HISTORICAL JOURNALISTS - UNIT 6

          Thursday, 18 July, 1918

HE finally fell

The final of tzar Nicholas II 

His fall started with his abdication on behalf of his son Alexis a year ago but then, due to his medical condition he couln't accept the charge and all the familly decided going into exile.

British government offered the family asylum on 19 March 1917, but they retracted and France decided that the Romanovs would be unwelcome in their country.

Alexander Palace

The final decision was made by the Provisional Government and they decided to send them under houser arrest  to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. The Imperial Family were then confined to a few rooms of the palace with total privacy and were strictly  watched over by a guard with fixed bayonets. The regime of their captivity, worked out by Alexander Kerensky himself, envisaged strict limitations in the life of the Imperial Family: an isolation from the outer world, a guard during their promenades in the park, prohibition of any contacts and correspondence apart from approved letters. Due to an increasingly precarious situation in St. Petersburg, the leader of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky, made the decision to move the Romanov family out of the palace into internal exile in Tobolsk in far away Siberia.

Governor's Mansion

That summer, the failure of the Kerensky Offensive against Austro-Hungarian and German forces in Galicia led to anti-government rioting in Petrograd, known as the July Days. The government feared that further disturbances in the city could easily reach Tsarskoye Selo and it was decided to move the royal family to a safer location. 
The selected town was Tobolsk in Western Siberia. The family left the Alexandra Palace late on 13 August and they reached Tobolsk on 19 August. There they lived in the former Governor's Mansion in considerable confort. On 26 March, when 250 ill-disciplined Red Guards arrived from the regional capital, Omsk. 400 Red Guards were sent to exert their influence on the town. A man called Vasily Yakovlev to bring Nicholas to Moscow, but the family was remove to Yekaterinburg. 

Ipatiev House

They arrived Yekaterinburg on the morning of 30 april and they were imprisioned in the two-storey Ipatiev House. Here the Romanovs were kept under even stricter conditions; their retinue was further reduced and their possessions were searched. Yakov Yurovsky was appointed to command the guard detachment. On 16 July, the Yekaterinburg leadership informed Yurovsky that they had been decided to execute the Romanovs as soon as approval arrived from Moscow. After in Moscow the order was sent,  Yurovsky had organised his firing squad and they waited through the night at the Ipatiev House for the signal to act.

Place of execution

In the early hours of 17 July, the royal family was awakened around 2 am, got dressed, and were led down into a half-basement room at the back of the Ipatiev house. All the family with their doctor and three of their servants were joined and commanded by Yurovsky were shot and bayoneted to death, finishing with that scourge. The bodies have not been found, but offial sources declare the execution.