The Wild Reed: Yes, the Children Too

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Yes, the Children Too

It’s the 104th anniversary of the murder of the Romanov family – Tsar Nicholas II, Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodovnora, Tsarevich Alexei, and Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.

The seven members of Russia’s last Imperial family were shot and bayoneted to death by their Bolshevik captors in the cellar of the “House of Special Purpose” in Ekaterinburg in the early hours of July 17, 1918.

Also murdered were four members of the Romanov household – lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova, footman Alexei Trupp, cook Ivan Kharitonov, and court physician, Eugene Botkin.

As I’ve noted previously, I’ve long been fascinated by the Romanovs and their tragic story. In marking this year’s anniversary of their deaths, I share an excerpt from the most recent addition to my collection of Romanov-related books, Helen Rappaport’s The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue the Russian Imperial Family.

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[In March 1917] the old tsarist government – the State Duma – fell, and Nicholas was prevailed upon to abdicate. Now prisoners of the new Russian Provisional Government, the Romanov family were held under house arrest, first at [their home] the Alexander Palace from March to July 1917, then transferred to Tobolsk [in Siberia] from August to April 1918, and finally [after the October Revolution] to the House of Special Purpose in Ekaterinburg.

It was here, in the centre of the Urals mining industry in Western Siberia, during the last ninety-eight days of their lives, that the Romanovs finally began to sense an ominous change in the atmosphere. Until then they had endured the monotony of their captivity with a combination of intense boredom and calm resignation. But, for the Bolshevik Revolution, the endgame was in sight; and that meant one thing: a brutal and vindictive act of retribution would be carried out against the entire Imperial Family. Nicholas and Alexandra must have sensed that sooner or later the revolution might take its revenge on them. But the children too?

Above: An unknown artist’s depiction of the Romanovs and their retainers moments before their execution in a cellar room of the Ipatiev House. There are two errors in this depiction. First, the Empress and all four Grand Duchesses were dressed in simple white blouses and dark skirts (as shown in the opening image of this post). Second, Alexei was unable to stand or walk at the time of his death, due to his haemophilia. He was actually sitting on one of two chairs that had been brought into the room. His mother, who suffered from sciatica, was sitting on the other.

The violent deaths of those seven royal victims, along with their doctor and three loyal servants, although horrific to us now, were soon forgotten at the time. They were rapidly swallowed up in a much more hideous catalogue of savage fighting and murder that saw eleven million Russians die during the years of upheaval and civil war of 1917-1922.

Yet despite this, for some people the Romanov family will always represent, historically, the symbolic first victims of the new, Soviet regime and a system that would go on to kill even more millions in the decades of Stalinist repression that followed. . . . But ultimately, it is the murder of innocent children that horrifies us the most.