Putting the Romanovs to Rest? Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Executions
• What Happened to the House Where the Romanovs Were Killed?
• Before the firing squad: How the Romanovs lived out their last days 100 years ago
• In Italy, fascist salute on display on anniversary of Mussolini’s execution
• Planning for the murders
• Contemporary Romanovs
• The Imperial family's stay and on-site execution

King George V and Czar Nicholas II were cousins and quite close, so when you hear the Romanovs exclaim that they think it’s “cousin George” coming to save them in Episode 6, it makes sense that the characters made that assumption. But the Windsors ultimately chose not to save the abdicated czar and his family for several reasons. The Washington Post reports that some historians believe it was due to tense international relations and alliances during World War I that made George V abandon his beloved cousin. Below are the descriptions of the house from the letters of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, as well as photographs and rare contemporary video footage of the last residence of the Romanov family.

Executions

Due to the fact that Ipatiev was away, his personal belongings were locked in a basement pantry next to the room in which the Imperial family were later shot. They lived for a time in regal—but closely guarded—comfort in Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. By the summer of 1917 they were moved to Western Siberia, into the safe confines of the Governor's Mansion in Tobolsk. After the Bolsheviks seized power from the provisional government in the fall of that year, things gradually deteriorated for the Romanovs, who were forced to part with longtime servants and give up certain luxuries like butter and coffee.

What Happened to the House Where the Romanovs Were Killed?

Medvedev suggests that the Romanovs’ proved willingness to attempt an escape was one of the reasons they were murdered. Along with the White enemy advance on Yekaterinburg, the Bolshevik decision to get rid of the Romanovs was arrived at. The Romanovs had already traveled a lot after the abdication of Nicholas II in 1917. The Interim government sent them to the city of Tobolsk in Siberia (1,400 miles east of Moscow) but after the Bolsheviks seized power and Civil war broke out in Russia, anti-Bolshevik White army forces threatened the region.

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Before the firing squad: How the Romanovs lived out their last days 100 years ago

Nikolai decided to emigrate, and sold the mansion to representatives of the White Army, and for a short time the mansion served as the headquarters of the Siberian Army, and representatives of the Russian government. Their stay in the Ural capital was cut short, after the city was recaptured by the Bolsheviks. A century after the brutal murders of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Alexandra, and their five children (Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei), the execution of the Russian imperial family continues to capture the popular imagination. In light of a new episode of The Crown focused on the Romanovs' relationship with the British royal family, the following excerpt from Helen Rappaport's new book, The Race to Save the Romanovs, details just what happened in the Romanovs' final hours of captivity.

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What happened in the basement of the House of Special Purpose on Voznesensky Prospekt, Ekaterinburg, in the early hours of July 17, 1918, was nothing less than ugly, crazed and botched murder. The corpses were then unceremoniously thrown into a Fiat truck and taken out to the Koptyaki Forest. But the supposed mine shaft that Yurovsky had selected for them to be dumped in turned out to be too shallow; local peasants would easily find the bodies and seek to preserve them as holy relics. And so, within hours, the mutilated corpses of the Romanov family, stripped of their clothes and the Tsaritsa’s jewels, which had been secreted in them, were hastily dug up. Yurovsky and his men then made a botched attempt to incinerate the bodies of Maria and Alexey. Sixty yards away, the rest of the family were hastily reburied in a shallow grave along with their servants.

Planning for the murders

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, widow of Nicholas II's uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir, and her children the Grand Dukes Kiril, Boris and Andrei, and Kiril’s wife Victoria Melita and children, also managed to flee Russia. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a cousin of Nicholas II, had been exiled to the Caucasus in 1916 for his part in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, and managed to escape Russia. His only son to survive into adulthood, Tsarevich Alexei, did not support Peter's modernization of Russia. He had previously been arrested and died in prison shortly thereafter. Near the end of his life, Peter managed to alter the succession tradition of male heirs, allowing him to choose his heir.

Contemporary Romanovs

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Burning the corpses proved to be difficult as it took significant time, so the group resorted to disfiguring the pair with acid. In a rush, the Bolsheviks threw nine additional bodies into a grave and covered them with acid as well. For instance, the guards painted the walls in the bathroom with “cynical pictures” and texts about the relationship between the ex-Empress Alexandra and her former favorite Grigory Rasputin (who had been murdered in 1916). At night, the guards used to sing vulgar songs or something about “death to the monarchy” under the prisoners’ windows. Their brother Alexei would have been 14 within two weeks of his murder.[citation needed] Alexei's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana were 22 and 21 years old at the time of the murder respectively. The bones were found using metal detectors and metal rods as probes.

The Imperial family's stay and on-site execution

The question of whether Nicholas should be canonized now confronts religious leaders here with the choice of making the humiliating admission that they were under the Soviet regime’s thumb for those seven decades or remaining at odds with Orthodox brethren abroad. Lyudmilla Koryakova, an archeology professor at Yekaterinburg University who supervised the exhumation in 1991, expresses disgust over the events that have ensued since her team of diggers descended on the grave site along Koptyaki Road north of Yekaterinburg. But Moscow’s powerful mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov--ever mindful of the value of historical controversy in luring tourists--has called for the Romanovs’ burial to take place in his city.

Most historians agree that Boris Yeltsin was keen to improving his political position by transferring to Moscow and took advantage of an opportunity given to him. As previously noted in his memoirs, Yeltsin claimed that the house was destroyed in one night, but in reality it took two days to raze the building to the ground. The destruction of the mansion began on 22nd September 1977, that is, more than two years after the decision of the Politburo. Prior to the demolition of the Ipatiev House, local historians removed many valuable interior elements, including a fireplace, door handles, tiles, stucco molding from walls, iron bars from windows, etc.

In the show, there is a flashback to Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather King George V being asked by an aide whether they want to give asylum to the Romanov family, who had been kidnapped during the revolution in Russia. Three days after the murders, Yurovsky personally reported to Lenin on the events of that night and was rewarded with an appointment to the Moscow City Cheka. He held a succession of key economic and party posts, dying in the Kremlin Hospital in 1938 aged 60.

They were discovered by a historian and a geologist nearly 20 years ago, but their location was kept secret until the Communists’ grip on power began slipping at the end of the last decade. An official party retrieved the remains in 1991, and they were warehoused at the Yekaterinburg city morgue until Wednesday morning. By air, by hearse and by shoulder, the remains of Russia’s last czar and his family ended their tortured 20th century journey home to this imperial capital Thursday for a belated burial on today’s 80th anniversary of the Romanovs’ deaths before a Bolshevik firing squad.