to say “What …?” before Yurovsky pointed his revolver directly at the Tsar’s head and fired. Nicholas died instantly. At this signal, the entire squad of executioners began to shoot. Alexandra had time only to raise her hand and make the sign of the cross before she too was killed by a single bullet. Olga, Tatiana and Marie, standing behind their mother, were hit and died quickly. Botkin, Kharitonov and Trupp also fell in the hail of bullets. Demidova, the maid, survived the first volley, and rather than reload, the executioners took rifles from the next room and pursued her, stabbing with bayonets. Screaming, running back and forth along the wall like a trapped animal, she tried to fend them off with the cushion. At last she fell, pierced by bayonets more than thirty times. Jimmy the spaniel was killed when his head was crushed by a rifle butt.
The room, filled with the smoke and stench of gunpowder, became suddenly quiet. Blood was running in streams from the bodies on the floor. Then there was a movement and a low groan. Alexis, lying on the floor still in the arms of the Tsar, feebly moved his hand to clutch his father’s coat. Savagely, one of the executioners kicked the Tsarevich in the head with his heavy boot. Yurovsky stepped up and fired two shots into the boy’s ear. Just at that moment, Anastasia, who had only fainted, regained consciousness and screamed. With bayonets and rifle butts, the entire band turned on her. In a moment, she too lay still. It was ended.
THE bodies were wrapped in sheets and placed in a truck outside the cellar. Before dawn, the vehicle with its sickening cargo reached the “Four Brothers” and the process of dismembering and destroying the bodies began. Each body was carefully cut into pieces with axes and saws, then placed in a bonfire kept burning fiercely with frequent soakings of gasoline. As the ax blades cut into the clothing, many of the jewels sewed inside were crushed, and the fragments spilled out into the high grass or were ground into the mud. As expected, many of the larger bones resisted fire and had to be dissolved with sulfuric acid. The process was neither easy nor quick; for three days, Yurovsky’s ghouls labored at their macabre work. Finally, the ashes and residue were thrown into the pool of water at the bottom of the mine shaft. So satisfied were the murderers that they had obliterated all traces that Voikov, the member of the Ural Soviet who purchased the gasoline and acid, proudly declared, “The world will never know what we did with them.” Later Voikov became Soviet Ambassador to Poland.
Eight days after the murder, Ekaterinburg fell to the advancing Whites, and a group of officers rushed to the Ipatiev house. In the courtyard, half famished, they found the Tsarevich’s spaniel Joy, wandering about as if in search of his master. The house itself was empty, but its appearance was sinister. The basement room had been thoroughly mopped and scrubbed, but the walls and floors bore the scratches and scars of bullets and bayonets. From the wall against which the family had been standing, large pieces of plaster had fallen away. It was obvious that some kind of massacre had taken place in the room. But it was impossible to tell how many victims there had been.
An immediate search for the family led nowhere. Not until the following January (1919) did a thorough investigation begin when Admiral Kolchak, “Supreme Ruler” of the White government in Siberia, selected Nicholas Sokolov, a trained legal investigator, to undertake the task. Sokolov, assisted by both of the Tsarevich’s tutors, Gilliard and Gibbs, located the mine and uncovered a wealth of tragic evidence. For Gilliard, especially, the work was excruciating. “But the children—the children?” he cried when Sokolov first told him of the preliminary findings. “The children have suffered the same fate as their parents,” replied Sokolov sadly. “There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind on that point.”
Before the investigation was concluded, hundreds of articles and fragments had been collected, identified and catalogued. Even the heart-broken Gilliard was convinced. Among the objects collected were these: the Tsar’s belt buckle; the Tsarevich’s belt buckle; an emerald cross given to the Empress Alexandra by the Dowager Empress Marie; a pearl earring from a pair always worn by Alexandra; the Ulm Cross, a jubilee badge adorned with sapphires and diamonds, presented by Her Majesty’s Own Uhlan Guards; and fragments of a sapphire ring which had become so tight on Nicholas’s finger that he could not take it off.
In addition, the investigators found a metal pocket case in which Nicholas always carried his wife’s portrait; three small icons worn by the Grand Duchess (on each icon, the face of the saint had been destroyed by heavy blows); the Empress’s spectacle case; six sets of women’s corsets (the Empress, her four daughters and Demidova made exactly six); fragments of the military caps worn by Nicholas and Alexis; shoe buckles belonging to the Grand Duchesses; and Dr. Botkin’s eyeglasses and false teeth.
There were also a number of charred bones, partly destroyed by acid but still bearing the mark of ax and saw; revolver bullets, many of which had been reduced by heat to molten blobs; and a severed human finger belonging to a middle-aged woman. It was slender and manicured like the Empress’s.
The investigators collected an assortment of nails, tinfoil, copper coins and a small lock which puzzled them until they were shown to Gilliard. He immediately identified them as part of the pocketful of odds and ends always carried by the Tsarevich. Finally, mangled but unburned, the little corpse of the spaniel Jimmy was found at the bottom of the pit. For some reason, the murderers had taken great care to destroy the bodies of the owners, but had ignored the still recognizable body of their pet.
Later, to confirm this evidence, the Whites added the depositions of captured members of the guard at the House of Special Purpose, who described the execution. Later still, Sokolov’s findings were fully confirmed from the Bolshevik side by P. M. Bykov, Chairman of the Ekaterinburg Soviet.
Within a few hours of the murder, a report was telegraphed to Moscow. On July 18, the Presidium of the Central Executive Council approved the action. That night, as the Commissar of Health was reading a draft of a new public-health law to the Council of People’s Commissars, Sverdlov came into the hall and whispered to Lenin, who interrupted the speaker.
“Comrade Sverdlov wants to make a statement,” said Lenin.
“I have to say,” declared Sverdlov, “that we have had a communication that at Ekaterinburg, by a decision of the Regional Soviet, Nicholas has been shot. The Presidium has resolved to approve.”
A hush fell over the room.
Then Lenin spoke up calmly: “Let us now go on to read the draft [of the health law] clause by clause.”
Although only Nicholas’s name was publicly mentioned, Lenin and Sverdlov knew that the entire family was dead. In their haste to evacuate Ekaterinburg, the Bolsheviks left behind the tapes of several telegrams exchanged with the Kremlin after the murder. “Tell Sverdlov,” said one, “that the whole family met the same fate as its head. Officially, the family will perish during the evacuation.” Another message asked how Moscow wished the news to be broken. Apparently the Bolshevik leaders decided that one murder was enough to announce at that time, and on July 20, the official proclamation mentioned only Nicholas. It came in the form of an announcement by the Ural Soviet with an endorsement by the Central Executive Committee:
DECISION
of the Presidium of the Divisional Council of Deputies of Workmen, Peasants, and Red Guards of the Urals:
In view of the fact that Czechoslovakian bands are threatening the Red Capital of the Urals, Ekaterinburg; that the crowned executioner may escape from the tribunal of the people (a White Guard Plot to carry off the whole Imperial family has just been discovered) the Presidium of the Divisional Committee in pursuance of the will of the people, has decided that the ex-Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty before the people of innumerable bloody crimes, shall be shot.
The decision of the Presidium of the Divisional Council was carried into execution on the Night of July 16th– 17th.
Romanov’s family has been transferred from Ekaterinburg to a place of greater safety.
Moscow’s endorsement was worded:
DECISION
of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of all the Russias of July 18th:
The Central Executive Committee of the Councils of Deputies of Workmen, Peasants, Red Guards and Cossacks, in the person of their president, approve the action of the Presidium of the Council of the Urals.
The President of the Central Executive Committee
Sverdlov
