The revolutionaries involved in the execution of the family of Nicholas II were punished by fate with the utmost cruelty.
The fact that the Civil War broke out in Russia in 1917 is also the fault of the last Russian emperor Nicholas II. But it so happened that of the 10 million victims of this war, he was the most famous victim.
On July 17, 1918, in the basement of the house of the engineer Ipatiev in Yekaterinburg, the last Russian emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Fedorovna, four grand duchesses: Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, Tsarevich Alexei and several people close to the royal family were shot.
Organizers and performers
During the Civil War in Russia, when blood was flowing like a river, the murder of the royal family in society was not perceived as a terrible atrocity. In the USSR, this crime was even presented as a just act of retribution, and the streets of cities were named after the regicides. And only in the last two decades the tragedy of this event became clear. No matter how bad the last Russian tsar was, neither he, nor his wife, nor, even more so, his children did not deserve such a terrible fate.
However, some higher power has long passed its verdict. It can be said without much exaggeration that the highest punishment fell on the heads of the regicides. Moreover, the curse fell not only on specific performers, but also on those who made the decision to eliminate the Romanovs.
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According to the generally accepted version, the decision was taken by the Ural authorities, but agreed with the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies Yakov Sverdlov. It is officially believed that the decision to shoot the royal family was made on July 14 at a meeting of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers' Deputies by the following comrades: Chairman of the Council of Deputies Alexander Beloborodov, member of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Committee of the RCP (b) Georgy Safarov, military commissar Golo Yekaterinshchekin Philip, supply commissar of the Uraloblsovet Pyotr Voikov, chairman of the regional Cheka Fedor Lukoyanov, member of the Council, commandant of the House of Special Purpose (Ipatiev House) Yakov Yurovsky and a number of others.
The plan for the murder of the Romanovs was developed by: Yurovsky, his assistant Grigory Nikulin, the Chekist Mikhail Medvedev (Kudrin) and a member of the executive committee of the Ural Soviet, the head of the Red Guard detachment of the Verkh-Isetsky plant, Pyotr Ermakov. These same people became the main characters directly in the execution of the Romanovs.
It is not easy to recover which of them shot at whom. But one gets the impression that the old revolutionary militant Pyotr Ermakov was especially zealous, who fired from three revolvers and finished off the wounded with a bayonet. Again, according to the generally accepted version, the sovereign-emperor was shot by Yakov Yurovsky.
It must be said that representatives of all revolutionary parties in the Middle Urals spoke out for the execution of the tsar - not only the Bolsheviks, but also the Social Revolutionaries and anarchists. There was only one against - Pavel Bykov, who insisted on the betrayal of Nikolai Romanov to the people's tribunal.
It is curious that at the same time, by that time, Bykov had almost more blood on his hands than other revolutionaries who were deciding the fate of the tsar. In October 1917, Bykov organized the shelling of the Winter Palace and participated in its assault, led the operation to suppress the uprising of the cadets of the Vladimir school.
However, his protest against regicide may have become an indulgence for all sins. Pavel Bykov lived a long and rather successful life.
Bullets as retribution
The fate of those who advocated the elimination of the Romanovs, on the contrary, were tragic. It is symbolic that most of them also died from a bullet.
The military commissar of Yekaterinburg Philip (Shaya Isaakovich) Goloshchekin played a key role in the decision to destroy the royal family. It was he who discussed this issue in Petrograd with Sverdlov, and on the basis of his report, a decision was made to shoot. At first, Goloshchekin's career was very successful, suffice it to say that for seven years he was a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), but this did not save him from execution. He was shot by the NKVD as a Trotskyist on October 28, 1941 near the village of Barbysh in the Kuibyshev region.
Alexander Beloborodov presided over the fateful meeting of the Executive Committee, where a resolution was adopted on the execution of Nicholas II and his family. In 1921 he was appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Felix Dzerzhinsky, and later he himself became People's Commissar. In the period from 1923 to 1927, he headed the NKVD of the RSFSR. Ruined his connection with the Trotskyist opposition. Beloborodov was shot on February 9, 1938. Also in 1938, his wife, Franziska Yablonskaya, was shot.
The editor-in-chief of the Uralsky Rabochy newspaper, Georgy Safarov, arrived in Russia from exile in 1917 with Lenin in a sealed carriage. In the Urals, he spoke louder than others for the execution of the Romanovs. After the Civil War, Safarov worked as secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, then was the chief editor of Leningradskaya Pravda. But his adherence to Zinoviev ruined him.
For this, in 1936, Safarov was sentenced to 5 years in the camps. One of those with whom he was serving time in a separate camp at Adzva said that after his arrest, Safarov's family had disappeared somewhere, and he suffered severely. In the camp he worked as a water carrier.
"Small in stature, in glasses, dressed in prisoner's rags, with a homemade whip in his hands, belted with a rope instead of a belt, silently endured grief." But when Safarov served his term, he did not find freedom. He was shot on July 16, 1942.
Petr Voikov also arrived in a sealed carriage from Germany to make a revolution in Russia. He not only took part in deciding the fate of the members of the royal family, but also actively engaged in the destruction of their remains. In 1924 he was appointed the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Poland and found his bullet in a foreign land.
On June 7, 1927, at the Varshavsky railway station, Voikov was shot dead by a student of the Vilna gymnasium Boris Koverda. This former Russian boy was also a revolutionary idealist terrorist. Only he set himself the goal of the struggle not against the autocracy, but against Bolshevism.
Fyodor Lukoyanov got off relatively easily - in 1919 he fell ill with a severe nervous breakdown, which pursued him all his life until his death in 1947.
Was it an accident or a curse?
Fate treated the perpetrators of the crime more leniently, probably believing that they were less guilty - they followed the order. Only a few people, who were in secondary roles, ended their days tragically, from which it can be concluded that they suffered for their other sins.
For example, Ermakov's assistant, the former Kronstadt sailor Stepan Vaganov, did not manage to leave Yekaterinburg before the arrival of the Kolchakites and hid in his cellar. There he was found by the relatives of the people he had killed and literally tore him to pieces.
Yakov Yurovsky
Ermakov, Medvedev (Kudrin), Nikulin and Yurovsky lived in high esteem to old age, speaking at meetings with stories about their "feat" of regicide. However, higher powers sometimes act in a very sophisticated way. In any case, it is very likely that the family of Yakov Yurovsky suffered a real curse.
During his lifetime, for Yakov, an ideological Bolshevik, the repression suffered the family of his daughter Rimma. My daughter was also a Bolshevik, from 1917 she headed the "Socialist Union of Working Youth" in the Urals, and then made a good career in the party line.
But in 1938 she was arrested with her husband and sent to re-education in the camps, where she spent about 20 years. In fact, the arrest of his daughter brought Yurovsky to the grave - his stomach ulcer worsened from the experiences. And the arrest in 1952 of his son Alexander, who at that time was a rear admiral, Yakov did not find. As he did not find the curse that fell on his grandchildren.
By a fatal coincidence, all of Yurovsky's grandchildren died tragically, and the girls mostly died in infancy.
One of the grandchildren, named Anatoly, was found dead in the car in the middle of the road, two fell from the roof of the shed, got stuck between the boards and suffocated, two more were burned down in a fire in the village. Maria's niece had 11 children, but only the eldest survived, whom she abandoned, and he was adopted by the family of the mine manager.
Ivan SMISLOV