WHAT’S THE STORY?
IT is 100 years to the day since the Romanov royal family of Russia were savagely executed in the basement of Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg (Ekaterinburg).

In the early hours of July 17, 1918, Bolsheviks and soldiers led by Soviet revolutionary Yakov Yurovsky killed Tsar Nicholas II and his wife and five children plus four members of their household.

Those who died at Yekaterinburg were Tsar Nicholas II; the Tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna, born Princess Alix of Hesse; Alexei, the Tsarevitch (crown prince); and four other children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.

Also killed were the family doctor Eugene Botkin and, for some inexplicable reason three domestic staff members, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov. So much for working-class solidarity.

WHO ORDERED THEIR DEATHS AND WHY?
TSAR Nicholas II had been a hapless monarch, bloodily crushing the first revolution in 1905 and being defeated in the Russo-Japanese War, including the loss of the imperial fleet, before sending his country into a losing war against Germany in which perhaps three million Russians were killed.

He was deposed – technically he abdicated – at the time of the Spring Revolution in March, 1917, and when the second and decisive revolution happened later that year, the Romanov family were imprisoned, eventually ending up in Ipatiev House.

There was no trial as such, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had determined that the Romanovs must die so that the monarchy could never be restored, although there was no paper trail back to Lenin to prove he gave the order.

WHO DID THE KILLING?
YAKOV Yurovsky was undoubtedly in charge of the executions and was one of the few killers to be sober.

With the Red Army in retreat before the White Guard, which was rapidly approaching Yekaterinburg, Yurovsky received his orders on July 16 and, waiting until after midnight, he assembled the execution squad of fellow Bolsheviks and ordinary soldiers.

The family were wakened and herded into the basement. Yurovsky said: “Nikolai Alexandrovich, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you.”

He and his colleagues then shot the Tsar and his family at point-black range. The children survived the initial shooting because they had jewels sown into their clothing. Bayonets, clubs and bullets to the head sealed their fate and that of the four other victims. The dead were then stripped, mutilated and buried in a shallow grave before being reburied in a mine with sulphuric acid used to speed up decomposition.

HOW DID THE WORLD REACT?
A MAJOR factor was that news of the executions emerged only slowly and was doubted at first. The fate of the Romanovs only became certain when British Intelligence heard from an agent near Ekaterineburg.

The report to London was as follows: “Last night I received following information from an officer eye-witness whom I have no reason to doubt. After the Czechs (White Guards) took Ekaterinburg, enquiries were made as to the whereabouts of the imperial family but these were without result.

“Then on the second day after the occupation a heap of charred bones was discovered in a mine shaft, about 30 versts (40kms) north of the town.

“Among the ashes were shoe buckles, corset ribs diamonds and platinum crosses ... Amongst trinkets and buckles he recognised articles belonging to the empress, her four daughters and the Tsarevitch.”

WHY DID NO OTHER COUNTRY INTERVENE WHEN THE ROYALS WERE DEPOSED?
KING George V was the Tsar’s almost identical cousin. Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II was Nicholas’s distant cousin, but as their two countries were at war the Kaiser could do nothing. George wanted to do something even before the Tsar was imprisoned but he was a good judge of the public mood – he changed the family name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor – and realised that bringing the Tsar here might just spark a workers’ rising. He was devastated to hear of their fate, the gory details kept from him for a year.

DID ONE OF THE PRINCESSES REALLY ESCAPE?
ALMOST from the day of the execution, rumours spread of survivors, with Anastasia, the youngest of the daughters, said to have been found alive. The most legendary claimant to being a survivor was a woman who appeared in 1920 saying she was Anastasia. Her story and all such stories were all disproved. Speculation about the deaths of the Romanovs continued until 1991, when bones discovered near Ekaterinburg were proved to be those of the Tsar and all the members of his family. Under President Boris Yeltson’s direction, the Romanovs were reburied with full ceremony in a St Petersburg Cathedral on July 17, 1998, some 80 years to the day after their execution.