What Happened to Nicholas Ii and His Family
At about 1 a.chiliad. on July 17, 1918, in a fortified mansion in the boondocks of Ekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains, the Romanovs—ex-tsar Nicholas II, ex-tsarina Alexandra, their five children, and their four remaining servants, including the loyal family doctor, Eugene Botkin—were awoken by their Bolshevik captors and told they must dress and gather their holding for a swift nocturnal deviation.
The White armies, which supported the tsar, were approaching; the prisoners could already hear the boom of the large guns. They gathered in the cellar of the mansion, standing together almost equally if they were posing for a family portrait. Alexandra, who was ill, asked for a chair, and Nicholas asked for another one for his but son, 13-twelvemonth-one-time Alexei. 2 were brought downwards. They waited there until, suddenly, eleven or 12 heavily armed men filed ominously into the room.
What happened next—the slaughter of the family and servants—was one of the seminal events of the 20th century, a wanton massacre that shocked the globe and yet inspires a terrible fascination today. A 300-year-old imperial dynasty, one marked by periods of glorious achievement as well as staggering hubris and ineptitude, was swiftly brought to an end. But while the Romanovs' political reign was over, the story of the line's last ruler and his family was about certainly not.
For the better part of the 20th century the bodies of the victims lay in ii unmarked graves, the locations of which were kept secret past Soviet leaders. In 1979 apprentice historians discovered the remains of Nicholas, Alexandra, and 3 daughters (Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia). In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the graves were reopened and the identities of the interred confirmed by Dna testing. In a ceremony in 1998 attended by Russian president Boris Yeltsin and 50 or so Romanov relatives, the remains were reburied in the family crypt in Saint petersburg. When the fractional remains of two skeletons believed to be the remaining Romanov children, Alexei and Maria, were found in 2007 and similarly tested, most people causeless they would be reburied in that location too.
Instead, events took a strange turn. Even though both sets of remains were identified by teams of meridian international scientists, who compared recovered Dna to samples from living Romanov relatives, members of the Russian Orthodox Church questioned the validity of the findings. More research was needed, they claimed. Rather than rebury Alexei and Maria, the regime stored them in a box in a country archive until 2015 and then turned them over to the church for further examination.
Terminal fall the official country investigation of the tsar'southward murder was reopened, and Nicholas and Alexandra were exhumed, equally was Nicholas'south father, Alexander III. Since so there accept been alien reports from regime and church officials on when, or if, the entire Romanov family will exist reburied and reunited, even if only in expiry.
Had Nicholas II died after the first 10 years of his reign (he came to power in 1894), he would have been regarded as a moderately successful emperor. Ultimately, though, his well-intentioned just weak personality—which also comprised duplicity, obstinacy, and delusion—contributed to the disasters that befell the dynasty and Russian federation.
He was handsome and blue-eyed but diminutive and hardly majestic, and his looks and immaculate manners concealed an astonishing arrogance, contempt for the educated political classes, vicious anti-Semitism, and an unshakable conventionalities in his right to dominion equally a sacred autocrat. He was jealous of his ministers, and he possessed the unfortunate ability to make himself utterly distrusted by his own government.
His matrimony to Princess Alexandra of Hesse but exacerbated these qualities. Theirs was a love lucifer, which was unusual for the times, but both Nicholas's father and Alexandra's grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, regarded her every bit too unstable to succeed equally empress. She brought to the human relationship paranoia, mystical fanaticism, and a vindictive and steely will. Also, through no fault of her ain, she brought the "royal disease" (hemophilia) into the family and passed it to her son, the imperial heir, Tsarevich Alexei, undermining the ability of the family unit and distorting their interests.
The personal inadequacies of Nicholas and Alexandra led them both to seek back up and advice from Grigori Rasputin, a holy homo whose notorious sexual promiscuity, hard drinking, and corrupt and inept political machinations in their name further isolated the couple from the government and people of Russia.
The crisis of Globe War I placed the frail government under intolerable stress. In February 1917, Nicholas 2 lost control of protests in St. Petersburg (which had been renamed St. petersburg during the state of war to audio less German) and was presently forced to abdicate, replaced past a republic under a conditional government.
The 1998 reburial of the Romanovs was a solemn country event meant to showcase the Russian nation'southward reconciliation with its past. In a televised procession, soldiers in dress uniform carried coffins downwardly a cherry-red carpet, past Romanov descendants and assembled dignitaries, and into the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint petersburg. President Yeltsin, a erstwhile Communist Party leader, told those gathered that the lesson of the 20th century was that political change must never again be enforced past violence.
Priests from the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church offered blessings, but, notably, the patriarch of the church building was not in omnipresence. At that time the Orthodox Church, which had been an intrinsic part of the Romanov system of rule, was reestablishing itself every bit a national ability. Many members of its hierarchy resented the fact that the burial ceremony had been directed almost entirely past Yeltsin'southward secular political agenda to promote a liberal democratic Russia.
A decade afterwards scientists appear that the two bodies found in the second grave were Alexei and Maria. This fourth dimension the church building publicly objected to the findings of the "strange experts" (many members of the forensic teams were American) and even questioned the earlier identifications of Nicholas and the others. The church had canonized the family in 2000, which meant that any physical remains were now holy relics. Information technology was essential, the church maintained, that information technology have a role in making sure the bodies were correctly identified.
Yeltsin had resigned the presidency of the Russian Federation in 1999 and handed over ability to a little-known ex-KGB colonel named Vladimir Putin. The young leader regarded the fall of the USSR as "the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century," and equally soon equally he took office he started centralizing ability, reining in strange influences and promoting a combination of nationalism, Orthodox faith, and aggressive strange policy. It was an effective approach that, ironically, could have been taken from whatsoever number of Romanov tsars' playbooks.
Putin was no cupboard royalist, but he was an admirer of the autocracy perfected by the Romanovs. Though born under Soviet communism, he had a pragmatist's understanding of history, in particular the fact that the nigh forceful leaders of Russian federation, from Peter the Cracking to Catherine the Neat to Joseph Stalin, had managed to personify the essence of not only the state but the Russian soul, and Russia's uniqueness in world history. Like the first Romanov rulers, Putin came to power during a time of troubles, and like his forebears he set about restoring the power of the state and the persona of its ruler.
Rejecting the findings of the international scientists was, of course, a power grab by the newly emboldened church, and information technology was supported past the growing anti-Western sentiment promoted by the Kremlin and shared by much of Russian social club. By agreeing to the church's atmospheric condition, Putin was appeasing an important ally. Simply the move also reflected conspiracy theories (which often had anti-Semitic undercurrents) spreading among ultranationalists about the remains. One was that Lenin and his henchmen, many of whom were Jewish, had demanded that the heads of the saintly Romanovs exist brought to Moscow every bit a sort of diabolical Hebraic-Bolshevik tribute. Was this the reason for the shattered country of the bones? Were these bones really the Romanovs? Or had someone escaped?
These questions might seem easy to dismiss, merely there is long-established tradition in Russia of murdered royals suddenly reappearing. During the Time of Troubles, in the 17th century, there were non one but three impostor, known as the False Dmitris, who claimed to be Prince Dmitri, last son of Ivan the Terrible. And after 1918 more than 100 imposters claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia.
At first, during the leap of 1917, the ex-imperial family unit was allowed to live in relative comfort at a favorite residence, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, not far from Petrograd. Nicholas's cousin, King George V of England, offered him sanctuary, but so inverse his heed and withdrew the offer. It was non the finest moment for the House of Windsor, only it is unlikely that it made any departure. The window of opportunity was short; demands for the ex-tsar to stand up trial were growing.
Alexander Kerensky, starting time justice minister and and then prime government minister of the provisional government, moved the royals to the governor's mansion in Tobolsk, in distant Siberia, to keep them safe. Their stay at that place was bearable only depressing. Boredom turned to danger when Kerensky was overthrown by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in October 1917. Lenin famously said that "revolutions are meaningless without firing squads," and he was presently considering, along with lieutenant Yakov Sverdlov, whether to identify Nicholas on public trial—to be followed by his execution—or just impale the entire family.
The Bolsheviks faced a desperate ceremonious state of war confronting the Whites, counterrevolutionary armies backed by Western powers. Lenin responded with unbridled terror. He decided to motion the family from Tobolsk closer to Moscow, to which he had relocated the Russian capital. A trusted Bolshevik factotum was dispatched to bring the Romanovs west, and in April 1918 they endured a terrifying trip past train and wagon.
The teenage Alexei suffered an attack of bleeding and had to exist left behind; he came to Ekaterinburg three weeks later with three of his sisters. The girls, meanwhile, were sexually molested on the train. But eventually the family was reunited in the gloomy, walled mansion of a merchant named Ipatiev in the centre of the city, whose leaders were the near fanatical of Bolsheviks.
The mansion was ominously renamed the Business firm of Special Purpose and converted into a prison fortress with painted-over windows, fortified walls and machine gun nests. The Romanovs received limited rations and were watched past hostile young guards. Still the family adapted. Nicholas read books aloud in the evening and tried to practise. The eldest daughter, Olga, became depressed, but the playful and spirited younger girls, especially the beautiful Maria and the mischievous Anastasia, began to interact with the guards. Maria began an illicit romance with one of them, and the guards discussed helping the girls escape. When this was uncovered by Bolshevik boss Filipp Goloshchekin, the guards were inverse, regulations were tightened. All of this made Lenin fifty-fifty more broken-hearted.
By the starting time of July 1918 it was clear that Ekaterinburg was going to fall to the Whites. Goloshchekin rushed to Moscow to get Lenin'southward approving, and it is certain that he got information technology, though Lenin was clever enough not to put the lodge on paper: The killing was planned nether the new commandant of the House of Special Purpose, Yakov Yurovsky, who decided to recruit a squad to murder the royals all together in one session and and then burn the bodies and bury them in the wood nearby. Just about every detail of the program was ill conceived and would be grotesquely bungled in practice.
Early that July forenoon, the bleary-eyed Romanovs and their loyal retainers stood in the cellar as the heavily armed murder squad filed into the room. Yurovsky suddenly read out a death sentence. Then the men used their weapons. Each was meant to fire at a unlike family unit fellow member, but many of them secretly wished to avoid shooting the girls, so they all aimed at the loathed Nicholas and Alexandra, killing them almost instantly.
The firing was wild; the killers managed to wound ane another as the room filled with swirling dust and smoke and screams. When the first volley was done, well-nigh of the family unit was all the same live, wounded, crying and terrified, their suffering made worse by the fact that they were in effect wearing bulletproof vests.
The Romanovs were famed for their collection of jewelry, and they had left Petrograd with a large cache of diamonds subconscious their baggage. During the terminal months they had sewn the diamonds into particularly made underwear in case they needed to fund an escape. On the night of the execution the children had pulled on this secretly bejeweled underwear, which was reinforced with the hardest material in existence. Tragically, ironically, the bullets bounced off these garments. Finally the murderers waded into the gruesome scene of wounded, haemorrhage children (one of the killers compared it to a slippery ice rink awash with blood and brains) and stabbed them manically with bayonets or shot them in the head.
The mayhem lasted 20 agonizing minutes. When the bodies were being carried out, ii of the girls turned out to nevertheless exist live, spluttering and cough before being stabbed into silence. This was surely the origin ofthe fable that Anastasia, the youngest daughter, had survived, a story that inspired and then many impostors to impersonate the murdered one thousand duchess.
Now that the human activity was done, drunken assassins and Bolshevik thugs argued virtually who was to motion the bodies and where. They mocked the deceased royals, pillaged their treasures, and then failed to muffle or bury them. Eventually the bodies were piled into a truck, which soon broke down. Out in the woods, where the Romanovs were stripped naked and their wearable burned, information technology turned out that the mineshafts that had been selected to receive the bodies were as well shallow. In a panic Yurovsky improvised a new programme, leaving the bodies and rushing into Ekaterinburg for supplies.
He spent three days and three nights, sleeplessly driving dorsum and along to the woods, collecting sulfuric acid and gasoline to destroy the bodies, which he finally decided to coffin in split places to confuse anyone who might find them. He was determined to obey his orders that "no one must ever know what had happened" to the Romanov family. He pummeled the bodies with rifle butts, doused them with sulfuric acid, and burned them with gasoline. Finally, he cached what was left in two graves.
Yurovsky and his killers subsequently wrote detailed, boastful, and dislocated accounts for the Cheka, a forerunner to the KGB. The reports were sequestered in the archives and never publicized, simply during the 1970s renewed involvement in the murder site led Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the KGB (and future leader of the USSR), to recommend that the House of Special Purpose exist bulldozed.
Next year is the centennial of the Russian Revolution, and while the country will undoubtedly detect many ways to marking the occasion, the unburied bones of its deposed ruling family unit present a dilemma. For a nation that aspires to regain its former influence and historic glory, coming to terms with complicated moments in its past is of paramount importance. But the protracted burial saga reflects issues that are universal and not easy to address.
Notions of birthright, bloodlines, and family power still take the ability to fascinate and resonate globally. Even though Britain, for case, is a ramble monarchy in which the royal family unit has no power whatsoever, the E! aqueduct is every bit obsessed with the elegant Duchess of Cambridge as with Taylor Swift and the Kardashians. And during the presidential election four years ago, a vocal "birther" movement tried to prove that Barack Obama did non have the correct to be president of the U.Southward.
In 2015, the patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, in conjunction with an investigation commission set up by Putin, ordered the retesting of all the bones. Nicholas II and his family were discreetly exhumed and their DNA compared with that of living relatives, including England'southward Prince Philip, one of whose grandmothers was the Romanov Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna. The tsar's Dna was too compared to that of his father, Alexander III, and grandfather Alexander II. (For the latter, scientists were able to use claret caked on a tunic the tsar was wearing when he was assassinated.)
There were also plans to test Alexandra'southward DNA against samples from the preserved body of her sister Ella, who was too killed by the Bolsheviks and whose body is at present displayed in a glass case in a Russian church building in Jerusalem. Nicholas, Alexandra, and three daughters were returned to their tomb, simply Alexei and Maria remain unburied.
A year later in that location take been vague reports that the tests have been completed just no new announcements about a final burial. This might seem a strange process, but information technology reflects the opaque style ability has always worked in Russian federation—under tsars, Bolsheviks, and now its gimmicky leaders. The church certainly has its ain agenda, only it has historically been an arm of the autocracy.
Near Kremlin observers agree that the final conclusion regarding the remains of the Romanovs will exist Putin's. Somehow he has to reconcile the 1917 Revolution, the slaughter of 1918, and contemporary Russia. Will there be ceremonies to commemorate both? A reburial ritual with royal honors or a religious ceremony to revere saints? No one knows exactly how he will try to pull it off.
Members of the Russian public, particularly those who are either ultranationalists or Orthodox believers, are fascinated past the story of the Romanovs. And near everybody is willing to comprehend the tsars as part of Russia's magnificent by. Stalin promoted a few of them, such every bit Peter the Great, every bit rigorous reformers, but Putin's new textbooks present many as heroic leaders. And then, even if there's petty support for a restoration of the dynasty, there is huge enthusiasm for the restoration of the glory and prestige and power that the dynasty represented.
I thing is certain: Putin's view of Russian history, fueled by his regular reading of historical biographies, is organized past success and accomplishment, not ideology. The country's great "tsars" were Stalin and Peter the Great, the disastrous ones Mikhail Gorbachev and Nicholas II. And, as he has told his entourage, unlike Gorbachev and the concluding Romanov tsar, "I'll never abdicate."
I recently completed a history of the Romanov dynasty, and I am often asked if I censored annihilation from the gruesome and sexually explicit materials I discovered in the archives of the family'due south three-century rule. The answer is yes, but only one once. As I was finishing the book, I left out the more horrid and cruel details of the family unit's murder in 1918. Whatever the fate of the bodies, whatever the future of Russia, however one regards the violent drama of Romanov dominion, this remains the most heartbreaking and unbearable scene of them all.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian whose latest volume is The Romanovs, 1613-1918.
This article originally appeared in the November 2016 issue of Boondocks & Country.
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Source: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a8072/russian-tsar-execution/
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