myachin), aimed at the safe passage of the royal family from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg.

Correspondence of Yakovlev V.V. with the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov Ya.M. shows the true intentions of the Bolsheviks of the Urals towards the royal family. Despite the clearly expressed position of Lenin V.I. and Sverdlova Y.M. about bringing the royal family to Yekaterinburg alive, the Bolsheviks of Yekaterinburg went against the Kremlin leadership in this matter and made an official decision to arrest V.V. Yakovlev. and even the use of armed force against his squad.

On April 27, 1918, Yakovlev sends a telegram to Sverdlov, in which he testifies to the attempts of his soldiers to repulse the assassination of the Royal Family by local Bolsheviks (referring to it with the code word “baggage”):

“I just brought some luggage. I want to change the route due to the following extremely important circumstances. Special people arrived from Yekaterinburg to Tobolsk before me to destroy the luggage. The special forces unit fought back and almost led to bloodshed. When I arrived, the Yekaterinburg residents gave me a hint that there was no need to carry my luggage to the place. ...They asked me not to sit next to the luggage (Petrov). This was a direct warning that I could also be destroyed. ...Having failed to achieve their goal either in Tobolsk, or on the road, or in Tyumen, the Yekaterinburg detachments decided to ambush me near Yekaterinburg. They decided that if I didn’t give them my luggage back without a fight, they decided to kill us too. ...Ekaterinburg, with the exception of Goloshchekin, has one desire: to do away with the luggage at all costs. The fourth, fifth and sixth companies of the Red Army are preparing an ambush for us. If this is at odds with the central opinion, then it is madness to carry luggage to Yekaterinburg.” // Resolution to terminate criminal case No. 18/123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and persons from their entourage in the period 1918-1919”, paragraphs 5-6.

When Nicholas II arrived in Yekaterinburg, local authorities provoked a crowd at the Yekaterinburg I station, which tried to carry out lynching of the family of the former emperor. Commissioner Yakovlev acted decisively, threatening those who attempted to assassinate the Tsar with machine guns. Only this made it possible to avoid the death of the royal family.

April 30, 1918 Yakovlev handed over to the representatives of the Ural Regional Council of Nicholas II, Alexandra Fedorovna, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, Court Marshal V.A. Dolgorukov and life physician prof. Botkin, valet T.I. Chemodurov, footman I.L. Sednev and room girl A.S. Demidov. Dolgorukov and Sednev were arrested upon arrival and placed in the Yekaterinburg prison. The rest were sent to the house of industrialist and engineer N.N. Ipatiev.

May 23, 1918 Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, Grand Duchesses Olga Nikolaevna, Tatyana Nikolaevna and Anastasia Nikolaevna were transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. A large group of servants and people from the entourage arrived with them. In Yekaterinburg, immediately after their arrival, Tatishchev, Gendrikova, Schneider, Nagornov, and Volkov were arrested and placed in prison. The following were placed in Ipatiev's house: Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, Grand Duchesses Olga Nikolaevna, Tatyana Nikolaevna and Anastasia Nikolaevna, the boy Sednev and footman Trupp A.E. Lackey Chemodurov was transferred from Ipatiev’s house to the Yekaterinburg prison.

June 4, 1918 At a meeting of the board of the People's Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR, the order of the Council of People's Commissars was considered, on which a decision was made: to delegate to the disposal of the Council of People's Commissars a representative from the People's Commissariat of Justice "as an investigator, Comrade Bogrov." Materials concerning Nicholas II were systematically collected. Such a trial could only take place in the capitals. In addition, V.I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky received messages from the Urals and Siberia about the unreliability of the security of the royal family. // Resolution to terminate criminal case No. 18/123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and persons from their entourage in the period 1918-1919”, paragraphs 5-6. 5.4. The situation of the family and people from the circle of the former Emperor Nicholas II after the Bolsheviks came to power

Sentiment towards Nicholas II in the Urals

Archival, newspaper and memoir sources emanating from the Bolsheviks have preserved a lot of evidence that the “working masses” of Yekaterinburg and the Urals in general constantly expressed concern about the reliability of the security of the royal family, the possibility of the release of Nicholas II, and even demanded his immediate execution. If you believe the editor of the Ural Worker V. Vorobyov, “they wrote about this in letters that came to the newspaper, they talked about it at meetings and rallies.” This was probably true, and not only in the Urals. Among the archival documents there is, for example, this one.

July 3, 1918 The Council of People's Commissars received a telegram from the Kolomna district party committee. It reported that the Kolomna Bolshevik organization

“unanimously decided to demand from the Council of People’s Commissars the immediate destruction of the entire family and relatives of the former tsar, because the German bourgeoisie, together with the Russian, are restoring the tsarist regime in the captured cities.” “In case of refusal,” the Kolomna Bolsheviks threatened, “it was decided to carry out this decree on our own.” //Ioffe, G.Z. Revolution and the fate of the Romanovs / M.: Republic, 1992. P.302—303

The Ural elite was all “leftist”. This was manifested in the issue of the Brest Peace, and in the separatist aspirations of the Ural Regional Council, and in the attitude towards the deposed tsar, whom the Urals did not trust in Moscow. The Ural security officer I. Radzinsky recalled:

“The dominance in the leadership was leftist, left-communist... Beloborodov, Safarov, Nikolai Tolmachev, Evgeny Preobrazhensky - all of these were leftists.”

The party line, according to Radzinsky, was led by Goloshchekin, also a “leftist” at that time.

In their “leftism,” the Ural Bolsheviks were forced to compete with the left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists, whose influence had always been noticeable, and by the summer of 1918 had even increased. A member of the Ural Regional Party Committee, I. Akulov, wrote to Moscow back in the winter of 1918 that the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were simply “baffling” with “their unexpected radicalism.”

The Ural Bolsheviks could not and did not want to give political competitors the opportunity to reproach them for “sliding to the right.” The Social Revolutionaries presented similar advertisements. Maria Spiridonova reproached the Bolshevik Central Committee for disbanding “tsars and sub-tsars” in “the Ukraine, Crimea and abroad” and raising its hand against the Romanovs “only at the insistence of the revolutionaries,” meaning the left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists.

Commandant of the Ipatiev House (until July 4, 1918) A.D. Avdeev testified in his memoirs that a group of anarchists tried to pass a resolution that “the former tsar should be immediately executed.” Extremist groups were not limited to just demands and resolutions. // Avdeev A. Nicholas II in Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg // Red news. 1928. No. 5. P. 201.

Chairman of the Yekaterinburg City Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies P.M. Bykov in his memoirs points to attempts to organize an attack on Ipatiev’s house and eliminate the Romanovs. // Bykov P. The last days of the Romanovs. Uralbook. 1926. P. 113

“In the morning they waited a long time, but in vain, for the priest to come to perform the service; everyone was busy with churches. For some reason we were not allowed into the garden during the day. Avdeev came and talked with Evg for a long time. Serg. According to him, he and the Regional Council are afraid of anarchist protests and therefore, perhaps, we will have to leave soon, probably to Moscow! He asked to prepare for departure. They immediately began to pack up, but quietly, so as not to attract the attention of the guard officials, at the special request of Avdeev.” Around 11 o'clock. In the evening he returned and said that we would stay a few more days. Therefore, on June 1, we remained in a bivouac style, without laying out anything. The weather was fine; The walk took place, as always, in two turns. Finally, after dinner, Avdeev, slightly tipsy, announced to Botkin that the anarchists had been captured and that the danger had passed and our departure was cancelled! After all the preparations it even became boring! In the evening we played bezique. // Diary of Nikolai Romanov // Red Archive. 1928. No. 2 (27). pp. 134-135

The next day, Alexandra Fedorovna wrote in her diary:

“Now they say that we are staying here, because they managed to capture the leader of the anarchists, their printing house and the entire group.” //TsGAOR. F. 640. Op.1. D.332. L.18.

Rumors of lynching of the Romanovs swept the Urals in June 1918. Moscow began sending alarming requests to Yekaterinburg. On June 20 the following telegram arrived:

“In Moscow, information spread that former Emperor Nicholas II had allegedly been killed. Provide the information you have. Manager of the Council of People's Commissars V. Bonch-Bruevich.” // TsGAOR. F. 130. Op.2. D.1109. L.34

In accordance with this request, the commander of the North Ural Group of Soviet Forces, R. Berzin, together with the military commissar of the Ural Military District, Goloshchekin, and other officials, inspected the Ipatiev House. In telegrams to the Council of People's Commissars, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the People's Commissariat of Military Affairs, he reported that

“All family members and Nicholas II himself are alive. All information about his murder is a provocation.” // TsGAOR. F.1235. Op.93. D.558.L.79; F.130.Op.2.D.1109.L.38

June 20, 1918 In the premises of the Postal and Telegraph Office of Yekaterinburg, a conversation took place over a direct wire between Lenin and Berzin.

According to three former officials of this office (Sibirev, Borodin and Lenkovsky), Lenin ordered Berzin:

“... to take under your protection the entire Royal Family, and to prevent any violence against it, responding in this case with your (i.e. Berzin’s) own life.” // Summary of information on the Royal Family of the Department of Military Field Control under the Commissioner for the Protection of State Order and Public Peace in the Perm Province dated 11/III/1919. Published: The Death of the Royal Family. Materials of the investigation into the murder of the Royal Family, (August 1918 - February 1920), p. 240.

Newspaper "Izvestia" June 25 and 28, 1918 published refutations of rumors and reports from some newspapers about the execution of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg. //Ioffe, G.Z. Revolution and the fate of the Romanovs / M.: Respublika, 1992. P.303—304

Meanwhile, the White Czechs and Siberian troops were already bypassing Yekaterinburg from the south, trying to cut it off from the European part of Russia, capturing Kyshtym, Miass, Zlatoust and Shadrinsk.

As it appears, the Ural authorities made a fundamental decision to execute by July 4, 1918: on this day, commandant Avdeev, loyal to Nicholas II, was replaced by security officer Ya.M. Yurovsky. There was a change in the security of the royal family.

Security guard V.N. Netrebin wrote in his memoirs:

“Soon [after joining the internal guard on July 4, 1918 - S.V.] it was explained to us that... we might have to execute the b/ts [former tsar. - S.V.], and that we must strictly keep everything secret, everything that could happen in the house... Having received explanations from Comrade. Yurovsky that we needed to think about how best to carry out the execution, we began to discuss the issue... The day when the execution would have to be carried out was unknown to us. But we still felt that it would come soon.”

“The All-Russian Central Executive Committee does not give permission for execution!”

At the beginning of July 1918, the Ural Regional Council tried to convince Moscow to shoot the Romanovs. At this time, a member of the Presidium of the Regional Council, Philip Isaevich Goloshchekin, who knew Yakov Sverdlov well from his underground work, went there. He was in Moscow during the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets from July 4 to July 10, 1918. The congress ended with the adoption of the Constitution of the RSFSR.

According to some reports, Goloshchekin stopped at Sverdlov’s apartment. Among the main issues then could be: the defense of the Urals from the troops of the Siberian Army and the White Czechs, the possible surrender of Yekaterinburg, the fate of the gold reserves, the fate of the former tsar. It is possible that Goloshchekin tried to coordinate the imposition of a death sentence on Romanov.

Probably, Goloshchekin did not receive permission to execute Goloshchekin from Sverdlov, and the central Soviet government, represented by Sverdlov, insisted on the trial for which it was preparing. M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin), a participant in the execution of the royal family, writes:

“...When I entered [the premises of the Ural Cheka on the evening of July 16, 1918], those present were deciding what to do with the former Tsar Nicholas II Romanov and his family. Report about a trip to Moscow to Ya.M. Sverdlov was made by Philip Goloshchekin. Goloshchekin failed to obtain sanctions from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to execute the Romanov family. Sverdlov consulted with V.I. Lenin, who spoke out for bringing the royal family to Moscow and an open trial of Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna, whose betrayal during the First World War cost Russia dearly... Y.M. Sverdlov tried to give [Lenin] Goloshchekin’s arguments about the dangers of transporting a train of the royal family through Russia, where counter-revolutionary uprisings broke out in cities every now and then, about the difficult situation on the fronts near Yekaterinburg, but Lenin stood his ground: “Well, so what if the front is withdrawing ? Moscow is now in the deep rear! And here we will arrange a trial for them for the whole world.” At parting, Sverdlov said to Goloshchekin: “So tell it, Philip, to your comrades: the All-Russian Central Executive Committee does not give official sanction for execution.” // Resolution to terminate criminal case No. 18/123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and persons from their entourage in the period 1918-1919”, paragraphs 5-6

This position of the Moscow leadership must be considered in the context of the events taking place at that time on the fronts. For several months by July 1918, the situation had become increasingly critical.

Historical context

At the end of 1917, the Soviet government was strenuously trying to get out of the First World War. Great Britain sought to resume the conflict between Russia and Germany. On December 22, 1917, peace negotiations began in Brest-Litovsk. On February 10, 1918, the German coalition, in an ultimatum, demanded that the Soviet delegation accept extremely difficult peace conditions (Russia’s renunciation of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, parts of Latvia, Estonia and Belarus). Contrary to Lenin’s instructions, the head of the delegation, Trotsky, arbitrarily interrupted the peace negotiations, although the ultimatum had not yet been officially received, and declared that Soviet Russia was not signing peace, but was ending the war and demobilizing the army. The negotiations were interrupted, and soon the Austro-German troops (over 50 divisions) went on the offensive from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In Transcaucasia, on February 12, 1918, the offensive of Turkish troops began.

Trying to provoke Soviet Russia into continuing the war with Germany, the Entente governments offered it “help,” and on March 6, an English landing force occupied Murmansk under the false pretext of the need to protect the Murmansk region from the powers of the German coalition.

An open military intervention by the Entente began. // Ilya Belous / “Red” terror arose in response to international and “white” terror

Not having sufficient forces to repel Germany, the Soviet Republic was forced to sign the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty on March 3, 1918. On March 15, the Entente announced non-recognition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and accelerated the deployment of military intervention. On April 5, Japanese troops landed in Vladivostok.

Despite its severity, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk temporarily stopped the advance of German troops in the central directions and gave the Soviet Republic a short respite.

In March - April 1918, an armed struggle unfolded in Ukraine against the occupying Austro-German troops and the Central Rada, which on February 9 concluded a “peace treaty” with Germany and its allies. Small Ukrainian Soviet units fought back to the borders of the RSFSR in the direction of Belgorod, Kursk and the Don region.

In mid-April 1918, German troops, violating the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, occupied Crimea and eliminated Soviet power there. Part of the Black Sea Fleet went to Novorossiysk, where, due to the threat of the ships being captured by the German occupiers, they were scuttled on June 18 by order of the Soviet government. German troops also landed in Finland, where they helped the Finnish bourgeoisie eliminate the revolutionary power of the working people.

The Baltic Fleet, located in Helsingfors, made the transition to Kronstadt under difficult conditions. On April 29, the German invaders in Ukraine eliminated the Central Rada, placing the puppet hetman P. P. Skoropadsky in power.

The Don Cossack counter-revolution also adopted a German orientation, again starting a civil war on the Don in mid-April.

On May 8, 1918, German units occupied Rostov, and then helped the kulak-Cossack “state” - the “Great Don Army” led by Ataman Krasnov - to take shape.

Turkey, taking advantage of the fact that the Transcaucasian Commissariat declared its independence from Soviet Russia, launched a broad intervention in Transcaucasia.

On May 25, 1918, a rebellion of the Czechoslovak Corps, prepared and provoked by the Entente, began, the echelons of which were located between Penza and Vladivostok in view of the upcoming evacuation to Europe. At the same time, German troops, at the request of the Georgian Mensheviks, landed in Georgia. The rebellion caused a sharp revival of the counter-revolution. Massive counter-revolutionary uprisings unfolded in the Volga region, the Southern Urals, the Northern Caucasus, and the Trans-Caspian and Semirechensk regions. and other areas. The Civil War began to unfold with renewed vigor in the Don, North Caucasus and Transcaucasia.

Soviet power and the Soviet state were under threat of complete occupation and liquidation. The Central Committee of the Communist Party devoted all its efforts to organizing defense. Volunteer units of the Red Army were being formed throughout the country.

At the same time, the Entente allocated significant funds and agents for the creation of military-conspiratorial organizations within the country: the right-wing Socialist Revolutionary Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom led by Boris Savinkov, the right-wing Cadet monarchist National Center, the coalition Union for the Revival of Russia. The Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks supported the petty-bourgeois counter-revolution, ideologically and organizationally. Work was carried out to destabilize the internal political life in the country.

On July 5, 1918, the left Socialist Revolutionary Yakov Blumkin killed the German ambassador to Moscow under the government of the RSFSR, Count Wilhelm Mirbach, in Moscow. The terrorist attack was designed to break the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and a possible resumption of the war with Germany. Simultaneously with the terrorist attack on July 6, 1918, an uprising of the left Socialist Revolutionaries occurred in Moscow and a number of large Russian cities.

The Entente began landing large landings in Vladivostok, the bulk of which were Japanese (about 75 thousand people) and American (about 12 thousand people) troops. The intervention troops in the North, consisting of British, American, French and Italian units, were strengthened. In July, the Right Socialist Revolutionary Yaroslavl rebellion of 1918, prepared with the support of the Entente, and smaller revolts in Murom, Rybinsk, Kovrov and others took place. A Left Socialist Revolutionary rebellion broke out in Moscow, and on July 10, the commander of the Eastern Front, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Muravyov, raised a rebellion, who tried to capture Simbirsk, so that, having concluded agreement with the White Czechs, together with them to move towards Moscow.

The efforts of the interventionists and the internal counter-revolution united.

“Their war with the civil war merges into one single whole, and this constitutes the main source of the difficulties of the present moment, when the military question, military events, have again come onto the scene as the main, fundamental question of the revolution” // Lenin V.I. Full collection cit., 5th ed., vol. 37, p. 14.

English trace

Western services, based on Socialist-Revolutionary-Anarchist elements, posed a serious threat to Russia, fanning chaos and banditry in the country in opposition to the policies of the new government.

The former Minister of War of the Provisional Government and Kolchakite A.I. Verkhovsky joined the Red Army in 1919. //Verkhovsky Alexander Ivanovich. On a difficult pass.

In his memoirs, Verkhovsky wrote that he was an activist in the “Union for the Revival of Russia,” which had a military organization that trained personnel for anti-Soviet armed protests, which was financed by the “allies.”

“In March 1918, I was personally invited by the Union for the Revival of Russia to join the military headquarters of the Union. The military headquarters was an organization that had the goal of organizing an uprising against Soviet power... The military headquarters had connections with the allied missions in Petrograd. General Suvorov was in charge of relations with the allied missions... Representatives of the allied missions were interested in my assessment of the situation from the point of view the possibility of restoring... the front against Germany. I had conversations about this with General Nissel, a representative of the French mission. Military headquarters through the cashier of the headquarters Suvorov received funds from allied missions». //Golinkov D. L. Secret operations of the Cheka

The testimony of A. I. Verkhovsky is fully consistent with the memoirs of another figure in the Union for the Revival of Russia, V. I. Ignatiev (1874-1959, died in Chile).

In the first part of his memoirs, “Some facts and results of four years of the civil war (1917-1921),” published in Moscow in 1922, Ignatiev confirms that the organization’s source of funds was “exclusively allied”. First amount from foreign sources Ignatiev received from General A.V. Gerua, to whom General M.N. Suvorov sent him. From a conversation with Gerua, he learned that the general was instructed to send officers to the Murmansk region at the disposal of the English General F. Poole, and that funds were allocated to him for this task. Ignatiev received a certain amount from Gerua, then received money from one agent of the French mission - 30 thousand rubles.

A spy group was operating in Petrograd, headed by sanitary doctor V.P. Kovalevsky. She also sent officers, mainly guards, to the English General Bullet in Arkhangelsk via Vologda. The group advocated the establishment of a military dictatorship in Russia and was supported by British funds. The representative of this group, English agent Captain G. E. Chaplin, worked in Arkhangelsk under the name Thomson. On December 13, 1918, Kovalevsky was shot on charges of creating a military organization associated with the British mission.

On January 5, 1918, the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly was preparing a coup d'etat, which was prevented by the Cheka. The English plan failed. The Constituent Assembly was dispersed.

Dzerzhinsky was aware of the counter-revolutionary activities of the socialists, mainly the Socialist Revolutionaries; their connections with British services, about the flow of their funding from the Allies.

Detailed information about the activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries in various committees “Saving the Motherland and Revolution”, “Defense of the Constituent Assembly” and others, disclosed by the Cheka, was given already in 1927 by Vera Vladimirova in her book “The Year of Service of the “Socialists” to the Capitalists. Essays on history, counter-revolution in 1918"

Russian historian and politician V. A. Myakotin, one of the founders and leaders of the Union for the Revival of Russia, also published his memoirs in 1923 in Prague “From the Recent Past. On the wrong side." According to his story, relations with the diplomatic representatives of the allies were carried out by members of the “Union for the Revival of Russia” specially authorized for this purpose. These connections were carried out through the French ambassador Noulens. Later, when the ambassadors left for Vologda, through the French consul Grenard. The French financed the “Union”, but Nulans directly stated that “the allies, in fact, do not need the assistance of Russian political organizations” and could well land their troops in Russia themselves. //Golinkov D.L. Secret operations of the Cheka.

The Russian Civil War was actively supported by British Prime Minister Lloyd George and US President Woodrow Wilson.

The US President personally supervised the work of agents to discredit Soviet power, and above all, the young government led by Lenin, both in the West and in Russia.

In October 1918, on the direct orders of Woodrow Wilson, a publication was published in Washington "German-Bolshevik conspiracy" better known as "Sisson papers", supposedly proving that the Bolshevik leadership consisted of direct agents of Germany, controlled by directives of the German General Staff. // The German-Bolshevik conspiracy / by United States. Committee on Public Information; Sisson, Edgar Grant, 1875-1948; National Board for Historical Service

The “documents” were purchased at the end of 1917 by the US Presidential Special Envoy to Russia Edgar Sisson for $25,000. The publication was published by CPI - the US Government Committee on Public Information. This committee was created by US President Woodrow Wilson and had the task of “influencing public opinion on issues of US participation in the First World War,” that is, CPI was a propaganda structure serving the US military department. The committee existed from April 14, 1917 to June 30, 1919.

The “documents” were fabricated by Polish journalist and traveler Ferdinand Ossendowski. They allowed the myth to spread throughout Europe about the leader of the Soviet state, Lenin, who allegedly “made a revolution with German money.”

Sisson's mission was "brilliant." He “obtained” 68 documents, some of which allegedly confirmed Lenin’s connection with the Germans and even the direct dependence of the Council of People’s Commissars on the Government of Kaiser Germany until the spring of 1918. More details about the forged documents can be found on the website of Academician Yu. K. Begunov.

Counterfeits continue to spread in modern Russia. Thus, in 2005, the documentary film “Secrets of Intelligence. Revolution in a suitcase."

Murder

In July, the White Czechs and White Guards captured Simbirsk, Ufa and Yekaterinburg, where the “regional government of the Urals” was created. Germany demanded that the Kremlin give permission to send a battalion of German troops to Moscow to protect its subjects.

Under these conditions, the execution of the royal family could have a negative impact on the development of relations with Germany, since the former Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Grand Duchesses were German princesses. Given the current situation, under certain conditions, the extradition of one or more members of the royal family to Germany was not excluded in order to mitigate the serious conflict caused by the murder of the German ambassador Mirbach.

On July 16, 1918, a telegram arrived from Petrograd to Moscow with a quote from another telegram, from a member of the presidium of the Ural Regional Council F.I. Goloshchekin to Moscow:

“July 16, 1918. Submitted 16.VII.1918 [at] 5:50 p.m. Accepted 16.VII.1918 [at] 9:22 p.m. From Petrograd. Smolny. HP 142.28 Moscow, Kremlin, copy to Lenin.
From Yekaterinburg the following is transmitted via direct wire: “Inform Moscow that the [trial] agreed upon with Filippov due to military circumstances cannot be delayed, we cannot wait. If your opinions are contrary, please tell us right now, out of turn. Goloshchekin, Safarov”
Contact Yekaterinburg about this yourself
Zinoviev."

At that time, there was no direct connection between Yekaterinburg and Moscow, so the telegram went to Petrograd, and from Petrograd Zinoviev sent it to Moscow, to the Kremlin. The telegram arrived in Moscow on July 16, 1818 at 21:22. In Yekaterinburg it was already 23 hours 22 minutes.

“At this time, the Romanovs were already offered to go down to the execution room. We don’t know whether Lenin and Sverdlov read the telegram before the first shots were fired, but we know that the telegram did not say anything about family and servants, so blaming the Kremlin leaders for the murder of children is at least unfair,” says the investigator Solovyov in an interview with Pravda

On July 17, at 12 noon, a telegram with the following content was received in Moscow addressed to Lenin from Yekaterinburg:

“In view of the approach of the enemy to Yekaterinburg and the disclosure by the Extraordinary Commission of a large White Guard conspiracy aimed at kidnapping the former Tsar and his family... by decision of the Presidium of the Regional Council, Nikolai Romanov was shot on the night of July 16th to 17th. His family was evacuated to a safe place.” // Heinrich Ioffe. Revolution and the Romanov family

Thus, Yekaterinburg lied to Moscow: The whole family was killed.

Lenin did not immediately learn about the murder. On July 16, the editors of the Danish newspaper National Tidende sent Lenin the following request:

“There are rumors here that the former king has been killed. Please report the actual state of affairs." // IN AND. Lenin. Unknown documents. 1891-1922 M., Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN). 2000. p. 243

Lenin sent a reply by telegraph:

"National Tidende. Copenhagen. The rumor is false, the former Tsar is unharmed, all rumors are just lies of the capitalist press.” //IN AND. Lenin. Unknown documents. 1981-1922 M., Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN). 2000. p. 243

Here is the conclusion of the ICR investigator on particularly important cases of Solovyov:

“The investigation has reliably established that Yakov Mikhailovich (Yankel Khaimovich) Yurovsky, his deputy Grigory Petrovich Nikulin, security officer Mikhail Aleksandrovich Medvedev (Kudrin), head of the 2nd Ural squad Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov, his assistant Stepan Petrovich Vaganov, security guard Pavel took part in the execution Spiridonovich Medvedev, security officer Alexey Georgievich Kabanov. The participation of security guard Viktor Nikiforovich Netrebin, Yan Martynovich Tselms and Red Guard Andrei Andreevich Strekotin in the execution is not excluded. There is no reliable information about the remaining participants in the execution.

According to the national composition, the “firing” team included Russians, Latvians, one Jew (Yurovsky), possibly one Austrian or Hungarian.

The indicated persons, as well as other participants in the execution after Yurovsky’s speech by Ya.M. the verdict began indiscriminate shooting, and the shooting was carried out not only in the room where the execution was carried out, but also from the adjacent room. After the first salvo, it turned out that Tsarevich Alexei, the Tsar’s daughters, the maid A.S. Demidova and Dr. E.S. Botkin is showing signs of life. Grand Duchess Anastasia screamed, the maid A.S. Demidova rose to her feet, and Tsarevich Alexei remained alive for a long time. They were shot with pistols and revolvers, Ermakov P.Z. finished off the survivors with a rifle bayonet. After death was confirmed, all the corpses began to be transferred to the truck.

As the investigation established, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, in Ipatiev’s house in Yekaterinburg, the following were shot: former Emperor Nicholas II (Romanov), former Empress Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova, their children - Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, Grand Duchesses Olga Nikolaevna Romanova, Tatyana Nikolaevna Romanova, Maria Nikolaevna Romanova and Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, physician Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin, maid Anna Stepanovna Demidova, cook Ivan Mikhailovich Kharitonov and footman Aloisy Egorovich Trupp.”

The version that the murder was “ritual” is often discussed, that the corpses of members of the royal family were beheaded after death. This version is not confirmed by the results of forensic examination.

“To investigate the possible post-mortem decapitation, the necessary forensic medical studies were carried out on all sets of skeletons. According to the categorical conclusion of the forensic medical examination on the cervical vertebrae of skeletons No. 1-9 there are no traces that could indicate post-mortem decapitation. At the same time, the version about the possible opening of the burial in 1919-1946 was checked. Investigative and expert data indicate that the burial was not opened until 1979, and during this opening the remains of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna were not touched. An inspection of the FSB Directorate for Yekaterinburg and the Sverdlovsk Region showed that the FSB does not have data on the possible opening of the burial in the period from 1919 to 1978.” // Resolution to terminate criminal case No. 18/123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and persons from their entourage in the period 1918-1919”, paragraphs 7-9.

The All-Russian Central Executive Committee did not punish the Ural Regional Council for arbitrariness. Some consider this evidence that the sanction for murder still existed. Others say that the central government did not enter into conflict with the Ural government, since in the conditions of the successful offensive of the Whites, the loyalty of the local Bolsheviks and the propaganda of the Socialist Revolutionaries about Lenin’s slide “to the right” were more important factors than the disobedience and execution of the Romanovs. The Bolsheviks may have feared a split under difficult conditions.

People's Commissar of Agriculture in the first Soviet government, Chairman of the Supreme Economic Council of the RSFSR V.P. Milyutin recalled:

“I returned late from the Council of People's Commissars. There were “current” matters. During the discussion of the health care project, Semashko’s report, Sverdlov entered and sat down in his place on the chair behind Ilyich. Semashko finished. Sverdlov came up, leaned towards Ilyich and said something.
- Comrades, Sverdlov asks for the floor for a message.
“I must say,” Sverdlov began in his usual tone, “a message has been received that in Yekaterinburg, by order of the regional Council, Nikolai was shot... Nikolai wanted to escape.” The Czechoslovaks were approaching. The Presidium of the Central Election Commission decided to approve...
“Let’s now move on to an article-by-article reading of the draft,” suggested Ilyich...” // Sverdlova K. T. Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. - 4th. - M.: Young Guard, 1985.

“On July 8, the first meeting of the Presidium of the Central I.K. of the 5th convocation took place. Comrade presided. Sverdlov. Members of the Presidium were present: Avanesov, Sosnovsky, Teodorovich, Vladimirsky, Maksimov, Smidovich, Rosengoltz, Mitrofanov and Rozin.
Chairman Comrade Sverdlov announces a message just received via direct wire from the Regional Ural Council about the execution of the former Tsar Nikolai Romanov.
In recent days, the capital of the Red Urals, Yekaterinburg, was seriously threatened by the approach of Czech-Slovak gangs. At the same time, a new conspiracy of counter-revolutionaries was uncovered, with the goal of wresting the crowned executioner from the hands of Soviet power. In view of this, the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council decided to shoot Nikolai Romanov, which was carried out on July 16th.
The wife and son of Nikolai Romanov were sent to a safe place. Documents about the uncovered conspiracy were sent to Moscow by special courier.
Having made this message, Comrade. Sverdlov recalls the story of the transfer of Nikolai Romanov from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg after the discovery of the same organization of White Guards, which was preparing the escape of Nikolai Romanov. Recently it was intended to bring the former king to trial for all his crimes against the people, and only recent events prevented this from being carried out.
The Presidium of the Central I.K., having discussed all the circumstances that forced the Ural Regional Council to decide to shoot Nikolai Romanov, decided:
The All-Russian Central I.K., represented by its Presidium, recognizes the decision of the Ural Regional Council as correct.”

The historian Ioffe believes that specific people played a fatal role in the fate of the royal family: the head of the Ural party organization and military commissar of the Ural region F.I. Goloshchekin, Chairman of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Ural Regional Council A. Beloborodov, and member of the board of the Ural Cheka, commandant of the “special purpose house” Ya.M. Yurovsky. //Ioffe, G.Z. Revolution and the fate of the Romanovs / M.: Republic, 1992. P.311—312 Golo

It should be noted that in the summer of 1918, an entire “campaign” was carried out in the Urals to exterminate the Romanovs.

At night from 12 to 13 June 1918 Several armed men appeared at the hotel in Perm, where Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich and his personal secretary and friend Brian Johnson lived in exile. They took their victims into the forest and killed them. The remains have not yet been found. The murder was presented to Moscow as the abduction of Mikhail Alexandrovich by his supporters or a secret escape, which was used by local authorities as a pretext to tighten the regime of detention of all exiled Romanovs: the royal family in Yekaterinburg and the grand dukes in Alapaevsk and Vologda.

At night from 17 to 18 July 1918, simultaneously with the execution of the royal family in the Ipatiev House, the murder of six grand dukes who were in Alapaevsk was committed. The victims were taken to an abandoned mine and dumped into it.

The corpses were discovered only on October 3, 1918, after policeman T.P. Malshikov. excavations in an abandoned coal mine located 12 versts from the city of Alapaevsk at the fork in the roads leading from the city of Alapaevsk to the Verkhotursky tract and to the Verkhne-Sinyachikhinsky plant. The doctor of the military hospital train No. 604 Klyachkin, on the instructions of the chief of police of Alapaevsk, opened the corpses and found the following:

“Based on the data of the forensic autopsy of a citizen of Petrograd, doctor Fedor Semenovich REMEZ, I conclude:
Death occurred from hemorrhage of the pleural cavity and hemorrhages under the dura mater due to a bruise.
I consider the injuries from the bruise to be fatal...
1. Death b. Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich suffered from hemorrhage under the dura mater and disruption of the integrity of the brain substance as a result of a gunshot wound.
The indicated damage is classified as fatal.
2. Death b. Prince John Konstantinovich's death occurred from hemorrhage under the dura mater and into both pleural cavities. The indicated injuries could have occurred from blows with a blunt hard object or from bruises when falling from a height onto some hard object.
3. Death b. Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich's death occurred from hemorrhage under the dura mater and in the area of ​​the pleural sacs. The indicated injuries occurred either as a result of blows to the head and chest with some hard blunt object, or from a bruise when falling from a height. The damage is classified as fatal.
4. Death b. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna suffered from hemorrhage under the dura mater. This damage could occur from a blow to the head with some blunt heavy object or from a fall from a height. The damage is classified as fatal.
5. The death of Prince Vladimir Paley occurred from hemorrhages under the dura mater and into the substance of the brain and into the pleura. These injuries could occur from a fall from a height or from blows to the head and chest with a blunt, hard instrument. The damage is classified as fatal.
6. Death b. Prince Igor Konstantinovich's death occurred from hemorrhage under the dura mater and disruption of the integrity of the cranial bones and base of the skull and from hemorrhages into the pleural cavity and into the peritoneal cavity. These injuries occurred from blows from any blunt hard object or from a fall from a height. The damage is classified as fatal.
7. The death of nun Varvara Yakovleva occurred from hemorrhage under the dura mater. This damage could have occurred from blows from a blunt hard object or from a fall from a height.
This entire act was drawn up in accordance with the most fundamental justice and conscience, in accordance with the rules of medical science and out of duty, which we certify with our signatures...”

Investigator Sokolov, Judicial Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the Omsk District Court N.A. Sokolov, whom Kolchak instructed in February 1919 to continue conducting the case of the murder of the Romanovs, testified:

“Both the Yekaterinburg and Alapaevsk murders are the product of the same will of the same individuals.” // Sokolov N. Murder of the royal family. P. 329.

Obviously: incitement of the Ural Bolshevik elite to the murder of the royal family, and the Socialist Revolutionaries inciting such public demands in the Urals; material and advisory support for the White movement; sabotage activities of the counter-revolution inside Russia; attempts to incite a conflict between Russia and Germany; accusing the Soviet leadership of “involvement in German intelligence,” which was allegedly the reason for its reluctance to continue the war with Germany - all links in the same chain that stretches to the British and American intelligence services. We should not forget: such a policy of confrontation between Russia and Germany was supported by British and American bankers literally just a few years after the events we are considering, taking up the financing of the Nazi war machine and fanning the fire of a new World War. // .

At the same time, even during World War II, the Third Reich, with all its sophisticated propaganda, did not release any German intelligence documents that would indicate connections with Lenin. But what a moral blow it would be to Leninism, to the system of ideological coordinates of the Red Army soldiers who went into battle under Lenin’s banners, and in general to all Soviet citizens! Obviously: such documents simply did not exist, just as Lenin’s connection with German intelligence did not exist.

Let us note: the version that the execution of the Royal Family was initiated by the Soviet leadership does not find any scientific confirmation, just like the myth of the “ritual murder”, which today has become the core of monarchist propaganda, through which Western intelligence services incite Black Hundred, anti-Semitic extremism in Russia.

According to official history, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Nikolai Romanov, along with his wife and children, was shot. After opening the burial and identifying the remains in 1998, they were reburied in the tomb of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. However, then the Russian Orthodox Church did not confirm their authenticity.

“I cannot exclude that the church will recognize the royal remains as authentic if convincing evidence of their authenticity is discovered and if the examination is open and honest,” Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, said in July of this year.

As is known, the Russian Orthodox Church did not participate in the burial of the remains of the royal family in 1998, explaining this by the fact that the church is not sure whether the original remains of the royal family are buried. The Russian Orthodox Church refers to a book by Kolchak investigator Nikolai Sokolov, who concluded that all the bodies were burned. Some of the remains collected by Sokolov at the burning site are kept in Brussels, in the Church of St. Job the Long-Suffering, and they have not been examined. At one time, a version of Yurovsky’s note, who supervised the execution and burial, was found - it became the main document before the transfer of the remains (along with the book of investigator Sokolov). And now, in the coming year of the 100th anniversary of the execution of the Romanov family, the Russian Orthodox Church has been tasked with giving a final answer to all the dark execution sites near Yekaterinburg. To obtain a final answer, research has been carried out for several years under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church. Again, historians, geneticists, graphologists, pathologists and other specialists are rechecking the facts, powerful scientific forces and the forces of the prosecutor's office are again involved, and all these actions again take place under a thick veil of secrecy.

Genetic identification research is carried out by four independent groups of scientists. Two of them are foreign, working directly with the Russian Orthodox Church. At the beginning of July 2017, the secretary of the church commission for studying the results of the study of the remains found near Yekaterinburg, Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Yegoryevsk, said: a large number of new circumstances and new documents have been discovered. For example, Sverdlov’s order to execute Nicholas II was found. In addition, based on the results of recent research, criminologists have confirmed that the remains of the Tsar and Tsarina belong to them, since a mark was suddenly found on the skull of Nicholas II, which is interpreted as a mark from a saber blow he received while visiting Japan. As for the queen, dentists identified her using the world's first porcelain veneers on platinum pins.

Although, if you open the conclusion of the commission, written before the burial in 1998, it says: the bones of the sovereign’s skull are so destroyed that the characteristic callus cannot be found. The same conclusion noted severe damage to the teeth of Nikolai’s presumed remains due to periodontal disease, since this person had never been to the dentist. This confirms that it was not the tsar who was shot, since the records of the Tobolsk dentist whom Nikolai contacted remained. In addition, no explanation has yet been found for the fact that the height of the skeleton of “Princess Anastasia” is 13 centimeters greater than her lifetime height. Well, as you know, miracles happen in the church... Shevkunov did not say a word about genetic testing, and this despite the fact that genetic studies in 2003 conducted by Russian and American specialists showed that the genome of the body of the supposed empress and her sister Elizabeth Feodorovna did not match , which means no relationship.

On this topic

In addition, in the museum of the city of Otsu (Japan) there are things left after the policeman wounded Nicholas II. They contain biological material that can be examined. Based on them, Japanese geneticists from Tatsuo Nagai’s group proved that the DNA of the remains of “Nicholas II” from near Yekaterinburg (and his family) does not 100% match the DNA of biomaterials from Japan. During the Russian DNA examination, second cousins ​​were compared, and in the conclusion it was written that “there are matches.” The Japanese compared relatives of cousins. There are also the results of a genetic examination of the President of the International Association of Forensic Physicians, Mr. Bonte from Dusseldorf, in which he proved: the found remains and doubles of the Nicholas II Filatov family are relatives. Perhaps, from their remains in 1946, the “remains of the royal family” were created? The problem has not been studied.

Earlier, in 1998, the Russian Orthodox Church, on the basis of these conclusions and facts, did not recognize the existing remains as authentic, but what will happen now? In December, all conclusions of the Investigative Committee and the ROC commission will be considered by the Council of Bishops. It is he who will decide on the church’s attitude towards the Yekaterinburg remains. Let's see why everything is so nervous and what is the history of this crime?

This kind of money is worth fighting for

Today, some of the Russian elites have suddenly awakened an interest in one very piquant history of relations between Russia and the United States, connected with the Romanov royal family. The story in a nutshell is this: More than 100 years ago, in 1913, the United States created the Federal Reserve System (FRS), a central bank and international currency printing press that still operates today. The Fed was created for the newly created League of Nations (now the UN) and would be a single global financial center with its own currency. Russia contributed 48,600 tons of gold to the “authorized capital” of the system. But the Rothschilds demanded that Woodrow Wilson, who was then re-elected as US President, transfer the center to their private ownership along with the gold. The organization became known as the Federal Reserve System, where Russia owned 88.8%, and 11.2% belonged to 43 international beneficiaries. Receipts stating that 88.8% of gold assets for a period of 99 years are under the control of the Rothschilds were transferred in six copies to the family of Nicholas II. The annual income on these deposits was fixed at 4%, which was supposed to be transferred to Russia annually, but was deposited in the X-1786 account of the World Bank and in 300 thousand accounts in 72 international banks. All these documents confirming the right to the gold pledged to the Federal Reserve from Russia in the amount of 48,600 tons, as well as income from leasing it, were deposited by the mother of Tsar Nicholas II, Maria Fedorovna Romanova, for safekeeping in one of the Swiss banks. But only heirs have conditions for access there, and this access is controlled by the Rothschild clan. Gold certificates were issued for the gold provided by Russia, which made it possible to claim the metal in parts - the royal family hid them in different places. Later, in 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference confirmed Russia's right to 88% of the Fed's assets.

At one time, two well-known Russian oligarchs, Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, proposed to tackle this “golden” issue. But Yeltsin “didn’t understand” them, and now, apparently, that very “golden” time has come... And now this gold is remembered more and more often - though not at the state level.

On this topic

In Lahore, Pakistan, 16 police officers were arrested for the shooting of an innocent family on the streets of the city. According to eyewitnesses, the police stopped a car traveling to the wedding and brutally dealt with its driver and passengers.

People kill for this gold, fight for it, and make fortunes from it.

Today's researchers believe that all wars and revolutions in Russia and in the world occurred because the Rothschild clan and the United States did not intend to return gold to the Federal Reserve System of Russia. After all, the execution of the royal family made it possible for the Rothschild clan not to give up the gold and not pay for its 99-year lease. “Currently, out of three Russian copies of the agreement on gold invested in the Fed, two are in our country, the third is presumably in one of the Swiss banks,” says researcher Sergei Zhilenkov. – In a cache in the Nizhny Novgorod region, there are documents from the royal archive, among which there are 12 “gold” certificates. If they are presented, the global financial hegemony of the USA and the Rothschilds will simply collapse, and our country will receive huge money and all the opportunities for development, since it will no longer be strangled from overseas,” the historian is sure.

Many wanted to close the questions about the royal assets with the reburial. Professor Vladlen Sirotkin also has a calculation for the so-called war gold exported to the West and East during the First World War and the Civil War: Japan - 80 billion dollars, Great Britain - 50 billion, France - 25 billion, USA - 23 billion, Sweden - 5 billion, Czech Republic – $1 billion. Total – 184 billion. Surprisingly, officials in the US and UK, for example, do not dispute these figures, but are surprised at the lack of requests from Russia. By the way, the Bolsheviks remembered Russian assets in the West in the early 20s. Back in 1923, People's Commissar of Foreign Trade Leonid Krasin ordered a British investigative law firm to evaluate Russian real estate and cash deposits abroad. By 1993, this company reported that it had already accumulated a data bank worth 400 billion dollars! And this is legal Russian money.

Why did the Romanovs die? Britain did not accept them!

There is a long-term study, unfortunately, by the now deceased professor Vladlen Sirotkin (MGIMO) “Foreign Gold of Russia” (Moscow, 2000), where the gold and other holdings of the Romanov family, accumulated in the accounts of Western banks, are also estimated at no less than 400 billion dollars, and together with investments - more than 2 trillion dollars! In the absence of heirs from the Romanov side, the closest relatives turn out to be members of the English royal family... Whose interests may be behind many events of the 19th–21st centuries... By the way, it is not clear (or, on the contrary, it is clear) for what reasons the royal house of England refused the family three times The Romanovs are in refuge. The first time in 1916, in the apartment of Maxim Gorky, an escape was planned - the rescue of the Romanovs by kidnapping and internment of the royal couple during their visit to an English warship, which was then sent to Great Britain. The second was Kerensky's request, which was also rejected. Then the Bolsheviks’ request was not accepted. And this despite the fact that the mothers of George V and Nicholas II were sisters. In surviving correspondence, Nicholas II and George V call each other “Cousin Nicky” and “Cousin Georgie” - they were cousins ​​with an age difference of less than three years, and in their youth these guys spent a lot of time together and were very similar in appearance. As for the queen, her mother, Princess Alice, was the eldest and beloved daughter of Queen Victoria of England. At that time, England held 440 tons of gold from Russia’s gold reserves and 5.5 tons of Nicholas II’s personal gold as collateral for military loans. Now think about it: if the royal family died, then who would the gold go to? To the closest relatives! Is this the reason why cousin Georgie refused to accept cousin Nicky's family? To obtain gold, its owners had to die. Officially. And now all this needs to be connected with the burial of the royal family, which will officially testify that the owners of untold wealth are dead.

Versions of life after death

All versions of the death of the royal family that exist today can be divided into three. First version: the royal family was shot near Yekaterinburg, and its remains, with the exception of Alexei and Maria, were reburied in St. Petersburg. The remains of these children were found in 2007, all examinations were carried out on them, and they will apparently be buried on the 100th anniversary of the tragedy. If this version is confirmed, for accuracy it is necessary to once again identify all the remains and repeat all examinations, especially genetic and pathological anatomical ones. Second version: the royal family was not shot, but was scattered throughout Russia and all family members died a natural death, having lived their lives in Russia or abroad, while in Yekaterinburg a family of doubles was shot (members of the same family or people from different families, but similar on members of the emperor's family). Nicholas II had doubles after Bloody Sunday 1905. When leaving the palace, three carriages left. It is unknown which of them Nicholas II sat in. The Bolsheviks, having captured the archives of the 3rd department in 1917, had data of doubles. There is an assumption that one of the families of doubles - the Filatovs, who are distantly related to the Romanovs - followed them to Tobolsk. Third version: the intelligence services added false remains to the burials of members of the royal family as they died naturally or before opening the grave. To do this, it is necessary to very carefully monitor, among other things, the age of the biomaterial.

Let us present one of the versions of the historian of the royal family Sergei Zhelenkov, which seems to us the most logical, although very unusual.

Before investigator Sokolov, the only investigator who published a book about the execution of the royal family, there were investigators Malinovsky, Nametkin (his archive was burned along with his house), Sergeev (removed from the case and killed), Lieutenant General Diterichs, Kirsta. All these investigators concluded that the royal family was not killed. Neither the Reds nor the Whites wanted to disclose this information - they understood that American bankers were primarily interested in obtaining objective information. The Bolsheviks were interested in the tsar's money, and Kolchak declared himself the Supreme Ruler of Russia, which could not happen with a living sovereign.

Investigator Sokolov was conducting two cases - one on the fact of murder and the other on the fact of disappearance. At the same time, military intelligence, represented by Kirst, conducted an investigation. When the Whites left Russia, Sokolov, fearing for the collected materials, sent them to Harbin - some of his materials were lost along the way. Sokolov’s materials contained evidence of the financing of the Russian revolution by the American bankers Schiff, Kuhn and Loeb, and Ford, who was in conflict with these bankers, became interested in these materials. He even called Sokolov from France, where he settled, to the USA. When returning from the USA to France, Nikolai Sokolov was killed. Sokolov’s book was published after his death, and many people “worked” on it, removing many scandalous facts from it, so it cannot be considered completely truthful. The surviving members of the royal family were observed by people from the KGB, where a special department was created for this purpose, dissolved during perestroika. The archives of this department have been preserved. The royal family was saved by Stalin - the royal family was evacuated from Yekaterinburg through Perm to Moscow and came into the possession of Trotsky, then the People's Commissar of Defense. To further save the royal family, Stalin carried out an entire operation, stealing it from Trotsky’s people and taking them to Sukhumi, to a specially built house next to the former house of the royal family. From there, all family members were distributed to different places, Maria and Anastasia were taken to the Glinsk Hermitage (Sumy region), then Maria was transported to the Nizhny Novgorod region, where she died of illness on May 24, 1954. Anastasia subsequently married Stalin’s personal guard and lived very secluded on a small farm, died

June 27, 1980 in the Volgograd region. The eldest daughters, Olga and Tatyana, were sent to the Seraphim-Diveevo convent - the empress was settled not far from the girls. But they did not live here for long. Olga, having traveled through Afghanistan, Europe and Finland, settled in Vyritsa, Leningrad Region, where she died on January 19, 1976. Tatyana lived partly in Georgia, partly in the Krasnodar Territory, was buried in the Krasnodar Territory, and died on September 21, 1992. Alexey and his mother lived at their dacha, then Alexey was transported to Leningrad, where they “did” a biography on him, and the whole world recognized him as party and Soviet leader Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin (Stalin sometimes called him Tsarevich in front of everyone). Nicholas II lived and died in Nizhny Novgorod (December 22, 1958), and the queen died in the village of Starobelskaya, Lugansk region on April 2, 1948 and was subsequently reburied in Nizhny Novgorod, where she and the emperor have a common grave. Three daughters of Nicholas II, besides Olga, had children. N.A. Romanov communicated with I.V. Stalin, and the wealth of the Russian Empire was used to strengthen the power of the USSR...

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

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

Reconstruction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Execution

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

Yurovsky recalled in 1922:

For a long time I was unable to stop this shooting, which had become careless. But when I finally managed to stop, I saw that many were still alive. For example, Doctor Botkin lay leaning on the elbow of his right hand, as if in a resting position, and finished off him with a revolver shot. Alexey, Tatyana, Anastasia and Olga were also alive. Demidova’s maid was also alive.

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

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

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

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

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

Comrade Ermakov wanted to finish the matter with a bayonet. But, however, this did not work. The reason became clear later (the daughters were wearing diamond armor like bras). I was forced to shoot everyone in turn.

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

Agony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The family of the last Emperor of Russia, Nicholas Romanov, was killed in 1918. Due to the concealment of facts by the Bolsheviks, a number of alternative versions appear. For a long time there were rumors that turned the murder of the royal family into a legend. There were theories that one of his children escaped.

What really happened in the summer of 1918 near Yekaterinburg? You will find the answer to this question in our article.

Background

Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century was one of the most economically developed countries in the world. Nikolai Alexandrovich, who came to power, turned out to be a meek and noble man. In spirit he was not an autocrat, but an officer. Therefore, with his views on life, it was difficult to manage the crumbling state.

The revolution of 1905 showed the insolvency of the government and its isolation from the people. In fact, there were two powers in the country. The official one is the emperor, and the real one is officials, nobles and landowners. It was the latter who, with their greed, licentiousness and short-sightedness, destroyed the once great power.

Strikes and rallies, demonstrations and bread riots, famine. All this indicated decline. The only way out could be the accession to the throne of an imperious and tough ruler who could take complete control of the country.

Nicholas II was not like that. It was focused on building railways, churches, improving the economy and culture in society. He managed to make progress in these areas. But positive changes affected mainly only the top of society, while the majority of ordinary residents remained at the level of the Middle Ages. Splinters, wells, carts and everyday life of peasants and craftsmen.

After the entry of the Russian Empire into the First World War, the discontent of the people only intensified. The execution of the royal family became the apotheosis of general madness. Next we will look at this crime in more detail.

Now it is important to note the following. After the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II and his brother from the throne, soldiers, workers and peasants began to take the leading roles in the state. People who have not previously dealt with management, who have a minimal level of culture and superficial judgments, gain power.

Small local commissars wanted to curry favor with the higher ranks. The rank and file and junior officers simply mindlessly followed orders. The troubled times that ensued during these turbulent years brought unfavorable elements to the surface.

Next you will see more photos of the Romanov royal family. If you look at them carefully, you will notice that the clothes of the emperor, his wife and children are by no means pompous. They are no different from the peasants and guards who surrounded them in exile.
Let's figure out what really happened in Yekaterinburg in July 1918.

Course of events

The execution of the royal family was planned and prepared for quite a long time. While power was still in the hands of the Provisional Government, they tried to protect them. Therefore, after the events in July 1917 in Petrograd, the emperor, his wife, children and retinue were transferred to Tobolsk.

The place was deliberately chosen to be calm. But in fact, they found one from which it was difficult to escape. By that time, the railway lines had not yet been extended to Tobolsk. The nearest station was two hundred and eighty kilometers away.

They sought to protect the emperor's family, so exile to Tobolsk became for Nicholas II a respite before the subsequent nightmare. The king, queen, their children and retinue stayed there for more than six months.

But in April, after a fierce struggle for power, the Bolsheviks recalled “unfinished business.” A decision is made to transport the entire imperial family to Yekaterinburg, which at that time was a stronghold of the red movement.

The first to be transferred from Petrograd to Perm was Prince Mikhail, the Tsar’s brother. At the end of March, their son Mikhail and three children of Konstantin Konstantinovich were deported to Vyatka. Later, the last four are transferred to Yekaterinburg.

The main reason for the transfer to the east was Nikolai Alexandrovich’s family ties with the German Emperor Wilhelm, as well as the proximity of the Entente to Petrograd. The revolutionaries feared the release of the Tsar and the restoration of the monarchy.

The role of Yakovlev, who was tasked with transporting the emperor and his family from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, is interesting. He knew about the assassination attempt on the Tsar that was being prepared by the Siberian Bolsheviks.

Judging by the archives, there are two opinions of experts. The first ones say that in reality this is Konstantin Myachin. And he received a directive from the Center to “deliver the Tsar and his family to Moscow.” The latter are inclined to believe that Yakovlev was a European spy who intended to save the emperor by taking him to Japan through Omsk and Vladivostok.

After arriving in Yekaterinburg, all prisoners were placed in Ipatiev’s mansion. A photo of the Romanov royal family was preserved when Yakovlev handed it over to the Urals Council. The place of detention among the revolutionaries was called a “house of special purpose.”

Here they were kept for seventy-eight days. The relationship of the convoy to the emperor and his family will be discussed in more detail below. For now, it is important to focus on the fact that it was rude and boorish. They were robbed, psychologically and morally oppressed, abused so that they were not noticeable outside the walls of the mansion.

Considering the results of the investigations, we will take a closer look at the night when the monarch with his family and retinue were shot. Now we note that the execution took place at approximately half past two in the morning. Life physician Botkin, on the orders of the revolutionaries, woke up all the prisoners and went down with them to the basement.

A terrible crime took place there. Yurovsky commanded. He blurted out a prepared phrase that “they are trying to save them, and the matter cannot be delayed.” None of the prisoners understood anything. Nicholas II only had time to ask that what was said be repeated, but the soldiers, frightened by the horror of the situation, began to shoot indiscriminately. Moreover, several punishers fired from another room through the doorway. According to eyewitnesses, not everyone was killed the first time. Some were finished off with a bayonet.

Thus, this indicates a hasty and unprepared operation. The execution became lynching, which the Bolsheviks, who had lost their heads, resorted to.

Government disinformation

The execution of the royal family still remains an unsolved mystery of Russian history. Responsibility for this atrocity may lie both with Lenin and Sverdlov, for whom the Urals Soviet simply provided an alibi, and directly with the Siberian revolutionaries, who succumbed to general panic and lost their heads in wartime conditions.

Nevertheless, immediately after the atrocity, the government began a campaign to whiten its reputation. Among researchers studying this period, the latest actions are called a “disinformation campaign.”

The death of the royal family was proclaimed the only necessary measure. Since, judging by the ordered Bolshevik articles, a counter-revolutionary conspiracy was uncovered. Some white officers planned to attack the Ipatiev mansion and free the emperor and his family.

The second point, which was furiously hidden for many years, was that eleven people were shot. The Emperor, his wife, five children and four servants.

The events of the crime were not disclosed for several years. Official recognition was given only in 1925. This decision was prompted by the publication of a book in Western Europe that outlined the results of Sokolov’s investigation. Then Bykov is instructed to write about “the current course of events.” This brochure was published in Sverdlovsk in 1926.

Nevertheless, the lies of the Bolsheviks at the international level, as well as hiding the truth from the common people, shook faith in power. and its consequences, according to Lykova, became the reason for people's distrust of the government, which did not change even in post-Soviet times.

The fate of the remaining Romanovs

The execution of the royal family had to be prepared. A similar “warm-up” was the liquidation of the Emperor’s brother Mikhail Alexandrovich and his personal secretary.
On the night from the twelfth to the thirteenth of June 1918, they were forcibly taken from the Perm hotel outside the city. They were shot in the forest, and their remains have not yet been discovered.

A statement was made to the international press that the Grand Duke had been kidnapped by attackers and went missing. For Russia, the official version was the escape of Mikhail Alexandrovich.

The main purpose of such a statement was to speed up the trial of the emperor and his family. They started a rumor that the escapee could contribute to the release of the “bloody tyrant” from “just punishment.”

It was not only the last royal family that suffered. In Vologda, eight people related to the Romanovs were also killed. The victims include the princes of the imperial blood Igor, Ivan and Konstantin Konstantinovich, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, Prince Paley, the manager and the cell attendant.

All of them were thrown into the Nizhnyaya Selimskaya mine, not far from the city of Alapaevsk. Only he resisted and was shot. The rest were stunned and thrown down alive. In 2009, they were all canonized as martyrs.

But the thirst for blood did not subside. In January 1919, four more Romanovs were also shot in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Nikolai and Georgy Mikhailovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich and Pavel Alexandrovich. The official version of the revolutionary committee was the following: the liquidation of hostages in response to the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg in Germany.

Memoirs of contemporaries

Researchers have tried to reconstruct how members of the royal family were killed. The best way to cope with this is the testimony of the people who were present there.
The first such source is notes from Trotsky’s personal diary. He noted that the blame lies with the local authorities. He especially singled out the names of Stalin and Sverdlov as the people who made this decision. Lev Davidovich writes that as Czechoslovak troops approached, Stalin’s phrase that “the Tsar cannot be handed over to the White Guards” became a death sentence.

But scientists doubt the accurate reflection of events in the notes. They were made in the late thirties, when he was working on a biography of Stalin. A number of mistakes were made there, indicating that Trotsky forgot many of those events.

The second evidence is information from Milyutin’s diary, which mentions the murder of the royal family. He writes that Sverdlov came to the meeting and asked Lenin to speak. As soon as Yakov Mikhailovich said that the Tsar was gone, Vladimir Ilyich abruptly changed the topic and continued the meeting as if the previous phrase had not happened.

The history of the royal family in the last days of its life is most fully reconstructed from the interrogation protocols of the participants in these events. People from the guard, punitive and funeral squads testified several times.

Although they are often confused, the main idea remains the same. All the Bolsheviks who were close to the tsar in recent months had complaints against him. Some were in prison themselves in the past, others had relatives. In general, they gathered a contingent of former prisoners.

In Yekaterinburg, anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries put pressure on the Bolsheviks. In order not to lose authority, the local council decided to quickly put an end to this matter. Moreover, there was a rumor that Lenin wanted to exchange the royal family for a reduction in the amount of indemnity.

According to the participants, this was the only solution. In addition, many of them boasted during interrogations that they personally killed the emperor. Some with one, and some with three shots. Judging by the diaries of Nikolai and his wife, the workers guarding them were often drunk. Therefore, real events cannot be reconstructed for certain.

What happened to the remains

The murder of the royal family took place secretly and was planned to be kept secret. But those responsible for the disposal of the remains failed to cope with their task.

A very large funeral team was assembled. Yurovsky had to send many back to the city “as unnecessary.”

According to the testimony of the participants in the process, they spent several days with the task. At first it was planned to burn the clothes and throw the naked bodies into the mine and cover them with earth. But the collapse did not work out. We had to extract the remains of the royal family and come up with another method.

It was decided to burn them or bury them along the road that was just under construction. The preliminary plan was to disfigure the bodies with sulfuric acid beyond recognition. It is clear from the protocols that two corpses were burned and the rest were buried.

Presumably the body of Alexei and one of the servant girls burned.

The second difficulty was that the team was busy all night, and in the morning travelers began to appear. An order was given to cordon off the area and prohibit travel from the neighboring village. But the secrecy of the operation was hopelessly failed.

The investigation showed that attempts to bury the bodies were near shaft No. 7 and the 184th crossing. In particular, they were discovered near the latter in 1991.

Kirsta's investigation

On July 26-27, 1918, peasants discovered a golden cross with precious stones in a fire pit near the Isetsky mine. The find was immediately delivered to Lieutenant Sheremetyev, who was hiding from the Bolsheviks in the village of Koptyaki. It was carried out, but later the case was assigned to Kirsta.

He began to study the testimony of witnesses pointing to the murder of the Romanov royal family. The information confused and frightened him. The investigator did not expect that this was not the consequences of a military court, but a criminal case.

He began questioning witnesses who gave conflicting testimony. But based on them, Kirsta concluded that perhaps only the emperor and his heir were shot. The rest of the family was taken to Perm.

It seems that this investigator set himself the goal of proving that not the entire Romanov royal family was killed. Even after he clearly confirmed the crime, Kirsta continued to interrogate more people.

So, over time, he finds a certain doctor Utochkin, who proved that he treated Princess Anastasia. Then another witness spoke about the transfer of the emperor’s wife and some of the children to Perm, which she knew about from rumors.

After Kirsta completely confused the case, it was given to another investigator.

Sokolov's investigation

Kolchak, who came to power in 1919, ordered Dieterichs to understand how the Romanov royal family was killed. The latter entrusted this case to the investigator for particularly important cases of the Omsk District.

His last name was Sokolov. This man began to investigate the murder of the royal family from scratch. Although all the paperwork was handed over to him, he did not trust Kirsta’s confusing protocols.

Sokolov again visited the mine, as well as Ipatiev’s mansion. Inspection of the house was made difficult by the location of the Czech army headquarters there. However, a German inscription on the wall was discovered, a quote from Heine's verse about the monarch being killed by his subjects. The words were clearly scratched out after the city was lost to the Reds.

In addition to documents on Yekaterinburg, the investigator was sent cases on the Perm murder of Prince Mikhail and on the crime against the princes in Alapaevsk.

After the Bolsheviks recapture this region, Sokolov takes all office work to Harbin, and then to Western Europe. Photos of the royal family, diaries, evidence, etc. were evacuated.

He published the results of the investigation in 1924 in Paris. In 1997, Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein, transferred all paperwork to the Russian government. In exchange, he was given the archives of his family, taken away during the Second World War.

Modern investigation

In 1979, a group of enthusiasts led by Ryabov and Avdonin, using archival documents, discovered a burial near the 184 km station. In 1991, the latter stated that he knew where the remains of the executed emperor were. An investigation was re-launched to finally shed light on the murder of the royal family.

The main work on this case was carried out in the archives of the two capitals and in the cities that appeared in the reports of the twenties. Protocols, letters, telegrams, photos of the royal family and their diaries were studied. In addition, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, research was carried out in the archives of most countries of Western Europe and the USA.

The investigation of the burial was carried out by the senior prosecutor-criminologist Soloviev. In general, he confirmed all of Sokolov’s materials. His message to Patriarch Alexei II states that “under the conditions of that time, the complete destruction of the corpses was impossible.”

In addition, the investigation of the late 20th - early 21st centuries completely refuted alternative versions of events, which we will discuss later.
The canonization of the royal family was carried out in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and in Russia in 2000.

Since the Bolsheviks tried to keep this crime secret, rumors spread, contributing to the formation of alternative versions.

So, according to one of them, it was a ritual murder as a result of a conspiracy of Jewish Freemasons. One of the investigator's assistants testified that he saw "kabbalistic symbols" on the walls of the basement. When checked, these turned out to be traces of bullets and bayonets.

According to Dieterichs' theory, the emperor's head was cut off and preserved in alcohol. The finds of remains also refuted this crazy idea.

Rumors spread by the Bolsheviks and false testimonies of “eyewitnesses” gave rise to a series of versions about the people who escaped. But photographs of the royal family in the last days of their lives do not confirm them. And also the found and identified remains refute these versions.

Only after all the facts of this crime were proven, the canonization of the royal family took place in Russia. This explains why it was held 19 years later than abroad.

So, in this article we got acquainted with the circumstances and investigation of one of the most terrible atrocities in the history of Russia in the twentieth century.