The Last Days of the Romanovs

by N. Sokolov

The twelve revolvers volleyed instantly, and all the prisoners fell to the ground. Death had been instantaneous in the case of the parents and three of the children, and of Dr. Botkin and two servants. Alexis remained alive in spite of his wounds, and moaned and struggled in his agony. Yurovsky finished him with his Colt. One of the girls—presumably the youngest grand duchess, Anastasia—rolled about and screamed, and, when one of the murderers approached, fought desperately with him till he killed her. It seems as if the murderers had not been able to aim straight at the boy and the girl. Even their callous hearts had wavered. The maidservant lived the longest. Perhaps the pillows were in the way. She was not touched by the first volley, and ran about screaming till some of the “Letts,” seizing their rifles, bayoneted her to death. She was covered with stabs. Poor Demidova died the victim of a misunderstanding; the Reds thought that she was a maid-of-honour and therefore a bourgeoise, whereas she was a simple peasant girl.

Within a few minutes of their entering the room, all was over. No time was to be lost in removing traces of the crime. The floors and walls had to be washed quickly and the bodies sent away. Daylight would soon appear. There was a long way to go through the city. Hardened and ruthless, secure in the impunity of murder under the Soviet system, Yurovsky and his associates were none the less hurrying desperately. They knew that the arrangements for “executing” the Romanovs could not be regarded as a trial, nor would the people approve the deed. And so like common murderers, they were desperately anxious to get rid of the corpses. Here Ermakov and Vaganov became invaluable.

The evidence of three eye-witnesses is given below, namely of Medvedev, one of the actual murderers, of Yakimov, who was present at the shooting, and of a Red Guard named Proskuriakov, who helped to remove traces of the murder. The necessary comments of the investigating magistrate accompany the depositions so that the reader is able to study them in their true perspective.

Medvedev told his wife all about it directly after the murder. He did not conceal the fact that he himself had fired his revolver at the Romanovs. He even emphasised his active complicity, boasting that he was the only Russian “workman” who had taken part in the shooting, and that all the others, besides Yurovsky and his assistants, were “not ours”—i.e., foreigners. Medvedev was caught at Perm while trying to blow up the bridge over the Kama to cover the retreat of the Red Army. He confirmed all the statements that he had made to his wife except in one particular: he denied having stated that he had himself done the shooting. It is a customary reservation in the case of all who take part in a joint and prearranged murder. The witness testifies to the fact of the murder and names the actual murderers, but persists in declaring that he himself did not do the killing, although he admitted to holding a revolver in his hand at the time of the shooting. To divert the evidence from himself he had to invent an alibi. Hear what he says in his signed deposition:—

“Yurovsky sent me out, saying, ‘Go into the street; see if there is anyone about and if the shots can be heard.’ I went out into the yard surrounded by the big fence” (he means the space between the outside wall and the hoardings), “and, before I had time to reach the street, heard the sound of the firing. I returned at once inside the house—only two or three minutes had passed—and, entering the room where the shooting had been carried out, I saw that all the members of the Tsar’s family—the Tsar, the Tsaritsa, the four daughters, and the Naslednik (heir), were already lying on the floor with numerous wounds on their bodies, and the blood was flowing in torrents. The doctor, maid, and two men-servants had also been killed. When I appeared the Naslednik was still alive, groaning. Yurovsky went up to him and fired two or three times point-blank into him. The Naslednik was still. The picture of the murder, the smell and sight of the blood, caused me to feel sick....”

Anatoly Yakimov, the second witness, is the man who had become “converted” after remaining a few weeks with the Tsar. He had been a sergeant of the Russian Guard, and remained so after the Russians had been relegated to the outer posts. It was his business to place the sentries and see that they remained at their posts. As the Russian sentries could see into the room where the murdering was to be done, it had not been possible to keep them in ignorance to the end, as explained above. Yakimov “sympathised” with the prisoners, but he did not dare to give effect to these feelings. There is good reason to believe that he was present at the murder. Possibly Yurovsky had insisted upon his being inside the house at the time, in order to implicate him in the deed. His alibi bears a family likeness to Medvedev’s. Like him, he had a full, circumstantial knowledge of the killing that corroborates Medvedev in every essential point, and that could not have come to him unless he had been actually present. He explains that it was all told to him by the sentries—two men who stood outside the death-chamber window and two others who were in the courtyard when the bodies were removed.

He also unburdened himself to his family. According to his own account, he heard of the murder at four o’clock in the morning, after which he could not sleep, but “just sat and shivered,” as he says. At eight o’clock he went to his sister, a woman of some education, who was married to Agafonov, an official of the Commissariat of Justice. Here is what his sister deposes:—“He came in without saying a word, looking dreadfully upset and exhausted. I noticed it at once and asked him: ‘What is the matter with you?’ He requested me to close the door, sat down and kept silent, his face convulsed with terror and his body trembling violently. I again asked him: ‘What ails you?’ I thought that some great misfortune had overtaken him. He still maintained an obstinate silence, although it evidently caused him suffering. The thought occurred to me: ‘Maybe they have killed Nicholas.’ I asked him if it was so. My brother answered something like: ‘It is all over,’ and in reply to my further questions he said that all had been killed—i.e., the Tsar himself and all his family and all who had been with them excepting their little scullion. I do not recall my asking him if he had taken part in the murder, but I remember his saying that he had seen the spectacle of the murder with his own eyes. He related how this sight had so shaken him that he could not hold out, and every now and then had gone out of the house into the open air, adding that his comrades in the guard had upbraided him for it, suspecting him of feeling repentance or pity.... I then understood him to mean that he had been himself in the room or so near that he could see the actual murder with his own eyes.”

Here are two corroborative depositions of interest. When Yakimov had left his sister, she immediately ran out to her husband’s office. An investigating magistrate named Tomashevsky was in the next room, and saw her standing, weeping, and whispering to her husband. When she had gone, Agafonov came and told this same story in confidence to Tomashevsky. Agafonov saw Yakimov later in the day, and relates what transpired:—“Yakimov came to take leave. [He was going to the front.] I was struck by his appearance: the face pinched, the pupils distended, the lower lip quivering when he spoke. The mere sight of him convinced me that all that my wife had said was true. Clearly, Anatoly had passed through some terrible experience during the night.... I only asked him: ‘How are things?’ He replied, It is all over’” (vsi yóncheno).

Philip Proskuriakov—a youngster, the type of the good-natured peasant—deposed that he had entered the guard at Ipatiev’s house principally because he was curious to have a look at the Tsar; not because he felt hostile to him; indeed, if he disliked anybody it was the Jews. His narrative impressed the investigating magistrate by its evident sincerity. He did not see the actual murder, having spent the evening with some friends and taken copious draughts of “denaturat” (methylated spirits, which were in vogue since the prohibition of vodka) and as a result of these libations, Medvedev had placed him under arrest. He was locked up in the bath-house and sleeping off his “spree” when Medvedev came to wake him and order him to go into the house.

The bodies had been taken out just before he reached the death-chamber. Everything that happened in the house immediately afterwards came under his personal observation. He washed the blood off the floor and the walls. That he positively admits. He discussed the details of the murder with Andrei Strekotin, one of the guards, who enjoyed Medvedev’s friendship and had been selected by him to stand at the lower-floor machine-gun post during the “execution.” This same Strekotin also related his observations to one of his brother-guards named Letemin, arrested later and found to be in possession of a whole collection of valuables belonging to the family and Alexis’s spaniel Joy (afterwards brought to England). Letemin’s version agreed with Proskuriakov’s rendering of the Strekotin eye-witness account. What is still more important, Proskuriakov heard also Medvedev relate the story of the killing.