A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

But even so, there is no doubt that the murder was also carried out for other reasons. The party leaders were by this stage having second thoughts about the wisdom of a trial. Not that there was any real prospect of finding the ex-Tsar innocent. Trotsky was a master of the political trial, as his own in 1906 had shown, and he would no doubt show with brilliant logic how, as an autocrat who claimed the right to rule in person, Nicholas was himself to blame for the crimes of his regime. Nor was there any prospect of the ex-Tsar being allowed the legal nicety of able lawyers to defend him: the Russian equivalents of Malesherbes and de Seze — Louis XVI's lawyers at his trial — were all in prison or exile by this stage. It was rather the more fundamental problem — one raised by Saint-Just against Louis's trial — that putting the deposed monarch in the dock at all was to presuppose the possibility of his innocence. And in that case the moral legitimacy of the revolution would itself be open to question. To put Nicholas on trial would also be to put the Bolsheviks on trial. The recognition of this was the point where they passed from the realm of law into the realm of terror. In the end it was not a question of proving the ex-Tsar's guilt — after all, as Saint-Just had put it, 'one cannot reign innocently' — but

a question of eliminating him as a rival source of legitimacy. Nicholas had to die so that Soviet power could live.

On 4 July the local Cheka had taken over the responsibility of guarding the Romanovs at the Ipatev House. Yakov Yurovsky, the local Cheka boss who led the execution squad, was one of Lenin's most trusted lieutenants — ruthless, honest, intelligent and cruel. His brother said he 'enjoyed oppressing people'.⁸⁹ The Tsar's murderer was also a Jew — a fact for which the Jews would pay in future. On the night of the murder, 16—17 July, at about 1.30 a.m., Yurovsky awoke the Tsar's physician and ordered him to rouse the rest of the prisoners. At 2 a.m. all eleven of them were led down the stairs to the basement. Nicholas carried the Tsarevich, followed by the Empress and her daughters, the Tsar's physician and the rest of the retinue. Anastasia carried the King Charles spaniel Joy. On their request, two chairs were brought in for the Empress and Alexis, who was still recovering from his recent attack of bleeding. None of them seemed aware of what was about to happen: they had been told that there had been shooting in the town and it was safer for them in the basement. After a few minutes, Yurovsky entered the room with the execution squad — six Hungarians, usually described as 'Latvians', and five Russians. Each had been assigned to shoot a particular victim, but when they entered the room it turned out that they were not facing the right person and the room was too small, with murderers and victims practically standing on each other's toes, for the necessary changes to be made: it was this that partly caused the confusion that followed. Yurovsky read out the order to shoot the Romanovs. Nicholas asked him to repeat it: his last words were 'What? What?' Then the firing began. Yurovsky shot Nicholas point blank with a Colt. The Empress also died instantly. Bullets ricocheted around the room, which filled up with smoke. When the firing finished, after several minutes, Alexis lay alive in a pool of blood: Yurovsky finished him off with two shots in the head. Anastasia, who also showed signs of life, was stabbed several times with a bayonet.⁹⁰

Given all the evidence that has come to light, it is inconceivable that any of the Romanovs survived this ordeal.* After the murder the bodies were driven off in a lorry and dumped in a series of nearby mineshafts. These turned out to be too shallow to conceal the bodies and the next day they were removed. But on the way to some deeper mines the lorry got stuck in the mud and it was decided to bury the corpses in the ground. Sulphuric acid was poured on their faces to hide the identity of the corpses should they be discovered. This proved unnecessary — and ineffective. The graves were not discovered until after the collapse of the Soviet regime. But by this time, DNA analysis of the bones,

* The only certain survivor was the spaniel Joy.

brought back to Britain in 1992, was enough to establish beyond doubt that they belonged to the Romanovs.⁹¹

News of the execution reached Lenin the next day during a session of Sovnarkom. The people's commissars were engaged in a detailed discussion of a draft decree for health protection when Sverdlov came in with the news. The brief announcement of the Tsar's death was met with general silence. Then Lenin said: 'We shall now proceed to read the draft decree article by article.'⁹²