In 1977, Andropov convinced Brezhnev that the Ipatiev House, where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were murdered by Bolshevik revolutionaries during the Russian Civil War, had become a site of pilgrimage for covert monarchists. With the Politburo's approval the house, deemed to be not of "sufficient historical significance", was demolished in September 1977, less than a year before the 60th anniversary of the murders.