The last royal family. Murder of the royal family: causes and consequences

The family of the last Russian emperor Nikolai Romanov was killed in 1918. In view of 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 was saved.

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

Prehistory

Russia in the early twentieth century was one of the most economically developed countries in the world. Coming to power, Nikolai Alexandrovich turned out to be a gentle 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 inconsistency of power and its isolation from the people. In fact, there were two authorities in the country. Official - the emperor, and the real - officials, nobles and landlords. It was the latter who, with their greed, promiscuity and short-sightedness, destroyed the once great power.

Strikes and rallies, demonstrations and grain riots, famine. All this testified to the decline. The only way out could be the accession to the throne of a powerful and rigid ruler who could take control of the country completely under his control.

Nicholas II was not like that. It was focused on the construction of railways, churches, improving the economy and culture in society. He managed to make progress in these areas. But positive changes affected, in the main, only the tops of society, while most ordinary people remained at the level of the Middle Ages. Luchiny, wells, carts and peasant-craft everyday life.

After the Russian Empire entered the First World War, the discontent of the people only increased. The execution of the royal family became the apotheosis of universal insanity. Next, we will learn more about this crime.

Now it is important to note the following. After the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II and his brother from the throne in the state, soldiers, workers and peasants begin to advance to the first roles. People who did not previously have affairs with management, who have a minimum level of culture and superficial judgments, receive power.

Small local commissioners wanted to curry favor with higher ranks. Ordinary and junior officers simply thoughtlessly carried out orders. The troubled time that came in these turbulent years, splashed on the surface of the unfavorable elements.

Next you will see another photo of the royal family of Romanovs. If you look at them carefully, you can see that the clothes of the emperor, his wife and children are not pompous. They are no different from the peasants and guards surrounding them in exile.
Let's see what really happened in Yekaterinburg in July 1918.

Course of events

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

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

The Provisional Government sought to protect the family of the emperor, so the reference to Tobolsk was for Nicholas II a respite before the subsequent nightmare. The tsar, the tsarina, their children and retinue stayed there for more than six months.

But in April the Bolsheviks, after a bitter struggle for power, recalled the "unfinished business". It is decided to deliver the entire imperial family to Yekaterinburg, which at that time was the mainstay of the red movement.

The first to transfer from Perm Petrograd Prince Michael, the brother of the king. At the end of March, Mikhail's son and three children of Konstantin Konstantinovich are sent to Vyatka. Later the last four are transferred to Ekaterinburg.

The main reason for the transfer to the east became Nikolai Alexandrovich's kinship with the German Emperor Wilhelm, and also the proximity of the Entente to Petrograd. The revolutionaries feared the liberation of the tsar and the restoration of the monarchy.

The role of Yakovlev, who was commissioned to transport the emperor with his family from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, is interesting. He knew about the attempted assassination of the tsar by the Siberian Bolsheviks.

Judging by the archives, there are two opinions of specialists. The first say that in reality it is Konstantin Myachin. And he received a directive from the Center "to deliver the tsar and his family to Moscow." The latter tend to believe that Yakovlev was a European spy, intending to save the emperor by taking him to Japan via Omsk and Vladivostok.

After arriving in Yekaterinburg, all the prisoners were placed in the Ipatiev mansion. The photo of the royal family of the Romanovs survived when they were handed over to the Yakovlev Uralsovet. The place of confinement among the revolutionaries was called the "house of special purpose".

Here they were kept for seventy-eight days. More details about the attitude of the convoy to the emperor and his family will be told further. In the meantime, it is important to focus on the fact that it was rude and boorish. They were robbed, crushed psychologically and morally, mocked so that it was not noticeable outside the walls of the mansion.

Examining the results of the investigations, we will dwell in greater detail on the night when the monarch with his family and retinue was shot. Now we note that the execution took place at about half past two in the morning. Leib-Medic Botkin, by order of revolutionaries, woke up all the captives and went down with them to the basement.

There was a terrible crime. Commander Yurovsky. He blurted out the prepared phrase that they were "trying to save, and the matter could not wait." None of the prisoners understood anything. Nicholas II only had time to ask to repeat what had been said, but the soldiers, frightened by the horror, began shooting indiscriminately. And several punishers fired from another room through the doorway. According to eyewitness accounts, not all were killed the first time. Some were finished off with a bayonet.

Thus, this indicates the urgency and unpreparedness of the operation. Execution became lynching, to which the Bolsheviks who lost their heads went.

Government misinformation

The execution of the royal family still remains the unsolved mystery of Russian history. Responsibility for this atrocity can lie both in Lenin and Sverdlov, to which the Uralsovet simply provided an alibi, and directly on the Siberian revolutionaries, who succumbed to panic and lost their head in the conditions of wartime.

Nevertheless, immediately after the atrocity, the government launched a campaign to whitewash its reputation. In the environment of researchers involved in this period, the last actions are called "campaign for misinformation."

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

The second point, which vehemently hid 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 caused by the publication in Western Europe of a book where the results of Sokolov's investigation were presented. At the same time Bekova is instructed to write about the "current course of events". This brochure was published in Sverdlovsk in 1926.

Nevertheless, the lie of the Bolsheviks at the international level, as well as the concealment of the truth from the common people, has shaken faith in power. This crime and its consequences, according to Lykova, caused people's distrust of the government, which did not change even in the post-Soviet period.

The fate of the rest of the Romanovs

The execution of the royal family had to be prepared. Such a "warm-up" was the liquidation of the brother of Emperor Mikhail Alexandrovich with his personal secretary.
On the night of the twelfth on the thirteenth of June, 1918, they were forcibly removed from the Perm hotel outside the city. They were shot in the woods, and their remains have not yet been found.

For the international press, a statement was made that the Grand Duke had been abducted by intruders and was missing. For Russia, the official version was the escape of Mikhail Alexandrovich.

The main purpose of this statement was to speed up the trial of the emperor and his family. It was rumored that the escaped person could contribute to the liberation of the "bloody tyrant" from "just punishment".

Not only did the last royal family suffer. In Vologda eight people were also killed, who had a relationship with the Romanovs. Among the victims are the princes of the imperial blood Igor, Ivan and Constantine Konstantinovichi, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, Prince Palei, the manager and the cell-attendant.

All of them were dropped into the Lower Selimskaya mine, not far from the city of Alapaevsk, Perm province. Only the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich resisted and was shot. The rest were deafened and dropped alive. In 2009, all of them were canonized as martyrs.

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

Memoirs of contemporaries

The researchers tried to restore how the members of the royal family were killed. It is best to help with the testimony of the people who were present there.
The first such source is a note from Trotsky's personal diary. He noted that the fault lies with the local authorities. Especially distinguished the names of Stalin and Sverdlov as people who made this decision. Lev Davidovich writes that in the conditions of the approach of the Czechoslovak detachments, the phrase of Stalin that "the tsar can not be given out to the White Guards" became a death sentence.

But scientists doubt the exact reflection of events in the notes. They were made in the late thirties, when he worked on the biography of Stalin. There are a number of mistakes indicating that Trotsky has forgotten many of those events.

The second evidence is information from the diary of Milutin, who mentions the murder of the royal family. He writes that Sverdlov came to the meeting and asked Lenin for the floor. As soon as Yakov Mikhailovich said that the tsar was no more, Vladimir Ilyich abruptly changed the subject and continued the meeting, as if there had been no previous phrase.

Most fully the history of the royal family in the last days of life was restored by the protocols of interrogations of participants in these events. People from the guard, punitive and funeral detachments gave testimony several times.

Although they get confused very often, but the main idea remains one. All the Bolsheviks who were close to the tsar in recent months had claims to him. Someone in the past was in prison himself, someone has relatives. In general, they collected a contingent of former prisoners.

In Yekaterinburg, the Bolsheviks were pressured by anarchists and Socialist-Revolutionaries. In order not to lose credibility, the local council decided to quickly put an end to this matter. Especially since there was a rumor that Lenin wants 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 during interrogations boasted that they personally killed the emperor. Who with one, and who with three shots. Judging by the diaries of Nicholas and his wife, the workers who guarded them were often drunk. Therefore, real events can not be repaired for certain.

What happened to the remains

The murder of the royal family happened in secret, and it was planned to keep it a secret. But those responsible for the destruction of the remains did not cope with their task.

A very large funeral team was assembled. Yurovsky had to send many back to the city "as superfluous."

According to the participants in the trial, they took the job for several days. Initially, it was planned to burn clothes, and throw bare bodies into the mine and cover up with earth. But the collapse did not work out. I had to extract the remains of the royal family and come up with another way.

It was decided to burn them or bury them along the road that was being built. Pre-conceived to disfigure the body with sulfuric acid beyond recognition. From the protocols it is clear that two corpses were burnt, and the rest were buried.

Allegedly burned the body of Alexei and one girl from the servants.

The second difficulty was that the team was busy all night, and in the morning the travelers began to appear. An order was given to secure the place and to prohibit leaving the neighboring village. But the secrecy of the operation was hopelessly failed.

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

Investigation of Kirsta

On July 26-27, 1918, peasants found a gold cross with precious stones in a fireplace near Isetsky mine. The find was immediately delivered to the lieutenant Sheremetiev, who was hiding from the Bolsheviks in the village of Koptyaki. A preliminary investigation was carried out , but later the case was assigned to Kirst.

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

He began to question witnesses who gave conflicting evidence. But on their basis, Kirsta concluded that, perhaps, only the emperor with the heir was shot. The rest of the family was taken to Perm.

It seems that this investigator set out to prove that not all the royal family of the Romanovs were killed. Even after he clearly confirmed the fact of the crime, Kirsta continued to question new people.

So, eventually he finds a certain doctor Utochkin, who argued that he treated Princess Anastasia. Then another witness spoke about the transfer of the wife and some children of the emperor to Perm, which she knows from rumors.

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

Sokolov's investigation

Coming to power in 1919 Kolchak instructed Dieterichs to understand how the royal family of the Romanovs was killed. The latter delegated this matter to the investigator for especially important cases in the Omsk District.

His name was Sokolov. The murder of the royal family, this man began to investigate from scratch. Although he was transferred all the clerical work, but he did not trust the intricate protocols of Kirsta.

Sokolov again visited the mine, as well as in the mansion of Ipatiev. Inspection of the house was made difficult by the presence there of the headquarters of the Czech army. Nevertheless, a German inscription on the wall was found, a quote from Heine's verse that the monarch was killed by his subjects. The words were clearly scratched after the city lost its reds.

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

After the Bolsheviks again seize the region, Sokolov exports all the records to Harbin, and then to Western Europe. Were evacuated photos of the royal family, diaries, clues and stuff.

The results of the investigation he published in 1924 in Paris. In 1997, Hans-Adam II, the prince of Liechtenstein, transferred all the proceedings to the government of Russia. In return, he was delivered archives of his family, taken out during the Second World War.

Modern investigation

In 1979, a group of enthusiasts, led by Ryabov and Avdonin, found archival documents near the station "184 km". In 1991, the latter stated that he knew where the remains of the executed Emperor were. The investigation was reopened to finally shed light on the murder of the royal family.

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

The burial was investigated by the senior criminal prosecutor Solovyov. In general, he confirmed all the materials of Sokolov. His message to Patriarch Alexei II says that "under the conditions of that time, it was impossible to completely destroy the corpses."

In addition, the outcome of the late XX - early XXI century completely refuted the alternative versions of events, which we will talk about further.
The canonization of the royal family was carried out in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and in Russia in 2000.

Interesting facts and theories

Since the Bolsheviks tried to classify this crime, rumors spread that contributed to the formation of alternative versions.

So, according to one of them, it was a ritual murder as a result of the conspiracy of zhidomasons. One of the investigator's assistants showed that he had seen "kabbalistic symbols" on the walls of the cellar. At check it there were traces from bullets and bayonets.

According to Dieterichs' theory, the emperor's head was cut off and alcoholized. Finds of the remains have refuted this crazy idea.

Rumors dissolved by the Bolsheviks, and false testimonies of "eyewitnesses" gave rise to a series of versions about the survivors. But photographs of the royal family in the last days of life do not confirm them. And also the found and identified remains disprove these versions.

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

So, in this article we have got acquainted with the circumstances and investigation of one of the most terrible atrocities in the history of Russia of the 20th century.