Nicholas II of Russia with the family (left to right): Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Alexandra Fyodorovna, Anastasia, Alexei, and Tatiana. Livadiya, 1913. Portrait by the Levitsky Studio, Livadiya. Today the original photograph is held at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and all those who chose to accompany them into imprisonment—notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov, according to the conclusion of the investigator Sokolov, were shot and bayoneted to death in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. According to the official state version in the USSR, former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, was executed by firing squad, by order of the Ural Regional Soviet, due to the threat of the city being occupied by Whites (Czechoslovak Legion). By the assumption of a number of researchers, this was done according to instructions by Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky. Their bodies were then taken to the Koptyaki forest where they were stripped and mutilated. In 1919, White Army investigation (of Sokolov) failed to find the gravesite, concluding that the imperial family's remains had been cremated at the mineshaft called Ganina Yama, since evidence of fire was found. In 1979 and 2007, the remains of the bodies were found in two unmarked graves in a field called Porosenkov Log.
Yevgeny Sergeyevich Botkin (27 March 1865 – 17 July 1918), commonly known as Eugene Botkin, was the court physician for Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra and, while in exile with the family, sometimes treated the haemophilia-related complications of the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia. Botkin went into exile with the Romanovs following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was murdered with the family at Ekaterinburg on 17 July 1918. Like them, he was canonised as a passion-bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981. On 3 February 2016, the Bishop's Council of the Russian Orthodox Church church-wide canonised Botkin as Righteous Passion-Bearer Yevgeny the Physician.Dr. Botkin’s oldest son Dimitri was killed in World War I. His son Yuri became seriously ill from dysentery while fighting at the front but recovered.
Ivan Mikhailovich Kharitonov (1872 – July 17, 1918) was the Head Cook at the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He followed the Romanov family into internal exile following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was executed with them by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918 at Ekaterinburg. Like the Romanovs, Kharitonov was canonized as a passion-bearer of Soviet oppression by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1991. Kharitonov's wife and daughter followed him into exile at Tobolsk but did not join him when the Bolsheviks moved the prisoners to Ekaterinburg in the spring of 1918. Kharitonov's grandson attended the funeral held on July 17, 1998 in Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg for his grandfather, the Romanovs, their servants (Anna Demidova and Alexei Trupp), and the other victims who were murdered eighty years before..
Anna Stepanovna Demidova (26 January 1878 – July 17, 1918) was a lady-in-waiting in the service of Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, who was executed alongside her employer in 1918. She shared the Romanov family's exile at Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was executed alongside them on July 17, 1918. She was canonized as an Orthodox martyr by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981, but not by the Russian Orthodox Church. She is remembered for staying with the Romanovs to the end.
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| Nicholas II, Tatiana and Anastasia Hendrikova working on a kitchen garden at Alexander Palace in May 1917. The family was allowed no such indulgences at the Ipatiev House |
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| he Romanov entourage. From left to right: Catherine Schneider, Ilya Tatishchev, Pierre Gilliard, Anastasia Hendrikova and Vasily Dolgorukov. They voluntarily accompanied the Romanov family into imprisonment but were forcibly separated by the Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg. All except Gilliard were later murdered by the Bolsheviks. |
Henrietta Catharina Luisa Schneider (20 January 1856 – 4 September 1918) was a Baltic German tutor at the court of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. She taught Alexandra Russian before her marriage, just as she had some years earlier taught Russian to the Tsarina's sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna before her marriage to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia. Schneider was murdered by the Bolsheviks at Perm in the fall of 1918 along with lady in waiting Anastasia Hendrikova. Schneider and Hendrikova were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981, even though she was a Lutheran. Schneider, nicknamed "Trina," was born to a Baltic German family and was the niece of the former imperial physician Dr. Hirsch. Her father was a Hof-Councillor. A courtier remembered her as "infinitely sweet tempered and good hearted." Schneider was also primly Victorian. She once refused to permit the four grand duchesses to put on a play because it contained the word "stockings." Schneider was devoted to the Empress and willingly followed her into imprisonment following the Russian Revolution of 1917. She was separated from the family at Ekaterinburg and imprisoned for months at Perm. In September 1918 the elderly Schneider and the thirty-one-year-old Hendrikova were driven to a forest outside Perm, told to march forward, and were killed with a rifle butt. The bodies of Hendrikova and Schneider were recovered by the Whites in May 1919, though the whereabouts of their final resting place remains a mystery.
Count Ilya Leonidovich Tatischev (11 December 1859, Saint-Petersburg — July 1918, Yekaterinburg) was a Russian nobleman, Adjutant General to Tsar Nicholas II, executed by the Bolsheviks and canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia as a new martyr. On April 18, 1917, he retired due to illness. Soon, Count Tatischev joined the arrested Imperial family at Tsarskoye Selo. Tatiscev followed the emperor to his exile in Tobolsk. When in April 1918 Nicholas II and his wife were convoyed from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, Ilya Tatischev stayed in Tobolsk with their children as wished the empress. In May 1918, alongside the royal children, he was convoyed to Yekaterinburg, where together with Vasily Dolgorukov, he was kept in prison. According to the witnesses, the two men were shot down by the Bolsheviks 10 days before the Imperial family. It is said that their bodies were found by nuns of the Novo-Tikhvinsky convent and buried at the Ivanopsvkoe cemetery.
Pierre Gilliard (16 May 1879 – 30 May 1962) was a Swiss academic and author, best known as the French language tutor to the five children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia from 1905 to 1918. In 1921, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he published a memoir, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family. In his memoirs, Gilliard described Tsarina Alexandra's torment over her son's haemophilia and her faith in the ability of starets Grigori Rasputin to heal the boy. Pierre Gilliard was born on 16 May 1879 in Fiez, Switzerland. In his memoirs, Gilliard wrote that he initially came to Russia in 1904 as a French tutor to the family of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a cousin of the Romanov family. He was recommended as a French tutor to the Tsar's children and began teaching the elder children, Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia in 1905. He grew fond of the family and followed them into internal exile at Tobolsk, Siberia, following the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks prevented Gilliard from joining his pupils when they were moved to the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg in May 1918. He described his final view of the children in his memoirs:
"The sailor Nagorny, who attended to Alexei Nikolaevitch, passed my window carrying the sick boy in his arms, behind him came the Grand Duchesses loaded with valises and small personal belongings. I tried to get out, but was roughly pushed back into the carriage by the sentry. I came back to the window. Tatiana Nikolaevna came last carrying her little dog and struggling to drag a heavy brown valise. It was raining and I saw her feet sink into the mud at every step. Nagorny tried to come to her assistance; he was roughly pushed back by one of the commissars."Gilliard remained in Siberia after the murders of the family, assisting White Russian investigator Nicholas Sokolov. He married Alexandra "Shura" Tegleva, who had been a nurse to Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, in 1919. In Siberia, he was instrumental in unmasking an impostor who claimed to be the Tsarevich Alexei. In 1920, he returned to Switzerland via the Russian Far East. He became a French professor at the University of Lausanne and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 1921, he published a book entitled Le Tragique Destin de Nicholas II et de sa famille, which described the last days of the Tsar and his family, and the subsequent investigation into their deaths. In 1958, Gilliard was severely injured in a car accident in Lausanne. He never fully recovered and died four years later on 30 May 1962.
Countess Anastasia Vasilyevna Hendrikova, (23 June 1887 – 4 September 1918), was a lady in waiting at the court of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. She was arrested by the Bolsheviks and shot to death outside Perm in the fall of 1918. Like the Romanovs and their servants who were killed on 17 July 1918, Hendrikova and Catherine Adolphovna Schneider, the elderly court tutor who was killed with her, were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981. Hendrikova, who was nicknamed "Nastenka," was the daughter of Count Vassili Alexandrovich Hendrikov, Grand Master of Ceremonies of the Imperial Court, and his wife, Princess Sophia Petrovna Gagarine. She was a descendant of the sister of Catherine I of Russia, the wife of Peter the Great. Hendrikova was appointed a lady of waiting in 1910. She acted as a "sort of unofficial governess" to the four grand duchesses. On 4 September 1918, Hendrikova and Schneider were taken from their prison cell and led to the prison office along with Aleksei Volkov, a sixty-year-old valet in the household of the Tsar. They were joined by eight other prisoners, including the chambermaid from the house where Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia had lived. They had an escort of twenty-two guards, none of them Russian. Volkov, who later escaped, recalled that when he asked a guard where they were being taken, he was told they were being taken "to the house of arrest." Hendrikova, who had been in the washroom, asked a guard the same question when she came out. She was told they were being taken "to the central prison." Hendrikova asked him, "and from there?" The guard replied, "Well! to Moscow." Hendrikova repeated this conversation to her fellow prisoners and made the sign of the cross with her fingers. Volkov took her gesture to mean "they will not shoot us." The sailor at the prison office door kept checking the front door that led to the street to make sure no one was there. After a while another sailor said, "Let's go." They lined the prisoners up in the street in rows of two, the men in front and the women in back. The group walked all the way to the edge of town and onto the Simbirsk road. Volkov asked another prisoner where the central prison was and was told they had long passed it. Volkov realized they were being taken into the woods to be shot. Volkov broke from the group and ran for his life at the first opportunity. A bullet whizzed past his ear. Behind him he heard gunshots as the other prisoners in the group, among them Hendrikova, were shot and killed. The bodies of Hendrikova and Schneider were recovered by the Whites in May 1919, and were reburied in the Yegoshikha Cemetery. However, their graves were destroyed when the Bolsheviks regained control of the city.
Aleksei Andreyevich Volkov (1859–1929) was a valet at the court of Tsar Nicholas II. He escaped a death march at Perm in September 1918 and survived to write his memoirs about his time at court and his escape. These include his experience of events such as the Khodynka Tragedy. Volkov was born in the town of Old-Ioriev, Kozlov District, Tambov Guberniya. As a young adult, he entered the Russian Army and rose through the ranks. He was on guard and witnessed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Later he was a military instructor to Tsar Nicholas II. From 1886, he was in service to Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia. He became a valet at the court of the Tsar in 1910. He was the Tsarina's personal servant and often pushed her wheelchair. Volkov followed the Tsar's family and household into internal exile following the Russian Revolution of 1917, but was separated from them at Ekaterinburg and imprisoned at Perm. There, he heard that the Tsar had been murdered by Bolsheviks, though he was unaware that the Tsarina and their children had also been shot. On 4 September 1918, he was taken from his prison cell in the middle of the night and led to the prison office, where he saw lady-in-waiting Anastasia Hendrikova and the elderly tutor Catherine Schneider. They were joined by eight other prisoners, including the chambermaid from the house where Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia had lived. They had an escort of twenty-two guards, none of whom were Russian. Volkov asked a guard where they were being taken and was told they were being taken "to the house of arrest." Hendrikova, who had been in the washroom, asked a guard the same question when she came out. She was told they were being taken "to the central prison." Hendrikova asked him, "and from there?" The guard replied, "Well! to Moscow." Hendrikova repeated this conversation to her fellow prisoners and made the sign of the cross with her fingers. Volkov took her gesture to mean "they will not shoot us." The sailor at the prison office door kept checking the front door that led to the street to make sure no one was there. After a while another sailor said, "Let's go." They lined the prisoners up in the street in rows of two, the men in front and the women in back. The group walked all the way to the edge of town and onto the Simbirsk road. Volkov asked another prisoner where the central prison was and was told they had long passed it. Volkov realized they were being taken into the woods to be shot. He broke from the group and ran for his life at the first opportunity. A bullet whizzed past his ear. Behind him he heard gunshots as the other prisoners in the group were shot and killed. Volkov eventually joined other refugees at the White Army headquarters in Omsk and made his escape from Russia through Vladivostok and the Far East. In 1922, he settled in Estonia. He later lived in Denmark, where he was highly respected in the émigré community because of his lifelong loyalty to the Romanov family.
Prince Vasily Alexandrovich Dolgorukov (1868–1918) was an advisor to Russian Emperor Nicholas II, and a Marshal from 1914–17. After the arrest of the Russian Imperial Family following the February Revolution, he voluntarily accompanied the family into internal exile in Tsarskoe Selo and later Tobolsk. He was barred from joining them in Yekaterinburg in April 1918, and was killed by order of the Bolshevik government in that July. Vasily Alexandrovich Dolgorukov was born in 1868 to Prince and Princess Alexander Vasilievich and Mary Sergeyevna Dolgorukov. In 1907 Dolgorukov became an adjutant, in 1910 a General, and in 1914 a commander of the Imperial Guard cavalry regiment, the Life-Guard Horse Artillery unit. During World War I, he was appointed Marshal of the Imperial Court. In this position, he assisted his stepfather, Count Pavel Benckendorff, in giving military advice to the Tsar. Deeply devoted to the Tsar, on August 14, 1917 he voluntarily accompanied the Imperial family to imprisonment in Tobolsk. He was separated from them when they were transferred to Ekaterinburg. Dolgorukov was initially allowed to stay in the city when he arrived at the end of April, but was arrested by the Cheka secret police, along with Count Ilya Tatishchev, as "enemies of the socialist revolution", after maps of the region showing river routes were found in his lodgings. During imprisonment, Dolgorukov constantly pressured the British Consulate in Ekaterinburg to help the Imperial family, using pencil-written notes smuggled from his prison cell. Accused of plotting to rescue the Imperial family, Dolgorukov and Count Tatishchev were taken by Cheka agents beyond the city's Ivanovskoe Cemetery on July 10, shot in the head and thrown into a pit. They were executed by Grigory Nikulin, Yakov Yurovsky's assistant, both of whom also murdered the Imperial family a week later. The bodies of Dolgorukov and Tatishchev were never found.
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| The last photograph ever taken of Alexandra. With her are her daughters Olga (right) and Tatiana (left). They are sitting on the balcony of the Governors house in Yekaterinburg |
To maintain a sense of normality, the Bolsheviks assured the Romanovs on 13 July 1918 that two of their loyal servants, Klementy Nagorny (Alexei's sailor nanny) and Ivan Sednev (OTMA's footman; Leonid Sednev's uncle), "had been sent out of this government" (i.e. out of the jurisdiction of Yekaterinburg and Perm province). However, both men were already dead: after the Bolsheviks had removed them from the Ipatiev House in May, they had been shot by the Cheka with a group of other hostages on 6 July, in reprisal for the death of Ivan Malyshev, a local Bolshevik hero, killed by the Whites. On 14 July, a priest and deacon conducted a liturgy for the Romanovs. The following morning, four housemaids were hired to wash the floors of the Popov House and Ipatiev House; they were the last civilians to see the family alive. On both occasions, they were under strict instructions not to engage in conversation of any kind with the family. Yurovsky always kept watch during the liturgy and while the housemaids were cleaning the bedrooms with the family.
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| Pavel Medvedev, left, head of the Ipatiev House Guard who were responsible for the deaths of Nicholas, Alexandra, their children and servants. |
The 16 men of the internal guard slept in the basement, hallway and commandant's office during shifts. The external guard led by Pavel Medvedev numbered 56 and were accommodated in the Popov House opposite. The guards were allowed to bring in women for sex and drinking sessions in the Popov House and basement rooms of the Ipatiev House. There were four machine gun emplacements: one in the bell tower of the Voznesensky Cathedral aimed toward the house; a second in the basement window of the Ipatiev House facing the street; a third monitored the balcony overlooking the garden at the back of the house; and a fourth in the attic overlooking the intersection, directly above the tsar and tsarina's bedroom. There were ten guard posts in and around the Ipatiev House, and the exterior was patrolled twice hourly day and night. In early May, the guards deprived the prisoners of the piano in the dining room and moved it to the commandant's office located next door to the Romanovs' bedrooms. Here they took pleasure in humiliating them in the evenings by singing Russian revolutionary songs while drinking and smoking. They also listened to the Romanovs' gramophone records on the confiscated phonograph. The lavatory on the landing was also used by the guards who scribbled political slogans and crude graffiti on the walls. The number of Ipatiev House guards totaled 300 when the imperial family was killed.
While the Romanovs were having dinner on 16 July 1918, Yurovsky entered the sitting room and informed them that the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev was leaving to meet his uncle Ivan Sednev, who had returned to the city asking to see him; Ivan had already been shot by the Cheka. The family was very upset as Leonid was Alexei's only playmate and he was the fifth member of the imperial entourage to be taken from them, but they were assured by Yurovsky that he would be back soon. Alexandra did not trust him, writing in her final diary entry just hours before her death, "whether its [sic] true & we shall see the boy back again!" Leonid was in fact kept in the Popov House that night. Yurovsky saw no reason to kill him and wanted him removed before the execution took place.
Around midnight on 17 July, Yakov Yurovsky, the commandant of The House of Special Purpose, ordered the Romanovs' physician, Dr. Eugene Botkin, to awaken the sleeping family and ask them to put on their clothes, under the pretext that the family would be moved to a safe location due to impending chaos in Yekaterinburg. The Romanovs were then ordered into a 6 m × 5 m (20 ft × 16 ft) semi-basement room. Nicholas asked if Yurovsky could bring two chairs, on which Tsarevich Alexei and Alexandra sat. Yurovsky's assistant Grigory Nikulin remarked to him that the "heir wanted to die in a chair. Very well then, let him have one." The prisoners were told to wait in the cellar room while the truck that would transport them was being brought to the House. A few minutes later, an execution squad of secret police was brought in and Yurovsky read aloud the order given to him by the Ural Executive Committee:
"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."
Alexey Kabanov, who ran out onto the street to check the noise levels, heard dogs barking from the Romanovs' quarters and the sound of gunshots loud and clear despite the noise from the Fiat's engine. Kabanov then hurried downstairs and told the men to stop firing and kill the family and their dogs with their gun butts and bayonets. Within minutes, Yurovsky was forced to stop the shooting because of the caustic smoke of burned gunpowder, dust from the plaster ceiling caused by the reverberation of bullets, and the deafening gunshots. When they stopped, the doors were then opened to scatter the smoke. While waiting for the smoke to abate, the killers could hear moans and whimpers inside the room. As it cleared, it became evident that although several of the family's retainers had been killed, all of the Imperial children were alive and furthermore, only Maria was even injured.
The noise of the guns had been heard by households all around, and had awakened many people. The executioners were ordered to proceed with their bayonets, a technique which proved ineffective and meant that the children had to be dispatched by still more gunshots, this time aimed more precisely at their heads. The Tsarevich was the first of the children to be executed. Yurovsky watched in disbelief as Nikulin spent an entire magazine from his Browning gun on Alexei, who was still seated transfixed in his chair; he also had jewels sewn into his undergarment and forage cap. Ermakov shot and stabbed him, and when he failed, Yurovsky shoved him aside and killed the boy with a gunshot to the head. The last to die were Tatiana, Anastasia, and Maria, who were carrying a few pounds (over 1.3 kilograms) of diamonds sewn into their clothing, which had given them a degree of protection from the firing. However, they were speared with bayonets as well. Olga sustained a gunshot wound to the head. Maria and Anastasia were said to have crouched up against a wall covering their heads in terror until they were shot down. Yurovsky himself killed Tatiana and Alexei. Tatiana died from a single bullet through the back of her head. Alexei received two bullets to the head, right behind the ear. Anna Demidova, Alexandra's maid, survived the initial onslaught but was quickly stabbed to death against the back wall while trying to defend herself with a small pillow which she had carried that was filled with precious gems and jewels. While the bodies were being placed on stretchers, one of the girls cried out and covered her face with her arm. Ermakov grabbed Alexander Strekotin's rifle and bayoneted her in the chest, but when it failed to penetrate he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head. While Yurovsky was checking the victims for pulses, Ermakov went back and forth in the room, flailing the bodies with his bayonet. The execution lasted about 20 minutes, Yurovsky later admitting to Nikulin's "poor mastery of his weapon and inevitable nerves". Future investigations calculated that a possible 70 bullets were fired, roughly seven bullets per shooter, of which 57 were found in the basement and at all three subsequent gravesites. Some of Pavel Medvedev's stretcher bearers began frisking the bodies for valuables. Yurovsky saw this and demanded that they surrender any looted items or be shot. The attempted looting, coupled with Ermakov's incompetence and drunken state, convinced Yurovsky to oversee the disposal of the bodies himself. Only Alexei's spaniel, Joy, survived to be rescued by a British officer of the Allied Intervention Force, living out his final days in Windsor, Berkshire.
Alexandre Beloborodov sent a coded telegram to Lenin's secretary, Nikolai Gorbunov. It was found by White investigator Nikolai Sokolov and reads:
"Inform Sverdlov the whole family have shared the same fate as the head. Officially the family will die at the evacuation."Aleksandr Lisitsyn of the Cheka, an essential witness on behalf of Moscow, was designated to promptly dispatch to Sverdlov soon after the executions of Nicholas and Alexandra's politically valuable diaries and letters, which would be published in Russia as soon as possible. Beloborodov and Nikulin oversaw the ransacking of the Romanov quarters, seizing all the family's personal items, the most valuable piled up in Yurovsky's office whilst things considered inconsequential and of no value were stuffed into the stoves and burned. Everything was packed into the Romanovs' own trunks for dispatch to Moscow under escort by commissars. On 19 July, the Bolsheviks nationalized all confiscated Romanov properties, the same day Sverdlov announced the tsar's execution to the Council of People's Commissars.
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