How the royal family of Nicholas II was killed. The remains of the royal family in our time. “The VTSIK does not give a sanction for execution!”

First, the Provisional Government agrees to fulfill all conditions. But already on March 8, 1917, General Mikhail Alekseev informs the tsar that he "may consider himself, as it were, under arrest." After some time, from London, which had previously agreed to accept the Romanov family, a notification of refusal comes. On March 21, former Emperor Nicholas II and his entire family were officially taken into custody.

A little more than a year later, on July 17, 1918, the last royal family of the Russian Empire will be shot in a cramped basement in Yekaterinburg. The Romanovs were subjected to hardships, getting closer and closer to their gloomy finale. Let's look at rare photos of members of Russia's last royal family, taken some time before the execution.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the last royal family of Russia, by decision of the Provisional Government, was sent to the Siberian city of Tobolsk to protect them from the wrath of the people. A few months earlier, Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated, bringing to an end more than three hundred years of the Romanov dynasty.

The Romanovs began their five-day journey to Siberia in August, on the eve of Tsarevich Alexei's 13th birthday. The seven members of the family were joined by 46 servants and a military escort. The day before reaching their destination, the Romanovs sailed by native village Rasputin, whose eccentric influence on politics could have contributed to their gloomy end.

The family arrived in Tobolsk on August 19 and began living in relative comfort on the banks of the Irtysh River. In the Governor's Palace, where they were placed, the Romanovs were well fed, and they could communicate a lot with each other, without being distracted by state affairs and official events. The children put on plays for their parents, and the family often went to the city for religious services - this was the only form of freedom allowed to them.

When the Bolsheviks came to power at the end of 1917, the regime of the royal family slowly but surely began to tighten. The Romanovs were forbidden to visit the church and generally leave the territory of the mansion. Soon coffee, sugar, butter and cream, and the soldiers assigned to protect them wrote obscene and offensive words on the walls and fences of their homes.

Things went from bad to worse. In April 1918, a commissar, a certain Yakovlev, arrived with an order to transport the former tsar from Tobolsk. The empress was adamant in her desire to accompany her husband, but Comrade Yakovlev had other orders that complicated everything. At this time, Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from hemophilia, began to suffer from paralysis of both legs due to a bruise, and everyone expected that he would be left in Tobolsk, and the family would be divided during the war.

The commissar's demands for the move were adamant, so Nikolai, his wife Alexandra and one of their daughters, Maria, soon left Tobolsk. They eventually boarded a train to travel via Yekaterinburg to Moscow, where the headquarters of the Red Army was located. However, Commissar Yakovlev was arrested for trying to save the royal family, and the Romanovs got off the train in Yekaterinburg, in the heart of the territory captured by the Bolsheviks.

In Yekaterinburg, the rest of the children joined their parents - they were all locked in the Ipatiev house. The family was placed on the second floor and completely cut off from outside world boarding up the windows and posting guards at the doors. The Romanovs were allowed to go out Fresh air just five minutes a day.

In early July 1918, the Soviet authorities began to prepare for the execution of the royal family. Ordinary soldiers on guard were replaced by representatives of the Cheka, and the Romanovs were allowed to last time go to worship. The priest who conducted the service later admitted that none of the family spoke a word during the service. For July 16 - the day of the murder - five truckloads of barrels of benzidine and acid were ordered to quickly dispose of the bodies.

Early in the morning of July 17, the Romanovs were gathered and told about the advance of the White Army. The family believed that they were simply being transferred to a small lighted basement for their own protection, because soon it would not be safe here. Approaching the place of execution, last king Russia walked past the trucks, in one of which his body would soon be lying, not even suspecting what a terrible fate awaited his wife and children.

In the basement, Nikolai was told that he was about to be executed. Not believing his own ears, he asked again: "What?" - immediately after which the Chekist Yakov Yurovsky shot the tsar. Another 11 people pulled their triggers, flooding the basement with the blood of the Romanovs. Aleksey survived after the first shot, but Yurovsky's second shot finished him off. The next day, the bodies of members of the last royal family of Russia were burned 19 km from Yekaterinburg, in the village of Koptyaki.

Bolsheviks and the execution of the royal family

Over the past decade, the topic of the execution of the royal family has become relevant in connection with the discovery of many new facts. Documents and materials reflecting this tragic event began to be actively published, causing various comments, questions, and doubts. That is why it is important to analyze the available written sources.

Emperor Nicholas II

Perhaps the earliest historical source is the materials of the investigator on special important matters Omsk District Court during the period of activity of the Kolchak army in Siberia and the Urals N.A. Sokolov, who, in hot pursuit, conducted the first investigation of this crime.

Nikolai Alekseevich Sokolov

He found traces of fires, fragments of bones, pieces of clothing, jewelry, and other fragments, but did not find the remains of the royal family.

According to a modern investigator, V.N. Solovyov, manipulations with the corpses of the royal family due to the sloppiness of the Red Army would not fit into any schemes of the smartest investigator for especially important cases. The subsequent advance of the Red Army shortened the search time. N.A. version Sokolov was that the corpses were dismembered and burned. Those who deny the authenticity of the royal remains rely on this version.

Another group of written sources are the memoirs of the participants in the execution of the royal family. They often contradict each other. They clearly show a desire to exaggerate the role of the authors in this atrocity. Among them - “a note by Ya.M. Yurovsky”, which was dictated by Yurovsky to the chief keeper of party secrets, Academician M.N. Pokrovsky back in 1920, when information about the investigation by N.A. Sokolov has not yet appeared in print.

Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky

In the 60s, the son of Ya.M. Yurovsky donated copies of his father's memoirs to the museum and archive so that his "feat" would not be lost in the documents.
Also preserved are the memoirs of the head of the Ural workers' squad, a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1906, an employee of the NKVD since 1920. P.Z. Ermakov, who was instructed to organize the burial, for he, as a local resident, knew the surroundings well. Ermakov reported that the corpses were burned to ashes, and the ashes were buried. His memoirs contain many factual errors, which are refuted by the testimony of other witnesses. Memories date back to 1947. It was important for the author to prove that the order of the Yekaterinburg Executive Committee: “to shoot and bury them so that no one ever found their corpses” was fulfilled, the grave does not exist.

The Bolshevik leadership also created considerable confusion by trying to cover up the traces of the crime.

Initially, it was assumed that the Romanovs would await trial in the Urals. Materials were collected in Moscow, L.D. was preparing to become a prosecutor. Trotsky. But the civil war aggravated the situation.
At the beginning of the summer of 1918, it was decided to take the royal family out of Tobolsk, since the Socialist-Revolutionaries headed the council there.

transfer of the Romanov family to Yekaterinburg Chekists

This was done on behalf of Ya.M. Sverdlov, the Extraordinary Commissar of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Myachin (aka Yakovlev, Stoyanovich).

Nicholas II with his daughters in Tobolsk

In 1905, he became famous as a member of one of the most daring gangs that robbed trains. Subsequently, all the militants - Myachin's associates - were arrested, imprisoned or shot. He manages to escape abroad with gold and jewels. Until 1917 he lived in Capri, where he was acquainted with Lunacharsky and Gorky, sponsored underground schools and printing houses of the Bolsheviks in Russia.

Myachin tried to direct the royal train from Tobolsk to Omsk, but a detachment of Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks accompanying the train, learning about the change in route, blocked the road with machine guns. The Ural Council repeatedly demanded that the royal family be placed at its disposal. Myachin, with the approval of Sverdlov, was forced to yield.

Konstantin Alekseevich Myachin

Nicholas II and his family were taken to Yekaterinburg.

This fact reflects the confrontation in the Bolshevik environment over the question of who and how will decide the fate of the royal family. In any alignment of forces, one could hardly hope for a humane outcome, given the mood and track record of the people who made the decisions.
Another memoir appeared in 1956 in Germany. They belong to I.P. Meyer, who, as a captured soldier Austrian army was sent to Siberia, but the Bolsheviks released him, and he joined the Red Guard. Since Meyer knew foreign languages, then he became a confidant of the international brigade in the Urals military district and worked in the mobilization department of the Soviet Ural Directorate.

I.P. Meyer was an eyewitness to the execution of the royal family. His memoirs supplement the picture of the execution with essential details, details, including the names of the participants, their role in this atrocity, but do not resolve the contradiction that arose in previous sources.

Later, written sources began to be supplemented by material ones. So, in 1978, geologist A. Avdonin found a burial. In 1989, he and M. Kochurov, as well as screenwriter G. Ryabov, spoke about their discovery. In 1991, the ashes were removed. On August 19, 1993, the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case in connection with the discovery of the Yekaterinburg remains. The investigation began to be conducted by the prosecutor-criminalist of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation V.N. Solovyov.

In 1995 V.N. Solovyov managed to get 75 negatives in Germany, which were made in hot pursuit in the Ipatiev House by the investigator Sokolov and were considered lost forever: toys of Tsarevich Alexei, the bedroom of the Grand Duchesses, the execution room and other details. Unknown originals of N.A.’s materials were also delivered to Russia. Sokolov.

Material sources made it possible to answer the question of whether there was a burial of the royal family, and whose remains were found near Yekaterinburg. For this, numerous scientific studies were carried out, in which more than a hundred of the most authoritative Russian and foreign scientists took part.

State-of-the-art methods were used to identify the remains, including DNA testing assisted by certain current royalty and other genetic relatives. Russian emperor. To eliminate any doubts in the conclusions of numerous examinations, the remains of Georgy Alexandrovich were exhumed, sibling Nicholas II.

Georgy Alexandrovich Romanov

Modern achievements of science have helped to restore the picture of events, despite some discrepancies in written sources. This made it possible for the government commission to confirm the identity of the remains and adequately bury Nicholas II, the Empress, three great princesses and courtiers.

There is one more controversial issue associated with the tragedy of July 1918. Long time it was believed that the decision to execute the royal family was made in Yekaterinburg by the local authorities at their own peril and risk, and Moscow found out about this after the fait accompli. This needs to be clarified.

According to the memoirs of I.P. Meyer, on July 7, 1918, a meeting of the Revolutionary Committee was held, which was chaired by A.G. Beloborodov. He offered to send F. Goloshchekin to Moscow and get the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, since the Ural Council could not decide on its own the fate of the Romanovs.

It was also proposed to give Goloshchekin an accompanying paper outlining the position of the Ural authorities. However, the resolution of F. Goloshchekin was adopted by a majority of votes, that the Romanovs deserve death. Goloshchekin, as an old friend Ya.M. Sverdlov, was nevertheless sent to Moscow for consultations with the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov.

Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov

On July 14, F. Goloshchekin, at a meeting of the revolutionary tribunal, made a report on his trip and on negotiations with Ya.M. Sverdlov about the Romanovs. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee did not want the tsar and his family to be taken to Moscow. The Ural Soviet and the local revolutionary headquarters must decide for themselves what to do with them. But the decision of the Ural Revolutionary Committee had already been made in advance. This means that Moscow did not object to Goloshchekin.

E.S. Radzinsky published a telegram from Yekaterinburg, in which, a few hours before the assassination of the royal family, V.I. Lenin, Ya.M. Sverdlov, G.E. Zinoviev. G. Safarov and F. Goloshchekin, who sent this telegram, asked to be informed immediately if there were any objections. Judging by what happened next, there were no objections.

The answer to the question, but by whose decision the royal family was put to death, was also given by L.D. Trotsky in his memoirs relating to 1935: “The liberals were inclined, as it were, to the fact that the Ural executive committee, cut off from Moscow, acted independently. This is not true. The decision was made in Moscow. Trotsky reported that he proposed an open trial to achieve a wide propaganda effect. The progress of the process was to be broadcast throughout the country and commented on every day.

IN AND. Lenin reacted positively to this idea, but expressed doubts about its feasibility. There might not be enough time. Later, Trotsky learned from Sverdlov about the execution of the royal family. To the question: “Who decided?” Ya.M. Sverdlov replied: “We decided here. Ilyich believed that it was impossible to leave us a living banner for them, especially in the current difficult conditions. These diary entries L.D. Trotsky were not intended for publication, did not respond "to the topic of the day", were not expressed in polemics. The degree of reliability of the presentation in them is great.

Lev Davydovich Trotsky

There is another clarification by L.D. Trotsky concerning the authorship of the idea of ​​regicide. In the drafts of the unfinished chapters of the biography of I.V. Stalin, he wrote about the meeting between Sverdlov and Stalin, where the latter spoke in favor of a death sentence for the tsar. At the same time, Trotsky did not rely on his own memories, but quoted the memoirs of the Soviet functionary Besedovsky, who had defected to the West. This data needs to be verified.

Message from Ya.M. Sverdlov at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18 about the execution of the Romanov family was greeted with applause and recognition that in the current situation the Ural Regional Council did the right thing. And at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, Sverdlov announced this by the way, without causing any discussion.

Trotsky outlined the most complete ideological justification for the execution of the royal family by the Bolsheviks with elements of pathos: “In essence, the decision was not only expedient, but also necessary. The severity of the reprisals showed everyone that we would fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the royal family was needed not only to confuse, horrify, and deprive the enemy of hope, but also to shake up their own ranks, to show that there was no retreat, that complete victory or complete death lay ahead. There were probably doubts and shaking of heads in the intelligent circles of the party. But the masses of workers and soldiers did not doubt for a moment: they would not have understood or accepted any other decision. Lenin felt this very well: the ability to think and feel for the masses and with the masses was highly characteristic of him, especially at great political turns ... "

The fact of the execution of not only the king, but also his wife and children, the Bolsheviks tried to hide for some time, and even from their own. So, one of the prominent diplomats of the USSR, A.A. Ioffe, officially reported only the execution of Nicholas II. He did not know anything about the wife and children of the king and thought that they were alive. His inquiries to Moscow yielded no results, and only from an informal conversation with F.E. Dzerzhinsky, he managed to find out the truth.

“Let Ioffe know nothing,” said Vladimir Ilyich, according to Dzerzhinsky, “it will be easier for him to lie there, in Berlin ...” The text of the telegram about the execution of the royal family was intercepted by the White Guards who entered Yekaterinburg. Investigator Sokolov deciphered and published it.

The royal family from left to right: Olga, Alexandra Feodorovna, Alexei, Maria, Nicholas II, Tatyana, Anastasia

The fate of the people involved in the liquidation of the Romanovs is of interest.

F.I. Goloshchekin (Isai Goloshchekin), (1876-1941), Secretary of the Ural Regional Committee and member of the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), Military Commissar of the Ural Military District, was arrested on October 15, 1939 at the direction of L.P. Beria and was shot as an enemy of the people on October 28, 1941.

A.G. Beloborodoe (1891-1938), chairman of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council, participated in the twenties in the inner-party struggle on the side of L.D. Trotsky. Beloborodoe provided Trotsky with his accommodation when the latter was evicted from the Kremlin apartment. In 1927, he was expelled from the CPSU (b) for factional activities. Later, in 1930, Beloborodov was reinstated in the party as a repentant oppositionist, but this did not save him. In 1938 he was repressed.

As for the direct participant in the execution, Ya.M. Yurovsky (1878-1938), a member of the board of the regional Cheka, it is known that his daughter Rimma suffered from repression.

Yurovsky's assistant at the "House special purpose» P.L. Voikov (1888-1927), People's Commissar for Supply in the government of the Urals, when appointed in 1924 as the USSR ambassador to Poland, could not get an agrement from the Polish government for a long time, since his personality was associated with the execution of the royal family.

Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov

G.V. Chicherin gave the Polish authorities a characteristic explanation on this occasion: “... Hundreds and thousands of fighters for the freedom of the Polish people, who died over the course of a century on the royal gallows and in Siberian prisons, would have reacted differently to the fact of the destruction of the Romanovs, than this could be concluded from your messages." In 1927 P.L. Voikov was killed in Poland by one of the monarchists for participating in the massacre of the royal family.

Of interest is another name in the list of persons who took part in the execution of the royal family. This is Imre Nagy. The leader of the Hungarian events of 1956 was in Russia, where in 1918 he joined the RCP (b), then served in the Special Department of the Cheka, and later collaborated with the NKVD. However, his autobiography refers to his stay not in the Urals, but in Siberia, in the region of Verkhneudinsk (Ulan-Ude).

Until March 1918, he was in the prisoner of war camp in Berezovka, in March he joined the Red Guard, and participated in the battles on Lake Baikal. In September 1918, his detachment, located on the Soviet-Mongolian border, in Troitskosavsk, was then disarmed and arrested by the Czechoslovaks in Berezovka. Then he ended up in a military town near Irkutsk. From the biographical information, it can be seen how mobile the future leader of the Hungarian Communist Party led in Russia during the execution of the royal family.

In addition, the information indicated by him in his autobiography did not always correspond to personal data. However, direct evidence of the involvement of Imre Nagy, and not his probable namesake, in the execution of the royal family, is currently not traced.

Imprisonment in the Ipatiev House

Ipatiev house

The Romanovs and their servants in the Ipatiev house

The Romanov family was placed in a "special purpose house" - the requisitioned mansion of a retired military engineer N. N. Ipatiev. Doctor E. S. Botkin, chamber footman A. E. Trupp, maid of the Empress A. S. Demidov, cook I. M. Kharitonov and cook Leonid Sednev lived here with the Romanov family.

The house is good and clean. Four rooms were assigned to us: a corner bedroom, a dressing room, a dining room next to it with windows overlooking the garden and a view of the low part of the city, and, finally, a spacious hall with an archway without doors. We were seated as follows: Alix [Empress], Maria and I three in the bedroom, a shared bathroom, N[yuta] Demidova in the dining room, Botkin, Chemodurov and Sednev in the hall. Near the entrance is the guard officer's room. The guard was placed in two rooms near the dining room. To go to the bathroom and W.C. [water closet], you need to pass by the sentry at the door of the guardhouse. A very high plank fence was built around the house, two fathoms from the windows; there was a chain of sentries, in the garden too.

The royal family spent 78 days in their last home.

A. D. Avdeev was appointed commandant of the "house of special purpose".

Execution

From the memoirs of the participants in the execution, it is known that they did not know in advance how the “execution” would be carried out. Various options were offered: to stab the arrested with daggers during sleep, to throw grenades into the room with them, to shoot them. According to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, the issue of the procedure for carrying out the "execution" was resolved with the participation of employees of the UraloblChK.

At 1:30 a.m. from July 16 to 17, a truck for transporting corpses arrived at Ipatiev's house, an hour and a half late. After that, doctor Botkin was awakened, who was told that everyone urgently needed to go downstairs due to the alarming situation in the city and the danger of staying on the top floor. It took about 30-40 minutes to get ready.

Evgeny Botkin, life medic Ivan Kharitonov, cook Alexei Trupp, valet Anna Demidova, maid

moved to the basement room (Alexei, who could not walk, was carried by Nicholas II in his arms). There were no chairs in the basement, then, at the request of Alexandra Feodorovna, two chairs were brought. Alexandra Fedorovna and Alexei sat on them. The rest were placed along the wall. Yurovsky brought in the firing squad and read out the verdict. Nicholas II only had time to ask: “What?” (other sources render Nikolai's last words as "Huh?" or "How, how? Re-read"). Yurovsky gave the command, indiscriminate shooting began.

The executioners did not manage to immediately kill Alexei, the daughters of Nicholas II, the maid A.S. Demidov, Dr. E.S. Botkin. There was a cry from Anastasia, the maid Demidova rose to her feet, Alexei remained alive for a long time. Some of them were shot; the survivors, according to the investigation, were finished off with a bayonet by P.Z. Ermakov.

According to Yurovsky's memoirs, the shooting was erratic: many were probably shooting from the next room, over the threshold, and the bullets ricocheted off the stone wall. At the same time, one of the shooters was slightly wounded (“A bullet from one of the shooters from behind buzzed past my head, and one, I don’t remember, either hand, palm, or touched a finger and shot through”).

According to T. Manakova, during the execution, two dogs of the royal family, who raised a howl, were also killed - Tatiana's French bulldog Ortino and Anastasia's royal spaniel Jimmy (Jammy) Anastasia. The third dog, Aleksey Nikolaevich's spaniel named Joy, was spared his life because she did not howl. The spaniel was later taken in by the guard Letemin, who because of this was identified and arrested by the whites. Subsequently, according to the story of Bishop Vasily (Rodzianko), Joy was taken to the UK by an immigrant officer and handed over to the British royal family.

after the execution

The basement of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg, where the royal family was shot. GA RF

From the speech of Ya. M. Yurovsky before the old Bolsheviks in Sverdlovsk in 1934

The younger generation may not understand us. They may reproach us for killing the girls, for killing the boy-heir. But to today girls-boys would grow up ... into what?

In order to muffle the shots, a truck was brought near the Ipatiev House, but the shots were still heard in the city. In Sokolov's materials, in particular, there are testimonies about this by two random witnesses, the peasant Buivid and the night watchman Tsetsegov.

According to Richard Pipes, immediately after this, Yurovsky harshly suppresses the attempts of the guards to plunder the jewelry they discovered, threatening to be shot. After that, he instructed P.S. Medvedev to organize the cleaning of the premises, and he left to destroy the corpses.

The exact text of the sentence pronounced by Yurovsky before the execution is unknown. In the materials of the investigator N. A. Sokolov, there are testimonies of the dividing guard Yakimov, who claimed, with reference to the guard Kleshchev who was watching this scene, that Yurovsky said: “Nikolai Alexandrovich, your relatives tried to save you, but they didn’t have to. And we are forced to shoot you ourselves.”

M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) described this scene as follows:

Mikhail Alexandrovich Medvedev-Kudrin

- Nikolai Alexandrovich! Attempts by your like-minded people to save you were unsuccessful! And so, in a difficult time for Soviet Republic... - Yakov Mikhailovich raises his voice and cuts the air with his hand: - ... we have been entrusted with the mission to put an end to the house of the Romanovs!

In the memoirs of Yurovsky's assistant G.P. Nikulin, this episode is stated as follows: Comrade Yurovsky uttered such a phrase that:

"Your friends are advancing on Yekaterinburg, and therefore you are sentenced to death."

Yurovsky himself could not remember the exact text: “... I immediately, as far as I remember, told Nikolai something like the following, that his royal relatives and relatives both in the country and abroad tried to release him, and that the Council of Workers' Deputies decided to shoot them ".

On July 17, in the afternoon, several members of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council contacted Moscow by telegraph (the telegram is marked that it was received at 12 o’clock) and reported that Nicholas II had been shot and his family had been evacuated. The editor of the Uralsky Rabochy, a member of the executive committee of the Uraloblsovet V. Vorobyov, later claimed that they “were very uncomfortable when they approached the apparatus: former king was shot by the decision of the Presidium of the Regional Council, and it was not known how the central government would react to this "arbitrariness" ... ". The reliability of this evidence, wrote G.Z. Ioffe, cannot be verified.

Investigator N. Sokolov claimed that he had found a ciphered telegram from the chairman of the Ural Regional Executive Committee A. Beloborodov to Moscow, dated 21:00 on July 17, which allegedly was deciphered only in September 1920. It reported: “To the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars N.P. Gorbunov: tell Sverdlov that the whole family suffered the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will die during the evacuation.” Sokolov concluded: it means that on the evening of July 17, Moscow knew about the death of the entire royal family. However, the minutes of the meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18 speak only of the execution of Nicholas II.

Destruction and burial of the remains

Ganinsky ravines - the burial place of the Romanovs

Yurovsky's version

According to Yurovsky's memoirs, he went to the mine at three o'clock in the morning on July 17th. Yurovsky reports that Goloshchekin must have ordered P.Z. Ermakov to carry out the burial. However, things did not go as smoothly as we would like: Ermakov brought too many people as a funeral team (“Why so many of them, I still don’t know , I heard only isolated cries - we thought that they would give us them alive, but here, it turns out, they are dead ”); truck stuck; jewels sewn into the clothes of the Grand Duchesses were discovered, some of Yermakov's people began to appropriate them. Yurovsky ordered to put guards on the truck. The bodies were loaded onto spans. On the way and near the mine planned for burial, strangers met. Yurovsky assigned people to cordon off the area, as well as to inform the village that Czechoslovaks were operating in the area and that it was forbidden to leave the village under threat of execution. In an effort to get rid of the presence of an overly large funeral team, he sends some people to the city "as unnecessary." Orders to make fires to burn clothes as possible evidence.

From the memoirs of Yurovsky (spelling preserved):

The daughters wore bodices so well made of solid diamond and other valuable stones, which were not only receptacles for valuables, but at the same time protective armor.

That is why neither the bullet nor the bayonet gave results when shooting and hitting the bayonet. By the way, no one is to blame for these death throes of theirs, except for themselves. These values ​​turned out to be only about (half) a pood. Greed was so great that, by the way, Alexandra Fedorovna was wearing just a huge piece of round gold wire, bent in the form of a bracelet, weighing about a pound ... Those parts of the valuables that were discovered during excavations undoubtedly belonged to separately sewn things and remained after burning in the ashes of the fires.

After seizing valuables and burning clothes on fires, the corpses were thrown into the mine, but “... a new hassle. The water covered the bodies a little, what to do here? Funeral Team unsuccessfully tried to bring down the mine with grenades (“bombs”), after which Yurovsky, according to him, finally came to the conclusion that the burial of the corpses had failed, since they were easy to detect and, in addition, there were witnesses that something was happening here. Leaving the guards and taking valuables, at about two o'clock in the afternoon (in the earlier version of the memoirs - "at 10-11 am") on July 17, Yurovsky went to the city. I arrived at the Ural Regional Executive Committee and reported on the situation. Goloshchekin summoned Ermakov and sent him to retrieve the corpses. Yurovsky went to the city executive committee to its chairman, S. E. Chutskaev, for advice on a place for burial. Chutskaev reported on deep abandoned mines on the Moscow Trakt. Yurovsky went to inspect these mines, but he could not get to the place right away due to a car breakdown, he had to walk. Returned on requisitioned horses. During this time, another plan appeared - to burn the corpses.

Yurovsky was not quite sure that the incineration would be successful, so the plan to bury the corpses in the mines of the Moscow Tract remained an option. In addition, he had the idea, in case of any failure, to bury the bodies in groups in different places on a clay road. Thus, there were three options for action. Yurovsky went to Voikov, the Commissar of Supply of the Urals, to get gasoline or kerosene, as well as sulfuric acid to disfigure faces, and shovels. Having received this, they loaded it onto carts and sent it to the location of the corpses. A truck was sent there. Yurovsky himself stayed behind to wait for Polushin, "the 'specialist' incineration," and waited for him until 11 pm, but he never arrived because, as Yurovsky later learned, he had fallen off his horse and injured his leg. At about 12 o'clock in the night, Yurovsky, not counting on the reliability of the car, went to the place where the bodies of the dead were, on horseback, but this time another horse crushed his leg, so that he could not move for an hour.

Yurovsky arrived at the scene at night. Work was underway to retrieve the bodies. Yurovsky decided to bury several corpses along the way. By dawn on July 18, the pit was almost ready, but a stranger appeared nearby. I had to abandon this plan. After waiting for the evening, we boarded the cart (the truck was waiting in a place where it should not get stuck). Then they were driving a truck, and it got stuck. Midnight was approaching, and Yurovsky decided that it was necessary to bury him somewhere here, since it was dark and no one could be a witness to the burial.

... everyone was so devilishly tired that they no longer wanted to dig a new grave, but, as always happens in such cases, two or three got down to business, then others set to work, immediately lit a fire, and while the grave was being prepared, we burned two corpses: Alexei and by mistake, instead of Alexandra Feodorovna, they apparently burned Demidov. A hole was dug at the place of burning, the bones were laid down, leveled, a large fire was lit again and all traces were hidden with ashes.

Before putting the rest of the corpses in the pit, we doused them with sulfuric acid, filled up the pit, covered it with sleepers, the truck passed empty, compacted the sleepers a little and put an end to it.

I. Rodzinsky and M. A. Medvedev (Kudrin) also left their memories of the burial of corpses (Medvedev, by his own admission, did not personally participate in the burial and retold the events from the words of Yurovsky and Rodzinsky). According to the memoirs of Rodzinsky himself:

The site where the remains of the alleged bodies of the Romanovs were found

We have now cleared this quagmire. She is deep God knows where. Well, here a part of these same darlings was decomposed and they began to fill it with sulfuric acid, they disfigured everything, and then it all turned into a quagmire. There was a railroad nearby. We brought rotten sleepers, laid a pendulum through the very quagmire. They laid out these sleepers in the form of an abandoned bridge over a quagmire, and the rest at some distance they began to burn.

But now, I remember, Nikolai was burned, there was this same Botkin, I can’t tell you for sure now, now that’s a memory. How many we burned, either four, or five, or six people were burned. Who, I don't remember exactly. I do remember Nicholas. Botkin and, in my opinion, Alexei.

The execution without trial and investigation of the king, his wife, children, including minors, was another step along the path of lawlessness, neglect human life, terror. Many problems of the Soviet state began to be solved with the help of violence. The Bolsheviks who unleashed terror often became its victims themselves.
The burial of the last Russian emperor eighty years after the execution of the royal family is another indicator of the inconsistency and unpredictability of Russian history.

“Church on Blood” on the site of the Ipatiev House

At one in the morning on July 17, 1918, the former Russian Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, their five children and four servants, including a doctor, were taken to the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, where they were held in custody, where they were brutally shot by the Bolsheviks, and subsequently burned body.

The eerie scene continues to haunt us to this day, and their remains, most lain for centuries in nameless graves, the location of which was known only to the Soviet leadership, is still surrounded by an aura of mystery. In 1979, enthusiastic historians discovered the remains of some members of the royal family, and in 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, their identity was confirmed using DNA analysis.

The remains of two more royal children, Alexei and Maria, were discovered in 2007 and subjected to a similar analysis. However, the ROC questioned the results of the DNA tests. The remains of Alexei and Maria were not buried, but transferred to a scientific institution. In 2015, they were again subjected to analysis.

The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore recounts these events in detail in his book 'The Romanovs, 1613-1618', published in this year. El Confidential has already written about her. In the Town & Country magazine, the author recalls that the official investigation into the murder of the royal family was resumed last fall, and the remains of the king and queen were exhumed. This gave rise to conflicting statements from the government and representatives of the Church, again putting this issue in the public eye.

According to Sebag, Nikolai was good-looking, and apparent weakness hid an imperious man who despised the ruling class, a fierce anti-Semite who did not doubt his sacred right to power. She and Alexandra married for love, what happened then a rare occurrence. She brought to family life paranoid thinking, mystical fanaticism (just remember Rasputin) and another danger - hemophilia, which was passed on to her son, heir to the throne.

Wounds

In 1998, the reburial of the remains of the Romanovs took place in a solemn official ceremony designed to heal the wounds of Russia's past.

President Yeltsin said that political change should never again be forced. Many Orthodox again expressed their disagreement and perceived this event as an attempt by the president to impose a liberal agenda in the former USSR.

In 2000, the Orthodox Church canonized the royal family, as a result of which the relics of its members became sacred, and according to the statements of its representatives, it was necessary to conduct their reliable identification.

When Yeltsin left his post and nominated an unknown Vladimir Putin, a KGB lieutenant colonel who considered the collapse of the USSR “the biggest catastrophe of the 20th century,” the young leader began to concentrate power in his hands, put up barriers to foreign influence, help strengthen Orthodox faith and carry out aggressive foreign policy. It seemed—Sebag reflects ironically—he decided to continue the political line of the Romanovs.

Putin is a political realist, and he is moving along the path outlined by the leaders of a strong Russia: from Peter I to Stalin. These were bright personalities who opposed the international threat.

The position of Putin, who questioned the results scientific research(faint echo cold war: there were many Americans among the researchers), calmed the Church and created a breeding ground for conspiracy, nationalist and anti-Semitic hypotheses regarding the remains of the Romanovs. One of them was that Lenin and his followers, many of whom were Jews, moved the bodies to Moscow with orders to mutilate them. Was it really the king and his family? Or did someone manage to escape?

Context

How did the kings return to Russian history

Atlantico 19.08.2015

304 years of Romanov rule

Le Figaro 05/30/2016

Why both Lenin and Nicholas II are “good”

Radio Prague 14.10.2015

What did Nicholas II give the Finns?

Helsingin Sanomat 25.07.2016 During civil war The Bolsheviks declared the Red Terror. They took the family away from Moscow. It was a terrible journey by train and horse-drawn carts. Tsarevich Alexei suffered from hemophilia, and some of his sisters were sexually abused on the train. Finally, they ended up in the house where their life path. It, in fact, was turned into a fortified prison and machine guns were installed around the perimeter. Be that as it may, the royal family tried to adapt to the new conditions. The eldest daughter Olga was depressed, and those who were younger played, not really understanding what was happening. Maria had an affair with one of the guards, and then the Bolsheviks replaced all the guards, tightening the rules of the internal order.

When it became obvious that the White Guards were about to take Yekaterinburg, Lenin issued an unspoken decree on the execution of the entire royal family, entrusting the execution to Yakov Yurovsky. At first it was supposed to secretly bury everyone in the nearby forests. But the assassination was poorly planned and even worse executed. Each member of the firing squad had to kill one of the victims. But when the basement of the house was filled with smoke from the shots and the screams of people being shot, many of the Romanovs were still alive. They were wounded and wept in terror.

The fact is that diamonds were sewn into the clothes of the princesses, and the bullets bounced off them, which confused the killers. The wounded were finished off with bayonets and shots to the head. One of the executioners later said that the floor was slippery with blood and brains.

scars

Having completed their work, drunken executioners robbed the corpses, loaded them onto a truck that stalled along the way. In addition, at the last moment it turned out that all the bodies did not fit in the graves dug in advance for them. The dead were stripped of their clothes and burned. Then the frightened Yurovsky came up with another plan. He left the bodies in the forest and went to Yekaterinburg for acid and gasoline. For three days and nights, he brought containers of sulfuric acid and gasoline into the forest to destroy the bodies, which he decided to bury in different places in order to confuse those who set out to find them. No one was supposed to know about what happened. The bodies were doused with acid and gasoline, they were burned, and then buried.

Sebag wonders how 2017 will mark the 100th anniversary of October revolution. What will happen to the royal remains? The country does not want to lose its former glory. The past is always viewed in a positive light, but the legitimacy of autocracy continues to generate controversy. New research, initiated by the Russian Orthodox Church and carried out by the Investigative Committee, led to the re-exhumation of the bodies. Was held comparative analysis DNA with living relatives, in particular with British prince Philip, one of whose grandmothers was Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna Romanova. Thus, he is the great-great-grandson of Tsar Nicholas II.

The fact that the Church is still making decisions on such important issues has attracted attention in the rest of Europe, as well as the lack of openness and a chaotic series of burials, exhumations, DNA tests of various members of the royal family. Most political observers believe that Putin will make the final decision on what to do with the remains on the 100th anniversary of the revolution. Will he finally be able to reconcile the image of the revolution of 1917 with the barbaric massacre of 1918? Will he have to hold two separate events to please each side? Will the Romanovs be given royal or ecclesiastical honors like saints?

In Russian textbooks, many Russian tsars are still presented as heroes covered in glory. Gorbachev and the last Romanov tsar abdicated, Putin said he would never do so.

The historian claims that in his book he did not omit anything from the materials he studied on the execution of the Romanov family ... with the exception of the most disgusting details of the murder. When the bodies were taken to the forest, the two princesses groaned, and they had to be finished off. Whatever the future of the country, it will be impossible to erase this terrible episode from memory.

The fate of the servants and close associates of the imperial family, who were shot in the Ipatiev house

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the Romanov family was shot. By that time, Nicholas II had already abdicated and ceased to be king. But with him and with his relatives there were people who decided to serve their emperor to the end - whether he had a title or not. Doctor, cook, valet and maid. Some of them left their family for the sake of the Romanovs, some never started it. About someone we know a lot, about someone - almost nothing. But they all died in the basement of the Ipatiev House - for serving faithfully. And for the fact that until the last they called Nicholas II the sovereign.

"I didn't turn anyone down." Dr. Evgeny Botkin

As a child, he studied music, but followed in his father's footsteps and became a doctor. As the son of a life physician - the famous Sergei Botkin, after whom one of the Moscow clinics is named - he worked in a hospital for the poor. He gave lectures to students of the Imperial Military Medical Academy. And although his dissertation was devoted to the composition of blood, he spoke to students primarily about psychology - that patients should be seen first of all as people.

Since the beginning Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Botkin went to the front and became in charge of the medical unit Russian Society Red Cross. “I rode with the most bloodthirsty feelings,” he said in letters to his wife. “The first wounded Japanese were unpleasant to me, and I had to force myself to approach them in the same way as ours.” He wrote that any boy who offended his son would also be unpleasant to him. But later this changed: the war taught him to see people even in enemies.

Botkin was a believer. He wrote that the losses and defeats of the army are "the result of people's lack of spirituality, a sense of duty." He said that he could not survive the war while sitting in St. Petersburg, so he needed to feel his involvement in the troubles of Russia. He was not afraid for himself: he was sure that he would not be killed, "unless God so wills." And, being at the front, he remained true to his principles - to help not only the bodies of patients, but also the souls.

He returned home with six military orders, and in the world they talked a lot about his courage. Two years later, the acting life physician, Dr. Hirsch, died. And when the Empress was asked who she wants to see in this post, Alexandra Feodorovna answered: "Botkin. The one who was at war." In the fall of 1908, the Botkin family moved to Tsarskoye Selo.

The doctor's younger children, Gleb and Tatyana, quickly became friends with the Tsarevich and the Grand Duchesses. Maria and Anastasia played tic-tac-toe with Gleb, and Tatyana Nikolaevna herself knitted a blue cap for the namesake when it was cut off after typhoid fever. Every day at five o'clock, Evgeny Sergeevich listened to the heart of the Empress and each time asked his children to help him wash his hands from the cup, which the Grand Duchesses called "yogurt". Once, when there were no children, Botkin asked Anastasia to call the footman. She refused and helped him wash his hands herself, saying: "If your children can do this, why can't I?"

In spring and autumn, the royal family often rested in Livadia, and Dr. Botkin accompanied them. In the photo - Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Maria and Tatiana (in the left corner). In the right corner in a white tunic (in profile) - Nicholas II, to the left of him - Evgeny Botkin

In exile, Botkin took on the role of an intermediary: he asked to let a priest go to the family, achieved an hour and a half walks, and when his mentor Pierre Gilliard was excommunicated from the sick Tsarevich Alexei, he wrote to the Yekaterinburg Executive Committee with a request to return him: "The boy suffers so inexpressibly that none of his closest relatives, not to mention his chronically ill mother, who does not spare herself for him, unable to endure caring for him for a long time. My fading strength is also not enough ... "I played dominoes and cards with Alexandra Fedorovna, read aloud. He taught children Russian and biology. Only in home performances, which the family loved to stage, he categorically refused to play. But even here he made an exception when Tsarevich Alexei personally asked him to play the role of the old doctor. True, the performance did not take place then. In Tobolsk, he even opened a practice - and many patients turned to him.

He did not complain about anything: neither about colic in the kidneys ("He suffers very much," Alexandra Fedorovna wrote about his illness), nor about difficulties in everyday life. Even when the guards at the Ipatiev House plastered the windows with lime so that the prisoners could not look out into the street, he wrote: “I like this innovation: I no longer see in front of me. wooden wall, but I sit, as in a comfortable winter apartment; you know, when the furniture is in covers, like we have now, and the windows are white. "And only in his last letter, which he undertook about a week before the execution, shows hopelessness. It breaks off in mid-sentence: the doctor did not have time to finish and send it.

On the night of the execution, the guards woke Botkin and ordered to wake up all the inhabitants of the Ipatiev House, saying that they would be transferred to another place, because the city was restless. The Romanovs and their entourage went down to the basement. When the commandant Yakov Yurovsky announced the execution, the doctor managed to ask in a hollow voice: "So they won't take us anywhere?"

His body was burned along with the bodies of the imperial couple and the heir. During the investigation, his artificial jaw, a small brush for a beard and mustache, which he always carried with him, and a broken pince-nez were found: Russia's last life doctor was farsighted.

"A footman settles against the wall." Valet Alexey Trupp

“I decided to let my old man Chemodurov go to rest and instead take the Troupe for a while,” Nicholas II wrote shortly after his arrival in Yekaterinburg. It turned out not "for a while", but forever: the valet Alexei Trupp went with the last tsar both to the Ipatiev house and to be shot.

In fact, his name was Alois (or Aloysius) Laure Truups - he was born in Latvia. The last tsar's valet was only seven years younger than the "old man Chemodurov": he turned 62. Perhaps he just looked young because he shaved his mustache and beard. Tall, thin, gray-eyed, wore gray trousers and a jacket. Even in the photo you can see his posture and military bearing: at the age of 18 he went to serve and even under Alexander III was enlisted in the Life Guards. Some write that he was a colonel, but others consider this a myth: it is unlikely that colonels became valets.

The valets - they were also called lackeys and room servants - watched the monarch's wardrobe, helped him to dress. The lackeys of Nicholas II had a lot of domestic work: the tsar hardly parted with old clothes, preferring darned new clothes, but he loved military uniform- Hundreds of uniforms hung in his closets.

Trouppe was a bachelor all his life, but he loved children, especially the children of the last emperor. They say he had a good income - he could afford to buy several plots of land near St. Petersburg, but he didn’t want to. When he arrived at Ipatiev's house, the commandant made a note: "61 [years]. He has one hundred and four (104) rubles with him. 310 rubles (three hundred and ten) were found during a search." Even during his imprisonment in Tsarskoye Selo, some drunken officer shouted to him and other servants: "You are our enemies. We are your enemies. You are all corrupt here." The last months of his life, the "corrupt" lackey Troupp served his master for free.

Servants and close associates, who decided to stay with the Romanovs in the Ipatiev house, gave a receipt that they were ready to obey the commandant and be imprisoned on an equal basis with the royal family

In the Ipatiev House, he shared a room with the cook Ivan Kharitonov. Once they saw that there were charged bombs on the cabinet - they were immediately discharged by order of the commandant. They also said that he, a Catholic, participated in an Orthodox church service. And among the Red Army soldiers guarding the "special purpose house", one day there was his nephew, with whom they spoke in their native Latvian.

Almost everything that is known about the Troupe is abrupt and inaccurate. He was little mentioned in their diaries by the royal couple, his contemporaries practically did not talk about him. He wrote to relatives from exile, but cautious people burned these letters.

... Before the execution, Trupp and Kharitonov retreated to the corner of the room and stood against the wall. "Women's squeals and groans ... a footman settles against the wall," one of the killers will tell later.

"You feed me well, Ivan." Chef Ivan Kharitonov

"Offal soup, pies, lamb and fire cutlets with garnish, raspberry jelly", "fish saltwort, pies, cold ham, roast chicken, salad, tangerine jelly", "ruff fish soup, pies, Gatchina trout italven, dumplings and dumplings, roast duck, lettuce, vanilla ice cream" are examples of the royal family's menu of everyday meals. When Nikolai Alexandrovich was only seven years old, two chefs personally worked for him. And the table for the Tsarevich and his tutors and guests cost 7,600 rubles a year. As an adult, Nikolai rarely dined less than an hour and a half and, according to legend, invented a recipe for an appetizer for cognac - lemon slices sprinkled with powdered sugar and coffee, which they called "nikolashka".

It can be assumed that cooks played a significant role in the life of the Romanovs. The last person to cook for the royal family was Ivan Kharitonov. At the age of 12, he became an apprentice cook. He practiced in Paris, received the specialty of "soup soup", came up with a recipe for soup-puree from fresh cucumbers. He had happy family and six children, but when the question arose whether he should stay with the Romanovs, he agreed immediately. His relatives went with him to Tobolsk, but they were not allowed into Yekaterinburg. When Kharitonov said goodbye to his family, someone offered to leave his gold watch to his wife. The cook replied: "I'll be back - with a watch, but I won't be back - why frighten them ahead of time?"

He was 48, but witnesses said he looked younger.

Once upon a time, the imperial family loved picnics, and Nicholas himself could bake potatoes in the ashes. In exile, simple food became not a pleasure, but a necessity. In Tobolsk, he managed to "keep up the mark", even cooking from simple products: "borsch, pasta, potatoes, rice cutlets, bread", "sour cabbage soup, roasted pig with rice" - such dinners were at the Romanovs in those days. "You feed me well, Ivan," the tsar told him. But many products had to be bought on credit, and there was nothing to pay with. And gradually locals ceased to trust Kharitonov.

The breakfast menu of the royal family in Tobolsk (at that time it was customary to eat soup at breakfast)

In Yekaterinburg, the prisoners were initially allowed to take packages from the local monastery - milk, eggs, cream. But soon the guard forbade that too. “I refused to transfer everything except milk, and also decided to transfer them to the ration that was established for all citizens of the city of Yekaterinburg,” said the commandant of the Ipatiev House, Yakov Yurovsky.

The cook coped as best he could: instead of pies - pasta pie, instead of dumplings and dumplings - potatoes and beetroot salad, instead of tangerine jelly - compote, "to the great joy of everyone," as Nikolai wrote in his diary. And his last cooks were the king's daughters: he taught them how to bake bread. On July 16, Alexandra Feodorovna recorded that the commandant had brought eggs for Alexei, but there were still some relaxations in the regime. But Kharitonov was no longer able to cook an omelette for Tsarevich.

... Before the execution, he stood in the corner next to the footman Trupp. When the shots rang out, he fell to his knees. During the investigation, no gold watch was found in the Ipatiev House.

"I slept little, worried about the unknown." Maid Anna Demidova

Anna Demidova before last day wore a corset: the empress believed that walking without it was promiscuity. And she got used to doing what the hostess thought was right, because she served her for 17 years.

Room girl - or maid - last empress was born into a bourgeois family in Cherepovets. She knew foreign languages, played the piano. But best of all she managed to embroider, knit and sew. This attracted Alexandra Fedorovna: she saw the girl's work at an exhibition in Yaroslavl. And soon Nyuta began to serve the royal family. Room girls were mainly engaged in the clothes of the empress, but Anna's main duty was to teach needlework to the royal daughters. In a way, she was another babysitter for them. “Now I’m going to bed. Nyuta is combing my hair,” Grand Duchess Olga once wrote to her father. And most of all she loved Anastasia. In her letters, the Grand Duchess addressed the maid as "dear Nyuta." Anna did not have her own children: room girls were not supposed to marry. And when one day she was proposed, she chose to stay with the royal family.

In Tobolsk, all the prisoners were given identity cards, although there was no point in them: the guards knew everyone by sight

Having given up the opportunity to have a family of her own for the sake of the Romanovs, she also gave up her freedom for them. Nyuta went into exile with her owners.

“For the last two weeks, when I found out that they were going to send us somewhere, I lived nervously, slept little, worried about the unknown where they would send us,” she wrote in her diary. hard times. It was only on the road that we learned that we were "on our way to the far north," and as soon as you think - "Tobolsk", my heart shrinks."

Although Anna Demidova was not an aristocrat, she received hereditary nobility for her service and, living in the palace, of course, got used to comfort. Even on the steamer that carried the prisoners into exile, she wrote: “Hard sofas and nothing else, not even carafes for water in any cabin. Cabins are rather large rooms with two or one sofa and a very uncomfortable wash basin. wash your face a lot. But "it was especially hard that nothing was prepared for the Hosts," she added.

So the royal family was portrayed in Soviet times. Painting by artist Vladimir Pchelin "Surrender of the Romanovs to the Ural Council at Shartash Station" (1927)

In Tobolsk, then in Yekaterinburg, Anna took on many household details. “Children help Nyuta darn their stockings and bedding,” “Before dinner, Maria and Nyuta washed my hair,” Alexandra Feodorovna wrote in her diary.

Like her mistress, Anna remained a lady to the last. Alexandra in exile always dressed up and put on a hat when she went for a walk, even when these walks began to really look like prison ones. And Nyuta kept a black silk bag by the bed - she never parted with it, she kept the most necessary things there. During the investigation, the remains of her belongings were found - a white blouse embroidered with satin stitch, a white cambric handkerchief and a pink silk ribbon with gray tints. She probably made all her clothes herself.



Demidova was 42 years old, tall, plump, blonde, her face was reddish, her nose was straight and small, her eyes were blue.

- from the testimony of Evgeny Kobylinsky, head of the royal family in Tobolsk

He was not shot, and the entire female half of the royal family was taken to Germany. But the documents are still classified...

FOR me, this story began in November 1983. I then worked as a photojournalist for a French agency and was sent to the summit of heads of state and government in Venice. There I accidentally met an Italian colleague who, having learned that I was Russian, showed me a newspaper (I think it was La Repubblica) dated the day of our meeting. In the article, which the Italian drew my attention to, it was about the fact that in Rome, at a very old age, a certain nun, Sister Pascalina, died. I later learned that this woman held an important position in the Vatican hierarchy under Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), but that is not the point.

The Secret of the Iron Lady of the Vatican

THIS sister Pascalina, who earned the honorary nickname of the "iron lady" of the Vatican, before her death called a notary with two witnesses and in their presence dictated information that she did not want to take with her to the grave: one of the daughters of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II - Olga - was not was shot by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 16-17, 1918, and lived long life and was buried in a cemetery in the village of Marcotte in northern Italy.

After the summit, I went to this village with an Italian friend, who was both a driver and an interpreter for me. We found the cemetery and this grave. On the stove was written in German: "Olga Nikolaevna, eldest daughter Russian Tsar Nikolai Romanov" - and dates of life: "1895 - 1976". We talked with the cemetery watchman and his wife: they, like all the villagers, perfectly remembered Olga Nikolaevna, knew who she was, and were sure that the Russian The Grand Duchess is under the protection of the Vatican.

This strange find I was extremely interested, and I decided to look into all the circumstances of the execution myself. And in general, was he?

I have every reason to believe that there was no execution. On the night of July 16-17, all the Bolsheviks and their sympathizers left for railway to Perm. The next morning, leaflets were posted around Yekaterinburg with the message that the royal family had been taken away from the city - and so it was. Soon the whites occupied the city. Naturally, an investigative commission "on the case of the disappearance of Tsar Nicholas II, the Empress, the Tsarevich and the Grand Duchesses" was formed, which did not find any convincing traces of execution.

Investigator Sergeev in 1919 spoke in an interview with one American newspaper: "I do not think that everyone was executed here - both the tsar and his family. In my opinion, the empress, the prince and the grand duchesses were not executed in the Ipatiev house." This conclusion did not suit Admiral Kolchak, who by that time had already proclaimed himself "the supreme ruler of Russia." And really, why does the "supreme" need some kind of emperor? Kolchak ordered a second investigative team to be assembled, which got to the bottom of the fact that in September 1918 the Empress and the Grand Duchesses were kept in Perm. Only the third investigator, Nikolai Sokolov (conducted the case from February to May 1919), turned out to be more understanding and issued a well-known conclusion that the whole family was shot, the corpses were dismembered and burned at the stake. "The parts that did not succumb to the action of fire," wrote Sokolov, "were destroyed with the help of sulfuric acid." What, then, was buried in 1998 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral? Let me remind you that soon after the start of perestroika, some skeletons were found on the Piglet Log near Yekaterinburg. In 1998, they were solemnly reburied in the family tomb of the Romanovs, after numerous genetic examinations had been carried out before that. Moreover, the guarantor of the authenticity of the royal remains was the secular power of Russia in the person of President Boris Yeltsin. And here is the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the bones as the remains of the royal family.

But let's go back to the Civil War. According to my information, the royal family was divided in Perm. The path of the female part lay in Germany, while the men - Nikolai Romanov himself and Tsarevich Alexei - were left in Russia. Father and son were kept near Serpukhov for a long time at the former dacha of the merchant Konshin. Later, in the reports of the NKVD, this place was known as "Object No. 17". Most likely, the prince died in 1920 from hemophilia. I can't say anything about the fate of the last Russian emperor. Except for one thing: in the 30s, "Object No. 17" was twice visited by Stalin. Does this mean that in those years Nicholas II was still alive?

The men were held hostage

IN order to understand why such incredible events from the point of view of a person of the 21st century became possible and to find out who needed them, you will have to go back to 1918. Do you remember from the school history course about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk? Yes, March 3 in Brest-Litovsk between Soviet Russia on the one hand, and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey on the other, a peace treaty was concluded. Russia lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic States and part of Belarus. But it was not because of this that Lenin called the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk "humiliating" and "obscene." By the way, the full text of the treaty has not yet been published either in the East or in the West. I believe that because of the secret conditions in it. Probably, the Kaiser, who was a relative of Empress Maria Feodorovna, demanded that all the women of the royal family be transferred to Germany. The girls had no right to the Russian throne and, therefore, could not threaten the Bolsheviks in any way. The men remained hostages - as guarantors that german army will not stick to the east further than it is written in the peace treaty.

What happened next? How was the fate of women exported to the West? Was their silence a necessary condition for their immunity? Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers.

By the way

Romanovs and false Romanovs

AT DIFFERENT years more than a hundred "miraculously saved" Romanovs appeared in the world. Moreover, in some periods and in some countries there were so many of them that they even arranged meetings. The most famous false Anastasia is Anna Anderson, who declared herself the daughter of Nicholas II in 1920. Supreme Court Germany finally refused her this only after 50 years. The most recent "Anastasia" is the century-old Natalia Petrovna Bilikhodze, who continued to play this old play as far back as 2002!