Romanov's death. Execution of the Romanov royal family

The murder of the Romanov family gave rise to many rumors and conjectures, and we will try to figure out who ordered the murder of the Tsar.

Version one "Secret Directive"

One of the versions, which is often and very unanimously preferred by Western scientists, is that all the Romanovs were destroyed in accordance with some “secret directive” received from the government in Moscow.

It was this version that investigator Sokolov adhered to, setting it out in his book, filled with various documents, about the murder of the royal family. The same point of view is expressed by two other authors who personally took part in the investigation in 1919: General Dieterichs, who received instructions to “monitor” the progress of the investigation, and London Times correspondent Robert Wilton.

The books they wrote are the most important sources for understanding the dynamics of developments, but - like Sokolov’s book - they are distinguished by a certain bias: Dieterichs and Wilton strive at any cost to prove that the Bolsheviks who operated in Russia were monsters and criminals, but just pawns in the hands of “non-Russians.” "elements, that is, a handful of Jews.

In some right-wing circles of the white movement - namely, the authors we mentioned adjoined them - anti-Semitic sentiments manifested themselves at that time in extreme forms: insisting on the existence of a conspiracy of the “Judeo-Masonic” elite, they explained by this all the events that took place, from the revolution to the murder of the Romanovs, blaming the crimes solely on the Jews.

We know practically nothing about a possible “secret directive” coming from Moscow, but we are well aware of the intentions and movements of various members of the Urals Council.

The Kremlin continued to evade making any concrete decision regarding the fate of the imperial family. Perhaps, at first, the Moscow leadership was thinking about secret negotiations with Germany and intended to use the former tsar as their trump card. But then, once again, the principle of “proletarian justice” prevailed: they had to be judged in a show open trial and thereby demonstrate to the people and the whole world the grandiose meaning of the revolution.

Trotsky, filled with romantic fanaticism, saw himself as a public prosecutor and dreamed of experiencing moments worthy of the significance of the Great French Revolution. Sverdlov was instructed to deal with this issue, and the Urals Council was supposed to prepare the process itself.

However, Moscow was too far from Yekaterinburg and could not fully assess the situation in the Urals, which was rapidly escalating: the White Cossacks and White Czechs successfully and quickly advanced towards Yekaterinburg, and the Red Army soldiers fled without offering resistance.

The situation was becoming critical, and it even seemed that the revolution could hardly be saved; in this difficult situation, when Soviet power could fall from minute to minute, the very idea of ​​holding a show trial seemed anachronistic and unrealistic.

There is evidence that the Presidium of the Urals Council and the regional Cheka discussed with the leadership of the “center” the issue of the fate of the Romanovs, and precisely in connection with the complicated situation.

In addition, it is known that at the end of June 1918, the military commissar of the Ural region and member of the presidium of the Urals Council, Philip Goloshchekin, went to Moscow to decide the fate of the imperial family. We do not know exactly how these meetings with government representatives ended: we only know that Goloshchekin was received at the house of Sverdlov, his great friend, and that he returned to Yekaterinburg on July 14, two days before the fateful night.

The only source that speaks of the existence of a “secret directive” from Moscow is Trotsky’s diary, in which the former People’s Commissar claims that he learned about the execution of the Romanovs only in August 1918 and that Sverdlov told him about it.

However, the significance of this evidence is not too great, since we know another statement by the same Trotsky. The fact is that in the thirties, the memoirs of a certain Besedovsky, a former Soviet diplomat who fled to the West, were published in Paris. An interesting detail: Besedovsky worked together with the Soviet ambassador in Warsaw, Pyotr Voikov, an “old Bolshevik” who had a dizzying career.

This was the same Voikov who, while still commissar of food for the Ural region, took out sulfuric acid to pour it over the corpses of the Romanovs. Having become an ambassador, he himself would die a violent death on the platform of the Warsaw station: on June 7, 1927, Voikova was shot with seven shots from a pistol by a nineteen-year-old student and “Russian patriot” Boris Koverda, who decided to avenge the Romanovs.

But let's return to Trotsky and Besedovsky. The memoirs of the former diplomat contain a story - allegedly written down from Voikov's words - about the murder in the Ipatiev House. Among other numerous fictions, the book contains one absolutely incredible one: Stalin turns out to be a direct participant in the bloody massacre.

Subsequently, Besedovsky will become famous precisely as the author of fictional stories; to the accusations that fell from all sides, he replied that no one was interested in the truth and that his main goal was to lead the reader by the nose. Unfortunately, already in exile, blinded by hatred of Stalin, he believed the author of the memoirs and noted the following: “According to Besedovsky, the regicide was the work of Stalin...”

There is another piece of evidence that can be considered confirmation that the decision to execute the entire imperial family was made “outside” Yekaterinburg. We are talking again about Yurovsky’s “Note”, which talks about the order to execute the Romanovs.

We should not forget that the “Note” was compiled in 1920, two years after the bloody events, and that in some places Yurovsky’s memory fails: for example, he confuses the cook’s surname, calling him Tikhomirov, not Kharitonov, and also forgets that Demidova was a maid, not a maid of honor.

You can put forward another hypothesis, more plausible, and try to explain some not entirely clear passages in the “Note” as follows: these short memoirs were intended for the historian Pokrovsky and, probably, with the first phrase the former commandant wanted to minimize the responsibility of the Urals Council and, accordingly, his own own. The fact is that by 1920, both the goals of the struggle and the political situation itself had changed dramatically.

In his other memoirs, dedicated to the execution of the royal family and still unpublished (they were written in 1934), he no longer talks about the telegram, and Pokrovsky, touching on this topic, mentions only a certain “telephonogram”.

Now let’s look at the second version, which perhaps looks more plausible and appealed more to Soviet historians, since it relieved the top party leaders of all responsibility.

According to this version, the decision to execute the Romanovs was made by members of the Urals Council, and completely independently, without even applying for sanction to the central government. Ekaterinburg politicians “had” to take such extreme measures due to the fact that the Whites were rapidly advancing and it was impossible to leave the former sovereign to the enemy: to use the terminology of that time, Nicholas II could become a “living banner of the counter-revolution.”

There is no information - or it has not yet been published - that the Urals Council sent a message to the Kremlin about its decision before the execution.

The Urals Council clearly wanted to hide the truth from the Moscow leaders and, in connection with this, gave two false information of paramount importance: on the one hand, it was claimed that the family of Nicholas II was “evacuated to a safe place” and, moreover, the Council allegedly had documents confirming the existence of a White Guard conspiracy.

As to the first statement, there is no doubt that it was a shameful lie; but the second statement also turned out to be a hoax: indeed, documents related to some major White Guard conspiracy could not exist, since there were not even individuals capable of organizing and carrying out such a kidnapping. And the monarchists themselves considered it impossible and undesirable to restore autocracy with Nicholas II as sovereign: the former tsar was no longer interested in anyone and, with general indifference, he walked towards his tragic death.

Third version: messages “via direct wire”

In 1928, a certain Vorobyov, editor of the Ural Worker newspaper, wrote his memoirs. Ten years have passed since the execution of the Romanovs, and - no matter how creepy what I’m about to say may sound - this date was considered as an “anniversary”: many works were devoted to this topic, and their authors considered it their duty to boast of direct participation in the murder.

Vorobyov was also a member of the presidium of the executive committee of the Urals Council, and thanks to his memoirs - although there is nothing sensational in them for us - one can imagine how communication took place “via direct wire” between Yekaterinburg and the capital: the leaders of the Urals Council dictated the text to the telegraph operator, and in Moscow Sverdlov I personally tore it off and read the tape. It follows that Yekaterinburg leaders had the opportunity to contact the “center” at any time. So, the first phrase of Yurovsky’s “Notes” - “On July 16, a telegram was received from Perm ...” - is inaccurate.

At 21:00 on July 17, 1918, the Urals Council sent a second message to Moscow, but this time a very ordinary telegram. There was, however, something special in it: only the recipient’s address and the sender’s signature were written in letters, and the text itself was a set of numbers. Obviously, disorder and negligence have always been constant companions of the Soviet bureaucracy, which was just being formed at that time, and even more so in an atmosphere of hasty evacuation: leaving the city, they forgot many valuable documents at the Yekaterinburg telegraph office. Among them was a copy of that same telegram, and it, of course, ended up in the hands of the whites.

This document came to Sokolov along with the investigation materials and, as he writes in his book, immediately attracted his attention, took up a lot of his time and caused a lot of trouble. While still in Siberia, the investigator tried in vain to decipher the text, but he succeeded only in September 1920, when he was already living in the West. The telegram was addressed to the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars Gorbunov and signed by the Chairman of the Urals Council Beloborodov. Below we present it in full:

"Moscow. Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars Gorbunov with a reverse check. Tell Sverdlov that the whole family suffered the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will die during the evacuation. Beloborodov."

Until now, this telegram has provided one of the main evidence that all members of the imperial family were killed; therefore, it is not surprising that its authenticity was often questioned, moreover by those authors who willingly fell for fantastic versions about one or another of the Romanovs who allegedly managed to avoid a tragic fate. There are no serious reasons to doubt the authenticity of this telegram, especially if it is compared with other similar documents.

Sokolov used Beloborodov's message to show the sophisticated deceit of all Bolshevik leaders; he believed that the deciphered text confirmed the existence of a preliminary agreement between the Yekaterinburg leaders and the “center.” Probably, the investigator was not aware of the first report transmitted “via direct wire,” and in the Russian version of his book the text of this document is missing.

Let us abstract, however, from Sokolov’s personal point of view; we have two pieces of information transmitted nine hours apart, with the true state of affairs only revealed at the last moment. Giving preference to the version according to which the decision to execute the Romanovs was made by the Urals Council, we can conclude that, by not immediately reporting everything that happened, the Yekaterinburg leaders wanted to soften a possibly negative reaction from Moscow.

Two pieces of evidence can be cited to support this version. The first belongs to Nikulin, deputy commandant of the Ipatiev House (that is, Yurovsky) and his active assistant during the execution of the Romanovs. Nikulin also felt the need to write his memoirs, clearly considering himself - like his other “colleagues” - an important historical figure; in his memoirs, he openly states that the decision to destroy the entire royal family was made by the Urals Council, completely independently and “at your own peril and risk.”

The second evidence belongs to Vorobyov, already familiar to us. In a book of memoirs, a former member of the presidium of the executive committee of the Urals Council says the following:

“...When it became obvious that we could not hold Yekaterinburg, the question of the fate of the royal family was raised head on. There was nowhere to take the former tsar, and it was far from safe to take him. And at one of the meetings of the Regional Council, we decided to shoot the Romanovs, without waiting for their trial.”

Obeying the principle of “class hatred,” people should not have felt the slightest pity towards Nicholas II “Bloody” and utter a word about those who shared his terrible fate with him.

Version analysis

And now the following completely logical question arises: was it within the competence of the Urals Council to independently, without even turning to the central government for sanction, make a decision on the execution of the Romanovs, thus taking upon itself all political responsibility for what they had done?

The first circumstance that should be taken into account is the outright separatism inherent in many local Soviets during the civil war. In this sense, the Urals Council was no exception: it was considered “explosive” and had already managed to openly demonstrate its disagreement with the Kremlin several times. In addition, representatives of the left Socialist Revolutionaries and many anarchists were active in the Urals. With their fanaticism they pushed the Bolsheviks to demonstrate.

The third motivating circumstance was that some members of the Urals Council - including Chairman Beloborodov himself, whose signature is on the second telegraph message - held extreme left-wing views; these people survived many years of exile and royal prisons, hence their specific worldview. Although the members of the Urals Council were relatively young, they all went through the school of professional revolutionaries, and they had years of underground activity and “serving the cause of the party” behind them.

The fight against tsarism in any form was the only purpose of their existence, and therefore they did not even have any doubts that the Romanovs, “enemies of the working people,” should have been destroyed. In that tense situation, when the civil war was raging and the fate of the revolution seemed to hang in the balance, the execution of the imperial family seemed to be a historical necessity, a duty that had to be fulfilled without falling into sympathetic moods.

In 1926, Pavel Bykov, who replaced Beloborodov as chairman of the Urals Council, wrote a book entitled “The Last Days of the Romanovs”; as we will see later, this was the only Soviet source that confirmed the fact of the murder of the royal family, but this book was very soon confiscated. This is what Tanyaev writes in the introductory article: “This task was completed by the Soviet government with its characteristic courage - to take all measures to save the revolution, no matter how arbitrary, lawless and harsh they may seem from the outside.”

And one more thing: “...for the Bolsheviks, the court in no way had the significance of a body clarifying the true guilt of this “holy family.” If the trial had any meaning, it was only as a very good propaganda tool for the political education of the masses, and nothing more.” And here is another one of the most “interesting” passages from Tanyaev’s preface: “The Romanovs had to be liquidated in an emergency manner.

In this case, the Soviet government showed extreme democracy: it did not make an exception for the all-Russian murderer and shot him just like an ordinary bandit.” The heroine of A. Rybakov’s novel “Children of the Arbat”, Sofya Alexandrovna, was right, who found the strength to shout in the face of her brother, an unbending Stalinist, the following words: “If the tsar had judged you according to your laws, he would have lasted another thousand years...”

The commandant of the Special Purpose House, Yakov Yurovsky, was entrusted with commanding the execution of members of the former emperor’s family. It was from his manuscripts that it was subsequently possible to reconstruct the terrible picture that unfolded that night in the Ipatiev House.

According to the documents, the execution order was delivered to the execution site at half past one in the morning. Just forty minutes later, the entire Romanov family and their servants were brought into the basement. “The room was very small. Nikolai stood with his back to me, he recalled. —

I announced that the Executive Committee of the Councils of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies of the Urals had decided to shoot them. Nikolai turned and asked. I repeated the order and commanded: “Shoot.” I shot first and killed Nikolai on the spot.”

The emperor was killed the first time - unlike his daughters. The commander of the execution of the royal family later wrote that the girls were literally “armored into bras made of a solid mass of large diamonds,” so the bullets bounced off them without causing harm. Even with the help of a bayonet it was not possible to pierce the “precious” bodice of the girls.

Photo report: 100 years since the execution of the royal family

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“For a long time I was unable to stop this shooting, which had become careless. But when I finally managed to stop, I saw that many were still alive. ... I was forced to shoot everyone in turn,” Yurovsky wrote.

Even the royal dogs could not survive that night—along with the Romanovs, two of the three pets belonging to the emperor’s children were killed in the Ipatiev House. The corpse of Grand Duchess Anastasia's spaniel, preserved in the cold, was found a year later at the bottom of a mine in Ganina Yama - the dog's paw was broken and its head was pierced.

The French bulldog Ortino, which belonged to Grand Duchess Tatiana, was also brutally killed - presumably hanged.

Miraculously, only the spaniel of Tsarevich Alexei, named Joy, was saved, who was then sent to recover from his experience in England to the cousin of Nicholas II, King George.

The place “where the people put an end to the monarchy”

After the execution, all the bodies were loaded into one truck and sent to the abandoned mines of Ganina Yama in the Sverdlovsk region. There they first tried to burn them, but the fire would have been huge for everyone, so the decision was made to simply throw the bodies into the mine shaft and throw them with branches.

However, it was not possible to hide what happened - the very next day rumors spread throughout the region about what had happened at night. As one of the members of the firing squad, forced to return to the site of the failed burial, later admitted, the icy water washed away all the blood and froze the bodies of the dead so that they looked as if they were alive.

The Bolsheviks tried to approach the organization of the second burial attempt with great attention: the area was first cordoned off, the bodies were again loaded onto a truck, which was supposed to transport them to a more reliable place. However, failure awaited them here too: after just a few meters of travel, the truck got stuck firmly in the swamps of Porosenkova Log.

Plans had to be changed on the fly. Some of the bodies were buried directly under the road, the rest were doused with sulfuric acid and buried a little further away, covered with sleepers on top. These cover-up measures proved to be more effective. After Yekaterinburg was occupied by Kolchak’s army, he immediately gave the order to find the bodies of the dead.

However, forensic investigator Nikolai U, who arrived at Porosenkov Log, managed to find only fragments of burnt clothing and a severed woman’s finger. “This is all that remains of the August Family,” Sokolov wrote in his report.

There is a version that the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was one of the first to learn about the place where, in his words, “the people put an end to the monarchy.” It is known that in 1928 he visited Sverdlovsk, having previously met with Pyotr Voikov, one of the organizers of the execution of the royal family, who could tell him secret information.

After this trip, Mayakovsky wrote the poem “Emperor,” which contains lines with a fairly accurate description of the “Romanov grave”: “Here the cedar has been touched with an ax, there are notches under the root of the bark, at the root there is a road under the cedar, and in it the emperor is buried.”

Confession of execution

At first, the new Russian government tried with all its might to assure the West of its humanity in relation to the royal family: they say that they are all alive and are in a secret place in order to prevent the implementation of the White Guard conspiracy. Many high-ranking political figures of the young state tried to avoid answering or answered very vaguely.

Thus, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs at the Genoa Conference in 1922 told correspondents: “The fate of the Tsar’s daughters is not known to me. I read in the newspapers that they are in America.”

Pyotr Voikov, who answered this question in a more informal setting, cut off all further questions with the phrase: “The world will never know what we did to the royal family.”

Only after the publication of Nikolai Sokolov’s investigation materials, which gave a vague idea of ​​the massacre of the imperial family, did the Bolsheviks have to admit at least the very fact of the execution. However, details and information about the burial still remained a mystery, shrouded in darkness in the basement of the Ipatiev House.

Occult version

It is not surprising that a lot of falsifications and myths have appeared regarding the execution of the Romanovs. The most popular of them was the rumor about a ritual murder and the severed head of Nicholas II, which was allegedly taken for safekeeping by the NKVD. This is evidenced, in particular, by the testimony of General Maurice Janin, who oversaw the investigation into the execution by the Entente.

Supporters of the ritual nature of the murder of the imperial family have several arguments. First of all, attention is drawn to the symbolic name of the house in which everything happened: in March 1613, who laid the foundation for the dynasty, ascended to the kingdom in the Ipatiev Monastery near Kostroma. And 305 years later, in 1918, the last Russian Tsar Nikolai Romanov was shot in the Ipatiev House in the Urals, requisitioned by the Bolsheviks specifically for this purpose.

Later, engineer Ipatiev explained that he purchased the house six months before the events that unfolded there. There is an opinion that this purchase was made specifically to add symbolism to the grim murder, since Ipatiev communicated quite closely with one of the organizers of the execution, Pyotr Voikov.

Lieutenant General Mikhail Diterichs, who investigated the murder of the royal family on behalf of Kolchak, concluded in his conclusion: “This was a systematic, premeditated and prepared extermination of Members of the House of Romanov and persons exclusively close to them in spirit and belief.

The direct line of the Romanov Dynasty is over: it began in the Ipatiev Monastery in the Kostroma province and ended in the Ipatiev House in the city of Yekaterinburg.”

Conspiracy theorists also drew attention to the connection between the murder of Nicholas II and the Chaldean ruler of Babylon, King Belshazzar. Thus, some time after the execution, lines from Heine’s ballad dedicated to Belshazzar were discovered in the Ipatiev House: “Belzazzar was killed that same night by his servants.” Now a piece of wallpaper with this inscription is stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation.

According to the Bible, Belshazzar, like , was the last king of his family. During one of the celebrations in his castle, mysterious words appeared on the wall, predicting his imminent death. That same night the biblical king was killed.

Prosecutor's and church investigation

The remains of the royal family were officially found only in 1991 - then nine bodies were discovered buried in Piglet Meadow. After another nine years, the missing two bodies were discovered - severely burnt and mutilated remains, presumably belonging to Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria.

Together with specialized centers in the UK and the USA, she conducted many examinations, including molecular genetics. With its help, DNA extracted from the found remains and samples of Nicholas II’s brother Georgy Alexandrovich, as well as his nephew, the son of Olga’s sister Tikhon Nikolaevich Kulikovsky-Romanov, were deciphered and compared.

The examination also compared the results with the blood on the king's shirt, stored in the. All researchers agreed that the found remains indeed belonged to the Romanov family, as well as their servants.

However, the Russian Orthodox Church still refuses to recognize the remains found near Yekaterinburg as authentic. This was because the church was not initially involved in the investigation, officials said. In this regard, the patriarch did not even come to the official burial of the remains of the royal family, which took place in 1998 at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

After 2015, the study of the remains (which had to be exhumed for this purpose) continues with the participation of a commission formed by the Patriarchate. According to the latest expert findings, released on July 16, 2018, comprehensive molecular genetic examinations “confirmed that the discovered remains belonged to the former Emperor Nicholas II, members of his family and people from their entourage.”

The lawyer of the imperial house, German Lukyanov, said that the church commission will take into account the results of the examination, but the final decision will be announced at the Council of Bishops.

Canonization of the Passion-Bearers

Despite the ongoing controversy over the remains, back in 1981 the Romanovs were canonized as martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. In Russia, this happened only eight years later, since from 1918 to 1989 the tradition of canonization was interrupted. In 2000, the murdered members of the royal family were given a special church rank - passion-bearers.

As the scientific secretary of the St. Philaret Orthodox Christian Institute, church historian Yulia Balakshina told Gazeta.Ru, passion-bearers are a special order of holiness, which some call the discovery of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“The first Russian saints were also canonized precisely as passion-bearers, that is, people who humbly, imitating Christ, accepted their death. Boris and Gleb - at the hands of their brother, and Nicholas II and his family - at the hands of the revolutionaries,” Balakshina explained.

According to the church historian, it was very difficult to canonize the Romanovs based on the fact of their lives - the family of rulers was not distinguished for pious and virtuous actions.

It took six years to complete all the documents. “In fact, in the Russian Orthodox Church there are no deadlines for canonization. However, debates about the timeliness and necessity of the canonization of Nicholas II and his family continue to this day. The main argument of opponents is that by transferring the innocently murdered Romanovs to the level of celestials, the Russian Orthodox Church deprived them of elementary human compassion,” said the church historian.

There were also attempts to canonize rulers in the West, Balakshina added: “At one time, the brother and direct heir of the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart made such a request, citing the fact that at the hour of death she demonstrated great generosity and commitment to the faith. But she is still not ready to positively resolve this issue, citing facts from the life of the ruler, according to which she was involved in the murder and accused of adultery.”

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, along with four members of the staff, was shot. There are 11 people in total. I am attaching an excerpt from a chapter of the book “Jews in the Revolution and Civil War” with the title “Purely Russian Murder” (Two Hundred Years of Protracted Pogrom, 2007, Volume No. 3, Book No. 2), dedicated to this historical event.

COMPOSITION OF THE SHOOTING TEAM

Previously, it was established that the main commander in the house where the family of Emperor Nicholas II was kept was a member of the Ural Regional Council, Commissar P. S. Ermakov, to whom 67 Red Army soldiers were subordinate, serving as guards for the royal family. It should be recalled that the execution of the royal family took place in the basement of the Ipatiev house measuring 5x6 meters with one double door in the left corner. The room had a single window, protected from the street by a metal mesh, in the upper left corner under the ceiling, from which practically no light penetrated into the room.
The next most important issue related to the execution is to clarify the number and names of the real, and not fictitious, team of armed people who were directly involved in this crime. According to the version of investigator Sokolov, supported by science fiction writer E. Radzinsky, 12 people took part in the execution, including six to seven foreigners, consisting of Latvians, Magyars and Lutherans. Radzinsky calls Chekist Pyotr Ermakov, originally from the Verkh-Isetsky plant, “one of the most sinister participants in the Ipatiev Night.” He was the head of the entire house security, and Radzinsky turns him into the head of a machine gun platoon (E. Radzinsky. Nicholas II, Vagrius ed., M., 2000, p. 442). This Ermakov, who by agreement “belonged to the tsar,” himself asserted: “I fired at him at point-blank range, he fell immediately...” (p. 454). The Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of the Revolution contains a special act with the following content: “On December 10, 1927, they accepted from comrade P.Z. Ermakov a revolver 161474 of the Mauser system, with which, according to P.Z. Ermakov, the Tsar was shot.”
For twenty years, Ermakov traveled around the country and gave lectures, usually to pioneers, telling how he personally killed the Tsar. On August 3, 1932, Ermakov wrote a biography in which, without any modesty, he said: “On July 16, 1918... I carried out the decree - the Tsar himself, as well as his family, was shot by me. And I personally burned the corpses myself” (p. 462). In 1947, the same Ermakov published “Memoirs” and, together with his biography, submitted them to the Sverdlovsk party activist. This book of memoirs contains the following phrase: “I honorably fulfilled my duty to the people and the country, took part in the execution of the entire reigning family. I took Nikolai himself, Alexandra, my daughter, Alexei, because I had a Mauser and could work with it. The rest had revolvers.” This confession by Ermakov is enough to forget all the versions and fantasies of Russian anti-Semites about the participation of Jews. I recommend that all anti-Semites read and re-read “Memoirs” by Pyotr Ermakov before going to bed and after waking up, when they again want to blame the Jews for the murder of the royal family. And it would be useful for Solzhenitsyn and Radzinsky to memorize the text of this book as “Our Father.”
According to the message of the son of the security officer M. Medvedev, a member of the firing squad, “participation in the execution was voluntary. We agreed to shoot in the heart so that they wouldn’t suffer. And there they sorted out who was who. Pyotr Ermakov took the Tsar for himself. Yurovsky took the queen, Nikulin took Alexei, Maria went to the father.” The same son of Medvedev wrote: “The king was killed by his father. And immediately, as soon as Yurovsky repeated the last words, his father was already waiting for them and was ready and immediately fired. And he killed the king. He made his shot faster than anyone else... Only he had a Browning (ibid., p. 452). According to Radzinsky, the real name of the professional revolutionary and one of the Tsar’s killers, Mikhail Medvedev, was Kudrin.
In the murder of the royal family on a voluntary basis, as Radzinsky testifies, another “chief of security” of the Ipatiev House, Pavel Medvedev, “a non-commissioned officer of the tsarist army, a participant in the battles during the defeat of Dukhovshchina”, captured by the White Guards in Yekaterinburg, took part, who allegedly told Sokolov that “ he himself fired 2-3 bullets at the sovereign and at other persons whom they shot” (p. 428). In fact, P. Medvedev was not the head of security; investigator Sokolov did not interrogate him, because even before Sokolov’s “work” began, he managed to “die” in prison. In the caption under the photograph of the main participants in the execution of the royal family, given in Radzinsky’s book, the author calls Medvedev simply “a security guard.” From the materials of the investigation, which Mr. L. Sonin outlined in detail in 1996, it follows that P. Medvedev was the only participant in the execution who gave evidence to the White Guard investigator I. Sergeev. Please note that several people immediately claimed the role of the king's killer.
Another killer took part in the execution - A. Strekotin. On the night of the execution, Alexander Strekotin “was appointed as a machine gunner on the ground floor. The machine gun stood on the window. This post is very close to the hallway and that room.” As Strekotin himself wrote, Pavel Medvedev approached him and “silently handed me the revolver.” “Why do I need him?” - I asked Medvedev. “There will be an execution soon,” he told me and quickly left” (p. 444). Strekotin is clearly being modest and concealing his real participation in the execution, although he is constantly in the basement with a revolver in his hands. When the arrested were brought in, the taciturn Strekotin said that “he followed them, leaving his post, they and I stopped at the door of the room” (p. 450). From these words it follows that A. Strekotin, in whose hands there was a revolver, also participated in the execution of the family, since it is physically impossible to observe the execution through the only door in the basement room where the shooters were crowded, but which was closed during the execution. “It was no longer possible to shoot with the doors open; shots could be heard on the street,” reports A. Lavrin, quoting Strekotin. “Ermakov took my rifle with a bayonet and killed everyone who was alive.” From this phrase it follows that the execution in the basement took place with the door closed. This very important detail - the closed door during the execution - will be discussed in more detail later. Please note: Strekotin stopped at the very door where, according to Radzinsky’s version, eleven riflemen were already crowded together! How wide were these doors if their opening could accommodate twelve armed killers?
“The rest of the princesses and servants went to Pavel Medvedev, the head of the security, and another security officer - Alexei Kabanov and six Latvians from the Cheka.” These words belong to Radzinsky himself, who often mentions nameless Latvians and Magyars taken from the dossier of investigator Sokolov, but for some reason forgets to name them. Radzinsky indicates the names of two security chiefs - P. Ermakov and P. Medvedev, confusing the position of the head of the entire security team with the head of the guard service. Later, Radzinsky, “according to legend,” deciphered the name of the Hungarian - Imre Nagy, the future leader of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, although without Latvians and Magyars, six volunteers had already been recruited to shoot 10 adult family members, one child and servants (Nicholas, Alexandra, Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Tatyana, Olga, Maria, Tsarevich Alexei, Doctor Botkin, cook Kharitonov, footman Trupp, housekeeper Demidova). In Solzhenitsyn, with the stroke of a pen, one invented Magyars turns into many Magyars.
Imre Nagy, born in 1896, according to bibliographic data, participated in the First World War as part of the Austro-Hungarian army. He was captured by Russians and was kept in a camp near the village of Verkhneudinsk until March 1918, then he joined the Red Army and fought on Lake Baikal. Therefore, there was no way he could take part in the execution in Yekaterinburg in July 1918. There is a large number of autobiographical data about Imre Nagy on the Internet, and none of them contains any mention of his participation in the murder of the royal family. Only one article supposedly states this “fact” with reference to Radzinsky’s book “Nicholas II”. Thus, the lie invented by Radzinsky returned to its original source. This is how in Russia they create a ring lie with liars referring to each other.
The nameless Latvians are mentioned only in the investigative documents of Sokolov, who clearly included a version of their existence in the testimony of those whom he interrogated. In Medvedev’s “testimony” in the case concocted by investigator Sergeev, Radzinsky found the first mentions of Latvians and Magyars, completely absent from the recollections of other witnesses to the execution, whom this investigator did not interrogate. None of the security officers who wrote their memoirs or biographies voluntarily - neither Ermakov, nor the son of M. Medvedev, nor G. Nikulin - mentions the Latvians and Hungarians. Pay attention to the stories of witnesses: they name only Russian participants. If Radzinsky had named the names of the mythical Latvians, he might as well have been grabbed by the hand. There are no Latvians in the photographs of the participants in the execution, which Radzinsky cites in his book. This means that the mythical Latvians and Magyars were invented by investigator Sokolov and later turned by Radzinsky into living invisible people. According to the testimony of A. Lavrin and Strekotin, the case mentions Latvians who allegedly appear at the last moment before the execution of “a group of people unknown to me, about six or seven people.” After these words, Radzinsky adds: “So, the team of Latvian executioners (that was them) is already waiting. That room is already ready, already empty, all the things have already been taken out of it” (p. 445). Radzinsky is clearly fantasizing, because the basement was prepared in advance for execution - all things were taken out of the room, and its walls were lined with a layer of boards to the full height. To the main questions related to the participation of imaginary Latvians: “Who brought them, where from, why were they brought if there were more volunteers than required? - Radzinsky does not answer. Five or six Russian executioners completely coped with their task in a few seconds. Moreover, some of them claim that they killed several people. Radzinsky himself let slip that there were no Latvians present during the execution: “By 1964, only two of those who were in that terrible room remained alive. One of them is G. Nikulin” (p. 497). This means that there were no Latvians “in that terrible room.”
Now it remains to explain how all the executioners, along with the victims, were housed in a small room during the murder of members of the royal family. Radzinsky claims that 12 executioners stood in the opening of an open double door in three rows. In an opening one and a half meters wide they could fit
no more than two or three armed shooters. I propose to conduct an experiment and arrange 12 people in three rows to make sure that at the first shot, the third row should shoot in the back of the head of those standing in the first row. The Red Army soldiers standing in the second row could only shoot directly, between the heads of the people stationed in the first row. Family members and household members were only partially located opposite the door, and most of them were in the middle of the room, away from the doorway, which is shown in the photograph in the left corner of the wall. Therefore, it can definitely be said that there were no more than six real killers, all of them were located inside the room behind closed doors, and Radzinsky tells tales about Latvians in order to dilute the Russian riflemen with them. Another phrase from M. Medvedev’s son betrays the authors of the legend “about the Latvian riflemen”: “They often met in our apartment. All former regicides who moved to Moscow” (p. 459). Naturally, no one remembered the Latvians who could not end up in Moscow.
It is necessary to pay special attention to the size of the basement and the fact that the only door of the room in which the execution took place was closed during the action. M. Kasvinov reports the dimensions of the basement - 6 by 5 meters. This means that along the wall, in the left corner of which there was an entrance door one and a half meters wide, only six armed people could accommodate. The size of the room did not allow placing a larger number of armed people and victims in a closed room, and Radzinsky’s statement that all twelve shooters allegedly shot through the open doors of the basement is a nonsense invention of a person who does not understand what he is writing about.
Radzinsky himself repeatedly emphasized that the execution was carried out after a truck drove up to the House of Special Purpose, the engine of which was deliberately not turned off in order to muffle the sounds of gunfire and not disturb the sleep of the city residents. In this truck, half an hour before the execution, both representatives of the Urals Council arrived at Ipatiev’s house. This means that the execution could only be carried out behind closed doors. To reduce the noise from gunfire and enhance the sound insulation of the walls, the previously mentioned plank cladding was created. Let me note that investigator Nametkin found 22 bullet holes in the plank lining of the basement walls. Since the door was closed, all the executioners, along with the victims, could only be inside the room in which the execution took place. At the same time, Radzinsky’s version that 12 shooters allegedly fired through an open door immediately disappears. One of the participants in the execution, the same A. Strekotin, reported in his memoirs in 1928 about his behavior when it was discovered that several women were only wounded: “It was no longer possible to shoot at them, since all the doors inside the building were open, then Comrade . Ermakov, seeing that I was holding a rifle with a bayonet in my hands, suggested that I finish off those who were still alive.”
From the testimony of the surviving participants interrogated by investigators Sergeev and Sokolov and from the above memoirs, it follows that Yurovsky did not participate in the execution of members of the royal family. At the time of the execution, he was to the right of the front door, a meter from the Tsarevich and Tsarina sitting on chairs and between those who shot. In his hands he held the Resolution of the Urals Council and did not even have time to read it a second time at Nikolai’s request, when a volley rang out on Ermakov’s order. Strekotin, who either did not see anything or himself participated in the execution, writes: “Yurovsky stood in front of the Tsar, holding his right hand in his trouser pocket, and in his left - a small piece of paper... Then he read the verdict. But before he could finish the last words, the Tsar loudly asked again... And Yurovsky read it a second time” (p. 450). Yurovsky simply did not have time to shoot, even if he intended to do so, because after a few seconds it was all over. People fell at the same moment after the shot. “And immediately after the last words of the sentence were pronounced, shots rang out... The Urals did not want to give the Romanovs into the hands of the counter-revolution, not only alive, but also dead,” Kasvinov commented on this scene (p. 481). Kasvinov never mentions any Goloshchekin or the mythical Latvians and Magyars.
In reality, all six shooters lined up along the wall in one row inside the room and fired at point-blank range from a distance of two and a half to three meters. This number of armed people is quite enough to shoot 11 unarmed people within two or three seconds. Radzinsky writes: Yurovsky allegedly claimed in the “Note” that it was he who killed the Tsar, but he himself did not insist on this version, but admitted to Medvedev-Kudrin: “Eh, you didn’t let me finish reading - you started shooting!” (p. 459). This phrase, invented by dreamers, is key to confirm that Yurovsky did not shoot and did not even try to refute Ermakov’s stories, according to Radzinsky, “avoided direct clashes with Ermakov,” who “shot at him (Nikolai) at point-blank range, he fell immediately” - these words are taken from Radzinsky’s book (pp. 452, 462). After the execution was completed, Radzinsky came up with the idea that Yurovsky allegedly personally examined the corpses and found one bullet wound in Nikolai’s body. And the second could not have happened if the execution was carried out at point-blank range.
It is the dimensions of the basement room and the doorway located in the left corner that clearly confirm that there could be no question of placing twelve executioners in the doors, which were closed. In other words, neither Latvians, nor Magyars, nor the Lutheran Yurovsky took part in the execution, but only Russian riflemen led by their chief Ermakov took part: Pyotr Ermakov, Grigory Nikulin, Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin, Alexey Kabanov, Pavel Medvedev and Alexander Strekotin, which could barely fit along one of the walls inside the room. All names are taken from the book by Radzinsky and Kasvinov.
The guard Letemin did not seem to personally participate in the execution, but he was honored to steal the family’s red spaniel named Joy, the prince’s diary, “the reliquaries with incorruptible relics from Alexei’s bed and the image that he wore...”. He paid with his life for the royal puppy. “Many royal things were found in Ekaterinburg apartments. They found the Empress's black silk umbrella, and a white linen umbrella, and her purple dress, and even a pencil - the same one with her initials, which she used to write in her diary, and the princesses' silver rings. The valet Chemodumov walked through the apartments like a bloodhound.”
“Andrei Strekotin, as he himself said, took jewelry from them (from the executed). But Yurovsky immediately took them away” (ibid., p. 428). “When removing the corpses, some of our comrades began to remove various things that were with the corpses, such as watches, rings, bracelets, cigarette cases and other things. This was reported to comrade. Yurovsky. Comrade Yurovsky stopped us and offered to voluntarily hand over various things taken from the corpses. Some passed in full, some passed partly, and some didn’t pass anything at all...” Yurovsky: “Under the threat of execution, everything stolen was returned (gold watch, cigarette case with diamonds, etc.)” (p. 456). From the above phrases, only one conclusion follows: as soon as the killers finished their job, they began looting. If not for the intervention of “Comrade Yurovsky,” the unfortunate victims would have been stripped naked by Russian marauders and robbed.
And again I draw attention to the fact - no one remembered the Latvians. When the truck with the corpses left the city, it was met by an outpost of Red Army soldiers. “Meanwhile... they began to load the corpses onto carriages. Now they started emptying their pockets - and then they had to threaten with shooting...” “Yurovsky guesses a savage trick: they hope that he is tired and will leave - they want to be left alone with the corpses, they long to look into the “special corsets,” Radzinsky clearly comes up with, as if he himself were among the Red Army soldiers (p. 470). Radzinsky comes up with a version that, in addition to Ermakov, Yurovsky also took part in the burial of the corpses. Obviously, this is another fantasy of his.
Before the murder of members of the royal family, Commissioner P. Ermakov suggested that the Russian participants “rape the grand duchesses” (ibid., p. 467). When a truck with corpses passed the Verkh-Isetsky plant, they met “a whole camp - 25 horsemen, in carriages. These were workers (members of the executive committee of the council) who were prepared by Ermakov. The first thing they shouted was: “Why did you bring them to us dead?” A bloody, drunken crowd was waiting for the Grand Duchesses promised by Ermakov... And so they were not allowed to take part in a just cause - to decide the girls, the child and the Tsar-Father. And they were sad” (p. 470).
The prosecutor of the Kazan Judicial Chamber N. Mirolyubov, in a report to the Minister of Justice of the Kolchak government, reported some of the names of the dissatisfied “rapists”. Among them are “military commissar Ermakov and prominent members of the Bolshevik party, Alexander Kostousov, Vasily Levatnykh, Nikolai Partin, Sergei Krivtsov.” “Levatny said: “I touched the queen myself, and she was warm... Now it’s not a sin to die, I touched the queen... (in the document the last phrase is crossed out in ink. - Author). And they began to decide. They decided to burn the clothes and throw the corpses into an unnamed mine - to the bottom” (p. 472). As we see, no one mentions Yurovsky’s name, which means he did not participate in the burial of the corpses at all.

“The world will never know what we did to them,” boasted one of the executioners, Peter Voikov. But it turned out differently. Over the next 100 years, the truth has found its way, and today a majestic temple has been built at the site of the murder.

Tells about the reasons and main characters of the murder of the royal family Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Lavrov.

Maria Pozdnyakova,« AiF“: It is known that the Bolsheviks were going to hold a trial of Nicholas II, but then abandoned this idea. Why?

Vladimir Lavrov: Indeed, the Soviet government, led by Lenin in January 1918 announced that the trial of the former emperor Nicholas II will. It was assumed that the main accusation would be Bloody Sunday - January 9, 1905. However, Lenin in the end could not help but realize that that tragedy did not guarantee a death sentence. Firstly, Nicholas II did not give the order to shoot the workers; he was not in St. Petersburg at all that day. And secondly, by that time the Bolsheviks themselves had soiled themselves with “Bloody Friday”: on January 5, 1918, a peaceful demonstration of many thousands in support of the Constituent Assembly was shot in Petrograd. Moreover, they were shot in the same places where people died on Bloody Sunday. How can one then throw it in the king’s face that he is bloody? And Lenin with Dzerzhinsky then which ones?

But let’s assume that you can find fault with any head of state. But what is my fault? Alexandra Fedorovna? Is that the wife? Why should the sovereign’s children be judged? The women and the teenager would have to be released from custody right there in the courtroom, admitting that the Soviet government repressed the innocent.

In March 1918, the Bolsheviks concluded a separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the German aggressors. The Bolsheviks gave up Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states, and pledged to demobilize the army and navy and pay indemnity in gold. Nicholas II, at a public trial after such a peace, could turn from an accused into an accuser, qualifying the actions of the Bolsheviks themselves as treason. In a word, Lenin did not dare to sue Nicholas II.

Izvestia of July 19, 1918 opened with this publication. Photo: Public Domain

— In Soviet times, the execution of the royal family was presented as an initiative of the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks. But who is really responsible for this crime?

— In the 1960s. former security guard of Lenin Akimov said that he personally sent a telegram from Vladimir Ilyich to Yekaterinburg with a direct order to shoot the Tsar. This evidence confirmed the memories Yurovsky, commandant of the Ipatiev House, and the head of his security Ermakova, who previously admitted that they had received an execution telegram from Moscow.

Also revealed was the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated May 19, 1918 with instructions Yakov Sverdlov deal with the case of Nicholas II. Therefore, the tsar and his family were sent specifically to Yekaterinburg - Sverdlov’s patrimony, where all his friends from underground work in pre-revolutionary Russia were. On the eve of the massacre, one of the leaders of the Yekaterinburg communists Goloshchekin came to Moscow, lived in Sverdlov’s apartment, received instructions from him.

The day after the massacre, July 18, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee announced that Nicholas II had been shot, and his wife and children were evacuated to a safe place. That is, Sverdlov and Lenin deceived the Soviet people by declaring that their wife and children were alive. They deceived us because they understood perfectly well: in the eyes of the public, killing innocent women and a 13-year-old boy is a terrible crime.

— There is a version that the family was killed because of the advance of the whites. They say that the White Guards could return the Romanovs to the throne.

— None of the leaders of the white movement intended to restore the monarchy in Russia. In addition, White's offensive was not lightning fast. The Bolsheviks themselves evacuated themselves perfectly and seized their property. So it was not difficult to take out the royal family.

The real reason for the destruction of the family of Nicholas II is different: they were a living symbol of the great thousand-year-old Orthodox Russia, which Lenin hated. In addition, in June-July 1918, a large-scale Civil War broke out in the country. Lenin needed to unite his party. The murder of the royal family was a demonstration that the Rubicon had been passed: either we win at any cost, or we will have to answer for everything.

— Did the royal family have a chance of salvation?

- Yes, if their English relatives had not betrayed them. In March 1917, when the family of Nicholas II was under arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government Miliukov suggested the option of her going to the UK. Nicholas II agreed to leave. A George V, the English king and at the same time the cousin of Nicholas II, agreed to accept the Romanov family. But within a matter of days, George V took back his royal word. Although in letters George V swore to Nicholas II of his friendship until the end of days! The British betrayed not just the tsar of a foreign power - they betrayed their close relatives, Alexandra Fedorovna is the beloved granddaughter of the English Queen Victoria. But George V, also Victoria's grandson, obviously did not want Nicholas II to remain a living center of gravity for Russian patriotic forces. The revival of a strong Russia was not in Britain's interests. And the family of Nicholas II had no other options to save themselves.

— Did the royal family understand that its days were numbered?

- Yes. Even the children understood that death was approaching. Alexei once said: “If they kill, at least they don’t torture.” As if he had a presentiment that death at the hands of the Bolsheviks would be painful. But even the killers’ revelations do not tell the whole truth. No wonder the regicide Voikov said: “The world will never know what we did to them.”

After the execution on the night of July 16-17, 1918, the bodies of members of the royal family and their associates (11 people in total) were loaded into a car and sent towards Verkh-Isetsk to the abandoned mines of Ganina Yama. At first they unsuccessfully tried to burn the victims, and then they threw them into a mine shaft and covered them with branches.

Discovery of remains

However, the next day almost the entire Verkh-Isetsk knew about what had happened. Moreover, according to a member of Medvedev’s firing squad, “the icy water of the mine not only completely washed away the blood, but also froze the bodies so much that they looked as if they were alive.” The conspiracy clearly failed.

It was decided to promptly rebury the remains. The area was cordoned off, but the truck, having driven only a few kilometers, got stuck in the swampy area of ​​Porosenkova Log. Without inventing anything, they buried one part of the bodies directly under the road, and the other a little to the side, after first filling them with sulfuric acid. Sleepers were placed on top for safety.

It is interesting that the forensic investigator N. Sokolov, sent by Kolchak in 1919 to search for the burial place, found this place, but never thought of lifting the sleepers. In the area of ​​​​Ganina Yama, he managed to find only a severed female finger. Nevertheless, the investigator’s conclusion was unequivocal: “This is all that remains of the August Family. The Bolsheviks destroyed everything else with fire and sulfuric acid.”

Nine years later, perhaps, it was Vladimir Mayakovsky who visited Porosenkov Log, as can be judged from his poem “The Emperor”: “Here a cedar has been touched with an ax, there are notches under the root of the bark, at the root there is a road under the cedar, and in it the emperor is buried.”

It is known that the poet, shortly before his trip to Sverdlovsk, met in Warsaw with one of the organizers of the execution of the royal family, Pyotr Voikov, who could show him the exact place.

Ural historians found the remains in Porosenkovo ​​Log in 1978, but permission for excavations was received only in 1991. There were 9 bodies in the burial. During the investigation, some of the remains were recognized as “royal”: according to experts, only Alexei and Maria were missing. However, many experts were confused by the results of the examination, and therefore no one was in a hurry to agree with the conclusions. The House of Romanovs and the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the remains as authentic.

Alexei and Maria were discovered only in 2007, guided by a document drawn up from the words of the commandant of the “House of Special Purpose” Yakov Yurovsky. “Yurovsky’s note” initially did not inspire much confidence, however, the location of the second burial was indicated correctly.

Falsifications and myths

Immediately after the execution, representatives of the new government tried to convince the West that members of the imperial family, or at least the children, were alive and in a safe place. People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin in April 1922 at the Genoa Conference, when asked by one of the correspondents about the fate of the Grand Duchesses, vaguely answered: “The fate of the Tsar’s daughters is not known to me. I read in the newspapers that they are in America.”

However, P.L. Voikov informally stated more specifically: “the world will never know what we did to the royal family.” But later, after the materials of Sokolov’s investigation were published in the West, the Soviet authorities recognized the fact of the execution of the imperial family.

Falsifications and speculation around the execution of the Romanovs contributed to the spread of persistent myths, among which the myth of ritual murder and the severed head of Nicholas II, which was in the special storage facility of the NKVD, was popular. Later, stories about the “miraculous rescue” of the Tsar’s children, Alexei and Anastasia, were added to the myths. But all this remained myths.

Investigation and examinations

In 1993, the investigation into the discovery of the remains was entrusted to the investigator of the General Prosecutor's Office, Vladimir Solovyov. Given the importance of the case, in addition to traditional ballistic and macroscopic examinations, additional genetic studies were carried out jointly with English and American scientists.

For these purposes, blood was taken from some Romanov relatives living in England and Greece. The results showed that the probability of the remains belonging to members of the royal family was 98.5 percent.
The investigation considered this insufficient. Solovyov managed to obtain permission to exhume the remains of the Tsar’s brother, George. Scientists confirmed the “absolute positional similarity of mt-DNA” of both remains, which revealed a rare genetic mutation inherent in the Romanovs - heteroplasmy.

However, after the discovery of the supposed remains of Alexei and Maria in 2007, new research and examinations were required. The scientists’ work was greatly facilitated by Alexy II, who, before burying the first group of royal remains in the tomb of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, asked investigators to remove bone particles. “Science is developing, it is possible that they will be needed in the future,” these were the words of the Patriarch.

To remove the doubts of skeptics, the head of the laboratory of molecular genetics at the University of Massachusetts, Evgeniy Rogaev (whom representatives of the House of Romanov insisted on), the chief geneticist of the US Army, Michael Cobble (who returned the names of the victims of September 11), as well as an employee of the Institute of Forensic Medicine from Austria, Walter, were invited for new examinations. Parson.

Comparing the remains from the two burials, experts once again double-checked the previously obtained data and also conducted new research - the previous results were confirmed. Moreover, the “blood-spattered shirt” of Nicholas II (the Otsu incident), discovered in the Hermitage collections, fell into the hands of scientists. And again the answer is positive: the genotypes of the king “on blood” and “on bones” coincided.

Results

The results of the investigation into the execution of the royal family refuted some previously existing assumptions. For example, according to experts, “under the conditions in which the destruction of corpses was carried out, it was impossible to completely destroy the remains using sulfuric acid and flammable materials.”

This fact excludes Ganina Yama as a final burial site.
True, historian Vadim Viner finds a serious gap in the conclusions of the investigation. He believes that some finds belonging to a later time were not taken into account, in particular coins from the 30s. But as the facts show, information about the burial place very quickly “leaked” to the masses, and therefore the burial ground could be repeatedly opened in search of possible valuables.

Another revelation is offered by the historian S.A. Belyaev, who believes that “they could have buried the family of an Ekaterinburg merchant with imperial honors,” although without providing convincing arguments.
However, the conclusions of the investigation, which was carried out with unprecedented rigor using the latest methods, with the participation of independent experts, are clear: all 11 remains clearly correlate with each of those shot in Ipatiev’s house. Common sense and logic dictate that it is impossible to duplicate such physical and genetic correspondences by chance.
In December 2010, the final conference dedicated to the latest results of the examinations was held in Yekaterinburg. The reports were made by 4 groups of geneticists working independently in different countries. Opponents of the official version could also present their views, but according to eyewitnesses, “after listening to the reports, they left the hall without saying a word.”
The Russian Orthodox Church still does not recognize the authenticity of the “Ekaterinburg remains,” but many representatives of the House of Romanov, judging by their statements in the press, accepted the final results of the investigation.