17.7.1918 Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II and his family

In mid-July 1918, the Bolsheviks executed the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, who died first. Only then his wife and five children. The massacre ended in chaotic gunfire until the last victims fell.

The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II of the Romanov family, married Alice Hessen of Germany, who converted to Orthodoxy after her marriage and took the name Alexandra. The Tsar ascended the throne after the death of his father in 1894. He was not interested in reforming the country, so strikes and riots broke out constantly, and the conservative management of the state hampered the development of the economy and the training of the army.

The war with Japan and later against Germany and Austria-Hungary were a fiasco for the Russian armed forces. A coup tore down his government and set up the parliamentary regime of Alexander Kerensky in February 1917. The tsarist family was deported to Ekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks triumphed over the new cabinet in November and on the orders of Lenin's close associate Sverdlov, the tsarist family was assassinated.

Around midnight on the 16th to the 17th. July 16th, Yakov Jurovsky, the head of the house for a special purpose, ordered the Romanovs' physician, Dr. Eugene Botkin, to awaken the sleeping family and askthem to dress under the pretext that the family would be moved to a safer place because of the impending chaos in Ekaterinburg. "The Romanovs were moved to a 6x5 metre basement room and the prisoners were then told to wait there until thea truck was brought to the house," Karel Renc describes the events in his book The Turbulent Years 1912-1918.

However, a few minutes later a firing squad of the secret police entered the room. Jurovsky read the order of the Executive Committee: "Nikolai (Russian form of the name Nicholas) Alexandrovich, since your relatives continue to attack Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals has decided to execute you.

Nicholas II looked at his family, turned around and said, "What? "What? Jurovsky quickly repeated the order, pointed his pistol at the Tsar and fired. Nicholas fell dead. Jurovsky then fired at Tsarevich Alexei. The other executioners then began firing chaotically until all the intended victims fell to the ground.

"The door was opened to disperse the smoke. Some of the survivors were still bayoneted because the gunfire could be heard outside. The last to die were Tatiana, Anastasia and Maria, who were wearing over a kilo of diamonds sewn into their clothes, thus protecting them to some extent from the bullets," Renc writes.

Nicholas II was executed, and his wife Alexandra, their five children (Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei) and all those who chose to go into exile with them, such as the physician Eugene Botkin, the maid Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitinov. In the 1990s, the Russian Orthodox Church declared Nicholas II a saint.

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