page_title: Execution of the Romanov family
section_title: The House of Special Purpose
hierarchical_section_title: Execution of the Romanov family / Background / The House of Special Purpose
caption_attribution_description: English: Ipatiev House with the inner fence Русский: Внутренний (малый) забор, закрывавший дом Ипатьева в момент заключения царской семьи
context_page_description: The Russian Imperial Romanov family were shot and bayoneted to death by Communist revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Also killed that night were retainers who had accompanied them: notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov. The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped and mutilated.
  In 1919 the White Army commissioned an investigation but were unable to find the unmarked gravesite. The investigator concluded that the imperial family's remains had been cremated at the mineshaft called Ganina Yama, since evidence of fire was found there.
  In 1979 and 2007, the remains of the bodies were found in two unmarked graves in a field called Porosenkov Log. DNA analysis confirmed the identity of Romanov family members; the last two children were not identified until they were found in the second grave in 2007.
  According to the official state version of the USSR, former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, was executed by firing squad, by order of the Ural Regional Soviet, due to the threat of the city being occupied by Whites.
context_section_description: The imperial family was kept in strict isolation at the Ipatiev House. They were strictly forbidden to speak any language other than Russian. They were not permitted access to their luggage, which was stored in an outhouse in the interior courtyard. Their Brownie cameras and photographic equipment were confiscated. The servants were ordered to address the Romanovs only by their names and patronymics. The family was subjected to regular searches of their belongings, confiscation of their money for "safekeeping by the Ural Regional Soviet's treasurer", and attempts to remove Alexandra's and her daughters' gold bracelets from their wrists. The house was surrounded by a 4 metre (14 ft) high, double palisade that obscured the view of the streets from the house. The initial fence enclosed the garden along Voznesensky Lane. On 5 June a second palisade was erected, higher and longer than the first, which completely enclosed the property. The second palisade was constructed after it was learned that passersby could see Nicholas's legs when he used the double swing in the garden.
  The windows in all the family's rooms were sealed shut and covered with newspapers (later painted with whitewash on 15 May). The family's only source of ventilation was a fortochka in the grand duchesses' bedroom, but peeking out of it was strictly forbidden; in May a sentry fired a shot at Anastasia when she looked out. After Romanov made repeated requests, one of the two windows in the tsar and tsarina's corner bedroom was unsealed on 23 June 1918. The guards were ordered to increase their surveillance accordingly, and the prisoners were warned not to look out the window or attempt to signal anyone outside, on pain of being shot. From this window, they could see only the spire of the Voznesensky Cathedral located across the road from the house.  An iron grille was installed on 11 July, after Alexandra had ignored repeated warnings from the commandant, Yakov Yurovsky, not to stand too close to the open window.
  The guard commandant and his senior aides had complete access at any time to all rooms occupied by the family. The prisoners were required to ring a bell each time they wished to leave their rooms to use the bathroom and lavatory on the landing. Strict rationing of the water supply was enforced on the prisoners after the guards complained that it regularly ran out. Recreation was allowed only twice daily in the garden, for half an hour morning and afternoon. The prisoners were ordered not to engage in conversation with any of the guards. Rations were mostly tea and black bread for breakfast, and cutlets or soup with meat for lunch; the prisoners were informed that "they were no longer permitted to live like tsars". In mid-June, nuns from the Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery also brought the family food on a daily basis, most of which the captors took when it arrived. The family was not allowed visitors or to receive and send letters. Princess Helen of Serbia visited the house in June but was refused entry at gunpoint by the guards, while Dr Vladimir Derevenko's regular visits to treat Alexei were curtailed when Yurovsky became commandant. No excursions to Divine Liturgy at the nearby church were permitted. In early June, the family no longer received their daily newspapers.
  To maintain a sense of normality, the Bolsheviks lied to the Romanovs on 13 July 1918 that two of their loyal servants, Klementy Nagorny (Alexei's sailor nanny) and Ivan Sednev (OTMA's footman; Leonid Sednev's uncle), "had been sent out of this government" (i.e. out of the jurisdiction of Yekaterinburg and Perm province). In fact, both men were already dead: after the Bolsheviks had removed them from the Ipatiev House in May, they had been shot by the Cheka with a group of other hostages on 6 July, in reprisal for the death of Ivan Malyshev, a local Bolshevik killed by the Whites. On 14 July, a priest and deacon conducted a liturgy for the Romanovs. The following morning, four housemaids were hired to wash the floors of the Popov House and Ipatiev House; they were the last civilians to
caption: Ipatiev House, with the palisade erected just before Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria arrived on 30 April 1918. On the top left of the house is a attic dormer window where a Maxim gun was positioned. Directly below it was the tsar and tsarina's bedroom.[48]
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