Execution+of+the+Romanov+Family

// By Sophia Murray //



The Romanov Dynasty:
The Romanov blood line ruled Russia from 1613 until 1917, when the Russian Revolution of March broke out. The Romanov rule lasted for over 300 years.

Political and Social Unrest:
Russia had long been an unjust society in which the royals lived a life of luxury by stepping on the proletariat. The Tsar was an absolute autocrat whose power was endless as was his wealth. At the turn of the century, three quarters of the Russian population were peasants. The peasants were uneducated and illiterate, and without knowledge or wealth they could do little to save themselves from the vicious cycle of arduous labour, squalor, and poverty. The industrial workers, however, were able to begin what the peasants could not. They became radicalized politically and began the union movement in which they fought for political and economic change.

The flame that was the Russian revolution was sparked by what happened on January 22, 1905, or Bloody Sunday, when Tsarist troops opened fire on peaceful protesters expressing their dissatisfaction with the social and political system. As a result, the Tsar lost much of his support amongst the working class, many of which joined revolutionary groups. The March Revolution of 1917 arose from continued social discontent. On March 10th, 200,000 workers took to the streets of Petrograd in protest. On March 12th, the troops that were ordered to put an end to the protest, joined the protesters and shot their own commander. On March 14th, Moscow had fallen and the Tsar was forced to abdicate his thrown. He and his family were placed under house arrest until their execution. The Red Army eventually made the decision to execute the Romanovs because they feared that the counter-revolutionary, White Army would rescue them. They believed that in killing the Romanov family, they would break the will of those still loyal to the Tsar.


 * The Execution:media type="youtube" key="CgplHZT6BEM" width="448" height="251" align="right"**

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On July 16, 1918, the executioner, Yurovsky, and his comrades carried out the murder of the Romanov family and their four, loyal servants in the cellar of the house in Yekaterinburg where they were exiled. At half past one, Yurovsky ordered his comrades to wake the Romanovs from their slumber and to send them to the designated basement room for their execution. Each man had one person to shoot and so it seemed as if the infamous execution would proceed smoothly as planned. Before carrying out their plan, however, they had not considered that the windows would emit noise and that the bullets would ricochet from the brick wall that the Romanovs were placed in front of. They also did not foresee that their firing would be uncoordinated. The Romanovs did not know what cruel fate awaited them when they entered that room. They were ordered to line up against the wall, but before they did so, Alexandra Feodrovna, the Tsarina, exclaimed, "There are not even chairs here," to which Yurovsky ordered the others to fetch some chairs for them. Before shooting Tsar Nicholas II, Yurovsky told the Tsar that despite the attempts of his royal relatives within Russia and abroad to save them, that it had been decided by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies that they were to be shot. Following the Tsar's murder, the frenzied shooting began. Yurovsky was forced to stop his accomplices' shooting because they had failed to kill all of their targets. Alexandra Feodrovna, Demidova (the Tsarina's maid), and Alexei were still alive. Yurovsky killed the terrified 13-year old boy, Alexei, but the murder of the two women was left to two other men. The men later discovered that jewels had been sewn into the women's corsets, thus acting like bullet-proof vests. They first tried to kill the women by shooting them, but when that proved to be unsuccessful, they mercilessly stabbed them with bayonets only to finally kill them with a shot to the head. Their bodies were eventually transported to an open field where nine of them, including five members of the Romanov family and four servants, were buried in one mass grave and two of the Romanov children, including Alexei and one of the Romanov girls, were buried in a separate grave. The lamentable consequence of revolution is the formation of a new world built on the death of innocents.======

The Mystery:
The murder of the Romanov family was one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century and was surrounded by myths and tales that captured the imagination of many people and has become the inspiration for many films and novels. For years it was rumoured that some of the Romanov children had escaped execution and lived their lives under false identities. One of the most famous myths was of the escape of Alexei and Anastasia. In this myth, Alexei and Anastasia pretended to be dead by lying amongst the others until they could make their escape. Some versions of this tale include the help of a repentant Soviet guard. In the late 1970's, however, Dr. Alexander Avdonin discovered the mass grave. Avdonin and some of his closest friends were forced to keep the grave's location secret until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, after which they lead an official recovery of the remains which later underwent DNA testing. As a result of the DNA tests, the remains were confirmed to belong to the Tsar, the Tsarina, and three of their royal daughters. Even with the irrefutable evidence obtained from their research, people continued to doubt the authenticity and validity of their discoveries. One of the reasons people were skeptical as to whether or not the remains belonged to the Romanov family was because two of the Romanov children were missing, the Tsarevich, Alexei, and one of the Romanov daughters. The myth of the escape of Romanov children, namely Anastasia and Alexei, lived on. These myths, however, were put to rest upon the discovery and subsequent DNA testing of the second grave in 2007 that was found 70 meters from the first grave. The bodies were confirmed to be Alexei and one of his sisters. The Romanovs have now been reburied in St. Petersburg.


 * Sources:**

http://www.teenink.com/nonfiction/academic/article/313404/What-is-the.. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004838 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/4971805/Mystery-of-murdered-Russian-Tsars-missing-children-solved-by-DNA-study.html http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508643/Romanov-Dynasty Falk, Jerry. History Twelve Student Workbook. Third ed. Surrey: Hazelmere, 2010. Print. Lynch, Michael. //Reaction and Revolutions: Russia 1881-1924.// London: Hodder & Stoughton Educational, 1992. Print. Access to History http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/yurovmurder.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Nikolaevich,_Tsarevich_of_Russia