The site of the execution. Most of the damage to the wall was done by investigators after the Whites took Ekaterinburg later in the month.
July 17 1918, Ekaterinburg–After his abdication, the Czar and his family remained at his palace at Tsarskoye Selo, under what amounted to lavish house arrest, while the Provisional Government figured out what to do with him. They had no particular interest in charging him for any crimes, and really just wanted him out of the country. However, he was unpopular abroad as well, and both France and Britain refused to take him in. In August 1917, the Romanovs were transferred to Tobolsk in Siberia, with the eventual hope of moving them to Japan. What luxuries they had were forfeit after the Bolsheviks took power; they no longer had any servants, were put on reduced rations, and, at the end of April 1918, were moved to a modest house in Ekaterinburg.
After the Romanovs’ arrival in Ekaterinburg, however, the Bolsheviks’ fortunes in Siberia took a turn for the worse. The first fighting between the Czechs and the Bolsheviks began in mid-May in Chelyabinsk, just over 100 miles to the south. By July, they had linked up with the Czechs across the Urals in Samara, and were advancing north towards Ekaterinburg to prevent the Bolsheviks from making any move on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The local Bolsheviks believed the Czechs were on their way to liberate the Czar and help to reinstall him on his throne, and decided to execute the Romanovs to prevent this. How much involvement the Bolsheviks in Moscow had with this decision is unclear; official Soviet history held that it was a local decision, but Trotsky and others held that it was decided in Moscow. If it was Lenin’s decision, he was very careful to make sure no paper trail was left.
In the wee hours of July 17, the Romanovs were woken by their doctor and summoned down to the basement of the house, on the pretext that they were to be moved out of Ekaterinburg. At around 2AM, the commandant of the house, Yakov Yurovsky, entered with a Cheka squad and read their sentence: “Nikolai Alexandrovich, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you.” After repeating the order, the firing began. Most of the men aimed at Nicholas or Alexandra, and the children were protected from incidental fire by the large number of gems sewn into their clothing. The guns did not use smokeless powder and it soon became too smoky to continue in the confined space, so they soon turned to bayonets to kill the children, then pistol shots to the head when that failed.
The bodies were disposed of two days later, and the execution of the Czar was publicly announced. The fate of the rest of the family was not discussed openly, but the Whites were able to piece together what happened after they captured Ekaterinburg a week later. They were unable to find the bodies, however, so wild speculation continued until glasnost.
