Romanovs Executed: Bolsheviks End Russian Dynasty

Bolshevik executioners woke the Romanov family at 1:30 a.m. on July 17, 1918, led them to a basement room in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, and opened fire with revolvers at point-blank range. Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, their five children, the family physician, and three servants were killed in a chaotic slaughter that took twenty minutes because the bullets ricocheted off jewels sewn into the women's corsets. The execution ended three centuries of Romanov rule and became one of the twentieth century's most extensively investigated murders. Nicholas had abdicated in March 1917 after the February Revolution, expecting to take his family into exile in Britain. His cousin King George V initially agreed to offer asylum but quietly withdrew the invitation, fearing that hosting the unpopular tsar would provoke republican sentiment at home. The Provisional Government held the family at the Alexander Palace near Petrograd, then moved them to Tobolsk in Siberia. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, the family was transferred to the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, where they were held under increasingly harsh conditions. The decision to execute came from the top. Yakov Yurovsky, the local Cheka commander, received orders from the Ural Soviet, almost certainly with Lenin's approval, as White Army forces approached Yekaterinburg. The family was told they were being moved for their safety and brought to the basement. Yurovsky read a brief statement announcing the execution, and Nicholas barely had time to say "What?" before the shooting began. The children proved hardest to kill. Anastasia and her siblings were initially protected by the diamonds hidden in their clothing, and soldiers resorted to bayonets and additional gunshots. The bodies were loaded onto a truck, doused with sulfuric acid and gasoline, and buried in a shallow pit in the Koptyaki forest. The remains were discovered in 1991, and DNA analysis confirmed the identities. Two missing children, believed to be Alexei and Maria, were found in a separate grave in 2007. The Romanovs were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000 as "passion bearers." The Ipatiev House was demolished on Boris Yeltsin's orders in 1977, but a cathedral now stands on the site, drawing thousands of pilgrims annually.