Execution of the Romanov family

The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and all those who chose to accompany them into exile – notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov – were shot in Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918. The Tsar and his family were killed by Bolshevik troops led by Yakov Yurovsky under the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet. Their bodies were then mutilated and buried in a field called Porosenkov Log in the Koptyaki forest.

Despite being informed that "the entire family suffered the same fate as its head", the Bolsheviks only announced Nicholas's death, with the official press release that "Nicholas Romanov's wife and son have been sent to a secure place." For over four years, as late as April 1922, the Soviet leadership continuously denied that the entire Romanov family was dead. The emergence of Romanov impostors drew media attention away from Soviet Russia, and discussion regarding the fate of the family was suppressed by Joseph Stalin from 1938.

The burial site was discovered in 1979 by an amateur sleuth, but the remains were not made public until 1989, during the glasnost period. However, the remains were disinterred by Soviet officials in a hasty exhumation that wrecked the site, destroying evidence in the process. The identity of the remains was confirmed by forensic and DNA investigation. They were reburied in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg in 1998, 80 years after they were killed, in a funeral that was not attended by key members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who disputed the authenticity of the remains. A second, smaller grave containing the remains of two Romanov children missing from the larger grave was discovered by amateur archeologists in 2007. However, their remains are kept in a state repository pending further DNA tests. No murder case against the perpetrators was ever brought forward, on the basis that those who committed the crime are dead.

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