Trigger Warnings at the end.
Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky.
When I took my duty as commander, the question already stood about liquidating the Romanov family, since the Czechoslovaks and the Cossacks were closing in on the Urals, closer and closer to Ekaterinburg.
On 16 July, 1918, about 2 o´clock in the afternoon, comrade Filipp came to the house and presented me with the resolution from the Executive Committee to execute Nicholas. It was pointed out that the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev, playmate to the tsarevich, must be removed. He told me that during the night, a comrade will arrive and say the password "chimneysweep", to him the corpses must be given, and he will get rid of them.
I called the boy Sednev and told him that his uncle wanted to see him, and therefore I was sending him away.
Restlessness began in the Romanov family. As always, Dr. Botkin immediately came to me and asked me to tell him where the boy had been sent. I told him also what I had told the boy, but he was still somewhat concerned. Later, Tatiana came, saying that Alexei missed him, but I calmed her, saying that the boy had gone to see his uncle and would return soon.
Having called the inner guard who were chosen for the execution of Nicholas and his family, I assigned roles and directed who would shoot whom. I provided them with "Nagant" system revolvers. When I allotted their roles, the Letts asked me to spare them the responsibility of shooting the girls, because they would not be able to do that. I decided it would be for the best to completely free these comrades from the shooting as they were clearly not capable of performing their revolutionary duty at the most decisive moment.
Having completed all the appropriate assignments, we waited for the "chimneysweep". However, hours passed, and the "chimneysweep" did not arrive. At 12 o´clock comrade Filipp came into the house again, he brought important news.
Orders had arrived, directly from Moscow, to spare the girls and the boy, for they were going to be taken to Perm. This had to be a secret. He gave me instructions and told me an extra truck was coming to take the children alive to the train station. The password the driver had to say was "chimney smoke". Annoyed by these recent developments, I told him there was no time to make the necessary alterations to the plans already put in place for the elimination of the entire family. There was also the legitimate concern that if we separated the children from the parents, panic would set amongst the prisoners.
I also told him of the suspicions I had about the intentions of the ones responsible for such a sudden and unexpected change of plans mere hours before the execution. Many, including myself, believed that destroying the entire dynasty was a revolutionary and historical necessity, one I would have proudly taken part in. We couldn´t give way to sentimentality when something much larger was at stake.
My first impression was that the orders were not truly from Moscow, and that the likelihood of an elaborate contra revolutionary infiltration being the sole cause of the entire affair was high. I was, admittedly, not as well informed as comrade Filipp on matters of state. I had no evidence to support my presuppositions regarding the source of the order, nor reason to doubt Filipp´s loyalty to the cause. After he explained to me in full detail the rationale for the choice Moscow had made, I became fully convinced that this postponement of the liquidation of the younger members of the family was a calculated measure that would probably benefit the revolution in the long run. I told comrade Filipp not to worry. The orders would be carried out.
I began making adjustments to the plans made days before.
We would still have to kill the servants. I knew in time I would be made to report back to Moscow in order to write down an official account of the events. Several of my men would be urged to do so as well, both publically and privately, but even then, we couldn´t afford to leave even one hostile witness capable of denying our story alive. Moscow had wanted to distance itself from the execution of the Romanov women and children in the first place, giving the appearance it had been a rogue decision made solely by the Ural Soviet, a claim that wouldn´t have held water if we had allowed survivors from the Ipatiev House to run around claiming that Moscow had indeed held enough power to order or delay the execution of certain or all members of the family.
The servants had to go.
The Ural Soviet had ordered the confiscation of all the objects belonging to the family, even the tsarevich´s brace, and for a murder scene to be staged in order to discourage and demoralize the upcoming enemy armies, many of whom would have no further reason to fight for. For this purpose, I was going to tell the men in charge of the disposal of the bodies to burn all the family´s clothes in the woods once they arrived.
No one but the necessary people would ever know the truth.
We wouldn´t allow the children to take any of their belongings with them. We would also have to ask the former grand duchesses and tsarevich to undress in order to confiscate all the jewels they had hidden somewhere in their clothes, something we had found out about shortly after their arrival from Tobolsk when one of our censors noticed the uncommon way in which they used the word "medicines" in their letters. It seemed like a code word for something different. The small number of valuables we had managed to take from them previously had also made us consider the possibility they were hiding something more.
We would find out later that our suspicions had been correct.
That left the issue of how to separate the parents and servants from the children. I didn´t think the prisoners would be able to overpower us or even cause serious trouble if they panicked, but the amount of force we would need to use in order to subdue them was unpredictable.
Managing to separate them peacefully was out of the question. They had worried excessively after the removal of the kitchen boy. How much worse would their reactions have been had they been told they would have to get into a truck without their parents?
I preferred to avoid the possibilities.
I decided it was best for the execution to start as originally planned. We would get them all in the room already selected for the process, and then I would ask the executioners to shoot directly at the hearts of the people assigned to each of them with order and accuracy, only this time none of them would be assigned to kill the children. In the unlikely event one of the children got hurt in the process, I would need the appropriate medical equipment to take care of the situation.
I met with the chosen executioners again and dismissed most of them. Only five were necessary now.
First I spoke to the guards who had been dismissed. They had gone outside and were leaning on the walls of the corridor. There, I informed them of the situation in detail and asked them to keep the secret, putting a special emphasis on how important it was for the survival of everything we had fought for so far. I sent most of them to join the patrols outside the house. One was ordered to get hold of four sets of clothes for women and one set for a boy of about twelve to fourteen years of age. I gave him money in case he needed to purchase the garments and authorized him to use force in the event that the sum wasn´t enough or the shops were all closed, as they probably were already at that hour. I asked another one to go to the nearest clinic or hospital and bring along bandages, sutures, alcohol, and any other equipment necessary to treat gunshot wounds. I had been trained as a medic during the war, so I believed myself to be capable enough of taking care of any possible unwanted incidents. The two guards were about to start asking questions, so I told them to hurry.
Finally, at 1:30 AM, the "chimneysweep" arrived, followed closely by the "chimney smoke". They would wait outside.
Back in the room where I would talk with the remaining executioners, I explained the new orders to them. Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin, Pavel Medvedev, Grigory Nikulin, and Stephen Vaganov appeared to accept them without question, but one of the comrades, Pyotr Ermakov, seemed very disappointed.
"I am going to kill them anyway!" He spat.
"Then I will be forced to write a report to the Ural Soviet on your unwillingness to follow orders," I said. I admired his passion, but any good revolutionary would have put aside personal desires for the good of the many.
"You are an undercover agent! You were sent to sabotage the people´s justice!" He shouted. Suspecting he was drunk, I started to worry.
"Be careful comrade," I said calmly. I considered dismissing him as well, but that would have been far too cruel. Ermakov wanted to shoot the Tsar more than anyone.
"But why did they change their minds so suddenly?" Pavel Medvedev asked.
"Don´t get confused comrade, they will meet their ends," I explained. "They are simply more useful to us alive than dead at the moment. You must understand that even though we signed a peace treaty with Germany, because we were completely defeated militarily, we are still in a precarious situation and cannot afford to offend them in any way. Just two weeks ago, the German ambassador was shot dead. The execution of the former emperor and empress could be treated by Germany as an internal Russian affair, but it would be completely irrational to offend the Germans unnecessarily by killing the daughters, princesses of German blood, when just days before they asked about their wellbeing incessantly. It is feared they may use this as an excuse to further invade Russia. The imperialist war is almost over, and once the Germans are defeated by the Allies or the revolution spreads to Berlin as well, we will have no reason left to keep the women alive."
"What about the heir?!" Yelled Ermakov. "We cannot allow him to live! He is the heir! That makes him an internal Russian affair!"
"I don´t understand why he is being spared and would never have agreed to that particular decision either", I admitted. "As far as I understand, if anything goes wrong they are using him as a bargaining chip to trade with our enemies. Many possible future scenarios were considered, because the position of our government is very fragile at the moment. The decision-makers in Moscow must have thought the hypothetical advantages of having him alive as a hostage to keep the counter-revolutionaries in check with the threat of his execution were far greater than the dangers. At least that is what I have been told, we must not be capricious enough to claim to understand comrade Lenin´s pragmatism. If this calms your fears, comrade Philipp tells me he won´t stay with his sisters for long, they are apparently planning to take him to Moscow. He will be kept away from counterrevolutionaries there, comrades. In the worst-case and least likely scenario, he will make for a pretty pathetic pawn, as he can´t even walk, but if the revolution succeeds and everything goes on as planned, they won´t find any further use for him and will finish what we started here, of that I am sure. His fate is sealed."
"If their fates are sealed, we might as well kill him now and have our way with his sisters, that way they will really have a good use!" Ermakov exclaimed, laughing at the end of his own joke. Some of the other executioners started laughing as well.
"Stop that!" I ordered, annoyed by his lack of discipline and the way he influenced the others to act the same way. "I will not allow any harm to come to the girls. These are orders and if you are not willing to follow them, you are free to leave like the Letts."
Being compared to the soft Letts offended Ermakov, so he didn´t say anything else.
I went to the lodgings and woke up Dr. Botkin. I told him that everyone had to dress quickly because there were disturbances in the city, and that I had to transfer them to a safer place. Not wishing to hurry them, I gave them the opportunity to get dressed and went to see if either the medical equipment or the clothes had arrived, but they had not.
At 2 o´clock, I transferred the guards to the lower premises and told them to place themselves in the arranged order. I led the family downstairs. Nicholas was carrying Alexei in his arms. The rest carried pillows in their hands or other items, two of them carried dogs.
We came down to the lower level to the room previously prepared. Alexandra Feodorovna asked for a chair, Nicholas asked for a chair for Alexei. When I ordered chairs to be brought, Nikulin observed in a playful manner that apparently, the empress wanted to die in a chair. The others cackled. Alexandra and Alexei sat down, I don´t know how no one in the room heard the laughter.
I left everyone and decided to wait for the guards who would bring the medical supplies and clothes. Once they arrived, I took everything upstairs, to the room that had once belonged to the grand duchesses.
I returned to the cellar where the family was waiting bringing all the executioners with me. Nicholas stood with his back turned on me until I announced they were to be shot.
The execution was an embarrassing and disorderly affair. None of the guards followed my instructions. As soon as I shot the emperor, all of them followed suit and shot Nicholas as well instead of aiming at their respective targets. I suspect each and every one of them wanted the opportunity of claiming to have ended the life of the former emperor.
After Ermakov shot his target, Alexandra, the room became chaotic with all the guards shooting without aiming. I was disappointed by the utter lack of discipline.
The firing went on for a very long time because the men found it delightful and amusing to terrorize the women by shooting at the walls nearby. When I was finally able to put a stop to the antics of my disgustingly childish and immature men, the room was completely filled with smoke, most of the servants were still alive, and two of the girls appeared to be dead. It was a complete disaster.
Ermakov wanted to finish the injured servants with bayonets, so I allowed him and some of the men to grab them before entering the room again. Thinking he was only trying to grab the boy, I let things go too far and had to stop Ermakov from outright killing the former tsarevich.
The guards seemed to finish the servants with no problem. They had received instructions to take the children upstairs after they were done, but before they could, the maid stood up and shouted. The men started bayoneting her in a disorderly manner. I had to inform them that the maid was already dead after a minute or so. This made me think about how much the Cheka needs serious and professional executioners.
Finally, we started dragging the girls upstairs. None of them appeared to be seriously hurt at first except for Maria, whose nose was bleeding, and Tatiana, who had been hit too hard on the side of the head by Ermakov.
Tatiana was unconscious. She woke up when she was already inside the room and immediately started screaming. Olga managed to soothe her sister.
I tried to be in the room at all times. We needed to undress the girls in order to search for the jewels and I didn´t trust my men to behave.
The first three women to be carried inside were disoriented, sobbing, and overall, absolutely hysterical. They smelled terrible. Their white shirts were completely red. Their skirts and faces were covered in their parents' and servants´ blood as well, but they were relatively unharmed. I finally relaxed. Everything seemed to have gone according to plan. Even the guards in the room were behaving, except for maybe Ermakov, who was taunting Maria.
"Did that hurt?" He hooted, making exaggerated gestures to catch her attention. When he wasn´t able to, he turned to the other sisters: "What is all your praying good for now? Do you want to go to the funeral? We are going to sprinkle your parents with acid instead of holy water!"
The girls were probably too upset by the recent events to be offended by Ermakov´s petty jokes. I wonder if they even understood what he said.
I heard Vaganov downstairs asking for help, something that was to be expected. He was in his late fifties and not in the best shape. Ermakov left with Kudrin to see what it was all about.
"The little one needed a few slaps, that is all," Ermakov explained upon returning. Behind him, Anastasia was being dragged by the arms. She wasn´t putting any resistance.
I told Ermakov to bring the boy upstairs as well so we could undress the girls quickly and be done with it. I knew he was the least likely not to overstep boundaries.
I went back to the women and stood in front of them.
"I am going to need you to take off all of your clothes," I said. "And by all I mean all, I need to be sure you are not hiding anything valuable in them. After you are done, you will be allowed to dress up. We have brought new clothes, they are in the cot."
I turned my head to the cot I was referring to.
I don´t know what I was expecting to happen, but none of the girls made a move. They stared at each other in confusion and disbelief, as if searching for answers, or maybe reassurance that I had meant something entirely different. They were terrified. The oldest one started sobbing louder. By the time I left the room a moment later, she was panting.
"We, don´t, have, anything," Tatiana managed to say between pauses and troubled breaths.
"I know about the medicines", I stated, putting special emphasis on the last word. Tatiana seemed shocked, maybe even hurt. She looked at her sisters and then back at me repeatedly. After a moment, still choking with sobs, she asked:
"Can we, at least, change our, clothes, in privacy? We will, give you… everything, we, promise."
"No. I can´t know for sure you won´t hide the jewels again in your new clothes unless we stay here. None of the men will harm you, I have forbidden it."
Nothing. No movements to do as I said, just more weeping.
"If you don´t do as I say, I will be forced to ask my men to undress you", I said, and the men behind me jeered. I hushed them.
"Maria doesn´t, have any, jewels, we sewed them, when... we were, back in Tobolsk... she was, she… she was, here, can´t you, spare, her?" This time it was the oldest one, Olga, talking. Attempting to.
"I have no reason to believe anything you say", I responded firmly.
"But…" Tatiana started, but I had run out of patience.
"Do it," I said to my men, and then I went downstairs to see why in the world it was taking Ermakov so long to take an invalid boy upstairs. I heard them scream before I left.
When I got to the cellar, I found myself feeling angry at Ermakov for the very first time, instead of simply annoyed. He was definitely drunk.
The heir was lying on the ground, while Ermakov stood over him.
"Die, die, die!" My comrade yelled as he yet again tried to stab the child in the stomach. "Die already you little shit!"
The boy in turn whimpered as he used his hands to drive the bayonet away from his body. I didn´t know how he had managed to defend himself from an adult man for so long. The point of the bayonet was red, meaning it had managed to pierce the child´s skin already, maybe more so than before. I briefly considered allowing Ermakov to finish what he was doing in order to save myself the trouble of stitching the boy up. The list of explanations I could have given without making myself seem incompetent was not very long though, so I decided against it.
"Comrade Ermakov! Enough!" I yelled, and he stopped his attack on the former tsarevich. "Go back upstairs immediately!"
He didn´t obey. Instead, he walked around the room, groaned, and grumbled like a little spoiled bourgeois child. He then started bayoneting the corpses of the former emperor and empress in front of a very scared and horrified thirteen-year-old.
I went to the child, carried him in my arms, and took him upstairs. The boy was blubbering, tense, and avoided looking me in the eye. He moaned in pain when I picked him up.
Back in the room, I saw that the grand duchesses had started undressing slowly in order to avoid being forced to do so by my men. Their heads were low, and they were silently weeping.
Maria was the only girl who had finished undressing. She cried with her eyes shut close, sitting in the corner of the room next to a cot. Desperately she made sure her arms successfully covered her breasts and genitals.
Some of the men had already found the jewels that were sewn in the shirts of three of the girls. They were trying to separate the jewels from the fabric.
When I entered the room with the boy, the sisters seemed to forget about everything else for an instant. Even Maria raised her head to look at him. The oldest one looked as if she had seen a vision. She let out a huge breath she seemed to have been holding, as if relieved, or maybe surprised that we had also spared her brother.
I went to the room next door, the one that had once belonged to the former tsarevich and his parents. After dropping the child in his cot, l went to see whether the guards were done confiscating the jewels.
When I arrived, the four women were completely naked. I couldn´t help but notice Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia had huge bruises on their chest, rib, and stomach respectively. I remembered the great number of jewels closely sewn in their shirts and quickly made the connection. The jewels had worked as unintended bulletproof vests, making the bullets bounce off. I had been incredibly lucky. If a single bullet had hit Maria anywhere near where they hit her sisters, she would have died, and I couldn't even begin to imagine how much effort and confusion would have ensued among my men had the killing proceeded as previously planned. Most of the children would have suffered for minutes without dying. I have been using this detail to add realism to the story every time I am made to talk about it. As a method of practice I also enjoy describing the murders in my diary.
I authorized the guards to make sure the grand duchesses hadn´t hidden anything, which all the men save Vaganov used as an opportunity to harass them.
They asked them to turn around and uncover their breasts, to turn around again so they could really see this time. To make sure the girls didn´t have any jewels, they had to search everywhere, or so the men claimed amidst laughter.
It was clear they didn´t have anything left though. Vaganov stood in a corner, watching the entire scene unfold with a serious expression. Ermakov, who was back upstairs, was searching them gladly.
Alexei could be heard moaning in pain, which upset the girls further. Anastasia even attempted to come to his aid by leaving the room. I stopped her, ordering her to go back.
"Let me see," Ermakov said, groping the breasts of a very hysterical Maria, who let out a scream. Medvedev and Nikulin followed suit and did the same with the other girls. They groped them, talked to them in a crude manner, laughed, and made jokes.
The shocked and terrified girls screamed as loudly as they had when we were shooting. In vain, they crawled as far back into the room as they could. Tatiana would place herself in front of her two younger sisters, which did spare them from some of the gropings, but there was not much she could have done to keep Maria and Anastasia from listening to the filth that was coming from the men´s mouths.
The grand duchesses had only themselves to blame though. It was their greed that had put them in that situation.
I was about to put an end to it, but then I saw something that truly infuriated me. Two of the guards I had previously dismissed were taking some of the jewels and putting them in their pockets. Several more of them were entering the room as well.
"Stop that!" I yelled, pointing my gun at them. "Anyone who steals any of the confiscated objects will be shot. Give it back." I extended my hand, and the thieves complied quickly by throwing away the jewels, which fell loudly into the floor. I then ordered the newcomers to leave.
Some of the guards were now trying to force the girls to dance on their laps. I ordered them to stop goofing around and start picking up the rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and clothes collected in order to take them to my office. Once the men had left the room, I gave the women a towel so they could at least wipe the blood and urine away from their bodies before dressing up and then closed the door under lock and key to give them some privacy.
After I had washed my hands, I went to see if the boy´s condition was in any way serious. Had it been, I would have simply had to admit to a mistake in my report. I found Alexei lying on the cot where I had left him. His face was red from crying.
I took his green shirt off and he started to struggle with me as I checked his wounds. He writhed the whole time I was treating him but was too weak to cause me any trouble.
He wailed very loudly, both when I cleaned his wounds and when I started with the stitches. It was not only the pain. I could see in his contorted face and the anger with which he tried to push me away that it was upsetting for him to have the man who had killed his father saving his life.
The sisters in the other room called out for him whenever they heard him screaming.
The damage was superficial, the two wounds in his stomach were barely scratches, and the internal organs remained intact. The small lacerations in his hands were actually worse than the ones in his torso. Apparently, the boy had injured his palms in an attempt to protect himself from Ermakov´s bayonet, which turned out to have been almost unnecessary, since the jewels sewn in his clothes were already keeping him safe.
My men and I even had time to discuss how we would proceed with the disposal of the bodies as I worked on the stitches. My disagreements with some of them on the matter made me a bit too rough with the boy at times without noticing, but that was the least of my concerns after such a difficult night, and overall the stitches turned out pretty well.
After I finished bandaging each of the child´s hands and torso, my men and I searched the boy for jewels as we had done with the girls, which of course proved to be far less exciting for the undisciplined guards.
By the time we left the boy lying on the cot, he was no longer screaming, only crying.
Back in the sisters´ room, I found them all dressed up in the new corsets, white shirts, and dark gray skirts. Only their original shoes they had kept, as the guard hadn´t considered buying them. The boy would also get to keep his boots.
The four sisters were close together, sitting on the ground by order of birth, and crying silently. Olga reclined her head on Tatiana´s shoulder, Maria did the same from the opposite side, and Anastasia reclined her own head on Maria´s shoulder.
I grabbed the boy´s new clothes, and handing them over to Tatiana, announced they could now go to their brother´s room.
The girls were clearly glad to see him. They hugged the child one by one, but the four of them kissed his cheeks almost at the same time. Tatiana helped him dress.
Their new clothes were all simple and middle-class. Not a dramatic change though, for they already dressed quite modestly. Only Alexei looked a bit different, for he was no longer wearing an army uniform, but clothes taken from Leonid, the kitchen boy.
Once they were all ready, I escorted the children outside to the "chimney smoke" truck. All the guards including those I had dismissed before made sure no one else saw them. Maria was carrying Alexei now that Nicholas was gone. The truck where the bodies would be carried was right in front, but the guards hadn´t taken the bodies out just yet.
Still with tears in their eyes, they all got into the truck, which drove them away from the Ipatiev House. I never saw them again.
I went back inside to help with the disposal of the bodies, which would prove to be an even harder task. Some of the men entrusted to do so were even more immature and undisciplined than my own. Because we had not brought them any of the girls, and the tsarina and the maid were not alive, they complained incessantly when we arrived with the bodies, claiming Ermakov had promised them the women. My men had to help them with the burial because they had little idea of how to even start, and were so lazy they wanted to bury the emperor and empress anywhere and be done with it. It seemed as if they had gone out into the woods to party.
After trying countless different methods, like disposing of the bodies on a pit or even attempting to burn them at some point, we ended up buying a different type of acid than the one we had used at first. Stephan Vaganov gave us the idea. He had some knowledge on the subject because his son was a chemist, or at least had studied to become one.
The bodies of the doctor, the servants, and the former emperor and empress were completely dissolved. We disposed of the resulting liquid in the woods. We didn´t, however, get rid of all the evidence. Leaving footprints was part of the plan all along, we just didn´t want their bodies to be used as relics.
The morning after, I made sure to organize a quick reunion with all those involved in the execution. Without much trouble, we agreed on the story that would probably be told for centuries to come. The story of Bloody Nicholas´s demise and that of his entire family.
Stephan Vaganov died some time later under mysterious circumstances. Many suspect it was a suicide, which truly is a shame. Because of Stephan, no one will ever know what we did to them.
Trigger Warnings:
-Attempted child murder.
-Implied/referenced murder.
-Implied/referenced gun violence.
-Forced stripping.
-Sexual assault.
-Injuries.