page_title: House of Romanov
section_title: Execution of Tsar and family
hierarchical_section_title: House of Romanov / Execution of Tsar and family
context_page_description: The House of Romanov was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917.
  The Romanovs achieved prominence as boyars of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and later the Tsardom of Russia under the reigning Rurik dynasty, which became extinct upon the death of Tsar Feodor I in 1598. The Time of Troubles was caused by the resulting succession crisis, where several pretenders and imposters fought for the crown during the Polish–Muscovite War. On 21 February 1613, Michael Romanov was elected Tsar of Russia by the Zemsky Sobor, establishing the Romanovs as Russia's second reigning dynasty. Michael's grandson Peter I established the Russian Empire in 1721, transforming the country into a great power through a series of wars and reforms. The direct male line of the Romanovs ended when Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762 leading the House of Holstein-Gottorp, a cadet branch of the German House of Oldenburg that reigned in Denmark, to ascend to the crown under Peter III. Officially known as the House of Romanov, descendants after Elizabeth are sometimes referred to as "Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov".
context_section_description: On the night of 17 July 1918, Bolshevik authorities acting on Yakov Sverdlov's orders in Moscow and led locally by Filip Goloschekin and Yakov Yurovsky, shot Nicholas II, his immediate family and four servants in the Ipatiev House's cellar.
  The family was roused from sleep around 1:30 a.m. and told that they were being moved to a newer, safer location.  They dressed quickly but informally.  They were then led from the house where they had been staying and taken across a courtyard and down some stairs, then through a number of corridors and small dark rooms, few of which were lit.  They reached a room at the end of one particular corridor that had a single electric light burning dimly.  They asked for and were brought two chairs for the youngest children to sit on. The family members were then left alone for several minutes.  Suddenly, a group of armed men led by Yurovsky entered the room.  Yurovsky read an announcement from the local Duma explaining that they must all be killed immediately.  Nicholas was utterly perplexed, and asked Yurovsky, "What?  What?"  Yurovsky eventually responded by saying, "This!" and shot Nicholas in the chest.
  Initially the gunmen shot at Nicholas, who immediately fell dead from multiple bullet wounds. Then the dark room filled with smoke and dust from the spray of bullets, and the gunmen shot blindly, often hitting the ceiling and walls, creating yet more dust.  Alexandra was soon shot in the head by military commissar Petar Ermakov, and killed, and some of the gunmen themselves became injured. It was not until after the room had been cleared of smoke that the shooters re-entered to find the  remaining Imperial family still alive and uninjured. Maria tried to escape through the doors at the rear of the room, which led to a storage area, but the doors were nailed shut. The noise as she rattled the doors attracted the attention of Ermakov. Some of the family were  shot in the head, but several of the others, including the young and frail Tsarevich, would not die either from multiple close-range bullet wounds or bayonet stabs. Finally, each was shot in the head. Even so, two of the girls were still alive 10 minutes later, and had to be bludgeoned with the butt of a rifle to finally be killed.  Later it was discovered that the bullets and bayonet stabs had been partially blocked by diamonds that had been sewn into the children's clothing. The bodies of the Romanovs were then hidden and moved several times before being interred in an unmarked pit where they remained until the summer of 1979 when amateur enthusiasts disinterred and re-buried some of them, and then decided to conceal the find until the fall of communism. In 1991 the grave site was excavated and the bodies were given a state funeral under the nascent democracy of post-Soviet Russia, and several years later DNA and other forensic evidence was used by Russian and international scientists to make genuine identifications.
  The Ipatiev House has the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, where Mikhail Romanov had been offered the Russian Crown in 1613. The large memorial church "on the blood" has been built on the spot where the Ipatiev House once stood.
  Nicholas II and his family were proclaimed passion-bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. In orthodoxy, a passion-bearer is a saint who was not killed because of his faith, like a martyr; but who died in faith at the hand of murderers.
caption: Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, (later Sverdlovsk) in 1928
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