It would seem difficult to find new evidence of the terrible events that occurred on the night of July 16-17, 1918. Even people far from the ideas of monarchism remember that this night was fatal for the royal family of the Romanovs. That night, the abdicated Nicholas II, the former Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and their children - 14-year-old Alexei, Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia were shot.
Their fate was shared by the doctor E. S. Botkin, the maid A. Demidova, the cook Kharitonov and the footman. But from time to time there are witnesses who, after long years of silence, report new details of the murder of the royal family.
Many books have been written about the execution of the royal family of the Romanovs. To this day, the debate about whether the murder of the Romanovs was planned in advance and whether it was part of Lenin's plans does not cease. And in our time there are people who believe that at least the children of Nicholas II were able to escape from the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg.
The accusation of murder of the Romanov royal family was an excellent trump card against the Bolsheviks, giving grounds to accuse them of inhumanity. Is this why most of the documents and testimonies that tell about the last days of the Romanovs appeared and continues to appear precisely in Western countries? But some researchers believe that the crime of which the Bolshevik Russia was accused was not committed at all …
In the investigation into the circumstances of the execution of the Romanovs, there were many secrets from the very beginning. In relatively hot pursuit, two investigators were engaged in it. The first investigation began a week after the alleged murder. The investigator concluded that the emperor was in fact executed on the night of July 16-17, but the former queen, her son and four daughters were spared. At the beginning of 1919, a new investigation was carried out. It was headed by Nikolai Sokolov. Was he able to find undeniable evidence that the entire Romanov family was killed in Yekaterinburg? Hard to say…
While examining the mine, where the bodies of the royal family were dumped, he found several things that, for some reason, did not catch the eye of his predecessor: a miniature pin that the prince used as a fishing hook, precious stones that were sewn into the belts of the great princesses, and the skeleton of a tiny dog, probably the darling of Princess Tatiana. If we recall the circumstances of the death of the royal family, it is difficult to imagine that the dog's corpse was also transported from place to place in order to hide … Falcons did not find any human remains, except for several fragments of bones and a severed finger of a middle-aged woman, presumably the empress.
1919 - Sokolov fled abroad, to Europe. But the results of his investigation were published only in 1924. Quite a long time, especially given the many emigrants who were interested in the fate of the Romanovs. According to Sokolov, all the Romanovs were killed on the fatal night. True, he was not the first to suggest that the empress and the children could not escape. Back in 1921, this version was published by the chairman of the Yekaterinburg Council, Pavel Bykov. It would seem that one could forget about the hopes that any of the Romanovs survived. But both in Europe and in Russia numerous impostors and impostors constantly appeared who declared themselves the children of the emperor. So there were doubts all the same?
The first argument of the supporters of the revision of the version of the death of the entire Romanov family was the announcement of the Bolsheviks about the execution of Nicholas II, which was made on July 19. It said that only the Tsar was executed, and Alexandra Feodorovna and her children were sent to a safe place. The second is that it was more profitable for the Bolsheviks at that time to exchange Alexandra Fyodorovna for political prisoners held in German captivity. There were rumors about negotiations on this topic. Sir Charles Eliot, the British consul in Siberia, visited Yekaterinburg shortly after the emperor's death. He met with the first investigator in the Romanov case, after which he informed his superiors that, in his opinion, the former queen and her children had left Yekaterinburg by train on July 17.
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At almost the same time, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, Alexandra's brother, allegedly informed his second sister, the Marquis of Milford Haven, that Alexandra was safe. Of course, he could simply console his sister, to whom rumors of the massacre of the Romanovs could not help but reach. If Alexandra and her children were actually exchanged for political prisoners (Germany would willingly take this step in order to save her princess), all the newspapers of both the Old and New World would trumpet about this. This would mean that the dynasty, connected by blood ties with many of the oldest monarchies in Europe, did not end. But no articles followed, because the version that the entire royal family was killed was recognized as official.
In the early 1970s, British journalists Anthony Summers and Tom Menschld got acquainted with the official documents of the Sokolov investigation. And we found many inaccuracies and shortcomings in them, which cast doubt on this version. First, an encrypted telegram about the execution of the entire royal family, sent to Moscow on July 17, appeared in the case only in January 1919, after the first investigator was removed. Secondly, the bodies have not yet been found. And it was not entirely correct to judge the death of the empress by the only fragment of the body - the severed finger.
1988 - it would seem that irrefutable proof of the death of the emperor, his wife and children appeared. Former Interior Ministry investigator, screenwriter Geliy Ryabov, received a secret report from Yakov Yurovsky's son (one of the main participants in the execution). It contained detailed information about where the remains of members of the royal family were hidden. Ryabov began his search. He was able to find greenish-black bones with burn marks left by acid. 1988 - he published a report on his find. 1991, July - Russian archaeologists-professionals came to the place where the remains, presumably belonging to the Romanovs, were found.
9 skeletons were recovered from the ground. 4 of them belonged to Nikolai's servants and their family doctor. Another 5 - to the king, his wife and children. It was not easy to establish the identity of the remains. First, the skulls were compared with surviving photographs of members of the imperial family. One of them was identified as the skull of the emperor. Later, a comparative analysis of DNA prints was carried out. This required the blood of a person who was related to the deceased. The blood sample was provided by the British Prince Philip. His own maternal grandmother was the sister of the empress's grandmother.
The result of the analysis showed a complete coincidence of DNA in four skeletons, which gave grounds to officially recognize the remains of Alexandra and her three daughters in them. The bodies of the Tsarevich and Anastasia were not found. On this occasion, two hypotheses were put forward: either two descendants of the Romanov family still managed to stay alive, or their bodies were burned. It seems that Sokolov was still right, and his report turned out to be not a provocation, but a real coverage of the facts …
1998 - the remains of the Romanov family were transferred with honors to St. Petersburg and buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. True, immediately there were skeptics who were sure that the remains of completely different people were in the cathedral.
2006 - performed another DNA analysis. This time, the samples of skeletons found in the Urals were compared with fragments of the relics of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. A series of studies was carried out by L. Zhivotovsky, Doctor of Science, an employee of the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His American colleagues helped him. The results of this analysis came as a complete surprise: the DNA of Elizabeth and the alleged empress did not match. The first thought that came to the minds of the researchers was that the relics stored in the cathedral, in fact, did not belong to Elizabeth, but to someone else. However, this version had to be ruled out: Elizabeth's body was found in a mine near Alapaevsk in the fall of 1918, she was identified by people who were closely acquainted with her, including the confessor of the Grand Duchess Father Seraphim.
This priest subsequently accompanied the coffin with the body of his spiritual daughter to Jerusalem and would not have allowed any substitution. This meant that, as a last resort, one body no longer belonged to members of the Romanov family. Later, doubts arose about the identity of the remaining remains. On the skull, which was previously identified as the skull of the emperor, there was no callus, which could not disappear even after so many years after death. This mark appeared on the skull of Nicholas II after an attempt on his life in Japan. In the Yurovsky protocol it was said that the tsar was killed with a point-blank shot, while the executioner shot in the head. Even taking into account the imperfection of the weapon, at least one bullet hole must have remained in the skull. However, it has no inlets or outlets.
It is possible that the 1993 reports were fake. Need to find the remains of the royal family? Please, here they are. To conduct an examination to prove their authenticity? Here is the result of the examination! In the 1990s, there were all the conditions for myth-making. It is not for nothing that the Russian Orthodox Church was so cautious, not wanting to recognize the discovered bones and rank the emperor and his family among the martyrs …
Again, talk began that the Romanovs were not killed, but hidden in order to be used in some political game in the future. Could Nikolai live in the Soviet Union under an assumed name with his family? On the one hand, this option cannot be ruled out. The country is huge, there are many corners in it, in which no one would recognize Nikolai. The Romanov family could also be accommodated in some kind of shelter, where they would be completely isolated from contacts with the outside world, which means they are not dangerous.
On the other hand, even if the remains found near Yekaterinburg are the result of falsification, this does not mean at all that there was no execution. They have been able to destroy the bodies of dead enemies and scatter their ashes since time immemorial. To burn a human body, you need 300-400 kg of wood - in India every day thousands of the dead are buried by the method of burning. So would the killers, who had an unlimited supply of firewood and a fair amount of acid, not be able to hide all traces? Relatively not so long ago, in the fall of 2010, during work in the vicinity of the Old Koptyakovskaya road in the Sverdlovsk region. found the places where the killers hid acid jugs. If there was no execution, where did they come from in the Ural wilderness?
Attempts to restore the events that preceded the execution were carried out several times. As you know, after the abdication, the royal family was settled in the Alexander Palace, in August they were transported to Tobolsk, and later to Yekaterinburg, to the infamous Ipatiev House.
Aviation engineer Pyotr Duz in the fall of 1941 was sent to Sverdlovsk. One of his duties in the rear was the publication of textbooks and manuals to supply the country's military universities. Getting acquainted with the property of the publishing house, Duz ended up in the Ipatiev House, in which several nuns and two elderly women archivists then lived. While examining the premises, Douz, accompanied by one of the women, went down to the basement and noticed the strange grooves on the ceiling, which ended in deep recesses …
At work, Peter often visited the Ipatius House. As you can see, the elderly employees felt trust in him, because one evening they showed him a small closet, in which a white glove, a lady's fan, a ring, several buttons of different sizes lay right on the wall, on rusty nails … On the chair was a small Bible in French and a couple of old-bound books. According to one of the women, all these things once belonged to members of the royal family.
She also talked about the last days of the life of the Romanovs, which, in her words, were unbearable. The Chekists who guarded the prisoners behaved incredibly rudely. All the windows in the house were boarded up. The Chekists explained that these measures were taken for security reasons, but the interlocutor Duzya was convinced that this was one of thousands of ways to humiliate the "ex." It should be noted that the Chekists had reasons for concern. According to the recollections of the archivist, every morning (!) The Ipatiev House was besieged by local residents and monks who tried to convey notes to the tsar and his relatives, offered to help with chores around the house.
Of course, this does not justify the behavior of the Chekists, but any intelligence officer charged with protecting an important person is simply obliged to limit his contacts with the outside world. But the behavior of the guards was not limited only to “excluding” sympathizers from the members of the Romanov family. Many of their antics were downright outrageous. They found particular pleasure in shocking Nikolai's daughters. They wrote obscene words on the fence and the outhouse located in the courtyard, tried to watch the girls in the dark corridors. No one has yet mentioned such details. Therefore, Duz listened attentively to the story of the interlocutor. She also reported a lot about the last minutes of the life of the imperial family.
The Romanovs were ordered to go down to the basement. The emperor asked for a chair for his wife. Then one of the guards left the room, and Yurovsky took out a revolver and began to line everyone up in one line. Most versions say that the executioners fired volleys. But the inhabitants of the Ipatiev house recalled that the shots were chaotic.
Nicholas was killed immediately. But his wife and princesses were destined for a more difficult death. The fact is that diamonds were sewn into their corsets. In some places, they were arranged in several layers. Bullets ricocheted off this layer and went into the ceiling. The execution dragged on. When the Grand Duchesses were already lying on the floor, they were considered dead. But when one of them began to be lifted in order to load the body into the car, the princess groaned and stirred. Therefore, the Chekists began to finish off her and her sisters with bayonets.
After the execution, no one was allowed into the Ipatiev House for several days - apparently, attempts to destroy the bodies took a lot of time. A week later, the Chekists allowed several nuns to enter the house - it was necessary to restore order in the premises. Among them was the interlocutor Dusya. According to him, she recalled with horror the picture that had opened in the basement of the Ipatiev house. The walls were full of bullet holes, and the floor and walls in the room where the execution was carried out were covered in blood.
Subsequently, experts from the Main State Center for Forensic Medical and Forensic Examinations of the Russian Ministry of Defense reconstructed the picture of the shooting to the nearest minute and to the millimeter. With the help of a computer, relying on the testimonies of Grigory Nikulin and Anatoly Yakimov, they established where and at what moment the executioners and their victims were. Computer reconstruction showed that the Empress and the Grand Duchesses tried to protect Nicholas from bullets.
Ballistic examination established many details: from what weapon members of the imperial family were eliminated, how many shots were fired approximately. The security officers needed to pull the trigger at least 30 times …
Every year the chances of discovering the real remains of the royal Romanov family (if the Yekaterinburg skeletons are recognized as a fake) are fading. This means that the hope of ever finding an exact answer to the questions is melting: who died in the basement of the Ipatiev House, did any of the Romanovs manage to escape and what was the further fate of the heirs to the Russian throne …
A. Rudycheva