Yakov Yurovsky was the direct organizer of the murder of Nicholas II and his family. Yurovsky never repented of what he had done, he was even proud. However, the murder of innocent people is murder, and even if the criminal avoids earthly court, he is overtaken by the revenge of some higher powers who have taken upon themselves the mission of justice. Not only the murderer, but also his descendants and relatives will have to answer. (website)
Dom Ipatiev, in the basement of which the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II was shot along with his family and servants.
Children and grandchildren
Rimma, Yurovsky's first child, was his favorite. Like her father, Rimma threw herself headlong into the revolution and successfully moved along the party line. In 1935 she was arrested. Yurovsky adored his daughter, but “the party makes no mistakes” - and he sacrificed his daughter in the name of the revolution.
According to the recollections of his loved ones, Yurovsky almost went crazy when he learned the terrible news about Rimma’s arrest, but he never made any attempts to free her or at least somehow alleviate her fate. Rimma Yurovskaya served time in the Karaganda camp, was released in 1946, and remained in a settlement in Southern Kazakhstan. Only in 1956 was she rehabilitated and was able to return to Leningrad.
Yurovsky did not catch all this, the arrest of his daughter actually brought him to the grave: against the background of his experiences, his stomach ulcer worsened and he died in 1938.
His son can be considered next on the list of victims. Rear Admiral Alexander Yurovsky was arrested in 1952. Only Stalin's death saved him from a terrible fate. Alexander Yurovsky was released in March 1953 and sent into retirement.
Of course, the Stalinist Gulag is not a sanatorium, but still both Yurovsky’s daughter and son remained alive. The fate of the grandchildren was much sadder. The grandchildren fell from the roof of the barn, died in a fire, were poisoned by mushrooms and committed suicide. Girls died in infancy. Beloved grandson Anatoly, Rimma's son, was found dead in a car. The cause of death could not be determined.
As a result, the Yurovsky family line was cut short. But the side branch did not escape the curse.
Favorite niece
Yakov Yurovsky simply adored his niece, the flirtatious Mashenka. At the age of 16, Maria fell in love and ran away from home. A year later she returned home, without her husband, but with a child. His beloved niece Mashenka became the “unlucky Masha” for Yurovsky; he disowned her.
She is not the first, she is not the last, but not all abandoned women’s lives go awry. Maria's went. Subsequently, Mary had more than a dozen “husbands”, from whom she gave birth to 11 children. But only one survived, the first-born Boris, because his mother sent him to an orphanage, where he became Yurovsky from Yurovsky.
The curse bypassed Boris; his son Vladimir was born, who in turn became the father of two children. Vladimir does not tell his son and daughter about their “famous” relative, considering him a soulless villain. Vladimir believes in a curse and seriously fears for the future of his children.
Others
The decision to execute Nicholas II and his family was made on July 14 by the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council. Composition of the Presidium: Alexander Beloborodov (chairman), Georgy Safarov, Philip Goloshchekin, Pyotr Voikov, Fedor Lukoyanov, Yakov Yurovsky. Here's how their fates turned out:
Alexander Beloborodov - arrested in 1936, executed in 1938. Georgy Safarov - arrested in 1934, executed in 1942. Philip Goloshchekin - arrested in 1939, executed in 1941. Pyotr Voikov - in 1927 in Warsaw, he was mortally wounded by a Polish terrorist. Fyodor Lukoyanov was not shot only because in 1919 doctors diagnosed him with a nervous disease (years of work in the Perm and then the Ural Cheka affected him) and placed him in a “Moscow sanatorium”, where he died in 1947.
Each of the destinies described is not unique. Hundreds of thousands of people passed through the Gulag, many of whom died. Many fiery Bolsheviks were shot during the years of repression. Children died as a result of accidents; child mortality still exists today. But taken together, they show a terrible picture: the death of the family of Yakov Yurovsky, who organized the murder of the royal family and the death of each accomplice in the crime.
No crime goes unpunished!
Well, reader? Let’s continue to understand the circumstances of the story, which has many “blank spots” and inconsistencies. This happens with family chronicles. The chronicles of the Yurovsky family are no exception. The geography of the wanderings of Yakov Yurovsky with his wife Maria, daughter Rimma and son Alexander is replete with the names of cities, provinces, and not only Siberian ones. The family's nomadic lifestyle changed in 1905, when the future regicide again found himself in Tomsk.
During the first Russian revolution, the 27-year-old watchmaker joined the ranks of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and was included in the Tomsk fighting squad. According to eyewitnesses, during the Black Hundred pogrom in Tomsk, Yurovsky was in the building of the Siberian Railway Administration and only miraculously survived, hiding in the basement. This fact was cited by Bolshevik veterans when they initiated a proposal to name one of the city streets after Yurovsky.
In the photo: the former building of the Siberian Railway Administration, now the main building of TUSUR.
In the photo: a memorial plaque in memory of the events of 1905 in Tomsk on the building of the main building of TUSUR
Yakov Yurovsky himself, in his autobiography about the Tomsk period of the revolutionary struggle against tsarism, wrote sparingly: “I carried out technical work. Kept illegal literature. He made passports and stamps for them. I was looking for apartments. Had a safe house. Conducted propaganda work among artisan workers.”
At the same time, Yakov Yurovsky was a successful businessman. Let's not forget that by 1910 he owned shops, workshops, and a photo studio. The origin of the capital is unknown, and any assumptions without documentary evidence will remain speculation. What about his family and immediate relatives? In marriage, Yakov Yurovsky is quite happy. The eldest daughter Rimma attends the Tomsk women's primary gymnasium. The middle son Alexander is still too young, and his wife Maria is raising him. In 1909, another son will be born - Evgeniy.
Things are not going so well for Yurovsky's father and mother and his many brothers and sisters. Documents from the funds of the State Archives of the Tomsk Region give only a partial idea of their occupation. One of Yakov's brothers - Borokh (Borukh) - lived on Nikitinskaya Street (modern Nikitin Street) in Beikov's house. At the end of 1903 he tried to get a deferment from military service. However, having been refused, he served in the army. Boroch did not participate in the Russo-Japanese War. But during the First World War he found himself in German captivity.
The fate of brother Peysakh, who served as a reserve lower rank in the Far East during the Russian-Japanese War, was different. Returned safely to Tomsk. Became a ladies' tailor. He owned a sewing workshop. In the summer of 1913, he went abroad and emigrated to the United States for permanent residence.
Much earlier, his elder brother Meyer left Russia; at the beginning of the 20th century, he settled in Harbin, where he founded his own business selling semi-precious stones.
Leiba Yurovsky was a jewelry maker and lived with his wife and child at the address st. Kondratyevskaya, 46 (Lermontov).
In the photo: Lermontov street, former st. Kondratievskaya
Another of the Yurovskys, Ilya, born in 1882, worked in Mr. Khaiduk’s watch workshop at 11 Magistratskaya and lived in a house at 11 Irkutskaya Street (Pushkina) in a one-room apartment with a kitchen and a veranda. This area is adjacent to the Church of the Resurrection.
In the photo: Pushkin Street, former Irkutsk.
However, the time has come to return to Yakov Yurovsky. The revolutionary businessman was beyond the suspicion of the security department for a long time. Apparently, he has mastered the rules of conspiracy well. There is an assumption that in the period from 1905 to 1912, Yakov made acquaintances with prominent Bolsheviks: S.M. Kirov, Ya.M. Sverdlov, V.V. Kuibyshev, but when I looked into this story, I couldn’t find any direct facts. It is better to deal with archival documents; they can be read.
In April 1912, in the house on Tatarskaya, 6, Yurovsky’s apartment was searched and arrested by certain Sokolov and Anna Linkevich. For the first time, the gendarmes became interested in the identities of the detainees, especially given the nature of the things seized from them.
Weapons, false documents, and various correspondence were found in Yurovsky's apartment. Now we can remember the technical work that Yakov Mikhailovich performed as a member of the RSDLP. The flywheel of the investigation was quickly spinning up. It turned out that the tradesman Yurovsky had already sheltered fugitive exiles from the Narym region in his apartment and provided them with financial assistance. Yurovsky's accomplices are very colorful. Peasant Alexander Sokolov is actually Mikhail Sorokin. By conviction he is a social democrat. He went underground due to fear of persecution for participating in an armed uprising in 1906 in Kamyshin.
His cohabitant and part-time “daughter of a Semipalatinsk merchant” Anna Linkevich was in fact Nahama Sorina, who did not have the right to live in Tomsk.
The men are being held in custody in the First Tomsk Prison Department, the woman in the provincial prison. What awaits them? Prison, hard labor? A month later, Yakov Yurovsky, having received an order prohibiting settlement in 64 administrative centers of the European part of Russia, Siberia and the North Caucasus, was deported to Yekaterinburg.
Photo from GATO funds: Tomsk provincial prison.
In the photo: the building of the former Tomsk provincial prison, now the educational building of TPU on Arkady Ivanov Street.
Once in the Urals, Yurovsky will begin to write petitions to return to Tomsk. For what? After all, the whole family is with him. The head of the family, as a person who has committed an “anti-state - criminal act”?, is prohibited from engaging in commerce. But the wife was not forbidden. Maria Yurovskaya opened a portrait photography studio under the sign “M.Ya. Yurovskaya". The Tomsk period of Yakov’s life ends with exile to Yekaterinburg. He will never have the opportunity to visit Tomsk again. Although in the provincial capital he continued to be listed as a tax debtor. They will never collect the arrears from Yurovsky...
What happened next? In 1915, at the height of the First World War, Yakov Yurovsky was drafted into the army. True, due to poor health, he serves in the rear militia. In Yekaterinburg, Yakov will graduate from paramedic school. After the February revolution, his political career will grow. In March 1917, he was a deputy of the Yekaterinburg Council of Workers and Soldiers. In October, he was appointed chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Ural Revolutionary Tribunal and became a member of the Extraordinary Commission. In July 1918, Yurovsky became commandant of the Special Purpose House, where the royal family was kept.
In the Ipatiev House, Yakov will shoot the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II. This will go down in history.
Kolchak investigators will take measures to detain the regicide. Traces of Yakov will be searched for in Tomsk, where people close to him remain.
Detectives will interrogate Yurovsky’s brothers, Ilya and Leiba, but they will show “that they lost contact with Yakov long ago.” There was no reason not to believe the testimony. Leiba had just returned home from German captivity. And Ilya never left Tomsk. It is interesting that the fate of these relatives, as well as the fate of the parents of Chaim and Esther Yurovsky, are unknown. What happened to them? The question remained unanswered...
After the Civil War, Yakov Yurovsky will not reach high ranks. He worked at Gokhran, headed a plant, and was director of the State Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. Died in 1938. The Soviet government, of which Yurovsky called himself an ordinary soldier, treated his descendants in a peculiar way. Daughter Rimma, a major Komsomol leader, was arrested as an “enemy of the people” shortly after her father’s death. She spent eight years, until 1946, in the terrible Karaganda camp. She died in 1980.
Son Alexander will become a naval artillery engineer. In 1944, he was awarded the rank of rear admiral of the fleet. Alexander Yurovsky was awarded many military orders and personalized weapons. Repressed in 1952. He spent several months in Butyrka prison. Stalin's death saved him from the camps in March 1953. He passed away in 1986.
In 1967, descendants will receive news that in Tomsk they are going to name one of the city streets after Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky. Local party veterans approached the CPSU Central Committee with such an initiative. Did not happen. And this is where we will put an end to the family chronicle of the regicide.
On the evening of July 16, new style, 1918, in the building of the Ural Regional Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution (located in the American Hotel in the city of Yekaterinburg - now the city of Sverdlovsk), the regional Council of the Urals met in part. When I, a Yekaterinburg security officer, was called there, I saw comrades I knew in the room: Chairman of the Council of Deputies Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov, Chairman of the Regional Committee of the Bolshevik Party Georgy Safarov, Military Commissar of Yekaterinburg Philip Goloshchekin, Council member Pyotr Lazarevich Voikov, Chairman of the Regional Cheka Fyodor Lukoyanov, my friends - members of the board of the Ural Regional Cheka Vladimir Gorin, Isai Idelevich (Ilyich) Rodzinsky (now a personal pensioner, lives in Moscow) and the commandant of the House of Special Purpose (Ipatiev House) Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky.
When I entered, those present were deciding what to do with the former Tsar Nicholas II Romanov and his family. A report about a trip to Moscow to Ya. M. Sverdlov was made by Philip Goloshchekin. Goloshchekin failed to obtain sanctions from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to execute the Romanov family. Sverdlov consulted with V.I. Lenin, who spoke out in favor of bringing the royal family to Moscow and an open trial of Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna, whose betrayal during the First World War cost Russia dearly.
It is the All-Russian court! - Lenin argued to Sverdlov: - with publication in newspapers. Calculate the human and material damage the autocrat inflicted on the country during the years of his reign. How many revolutionaries were hanged, how many died in hard labor, in a war that no one wanted! To answer before all the people! You think that only a dark peasant believes in our good father-tsar. Not only, my dear Yakov Mikhailovich! How long has it been since your advanced St. Petersburg workers walked to the Winter Palace with banners? Just some 13 years ago! It is this incomprehensible “racial” gullibility that the open trial of Nicholas the Bloody should dispel into smoke...
Y. M. Sverdlov tried to present Goloshchekin’s arguments about the dangers of transporting the royal family by train through Russia, where counter-revolutionary uprisings broke out in cities every now and then, about the difficult situation on the fronts near Yekaterinburg, but Lenin stood his ground:
So what if the front is retreating? Moscow is now deep in the rear, so evacuate them to the rear! And here we will arrange a trial for them for the whole world.
At parting, Sverdlov said to Goloshchekin:
Tell me so, Philip, to your comrades - the All-Russian Central Executive Committee does not give official sanction for execution.
After Goloshchekin’s story, Safarov asked the military commissar how many days, in his opinion, Yekaterinburg would hold out? Goloshchekin replied that the situation was threatening - the poorly armed volunteer detachments of the Red Army were retreating, and in three days, maximum five, Yekaterinburg would fall. A painful silence reigned. Everyone understood that evacuating the royal family from the city not only to Moscow, but simply to the North meant giving the monarchists the long-desired opportunity to kidnap the Tsar. Ipatiev’s house was, to a certain extent, a fortified point: two high wooden fences around, a system of external and internal security posts made up of workers, and machine guns. Of course, we could not provide such reliable security to a moving car or crew, especially outside the city limits.
There could be no question of leaving the tsar to the white armies of Admiral Kolchak - such “mercy” posed a real threat to the existence of the young Soviet Republic, surrounded by a ring of enemy armies. Hostile to the Bolsheviks, whom he considered traitors to the interests of Russia after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, Nicholas II would become the banner of counter-revolutionary forces outside and inside the Soviet Republic. Admiral Kolchak, using the age-old faith in the good intentions of the kings, could win over to his side the Siberian peasantry, who had never seen landowners, did not know what serfdom was, and therefore did not support Kolchak, who imposed landowner laws on the land he had captured (thanks to the uprising of the Czechoslovak buildings) territory. The news of the “salvation” of the tsar would have increased tenfold the strength of the embittered kulaks in the provinces of Soviet Russia.
We, the security officers, had fresh memories of the attempts of the Tobolsk clergy, led by Bishop Hermogenes, to free the royal family from arrest. Only the resourcefulness of my friend, sailor Pavel Khokhryakov, who arrested Hermogenes in time and transported the Romanovs to Yekaterinburg under the protection of the Bolshevik Council, saved the situation. Given the deep religiosity of the people in the province, it was impossible to allow even the remains of the royal dynasty to be left to the enemy, from which the clergy would immediately fabricate “holy miraculous relics” - also a good flag for the armies of Admiral Kolchak.
But there was another reason that decided the fate of the Romanovs differently than Vladimir Ilyich wanted.
The relatively free life of the Romanovs (the mansion of the merchant Ipatiev did not even remotely resemble a prison) in such an alarming time, when the enemy was literally at the gates of the city, caused understandable indignation among the workers of Yekaterinburg and the surrounding area. At meetings and rallies at the factories of Verkh-Isetsk, workers directly said:
Why are you Bolsheviks babysitting Nikolai? It's time to finish! Otherwise we’ll smash your advice to pieces!
Such sentiments seriously complicated the formation of units of the Red Army, and the threat of reprisals itself was serious - the workers were armed, and their word and deed did not differ. Other parties also demanded the immediate execution of the Romanovs. Back at the end of June 1918, members of the Yekaterinburg Council, the Socialist-Revolutionary Sakovich and the left Socialist-Revolutionary Khotimsky (later a Bolshevik, security officer, died during the years of Stalin’s personality cult, posthumously rehabilitated) at a meeting insisted on the speedy liquidation of the Romanovs and accused the Bolsheviks of inconsistency. The anarchist leader Zhebenev shouted to us in the Council:
If you do not destroy Nicholas the Bloody, then we will do it ourselves!
Without the sanction of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the execution, we could not say anything in response, and the position of delaying without explaining the reasons embittered the workers even more. To further postpone the decision on the fate of the Romanovs in a military situation meant to further undermine the people's trust in our party. Therefore, it was the Bolshevik part of the Regional Council of the Urals who finally gathered to decide the fate of the royal family in Yekaterinburg, Perm and Alapaevsk (the tsar’s brothers lived there). It practically depended on our decision whether we would lead the workers to the defense of the city of Yekaterinburg or whether the anarchists and left Socialist Revolutionaries would lead them. There was no third way.
For the last month or two, some “curious” people have been constantly climbing up to the fence of the House for Special Purposes - mostly shady individuals who came, as a rule, from St. Petersburg and Moscow. They tried to send notes, food, and sent letters by mail, which we intercepted: all of them were assurances of loyalty and offers of services. We, the security officers, had the impression that there was some kind of White Guard organization in the city that was persistently trying to get into contact with the Tsar and Tsarina. We even stopped allowing priests and nuns into the house who were carrying food from the nearby monastery.
But not only the monarchists who secretly came to Yekaterinburg hoped to free the captive tsar on occasion - the family itself was ready for abduction at any moment and did not miss a single opportunity to contact the will. The Yekaterinburg security officers found out this readiness in a rather simple way. Beloborodov, Voikov and the security officer Rodzinsky drew up a letter on behalf of the Russian officer organization, which reported the imminent fall of Yekaterinburg and proposed to prepare for an escape on the night of a certain day. The note, translated into French by Voikov and rewritten in white red ink in the beautiful handwriting of Isai Rodzinsky, was handed over to the queen through one of the guard soldiers. The answer was not long in coming. We composed and sent a second letter. Observation of the rooms showed that the Romanov family spent two or three nights dressed - they were fully prepared to escape. Yurovsky reported this to the Regional Council of the Urals.
Having discussed all the circumstances, we make a decision: that very night to deliver two blows: to liquidate two monarchist underground officer organizations that can stab in the back the units defending the city (the security officer Isai Rodzinsky is assigned to this operation), and to destroy the royal Romanov family.
Yakov Yurovsky offers to make leniency for the boy.
Which one? An heir? I'm against! - I object.
No, Mikhail, the kitchen boy Lenya Sednev needs to be taken away. Why the scullion... He was playing with Alexei.
What about the rest of the servants?
From the very beginning we suggested that they leave the Romanovs. Some left, and those who remained declared that they wanted to share the fate of the monarch. Let them share...
They decided to save the life of only Lena Sednev. Then they began to think about who to allocate for the liquidation of the Romanovs from the Ural Regional Extraordinary Commission. Beloborodov asks me:
Will you take part?
By decree of Nicholas II, I was tried and imprisoned. Of course I will!
We still need a representative from the Red Army,” says Philip Goloshchekin: “I propose Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov, military commissar of Verkh-Isetsk.”
Accepted. And from you, Yakov, who will participate?
“Me and my assistant Grigory Petrovich Nikulin,” Yurovsky answers. - So, four: Medvedev, Ermakov, Nikulin and me.
The meeting ended. Yurovsky, Ermakov and I went together to the House of Special Purposes, went up to the second floor to the commandant’s room - here the security officer Grigory Petrovich Nikulin (now a personal pensioner, lives in Moscow) was waiting for us. They closed the door and sat for a long time, not knowing where to start. It was necessary to somehow hide from the Romanovs that they were being led to execution. And where to shoot? In addition, there are only four of us, and the Romanovs with their physician, cook, footman and maid are 11 people!
Hot. We can't think of anything. Maybe when they fall asleep, throw grenades into the rooms? It’s not good - the whole city will roar, they’ll think that the Czechs have broken into Yekaterinburg. Yurovsky proposed the second option: to kill everyone with daggers in their beds. They even decided who should finish off whom. We are waiting for them to fall asleep. Yurovsky several times goes out to the rooms of the Tsar and Tsarina, the Grand Duchesses, and the servants, but everyone is awake - it seems they are alarmed by the removal of the kitchen boy.
It was past midnight and it was getting cooler. Finally, the lights went out in all the rooms of the royal family, apparently they fell asleep. Yurovsky returned to the commandant’s office and suggested a third option: wake up the Romanovs in the middle of the night and ask them to go down to the room on the first floor under the pretext that an anarchist attack was being prepared on the house and bullets during a shootout might accidentally fly to the second floor, where the Romanovs lived (the Tsar with the Tsarina and Alexei - in the corner, and my daughters - in the next room with windows overlooking Voznesensky Lane). There was no longer a real threat of an anarchist attack that night, since shortly before this Isai Rodzinsky and I dispersed the anarchist headquarters in the mansion of engineer Zheleznov (former Commercial Assembly) and disarmed the anarchist squads of Pyotr Ivanovich Zhebenev.
We chose a room on the ground floor next to the storage room, just one barred window towards Voznesensky Lane (the second from the corner of the house), ordinary striped wallpaper, a vaulted ceiling, a dim light bulb under the ceiling. We decide to park a truck in the yard outside the house (the yard is formed by an additional external fence on the side of the avenue and alley) and start the engine before the execution in order to drown out the noise from the shots in the room. Yurovsky had already warned the outside guards not to worry if they heard shots inside the house; then we distributed revolvers to the Latvians of the internal security - we considered it reasonable to involve them in the operation so as not to shoot some members of the Romanov family in front of others. Three Latvians refused to participate in the execution. The head of security, Pavel Spiridonovich Medvedev, returned their revolvers to the commandant’s room. There were seven Latvians left in the detachment.
Long after midnight, Yakov Mikhailovich goes into the rooms of Doctor Botkin and the Tsar, asks them to dress, wash and be ready to go down to the semi-basement shelter. It takes about an hour for the Romanovs to get themselves in order after sleep, and finally - around three o'clock in the morning - they are ready. Yurovsky invites us to take the remaining five revolvers. Pyotr Ermakov takes two revolvers and puts them in his belt; Grigory Nikulin and Pavel Medvedev each take a revolver. I refuse, since I already have two pistols: an American Colt in a holster on my belt, and a Belgian Browning behind my belt (both historical pistols - Browning No. 389965 and a Colt 45 caliber, government model "C" No. 78517 - I saved it until today). Yurovsky first takes the remaining revolver (he has a ten-round Mauser in his holster), but then gives it to Ermakov, and he tucks a third revolver into his belt. We all involuntarily smile, looking at his warlike appearance.
We go out onto the landing of the second floor. Yurovsky goes to the Tsar’s chambers, then returns - following him in single file: Nicholas II (he is carrying Alexei in his arms, the boy has blood clotting, he has bruised his leg somewhere and cannot yet walk on his own), following the Tsar, rustling their skirts, a queen dressed in a corset, followed by four daughters (of whom I know by sight only the youngest, plump Anastasia and the older one, Tatyana, who, according to Yurovsky’s dagger version, was entrusted to me until I fought the tsar himself from Ermakov), men follow the girls: doctor Botkin, cook, footman, the queen's tall maid carries white pillows. On the landing there is a stuffed bear with two cubs. For some reason, everyone crosses themselves when passing by the scarecrow before going down. Following the procession, Pavel Medvedev, Grisha Nikulin, seven Latvians (two of them have rifles with fixed bayonets on their shoulders) follow the stairs; Ermakov and I complete the procession.
When everyone entered the lower room (the house has a very strange arrangement of passages, so we first had to go out into the courtyard of the mansion and then re-enter the first floor), it turned out that the room was very small. Yurovsky and Nikulin brought three chairs - the last thrones of the condemned dynasty. On one of them, closer to the right arch, the queen sat on a cushion, followed by her three eldest daughters. For some reason, the youngest, Anastasia, went to the maid, who was leaning against the frame of the locked door to the next storage room. A chair was placed in the middle of the room for the heir, Nicholas II sat on the chair to the right, and Doctor Botkin stood behind Alexei’s chair. The cook and footman respectfully moved to the arch pillar in the left corner of the room and stood against the wall. The light from the light bulb is so weak that the two female figures standing at the opposite closed door at times seem to be silhouettes, and only in the hands of the maid do two large pillows become clearly white.
The Romanovs are completely calm - no suspicions. Nicholas II, the Tsarina and Botkin carefully examine me and Ermakov, as if they were new people in this house. Yurovsky calls Pavel Medvedev away, and both go into the next room. Now to my left, opposite Tsarevich Alexei, stands Grisha Nikulin, opposite me is the Tsar, to my right is Pyotr Ermakov, behind him is an empty space where a detachment of Latvians should stand.
Yurovsky quickly enters and stands next to me. The king looks at him questioningly. I hear the loud voice of Yakov Mikhailovich:
I ask everyone to stand up!
Nicholas II stood up easily, in a military manner; Alexandra Feodorovna reluctantly rose from her chair, her eyes flashing angrily. A detachment of Latvians entered the room and lined up just opposite her and her daughters: five people in the first row, and two with rifles in the second. The queen crossed herself. It became so quiet that from the yard through the window you could hear the rumble of a truck engine. Yurovsky steps forward half a step and addresses the Tsar:
Nikolai Alexandrovich! The attempts of your like-minded people to save you were unsuccessful! And so, in a difficult time for the Soviet Republic... - Yakov Mikhailovich raises his voice and chops the air with his hand: - ... we have been entrusted with the mission of putting an end to the house of the Romanovs!
Women's screams: “Oh my God! Oh! Oh!" Nicholas II quickly mutters:
Oh my God! Oh my God! What is this?!
But what is it! - says Yurovsky, taking the Mauser out of his holster.
So they won't take us anywhere? - Botkin asks in a dull voice.
Yurovsky wants to answer him something, but I’m already pulling the trigger on my Browning and putting the first bullet into the Tsar. Simultaneously with my second shot, the first volley of Latvians and my comrades is heard from right and left. Yurovsky and Ermakov also shoot in the chest of Nicholas II, almost in the ear. On my fifth shot, Nicholas II falls in a sheaf on his back.
Female squeals and moans; I see Botkin fall, the footman slumps against the wall and the cook collapses on his knees. The white pillow moved from the door to the right corner of the room. In the powder smoke from the screaming group of women, a female figure rushed to the closed door and immediately fell, struck by the shots of Ermakov, who was firing from his second revolver. You can hear bullets ricocheting off stone pillars and limestone dust flying. Nothing is visible in the room because of the smoke - the shooting is already on the barely visible falling silhouettes in the right corner. The screams have died down, but the shots are still roaring - Ermakov is firing from the third revolver. Yurovsky's voice is heard:
Stop! Stop shooting!
Silence. Ringing in my ears. One of the Red Army soldiers was wounded in the finger and in the neck - either by a ricochet, or in the powder fog, the Latvians from the second row burned with bullets from rifles. The veil of smoke and dust is thinning. Yakov Mikhailovich invites Ermakov and me, as representatives of the Red Army, to witness the death of every member of the royal family. Suddenly, from the right corner of the room, where the pillow moved, a woman’s joyful cry:
God bless! God saved me!
Staggering, the surviving maid rises - she covered herself with pillows, in the fluff of which the bullets were stuck. The Latvians have already shot all their cartridges, then two people with rifles approach her through the lying bodies and pin the maid with bayonets. From her dying cry, the slightly wounded Alexei woke up and began to moan frequently - he was lying on a chair. Yurovsky approaches him and fires the last three bullets from his Mauser. The guy fell silent and slowly slid to the floor at his father’s feet. Ermakov and I feel Nikolai’s pulse - he is all riddled with bullets, dead. We inspect the rest and finish shooting Tatyana and Anastasia, still alive, from the Colt and the Ermakov revolver. Now everyone is lifeless.
Security chief Pavel Spiridonovich Medvedev approaches Yurovsky and reports that shots were heard in the courtyard of the house. He brought the Red Army internal guards to carry the corpses and blankets on which to carry them to the car. Yakov Mikhailovich instructs me to oversee the transfer of corpses and loading into the car. We lay the first one on a blanket, lying in a pool of blood, Nicholas II. Red Army soldiers carry the remains of the emperor into the courtyard. I'm going after them. In the passage room I see Pavel Medvedev - he is deathly pale and vomiting, I ask if he is wounded, but Pavel is silent and waves his hand.
I meet Philip Goloshchekin near the truck.
Where have you been? - I ask him.
I walked around the square. I heard shots. It was audible. - He bent over the king.
The end, you say, of the Romanov dynasty?! Yes... The Red Army soldier brought Anastasia's lap dog on a bayonet - when we walked past the door (to the stairs to the second floor), a long, plaintive howl was heard from behind the doors - the last salute to the All-Russian Emperor. The dog's corpse was thrown next to the king's.
Dogs - dog death! - Goloshchekin said contemptuously.
I asked Philip and the driver to stand by the car while they carried the corpses. Someone dragged a roll of soldier's cloth, one end of it was spread on sawdust in the back of a truck - they began to lay the executed people on the cloth.
I accompany each corpse: now they have already figured out how to tie some kind of stretcher from two thick sticks and blankets. I notice that in the room, during the laying down, the Red Army soldiers remove rings and brooches from the corpses and hide them in their pockets. After everyone is put in the back, I advise Yurovsky to search the porters.
Let’s make it easier,” he says and orders everyone to go up to the second floor to the commandant’s room. He lines up the Red Army soldiers and says: “He suggested putting all the jewelry taken from the Romanovs out of their pockets on the table.” Half a minute to think. Then I will search everyone I find - shot on the spot! I will not allow looting. Do you understand everything?
Yes, we just took it as a souvenir of the event,” the Red Army soldiers make an embarrassed noise. - So that it doesn’t disappear.
A pile of gold things grows on the table every minute: diamond brooches, pearl necklaces, wedding rings, diamond pins, gold pocket watches of Nicholas II and Doctor Botkin and other items.
The soldiers went to wash the floors in the lower room and adjacent to it. I go down to the truck, count the corpses again - all eleven are in place - and cover them with the free end of the cloth. Ermakov sits down with the driver, and several security men with rifles climb into the back. The car moves off, drives out of the wooden gate of the outer fence, turns right and carries the remains of the Romanovs out of town along Voznesensky Lane through the sleeping city.
Beyond Verkh-Isetsk, a few miles from the village of Koptyaki, the car stopped in a large clearing, in which some overgrown holes appeared black. They lit a fire to warm themselves up; those riding in the back of the truck were chilled. Then they began to take turns carrying the corpses to the abandoned mine and tearing off their clothes. Ermakov sent Red Army soldiers onto the road so that no one from the nearby village would be allowed through. Those shot were lowered onto ropes into the shaft of the mine - first the Romanovs, then the servants. The sun had already come out when they began to throw bloody clothes into the fire. ...Suddenly a stream of diamonds sprayed out of one of the ladies' bras. They trampled the fire and began to pick out jewelry from the ashes and from the ground. In two more bras, diamonds, pearls, and some colored precious stones were found sewn into the lining.
A car rattled on the road. Yurovsky and Goloshchekin drove up in a passenger car. We looked into the mine. At first they wanted to cover the corpses with sand, but then Yurovsky said that let them drown in the water at the bottom - anyway, no one would look for them here, since this is an area of abandoned mines, and there are a lot of shafts here. Just in case, they decided to collapse the upper part of the cage (Yurovsky had brought a box of grenades), but then they thought: explosions would be heard in the village, and fresh destruction would be noticeable. They simply filled the mine with old branches, twigs, and rotten boards found nearby. Ermakov's truck and Yurovsky's car set off on their way back. It was a hot day, everyone was exhausted to the limit, they had difficulty fighting sleep, no one had eaten anything for almost a day.
The next day - July 18, 1918 - the Ural Regional Cheka received information that all of Verkh-Isetsk was talking only about the execution of Nicholas II and that the corpses were thrown into abandoned mines near the village of Koptyaki. So much for conspiracy! It could only be that one of the participants in the burial told his wife in secret, and she told the gossip, and it went around the whole district.
Yurovsky was summoned to the Cheka board. They decided to send the car with Yurovsky and Ermakov to the mine that same night, pull out all the corpses and burn them. From the Ural Regional Cheka, my friend, board member Isai Idelevich Rodzinsky, was assigned to the operation.
So, the night came from July 18 to 19, 1918. At midnight, a truck with security officers Rodzinsky, Yurovsky, Ermakov, sailor Vaganov, sailors and Red Army soldiers (six or seven people in total) left for the area of abandoned mines. In the back were barrels of gasoline and boxes of concentrated sulfuric acid in bottles for disfiguring corpses.
Everything that I will tell about the re-burial operation, I say from the words of my friends: the late Yakov Yurovsky and the now living Isai Rodzinsky, whose detailed memories must certainly be recorded for history, since Isai is the only person who survived from the participants in this operation, who today can identify the place where the remains of the Romanovs are buried. It is also necessary to record the memories of my friend Grigory Petrovich Nikulin, who knows the details of the liquidation of the Grand Dukes in Alapaevsk and Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich Romanov in Perm.
We drove up to the mine, lowered two sailors on ropes - Vaganov and another - to the bottom of the mine shaft, where there was a small platform-ledge. When all those shot were pulled out of the water by the feet with ropes to the surface and laid in a row on the grass, and the security officers sat down to rest, it became clear how frivolous the first burial was. Before them lay the ready-made “miraculous relics”: the icy water of the mine not only washed away the blood completely, but also froze the bodies so much that they looked as if they were alive - a blush even appeared on the faces of the king, girls and women. Undoubtedly, the Romanovs could have been preserved in such excellent condition in a mine refrigerator for more than one month, and, let me remind you, there were only a few days left before the fall of Yekaterinburg.
It was beginning to get light. Along the road from the village of Koptyaki, the first carts headed to the Verkh-Isetsky bazaar. The sent outposts of Red Army soldiers blocked the road at both ends, explaining to the peasants that the passage was temporarily closed because criminals had escaped from prison, the area was cordoned off by troops and the forest was being combed. The carts were turned back.
The guys didn’t have a ready-made burial plan, where to take the corpses, and no one knew where to hide them either. Therefore, we decided to try to burn at least some of those executed so that their number would be less than eleven. They took the bodies of Nicholas II, Alexei, the Tsarina, and Doctor Botkin, doused them with gasoline and set them on fire. The frozen corpses smoked, stank, hissed, but did not burn. Then they decided to bury the remains of the Romanovs somewhere. They put all eleven bodies (four of them burnt) into the back of the truck, drove onto the Koptyakovskaya road and turned towards Verkh-Isetsk. Not far from the crossing (apparently across the Mountain-Ural Railway - check the location on the map with I.I. Rodzinsky) in a swampy lowland, the car skidded in the mud - neither forward nor backward. No matter how much they fought, they didn’t move. They brought boards from the railway guard's house at the crossing and with difficulty pushed the truck out of the resulting swampy hole. And suddenly someone (Ya. M. Yurovsky told me in 1933 that it was Rodzinsky) had an idea: this hole on the road itself is an ideal secret mass grave for the last Romanovs!
We deepened the hole with shovels until it reached black peat water. There, the corpses were lowered into a swampy bog, doused with sulfuric acid, and covered with earth. The moving truck brought a dozen old impregnated railroad sleepers - they made a flooring out of them over the pit, and drove the car over it several times. The sleepers were pressed a little into the ground and became dirty, as if they had always been there.
Thus, in a random swampy hole, the last members of the royal Romanov dynasty, a dynasty that tyrannized Russia for three hundred and five years, found a worthy rest! The new revolutionary government made no exception for the crowned robbers of the Russian land: they were buried the way highway robbers were buried in Rus' from ancient times - without a cross or a tombstone, so as not to stop the gaze of those walking along this road to a new life.
On the same day, Ya. M. Yurovsky and G. P. Nikulin went to Moscow through Perm to V. I. Lenin and Ya. M. Sverdlov with a report on the liquidation of the Romanovs. In addition to a bag of diamonds and other jewelry, they carried all the diaries and correspondence of the royal family found in Ipatiev’s house, photo albums of the royal family’s stay in Tobolsk (the king was a passionate amateur photographer), as well as those two letters in red ink that were compiled by Beloborodov and Voikov to ascertain the mood royal family. According to Beloborodov, now these two documents were supposed to prove to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee the existence of an officer organization whose goal was to kidnap the royal family. Alexander feared that V.I. Lenin would bring him to justice for his arbitrariness in executing the Romanovs without the sanction of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In addition, Yurovsky and Nikulin had to personally tell Ya. M. Sverdlov the situation in Yekaterinburg and the circumstances that forced the Ural Regional Council to make a decision to liquidate the Romanovs.
At the same time, Beloborodov, Safarov and Goloshchekin decided to announce the execution of only one Nicholas II, adding that the family had been taken away and hidden in a safe place
On the evening of July 20, 1918, I saw Beloborodov, and he told me that he had received a telegram from Ya. M. Sverdlov. At a meeting on July 18, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided: to consider the decision of the Ural Regional Council to liquidate the Romanovs correct. Alexander and I hugged and congratulated each other, which means that Moscow understood the complexity of the situation, and therefore Lenin approved of our actions. That same evening, Philip Goloshchekin publicly announced for the first time at a meeting of the Regional Council of the Urals the execution of Nicholas II. There was no end to the jubilation of the listeners; the workers' spirits rose.
A day or two later, a message appeared in Yekaterinburg newspapers that Nicholas II had been shot by the verdict of the people, and the royal family had been taken out of the city and hidden in a safe place. I don’t know the true goals of Beloborodov’s maneuver, but I assume that the regional Council of the Urals did not want to inform the city population about the execution of women and children. Perhaps there were some other considerations, but neither I nor Yurovsky (with whom I often saw each other in Moscow in the early 1930s, and we talked a lot about Romanov history) were aware of them. One way or another, this deliberately false report in the press gave rise to rumors among the people that persist to this day about the rescue of the royal children, the flight abroad of the king’s daughter Anastasia and other legends.
Thus ended the secret operation to rid Russia of the Romanov dynasty. It was so successful that to this day neither the secret of Ipatiev’s house nor the burial place of the royal family has been revealed.
Biography
early years
Yakov Yurovsky was born in the city of Tomsk into a large working-class Jewish family, the eighth of ten children. His father Mikhail Ilyich was a glazier, his mother was a seamstress. He studied at an elementary school in the river area, then (from 1890) at a craft. In exile in Germany, together with his entire family (wife Maria Yakovlevna, three children, one of whom, Alexander Yakovlevich, later became a rear admiral of the USSR fleet) converted to Lutheranism.
Revolutionary activities
He joined the RSDLP in 1905 and was personally acquainted with Yakov Sverdlov. During the revolution of 1905 he went to Berlin. He returned to Ekaterinodar, from where he went to America in 1907. In 1909 he arrived from America to Ekaterinodar. In 1910 he moved to Tomsk, where he opened a watch shop. In 1912, he was exiled to Yekaterinburg for revolutionary activities, where he opened a photo studio and a watch workshop.
After the February Revolution, Yurovsky became a member of the local Council, and after the October Revolution - the regional Commissioner of Justice. At the beginning of 1918, he headed the investigative commission of the Cheka at the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Execution of the royal family
Yakov Yurovsky went down in history as one of the main participants and leader of the execution of the sentence of Nicholas II and his family.
On July 4, 1918, Yurovsky became the commandant of the Ipatiev House and, by decision of the Ural Council, led the direct execution of the royal family on the night of July 16-17.
There is a version that in order to carry out the execution, Yurovsky allegedly drew up a special document that included a list of the execution team. However, based on the results of the historical research of I. F. Plotnikov, it can be concluded that this document, at one time provided to the press by former Austrian prisoner of war I. P. Meyer, published in the USA in 1984 by E. E. Alferyev and, most likely, fabricated , does not display the real list of participants in the execution.
On July 21, 1920, Yurovsky handed over the jewelry of the executed Romanov royal family to the commandant of the Moscow Kremlin P.D. Malkov.
Later years of life
After the execution of the royal family, Yurovsky was appointed head of the Moscow regional Cheka and a member of the board of the Moscow Cheka, worked in the Vyatka Cheka, and in 1919 became chairman of the Yekaterinburg Cheka. In 1921 he was transferred to Moscow and worked in the People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. In 1921, he headed the gold department of the Gokhran of the Republic, then - chairman of the department for the sale of valuables at the Gokhran of the RSFSR. Subsequently, he held a number of management positions.
In 1928 he joined the board of the State Polytechnic Museum, and since 1930 - director of the Polytechnic Museum.
He died in 1938 from a stomach ulcer. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
Family
Daughter - Yurovskaya, Rimma Yakovlevna (1898–1980) - a major Komsomol leader, was arrested in 1938 and served time in the Karaganda camp until 1946.
Son - Yurovsky, Alexander Yakovlevich (1904–1986) - rear admiral of the Navy.
Son - Yurovsky, Evgeniy Yakovlevich (1909–1977) - lieutenant colonel, political worker in the Navy.
Notes
see also
- Ipatiev House
- Execution of the royal family
- Film "The Kingslayer"
Literature
- Letters from the Royal Family from captivity / Comp. E. E. Alferev. - Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1984.
- Plotnikov I. About the team of killers of the royal family and its national composition // Ural. - 2003. - No. 9.
- Sokolov N. A. Surrounding the royal family by security officers // Murder of the Royal Family / N. A. Sokolov. - M.: Soviet writer, 1991. - Ch. 15.
- Heresh E. Nicholas II / Trans. B. Lyubartseva. - M.: Phoenix, 1998. - 416 p. - (Ser. Trace in history). -
On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the family of Tsar Nicholas II and several of their associates were shot in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. The execution was carried out by order of the executive committee of the Ural Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, led by the Bolsheviks. Council member Yakov Yurovsky directly supervised the execution. Here is his story about those events, simple and creepy.
“On the 15th I started preparing, because I had to do it all quickly. I decided to take as many people as there were being shot, I gathered them all, saying what was the matter, that we all needed to prepare for this, that as soon as we received final instructions, we would need to carry out everything skillfully. It must be said that shooting people is not at all as easy as some may think. This is not happening at the front, but, so to speak, in a “peaceful” environment. Here, after all, there were not just bloodthirsty people, but people fulfilling the difficult duty of the revolution. That is why it was no coincidence that at the last moment two of the Latvians refused - they could not stand it.
On the morning of the 16th, under the pretext of a meeting with the uncle of Sverdlovsk, I sent the cook boy Sednev. This caused concern among those arrested. The constant mediator Botkin, and then one of the daughters, inquired where and why, and took Sednev away for a long time. Alexey misses him. Having received an explanation, they left as if reassured. He prepared 12 revolvers and decided who would shoot whom. Comrade Philip [Goloshchekin] warned me that a truck would arrive at 12 o’clock at night, those who arrived would tell the password, let them through and hand over the corpses, which they would take away for burial. At about 11 pm on the 16th, I gathered people again, distributed revolvers and announced that we would soon begin to liquidate those arrested. Pavel Medvedev was warned about a thorough check of the guards outside and inside, that he and the guard should always watch themselves in the area of the house and the house where the external guards were located, and that they should keep in touch with me. And that only at the last moment, when everything is ready for execution, to warn both the sentries and the rest of the team that if shots are heard from the house, not to worry and not to leave the premises, and what if anything particularly disturbs , then let me know through the established connection.
Only at half past one did the truck arrive; the extra time of waiting could no longer help but contribute to some anxiety, the waiting in general, and most importantly, the nights were short. Only upon arrival or after phone calls that they had left, I went to wake up the arrested.
Botkin was sleeping in the room closest to the entrance, he came out and asked what was the matter, I told him that we needed to wake everyone up right away, since there was anxiety in the city and it was dangerous for them to stay up here, and that I would transfer them to another place. Getting ready took a long time, about 40 minutes. When the family got dressed, I led them to a pre-designated room, downstairs of the house. We obviously thought through this plan with Comrade Nikulin (here it must be said that we did not think in a timely manner about the fact that the windows would let the noise through, and secondly, that the wall against which those being shot would be placed was stone, and, finally, thirdly, which is not possible What was foreseen was that the shooting would take on a disorderly character. This latter should not have happened because everyone would shoot one person and that everything would therefore be in order. The reasons for the latter, that is, the disorderly shooting, became clear later. Although I warned through Botkin that they did not need to take anything with them, they, however, collected some various small items, pillows, handbags, etc. and, it seems, a small dog.
Having gone down into the room (there is a very wide window on the right at the entrance to the room, almost the entire wall), I invited them to stand along the wall. Obviously, at that moment they had no idea what awaited them. Alexandra Fedorovna said: “There aren’t even chairs here”. Nikolai carried Alexei in his arms. He stood there with him in the room. Then I ordered a couple of chairs to be brought, on one of which Alexandra Fedorovna sat on the right side of the entrance to the window, almost in the corner. Next to her, towards the left side of the entrance, stood her daughters and Demidova. Then they seated Alexey on a chair next to him, followed by Doctor Botkin, the cook and others, and Nikolay remained standing opposite Alexey. At the same time, I ordered people to come down, and ordered that everyone be ready and that everyone be in their place when the command was given. Nikolai, having seated Alexei, stood up so that he was blocked by himself. Alexey was sitting in the left corner of the room from the entrance, and I immediately, as far as I remember, told Nikolai something like the following: that his royal relatives and friends both in the country and abroad tried to free him, and that the Council of Workers' Deputies decided to shoot them. He asked: "What?" and turned to face Alexey, at that time I shot at him and killed him on the spot. He never had time to turn to face us to get an answer. Then, instead of order, random shooting began. The room, although very small, everyone could, however, enter the room and carry out the execution in order. But many, obviously, were shooting over the threshold, since the wall was stone, the bullets began to ricochet, and the firing intensified when the cry of those being shot rose. With great difficulty I managed to stop the shooting. A bullet from one of the shooters from behind buzzed past my head, and one, I don’t remember, hit either his arm, palm, or finger and was shot through. When the shooting was stopped, it turned out that the daughters, Alexandra Fedorovna and, it seems, the maid of honor Demidova, as well as Alexei, were alive. I thought that they fell out of fear or, perhaps, on purpose, and therefore were still alive. Then they began to finish shooting (to reduce blood, I suggested in advance to shoot in the area of the heart). Alexey remained sitting, petrified, and I shot him. And they shot [at] the daughters, but nothing came of it, then Ermakov used a bayonet, and this did not help, then they were shot in the head. The reason that the execution of the daughters and Alexandra Feodorovna was difficult, I found out only in the forest.
Having finished the execution, it was necessary to transport the corpses, and the path is relatively long, how to transport them? Then someone guessed about the stretcher (they didn’t guess in time), took the shafts from the sleigh and pulled on what seemed to be a sheet. After checking that everyone was dead, we began carrying them. It was then discovered that there would be traces of blood everywhere. I immediately ordered to take the available soldier’s cloth, put a piece in a stretcher, and then lined the truck with cloth. I instructed Mikhail Medvedev to accept the corpses; he is a former security officer and currently an employee of the GPU. It was he, together with Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov, who was supposed to accept and take away the corpses. When the first corpses were taken away, I don’t remember exactly who told me that someone had appropriated some valuables. Then I realized that, obviously, there were values in the things they brought. I immediately stopped the transfer, gathered people and demanded that they hand over the taken valuables. After some denial, the two who took their valuables returned them. Having threatened to shoot those who would loot, he removed these two and assigned, as far as I remember, Comrade. Nikulin, warning that the executed people had valuables. Having previously collected everything that turned out to be in certain things that were captured by them, as well as the things themselves, he sent them to the commandant’s office. Comrade Philip [Goloshchekin], obviously sparing me (since I was not in good health), warned me not to go to the “funeral,” but I was very worried about how well the corpses would be hidden. Therefore, I decided to go myself, and, as it turned out, I did well, otherwise all the corpses would certainly have been in the hands of the whites. It is easy to understand what kind of speculation they would create around this matter.
Having ordered everything to be washed and cleaned, we set off at about 3 o'clock, or even a little later. I took with me several people from the internal security. I didn’t know where the corpses were supposed to be buried; this matter, as I said above, was obviously entrusted by Philip [Goloshchekin] to Comrade Ermakov (by the way, Comrade Philip, as I think Pavel Medvedev told me that same night, he saw him when he was running to the team, walking all the time near the house, probably worrying a lot about how everything would go here), who took us somewhere to the Verkh]-Isetsky plant. I had not been to these places and did not know them. About 2-3 versts, and maybe more, from the Verkh-Isetsky plant we were met by a whole escort of people on horseback and in carriages. I asked Ermakov what kind of people these were, why they were here, he answered me that these were people prepared for him. Why there were so many of them, I still don’t know, I only heard isolated shouts: “We thought that they would give them here to us alive, but here, it turns out, they are dead.”. It seems that after 3-4 miles we got stuck with the truck among two trees. Then some of Ermakov’s people at the bus stop began to stretch the girls’ blouses, and again it was discovered that there were valuables and that they were beginning to appropriate them. Then I ordered people to be stationed so that no one would be allowed near the truck. The stuck truck did not move. I ask Ermakov: “Well, is the place he chose far away?” He says: “Not far, beyond the railway line” . And here, in addition to being caught in the trees, the place is also swampy. Wherever we go, everything is swampy. I think he brought so many people, horses, at least there were carts, or even carriages. However, there is nothing to do, you need to unload and lighten the truck, but this did not help either. Then I ordered them to be loaded onto the carriages, since time did not allow us to wait any longer; it was already getting light. Only when it was already dawn did we approach the famous “tract”. A few dozen steps from the intended burial shaft, peasants were sitting around a fire, apparently having spent the night in the hayfield. Along the way, we also met loners at a distance; it became completely impossible to continue working in front of people. It must be said that the situation was becoming difficult, and everything could go down the drain. Even at that time I didn’t know that the mine was not even suitable for our purpose. And then there are these damned values. That there were quite a lot of them, I didn’t know at that moment, and Ermakov recruited people for such a task that were in no way suitable, and there were so many of them. I decided that the people needed to be dispersed. I immediately learned that we had driven about 15–16 versts from the city, and arrived at the village of Koptyaki, two or three versts from it. It was necessary to cordon off the place at a certain distance, which I did. He singled out people and instructed them to cover a certain area and, in addition, sent them to the village so that no one would leave with an explanation that there were Czechoslovaks nearby. That our units are moving here, that it is dangerous to show up here, so that everyone they meet will be turned into the village, and those who are stubbornly disobedient will be shot if all else fails. I sent another group of people to the city as if out of necessity. Having done this, I ordered the corpses to be loaded, the dress to be removed in order to burn it, that is, in case the things were destroyed completely and thus to remove unnecessary leading evidence if the corpses were for some reason discovered. He ordered the fires to be lit, when they began to undress, it was discovered that the daughters and Alexandra Fedorovna, on the latter I don’t remember exactly what was on, were also wearing clothes or just sewn-up clothes. The daughters wore bodices, so well made of solid diamonds and other valuable stones, which were not only containers for valuables, but also protective armor. That is why neither the bullets nor the bayonet produced results when fired and struck by the bayonet. By the way, no one is to blame for these death throes of theirs except themselves. These valuables turned out to be only about half a pound. The greed was so great that Alexandra Feodorovna, by the way, was simply wearing a huge piece of round gold wire, bent into the shape of a bracelet, weighing about a pound. All valuables were immediately flogged so as not to carry bloody rags with them. Those parts of the valuables that the whites discovered during excavations undoubtedly belonged to things sewn up separately and, when burned, remained in the ashes of the fires. The next day, several diamonds were given to me by my comrades who found them there. How they neglected to look after other remnants of valuables! They had enough time for this. Most likely, they just didn’t realize it. By the way, we must think that some valuables are returned to us through Torgsin, since, probably, they were picked up there after our departure by the peasants of the village of Koptyaki. The valuables were collected, things were burned, and the corpses, completely naked, were thrown into the mine. This is where a new hassle began. The water barely covered the bodies, what should we do? They decided to blow up the mines with bombs to fill them up. But, of course, nothing came of this. I saw that we had not achieved any results with the funeral, that we couldn’t leave it like that and that everything had to start all over again. So what to do? Where to go? At about two o'clock in the afternoon I decided to go to the city, since it was clear that the corpses had to be removed from the mine and transported somewhere else to another place, since besides the fact that a blind man would have discovered them, the place was a failure, because people... then they saw that something was going on here. Zastava left the guards on site, took the valuables and left. I went to the regional executive committee and reported to the authorities how bad everything was. T. Safarov and I don’t remember who else listened, and they didn’t say anything. Then I found Philip [Goloshchekin] and pointed out to him the need to transfer the corpses to another place. When he agreed, I suggested that we immediately send people to pull out the corpses. I'll start looking for a new place. Philip [Goloshchekin] called Ermakov, scolded him strongly and sent him to remove the corpses. At the same time, I instructed him to bring bread and lunch, since people there had been without sleep for almost a day, hungry, and exhausted. There they had to wait for me to arrive. It turned out to be not so easy to get and remove the corpses, and they suffered a lot with this. Obviously, we were busy all night, since we left late.
Yakov Yurovsky. Photo: tsushima.su
I went to the city executive committee to Sergei Egorovich Chutskaev, then the pre-city executive committee, to consult, maybe he knows such a place. He advised me of very deep abandoned mines on the Moscow Highway. I got a car, took someone from the regional Cheka with me, it seems Polushin and someone else, and we drove off, not reaching a mile or a mile and a half to the indicated place, the car was damaged, we left the driver to repair it, and we set off on foot and examined the place and they found that it was good, the whole point was that there were no extra eyes. Some people lived nearby, we decided that we would come, pick him up, send him to the city, and at the end of the operation we would release him, and that’s what we decided on. Returning to the car, and she herself needs to be dragged. I decided to wait for someone passing by. After a while, someone was driving along on a steam car, stopped me, the guys, it turned out, knew me, and were rushing to their factory. With great reluctance, of course, I had to give up the horses.
While we were driving, another plan arose: to burn the corpses, but no one knows how to do this. Polushin, it seems, said that he knew, well, okay, since no one really knew how it would turn out. I still had in mind the mines of the Moscow Highway, and, therefore, transportation, I decided to get carts, and, in addition, I had a plan, in case of any failure, to bury them in groups in different places on the road. The road leading to Koptyaki, near the tract, is clayey, so if you bury it here without prying eyes, not a single devil would have guessed, bury it and drive through with a convoy, it will turn out to be a mess and that’s all. So, three plans. There is nothing to drive, no car. I went to the garage of the head of military transportation to see if there were any cars. It turned out to be a car, but only for the boss. I forgot his last name, who, as it turned out later, was a scoundrel and, it seems, he was shot in Perm. The head of the garage or the deputy head of military transportation, I don’t remember exactly, was Comrade Pavel Petrovich Gorbunov, currently deputy. [chairman] of the State Bank, told him that I urgently needed a car. He: “Oh, I know why”. And he gave me the boss's car. I went to the supply chief of the Urals, Voikov, to get gasoline or kerosene, as well as sulfuric acid, in case of disfiguring faces, and, in addition, shovels. I got all this. As a Comrade Commissioner of Justice for the Ural Region, I ordered that ten carts without drivers be taken from the prison. We loaded everything up and went. The truck was sent there. I myself was left to wait for Polushin, the “specialist” in burning, who had disappeared somewhere. I was waiting for him at Voikov’s. But after waiting until 11 o’clock in the evening, he still didn’t arrive. Then they told me that he rode to me on horseback, and that he fell off the horse and injured his leg, and that he could not ride. Bearing in mind that I could get back into the car again, already around 12 at night, I went on horseback, I don’t remember with which comrade, to the location of the corpses. I also got into trouble. The horse stumbled, knelt down and somehow awkwardly fell on its side and crushed my leg. I lay there for an hour or more before I was able to mount my horse again. We arrived late at night, work was going on to extract [the corpses]. I decided to bury several corpses on the road. We started digging a hole. She was almost ready by dawn, one comrade came up to me and told me that, despite the ban on not letting anyone get close, a man, an acquaintance of Ermakov, appeared from somewhere, whom he allowed to the distance from which it was clear that there was something... then they dig because there were heaps of clay. Although Ermakov assured that he could not see anything, then other comrades, besides the one who told me, began to illustrate, that is, showing where he was and what he, undoubtedly, could not help but see.
Monument to the Royal Passion-Bearers in front of the Church on the Blood in Yekaterinburg. Photo: temples.ru
So this plan also failed. It was decided to restore the pit. After waiting until evening, we boarded the cart. The truck was waiting in a place where it seemed to be guaranteed against the danger of getting stuck (the driver was the Zlokazovsky worker Lyukhanov). We headed for the Siberian Highway. Having crossed the railway track, we reloaded the corpses into the truck and soon settled down again. After traveling for about two hours, we were already approaching midnight, then I decided that we should be buried somewhere here, since at this late hour of the evening no one could really see us here, the only one who could see several people was the railway guard siding, since I sent to train sleepers to cover the place where the corpses would be stored, bearing in mind that the only guess for the presence of sleepers here would be that the sleepers were laid in order to transport a truck. I forgot to say that this evening, or rather that night, we got stuck twice. Having unloaded everything, we got out, but the second time we were hopelessly stuck. About two months ago, while leafing through the book of the investigator on extremely important cases under Kolchak, Sokolov, I saw a photograph of these laid sleepers, and it was indicated there that this was a place laid with sleepers for the passage of a truck. So, having dug up the whole area, they didn’t think to look under the sleepers. It must be said that everyone was so damn tired that they didn’t want to dig a new grave, but as always happens in such cases, two or three got down to business, then others started, immediately lit a fire, and while the grave was being prepared, we burned two corpses : Alexey and by mistake they burned Demidova instead of Alexandra Fedorovna. They dug a hole at the burning site, stacked the bones, leveled them, lit a large fire again and hid all traces with ash. Before putting the rest of the corpses in the pit, we doused them with sulfuric acid, filled the pit, covered it with sleepers, drove an empty truck, compacted some of the sleepers and called it a day. At 5–6 o’clock in the morning, having gathered everyone and explained to them the importance of the work done, warning that everyone should forget about what they saw and never talk about it with anyone, we went to the city. Having lost us, we had already finished everything, the guys from the regional Cheka arrived: comrades Isai Rodzinsky, Gorin and someone else. On the evening of the 19th I left for Moscow with a report. I then handed over the valuables to a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Third Army, Trifonov; it seems that Beloborodov, Novoselov and someone else buried them in the basement, in the ground of some worker’s house in Lysva, and in 1919, when the Central Committee commission went to the Urals to organize Soviet power in the liberated Urals, I was also on my way here to work then, the same Novosyolov’s valuables, I don’t remember with whom, were taken out, and N. N. Krestinsky, returning to Moscow, took them there. When in 1921–23 I worked at the Gokhran of the Republic, putting valuables in order, I remember that one of Alexandra Fedorovna’s pearl strings was valued at 600 thousand gold rubles.
In Perm, where I dismantled the former royal things, a lot of valuables were again discovered, which were hidden in things up to and including black linen, and there was more than one carload of all sorts of goods.”
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