page_title: Execution of the Romanov family
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Execution of the Romanov family / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Tombstones marking the burial of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in St. Catherine's Chapel.
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: Early the next morning, when rumors spread in Yekaterinburg about the disposal site, Yurovsky removed the bodies and hid them elsewhere (56.942222°N 60.473333°E). When the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way to the next chosen site, Yurovsky made new arrangements, and buried most of the acid-covered bodies in a pit sealed and concealed with rubble, covered over with railroad ties and then earth (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E) on Koptyaki Road, a cart track (subsequently abandoned) 19 kilometres (12 mi) north of Yekaterinburg.
  On the afternoon of 19 July, Filipp Goloshchyokin announced at the Opera House on Glavny Prospekt that "Nicholas the bloody" had been shot and his family taken to another place. Sverdlov granted permission for the local paper in Yekaterinburg to publish the "Execution of Nicholas, the Bloody Crowned Murderer – Shot without Bourgeois Formalities but in Accordance with our new democratic principles", along with the coda that "the wife and son of Nicholas Romanov have been sent to a safe place". An official announcement appeared in the national press, two days later. It reported that the monarch had been executed on the order of Uralispolkom under pressure posed by the approach of the Czechoslovaks.
  Over the course of 84 days after the Yekaterinburg murders, 27 more friends and relatives (14 Romanovs and 13 members of the imperial entourage and household) were murdered by the Bolsheviks: at Alapayevsk on 18 July, Perm on 4 September, and the Peter and Paul Fortress on 24 January 1919. Unlike the imperial family, the bodies at Alapayevsk and Perm were recovered by the White Army in October 1918 and May 1919 respectively. However, only the final resting places of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and her faithful companion Sister Varvara Yakovleva are known today, buried alongside each other in the Church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem.
  Although official Soviet accounts place the responsibility for the decision with the Uralispolkom, an entry in Leon Trotsky's diary reportedly suggested that the order had been given by Lenin himself. Trotsky wrote:
  My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Yekaterinburg. Talking to Sverdlov I asked in passing, "Oh yes and where is the Tsar?" "It's all over," he answered. "He has been shot." "And where is his family?" "And the family with him." "All of them?" I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. "All of them," replied Yakov Sverdlov. "What about it?" He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply. "And who made the decision?" I asked. "We decided it here. Ilyich [Lenin] believed that we shouldn't leave the Whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances."
  However, as of 2011, there has been no conclusive evidence that either Lenin or Sverdlov gave the order. V. N. Solovyov, the leader of the Investigative Committee of Russia's 1993 investigation on the shooting of the Romanov family, has concluded that there is no reliable document that indicates that either Lenin or Sverdlov were responsible. He declared:
  According to the presumption of innocence, no one can be held criminally liable without guilt being proven. In the criminal case, an unprecedented search for archival sources taking all available materials into account was conducted by authoritative experts, such as Sergey Mironenko, the director of the largest archive in the country, the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The study involved the main experts on the subject – historians and archivists. And I can confidently say that today there is no reliable document that would prove the initiative of Lenin and Sverdlov.
  — V. N. Solovyov
  In 1993, the report of Yakov Yurovsky from 1922 was published. According to the report, units of the Czechoslovak Legion were approaching Yekaterinburg. On 17 July 1918, Yakov and other Bolshevik jailers, fearing that the Legion would free Nicholas after conquering the town, murdered him and his family. The next day, Yakov departed for Moscow with a report to Sverdlov. As soon as the Czechoslovaks seized
caption: The final resting places of the Romanov family and their servants in St. Catherine's Chapel in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The names of Maria (third from right) and Alexei (far left) on the wall do not have a burial date inscribed at the bottom.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D300", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.0 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2009:10:23 13:37:39", "Image Artist": "DENNIS G. JARVIS", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "DENNIS G. JARVIS", "Image ExifOffset": "368", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1024", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1138", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7277", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/25", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:09:22 04:59:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:09:22 04:59:49", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "37/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "20", "EXIF SubSecTime": "17", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "17", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "17", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4338", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2923", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "992", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "30", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}