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 Nicholas II, The Last Tsar by Michael Paterson.
Accounts describe the executioners’ astonishment when bullets ricocheted off some of the women. Only afterward did the reason become clear – they had jewels sewn into their bodices that had deflected the shots. [Thus] not all were killed outright, despite the careful targeting. Anastasia seems to have fainted. She regained consciousness seconds after the fusillade and had to be finished off with a bayonet. The maid, Demidova, was unharmed enough by the first shots to run back and forth to defend herself with a cushion that had been in her hands. Otherwise it was mercifully swift.
Arguably this sudden end, horrific as it was, was preferable to further months – or years – of captivity and degradation. Time and again over that interminable, fourteen-month wait, they must have asked themselves: “How much longer can this go on? How can we endure?” The youngest member of the Family, during their last days in Tobolsk, told Alexandra: “I would like to die, Mama; I’m not afraid of death, but I’m afraid of what they may do to us here.”
It is unlikely that the Romanovs would have been released, and they could have lived on, prisoners in some Gulag, for decades. Alexandra and Alexis would not have survived. The girls could in theory have lived until the end of the twentieth century – and thus might have seen the demise of the Soviet state in 1991. Had the Bolsheviks put Nicholas on trial he would have been made a national scapegoat and condemned to death. There would have been the same type of tragic parting from his family that was seen with Charles I. Alexandra too might have been tried, for treason – the fact that no evidence existed would not have mattered – and could have suffered her own Calvary in the manner of Marie Antionette. How much better that this close-knit family was together and that it happened without warning. One wonders why the executioners did not simply shoot them in their beds as they slept. Perhaps Yakov Yurovsky was one of those who wanted to see the Tsar stand trail, hence his brief delivery of sentence [before being the first of the executioners to open fire in the cellar].
As the world knows, the bodies were taken to a clearing outside the town and rendered down by a crude process of dismemberment, acid and burning. They were then buried and the site of their grave was disguised. They would remain undisturbed for more than sixty years while, from the moment they disappeared, rumour and speculation and wishful thinking would keep them alive.
Had the Family been able to flee and find sanctuary abroad, they would never have known peace. The secret police of the new state were to prove extremely adept at carrying out executions of dissidents and other enemies no matter where in the world they settled, as witness the killing of Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. Though a great many Russian aristocrats, and a number of Romanovs, were to live unmolested in the West for the remainder of their lives, the immediate family might not have been so lucky. They could have been – and they would have felt – hunted for the rest of their lives.
– Michael Paterson
Excerpted from Nicholas II, The Last Tsar
Robinson, 2017
pp. 221-222
Excerpted from Nicholas II, The Last Tsar
Robinson, 2017
pp. 221-222
Above: Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra pictured under house arrest in the garden of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo in May of 1917. The Alexander Palace was the preferred residence of the last Tsar and his family, and it became the family’s initial place of imprisonment after the first of two Russian Revolutions in 1917 overthrew the House of Romanov in February. In August, the Provisional Government evacuated Nicholas and his family to the Siberian town of Tobolsk. After the October Revolution, the Bolshevik regime moved the family in the spring of 1918 to the Urals city of Ekaterinburg where they were executed in July of that year, together with several of their retainers.
After undergoing years of renovation, the Alexander Palace opened in the summer 2021 as a state museum housing relics of the former imperial dynasty.
The Governor’s Mansion in Tobolsk (right) in which the Romanovs were imprisoned, is now also known as Kuklin House. Located on 10 Mira Street, the mansion is protected by the Russian Federal government as a historical monument. Following the Revolution the house was renamed the “House of Freedom.” In 1937 a carpet from the Governor’s Mansion was sent to and preserved by a museum in San Francisco. Following a complete restoration of the building, which included demolition of an art deco portico and its replacement by one in the original design, it was reopened in 2018 to house The Museum of the Family of Emperor Nicholas II.
The Ipatiev House (the “House of Special Purpose”) in Ekaterinburg was demolished in 1977 by order of the Politburo to the local Soviet government, almost 59 years after the Romanov family’s murder and 14 years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In closing, here is the “Nicholas and Alexandra Suite” from the soundtrack of the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra. Composed by Richard Rodney Bennett, this work is one of the truly great film soundtracks – epic, haunting and, like the film itself, often underrated; so much so that it remains to this day unavailable on CD. The film's “Love Theme” (the second movement in the suite) is much beloved by my Mum, who can play it beautifully on the keyboard. It was turned into a rather torchy song, “Too Beautiful to Last,” and recorded by Engelbert Humperdinck in 1972.
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Remembering the Romanovs (2012)
• Remembering Olga Nikolaevna and Her Sisters
• The Tragedy of the Romanovs, 100 Years On
• Yes, the Children Too
• Viva La Vida – The Romanovs
Related Off-site Links:
The Legacy of the Romanovs: How Is the Last Russian Royal Family Remembered in Russia? – Helen Rappaport (HistoryExtra.com, July 16, 2018).
DNA Analysis Confirms Authenticity of Romanovs’ Remains – Brigit Katz (Smithsonian Magazine, July 17, 2018).
Inside the Romanov Family's Final Days – Caroline Hallemann (Town and Country, July 1, 2018).
The Race to Save the Romanovs and How It Fell Apart – Bob Ruggiero (Houston Press, July 11, 2018).
How the Royal Houses of Europe Abandoned the Romanovs – Helen Rappaport (The Economist, June 28, 2018).
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