Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg

by Helen Rappaport

  As the hour approached and there was still no truck, Yurovsky paced his office, watching the clock and smoking incessantly, knowing full well that the sun would be up again at just after five. Summer nights in the Urals were too short for this kind of operation and everybody’s nerves were on edge. Time was running out if they were to complete the liquidation under cover of darkness, but final word had still not come from Moscow. Might the commandant, for all his dutifully pragmatic attention to revolutionary duty, have had some passing crise de conscience, even at this late hour, about what he was about to do? In his 1922 memoir of events at the house, Yurovsky recalled that although he despised the Romanovs for what they represented and ‘for all the blood of the people spilled on their behalf’, they were fundamentally simple, unassuming and ‘generally pleasant’ people. Had he not been entrusted with their liquidation he would have had no reason to hold anything against them.

  Down at the garage, meanwhile, the one-and-a-half-ton Fiat truck was only just being filled with petrol. Thanks to the chronic inefficiency and poor communications that now were beginning to characterise the entire operation, the truck was then wrongly sent off to the Amerikanskaya Hotel instead of the Ipatiev House. Realising something had gone wrong, Yurovsky’s chauffeur Lyukhanov had gone down and taken charge of the vehicle himself and telephoned Yurovsky to warn him of the delay.

  After further hold-ups, and a succession of urgent phone calls to the Cheka, the open-topped Fiat truck finally rattled off across the silent streets of the city. Operation trubochist was at last swinging into action. The truck was only minutes away, trundling up Voznesensky Prospekt, when Commandant Yurovsky got up from his chair, went out on to the landing and rang the bell at the double doors of the Romanovs’ sitting room.

  It was 1.30 in the morning of 17 July 1918. The Ipatiev House was now about to fulfil the ‘Special Purpose’ for which it had been summarily requisitioned only three months ago.

  15

  ‘The Will of the Revolution’

  WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 1918

  A tired and dishevelled Dr Botkin came to the door and opened it. What was the matter? he asked. Yurovsky told him that the situation in Ekaterinburg was now very unstable; the Whites were approaching and might at any moment launch an artillery attack on the city. It was dangerous for the family to remain here on the upper floor; they had to take them down into the basement for their own safety. Would Dr Botkin please go and wake the others. Yurovsky then retreated to his office, from where, through his open window, he heard the Fiat truck turn in through the palisade gates and pull up outside the house. He went downstairs and told the driver Lyukhanov to take the truck to the other side of Voznesensky Square opposite and wait.

  Although the Tsar had got out of bed immediately, as though he had trained himself for the eventuality of sudden flight or rescue, the rest of the family and servants took their time getting washed and dressed, the girls carefully putting on their camisoles sewn full of gems and pearls, as they had long since prepared for under their mother’s supervision. Outside in the corridor Yurovsky heard the family walking around and talking as his impatience mounted. For 40 minutes he stood listening hard at the door, his nerves jangling, trying to catch the family’s reaction as they readied themselves. What were they saying? Had they any inkling of what was to come? He was about to go in and hurry them all up – something he had wanted to avoid in order not to alarm them – when one by one the Romanovs emerged on to the landing, all ‘neat and tidy’, as machine-gunner Aleksandr Strekotin observed, the Tsar in front with Alexey in his arms, both of them dressed in their soldier’s tunics and forage caps. The girls followed in their simple white blouses and skirts, carrying pillows, bags and other small items. The Tsaritsa too was plainly dressed. None of them had their outdoor clothing on. They started asking questions but they did not seem alarmed as such; they had, after all, had false alarms before and would have known that the approaching Czechs might have dictated their sudden evacuation at any time. Indeed, the Tsar was heard to turn and say to the servants reassuringly, ‘Well, we’re going to get out of this place.’ If anything it was a relief for all of them. Was Nicholas being falsely reassuring, protective as he was of his family, or did he still have no true grasp of what could possibly happen to him – or them? Clearly not, for the only doubts raised by the family were trivial ones. What about their personal belongings? they asked. ‘It’s not necessary right now’, Yurovsky reassured them, working hard to remain calm and polite as he escorted them to the stairs. ‘We’ll get them later and bring them down.’

  It was about 2.15 a.m. when Yurovsky and Nikulin, accompanied by two of the internal guard with rifles, led the family in the semi-darkness down the steep, narrow stairs to the ground floor. Instinctively the Romanovs followed the order of precedence inculcated in them, the Tsar in front but refusing all assistance as he struggled with the burden of Alexey, who winced with pain from his bandaged leg; then Alexandra, using a stick and leaning heavily on Olga’s arm, followed by the three other girls. Nikulin and Kudrin both later recalled that, as they made their way to the stairs, the family paused and devoutly crossed themselves at the stuffed mother bear and her cubs that stood on the landing – a sign of respect for the dead, thinking as they did that they were going to be leaving the house.

  At this point the family’s three pet dogs: Joy, Jimmy and Ortipo, must instinctively have tried to follow them and been turned back. Dogs are incredibly sensitive and would have responded to an underlying nervousness in Yurovsky and the guards. It is likely that one of the dogs came downstairs with them: Tatiana’s little Pekinese, Jimmy, to whom Anastasia was deeply attached. His legs were so short that he couldn’t walk up and down stairs by himself and Anastasia was in the habit of carrying him everywhere. For Yurovsky to have attempted to take the dog from her would have created an unsettling scene and set alarm bells going in the whole family’s minds. Following the Imperial Family came Dr Botkin, and then bringing up the rear Trupp carrying a blanket, Demidova carrying two cushions (ostensibly for the Tsaritsa’s comfort but in fact containing many of her jewels in two small boxes) and the cook Kharitonov at the rear. They all then exited the house by the door leading out into the small courtyard, re-entering by another, adjacent door leading down into the basement. Twenty-three steps – one for every year of Nicholas’s disastrous reign – now led him and his family to their collective fate. As the Romanovs entered the basement rooms, one of the guards, Viktor Netrebin, noticed that even now, at this late hour, the Tsaritsa gave them a filthy look, ‘as if expecting we would bow as she passed’. Both she and Olga were, he recalled, ‘skin and bones’, the Tsaritsa’s grey hair untidy from being woken so unexpectedly. The other three girls, in contrast, were smiling and cheerful, as ever so trusting in their youth and naïvety.

  But they must have been puzzled by the scene that greeted them: a bare, ill-lit storeroom with a single naked lightbulb hanging from the plaster ceiling. They did not express any alarm, but Alexandra, true to form, immediately complained. Why were there no chairs? Were they not allowed to sit down? She could not stand for long because of her sciatica, and the sick Alexey needed a chair as well. Obliging her request without showing any sign of impatience, Yurovsky sent guard Aleksandr Strekotin to fetch two, Nikulin making the acid comment under his breath as they were brought that the ‘heir wanted to die in a chair. Very well then, let him have one.’ Nicholas gently lowered Alexey on to his, standing protectively in front of him – was it instinct or some unspoken fear? The Tsaritsa sank gratefully into the other, the girls, thoughtful as ever, bringing their pillows for them to sit on. Even now, guard Viktor Netrebin noticed the boy’s irrepressible curiosity as he sat watching ‘with wide curious eyes’, following every move the guards made. In a fleeting moment of sympathy Netrebin, who later admitted to being extremely nervous that night, hoped, when it came to it, that they would ‘all be good shots’. In a soft voice, Yurovsky now politely asked the rest of the family and servan
ts to take up particular places behind the Tsar and Tsaritsa, which he indicated. Like the professional photographer he once had been, he seemed to be posing his victims, as he might clients, but for something far more sinister.

  Conscious of his position as Tsar and paterfamilias, Nicholas took a position in the centre of the room. He faced the open door, with Alexey to his left on a chair, both of them slightly in front of everyone else. The punctilious Botkin, in collar and tie even at this late hour, stood behind to the Tsar’s right. The Tsaritsa sat in her chair to Alexey’s left – in the shadows near the barred window. It had been nailed shut specially, to muffle the sound of shooting and in case of any screaming.

  Maria, Tatiana and Olga stood close behind their mother in silence. Further back still, the gangly Demidova, clutching her pillows, stood beside the doors into the storeroom. They were locked because Yurovsky feared his victims would panic and try to escape any way they could. To her right, Anastasia, who had detached herself from the others, stood typically alone and, as always, defiant. Trupp and Kharitonov were just in front of Anastasia, behind Dr Botkin and leaning against the wall.

  Yurovsky gazed calmly at them and then continued with his lie: the family would have to wait here until the truck came to take them to safety. Leaving them all waiting in the bare basement room for half an hour or so, he went off to check everything was ready. The family were anxious about the delay, and no doubt worried about their things, which they had left upstairs, but having lived through so many difficult, tense moments in the last 16 months they exchanged few words, not wanting to alarm each other. Alexandra broke the rules, though, whispering in English not Russian to the girls.

  What the astute Dr Botkin was thinking in those moments, in light of the sanguine letter that he had been writing anticipating his own inevitable death, we cannot guess, but even at the very moment of death victims are often in denial of the fact. If any of the 11 people gathered in that room in such ominous circumstances at such a late hour had any inkling of danger it must have been he. But the thought that his Tsar might actually be killed, let alone his innocent family – that was impossible to contemplate.

  In the guards’ room next door, the killers sat hunched together, repeatedly checking their weapons, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Their nerves were running riot, their tempers rising. With the adrenalin already coursing in their veins, being Russians, they did what all Russians would do – they shared a drink or two of vodka.

  The names of only five of the killers that night are known for certain. There was the swaggering alcoholic Ermakov, with three revolvers stuffed in his belt; the young, cold-blooded Nikulin; Kudrin, the factory mechanic and, as a dedicated Cheka man, a willing killer; Medvedev, a 28-year-old welder from the Sysert works and senior guard at the Ipatiev House; and, of course, Yurovsky.

  Research suggests that the remaining killers were Alexey Kabanov, who manned one of the machine-gun posts in the house; Viktor Netrebin – a young and inexperienced 17-year-old Cheka man; Stepan Vaganov – Ermakov’s sidekick from the Verkh-Isetsk factory, a late replacement for the Letts who had refused to kill the girls; and the most shadowy figure of all, Jan Tsel’ms, who like Kabanov had been assigned to one of the machine-gun posts. Significantly, several of the ‘Letts’ brought into the house by Yurovsky to be part of the execution squad had lost their nerve when it came to it, but a legend was born that night and persisted thereafter that ‘Letts and Jews’ were key figures in the executions when in fact this was not so; all but one of the killers were Russians and Yurovsky was a Jew by birth only.

  When everything was ready, Yurovsky ordered the Fiat truck across the road to be brought round to the house. The truck arrived, with the Ipatiev House’s ‘official driver’ Lyukhanov at the wheel. He gingerly backed the clumsy vehicle into the courtyard between the palisades, grinding its gears in the process, in order to ensure it could better pull away up the incline out of the house when fully loaded. As they watched, some of the guards might reasonably have wondered whether such a ramshackle vehicle was sturdy enough to carry 11 bodies and their escort out to the night-bound Koptyaki Forest.

  With the truck now outside and gunning its engine, and the killers gathering behind him outside the door, Yurovsky prepared to re-enter the storeroom. All was silent, except for the roar of the Fiat’s engine rattling the window panes. With Nikulin on his left, and Kudrin and Ermakov on his right, Yurovsky opened the double doors and entered, the rest of the execution squad crowding into the doorway behind him. What was this? A new special detachment to escort the family to their next refuge? Nicholas, Alexandra and Botkin all seemed to register Ermakov and Kudrin as being new to the house and were unnerved by their presence, as they and Yurovsky took up their positions in front of them.

  ‘Well here we all are,’ said Nicholas, stepping forward to face Yurovsky, thinking that the truck they could hear revving outside had now arrived to take them to safety ‘What are you going to do now?’

  His right hand clutching sweatily at the Colt in his trouser pocket, his left holding a piece of paper, Yurovsky asked the family to stand. Alexey, of course, could not and stayed where he was, as the Tsaritsa, muttering her complaints, struggled to her feet. Suddenly the room seemed to shrink in on him as Yurovsky stepped forward, brandishing his sheet of paper. It had been drafted by the presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet and given to him by Goloshchekin that day. Here, at last, was the commandant’s personal moment in history. Yurovsky had rehearsed his statement many times and raised his voice in order to be heard more clearly.

  ‘In view of the fact that your relatives in Europe continue their assault on Soviet Russia,’ he began portentously, gazing straight at Nicholas, ‘the presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet has sentenced you to be shot . . .’

  The Tsar registered blank incomprehension; turning his back to Yurovsky to face his family, he managed an incredulous stutter – ‘What? What?’ – as those around him were rooted to the spot in absolute terror.

  ‘So you’re not taking us anywhere?’ ventured Botkin, unable also to comprehend what had just been said.

  ‘I don’t understand. Read it again . . .’ the Tsar interrupted, his face white with horror. Yurovsky picked up where he had left off:

  . . . in view of the fact that the Czechoslovaks are threatening the red capital of the Urals – Ekaterinburg – and in view of the fact that the crowned executioner might escape the people’s court, the presidium of the Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, has decreed that the former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes against the people, should be shot . . .

  Instinctively, the Tsaritsa and Olga crossed themselves; a few incoherent words of shock or protest were heard from the rest. Yurovsky, having finished reading the decree, pulled out his Colt, stepped forward and shot the Tsar at point-blank range in the chest. Ermakov, Kudrin and Medvedev, not to be outdone and wanting their moment of personal revenge and glory too, immediately took aim and fired at Nicholas as well, followed by most of the others, propelling an arc of blood and tissue over his terrified son beside him.

  For a moment the Tsar’s body quivered on the spot, his eyes fixated and wide, his chest cavities, ripped open by bullets, now frothing with oxygenated blood, his heart speeding up, all in a vain attempt to pump blood round his traumatised body. Then he quietly crumpled to the floor.

  But at least Nicholas was spared the sight of seeing what happened to his wife and family. For in that moment, Ermakov had turned and fired his Mauser at the Tsaritsa only six feet away from him as she tried to make the sign of the cross, hitting her in the left side of the skull, spraying brain tissue all around, as a hail of bullets from the other assassins hit her torso. Alexandra crumpled sideways on to the floor, her warm, sticky blood and brain tissue spreading across it in a mist of steam. Next to her, poor lame Alexey, too crippled even to get up and run, sat there transfixed, clutching in terror at his chair, his ashen face splattered with his father’s bl
ood.

  The other victims meanwhile had fallen first to their knees and then to the floor in an instinctive attempt to protect themselves, some of them convulsing from the trauma of flesh wounds received from bullets aimed at the Tsar and Tsaritsa that had missed, others crawling in desperation in the impenetrable smoke, trying to find a way out. Trupp had gone down quickly, his legs shattered, and was finished off by a final shot to the head. Kharitonov, his body riddled with bullets, crumpled to the floor and died beside him.

  Within minutes there was such chaos in the basement room that Yurovsky was forced to stop the shooting because of the choking conditions; he did so with great difficulty, for by now the men had been overtaken by the frenzy of getting the job done. The air was thick with a nauseating cocktail of blood and bodily fluids – the faeces, urine and vomit precipitated from bodies in moments of extreme trauma. The killers were all choking and coughing from the caustic smoke of burnt gunpowder as well as showers of dust from the plaster ceiling caused by the reverberation of bullets. Their eyes were streaming too and they were all temporarily deafened by the delayed noise of the gunshots.

  As Yurovsky’s men staggered from the storeroom, shaking and disorientated, to gasp at the cool night air, some of them vomited. But it wasn’t over. Once the deafening roar of firearms had ceased and the smoke had abated, the moans and whimpers they could hear inside made it all too apparent that they had botched the job. Many of their victims were still alive, horribly injured and suffering in agony.