Empire: World History - 93. Murdering the Romanovs: The End of a Dynasty

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Dawn breaks on 16th July 1918. For Nicholas, Alexandra, and the rest of the Romanov family this is just another day in exile. They sit down for breakfast - today it is eggs - and then go about their usual business. The Romanovs had been out in the cold ever since Nicholas II's abdication over a year earlier. First they had lived in their own home, then they were moved to Siberia. Now they have ended up in Ekaterinburg. Outside their compound, the Civil War was going badly for the Bolsheviks. The Whites were taking territory across Russia, including one army that was approaching Ekaterinburg. Fearing the Whites could recapture the former tsar and rally around him, operation 'chimney sweep' was put into action that night. Early in the morning on 17th July 1918, the order was given: the tsar and his family were all to be executed. Listen as William and Anita are joined for the final time by Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss the murder of the Romanovs. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello, Empire Podcast listeners, Anita here. Look, this episode is going to be one perhaps if you're of a delicate disposition, or you've got small children or even slightly bigger children who don't like gory story, you may not want to listen to it with them. Anyway, just a friendly warning on with the show.

And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Duremple. Well, last time you may remember, we were trying to concertina the whole story of Nicholas and Alexandra into one episode. He will not be squeezed. He will not be squeezed. Seabag will not be squeezed. We were having such fun. I know.

It's good to be with you. It's gone into two again. Honestly, I'm utterly, utterly charmed by the way you tell a story. So am I. Yeah, this is going to be actually a really hard story to tell. Things get a bit darker now. Well, maybe we just start. Rasputin is dead.

The world was going extremely badly. And Nicholas and Alexandra have buried their beloved Rasputin. Now, I think the interesting thing is Nicholas still, though he's advised by the British Ambassador Buchanan, to create a multi-party government or to appoint a prime minister or to institute democracy or something. Refuses everything. He's the one person who really says straight to Nicholas, you're heading for a complete disaster. If you don't change your ways, this will end in tears.

Correct. And he says, you don't understand Russia. We don't have to deal with the people here. Which, by the way, is exactly why Alexandra believed and had said, when Queen Victoria, her granny, wrote to her and said, you know, in Russia, you've got to listen to the people. Alexandra, as a young girl, had written back and said, very patronising to old Queen Victoria,

to say, dear as grandmamma, you don't understand Russia. In Russia, the Tsars are like divine beings, and we don't have to consult or worry about the people. She had not changed her view after being in power. But you've got to realize one thing. They had been in power for over 20 years,

you know, a long time for any political leader to be in power. As long as Putin has now been in power in Russia. Yes, yes, and that was an achievement in itself. And as I said, if you look at the first 10 years of his reign, if he died in 1904 before the war started, he would have been regarded as quite successful. But obviously the second 20 years had been pretty disastrous. Now, one thing I wanted to say was that it's interesting to see

that he'd always resisted any reform. When he was succeeded the throne, he said, those are senseless dreams. I'm determined, and as was Alexander, to give the throne to Alexei, little boy who's now a teenager. And actually, though, of course, he's kind of now kind of almost canonised, I think, in the church, he was actually a bit of a brat as now he was a teenager. Oh, really, the little heaphafiliate boy, who we always think of a cherubic.

Bratish in what way? Just rude, very rude to people, very arrogant, froze food, you know, he's very ill-mannered, actually, which is interesting because, of course, we don't normally expect to find that in such a rubic valetudinarian, young varit. So that's part of it. But there's always a debate whether, you know, Nicholas Alexander should have instituted sort of some sort of democracy. And everyone in the West always presumes it was a huge mistake he didn't. But actually, who knows if that would have worked? Maybe that wouldn't have saved. Maybe Russia would have just dissolved into chaos earlier. That's worth a thought. The second point is you mentioned on Sykes Pico, which was a

treaty signed by the Western powers to divvy up the Ottoman Empire in ways that actually never quite happened for all sorts of reasons. But the rough division that the French get the kind of north and Syria and the British get Palestine in the south and Iraq. Iraq and Palestine and Jordan, with today's Jordan. But what's often forgotten is Russia also signed this treaty. And Nicholas II was signed up to basically partition what is the present-day Anatolia, in other words, Turkey today. and would have received Constantinople in some form, and access to Jerusalem, by the way, special access to Jerusalem, plus a huge swave of what is today Turkey.

Though, of course, there were also parts of Turkey that were assigned and promised. The promise that made by the Allies weren't just to the Jews and the Arabs, they were also to the Kurds and Armenians. Yes, the Armenians at the Treaty of Sev are given great chunks of what is now modern Turkey, aren't they? Yeah, but they never got it. never got it, but he was on the map. They were to be promised it. But the interesting thing is,

point of this is, if Nicholas II had managed just to hang on to power for 18 more months, he would have been one of the victors of World War I, and Russia would have received the biggest bumper of imperial conquests. Very interesting point. Bigger than any of his predecessors since Catherine the Great. Versailles would have been utterly different. There would be a completely different division. I had never thought of that. That really is a fabulous thought experiment, but he doesn't. He doesn't. And what Beaver in his wonderful episodes last week showed us was that it collapses far quicker than anyone imagines, that the actual process of the revolution, which will extend on for another two or three years, the abdication of the Romanovs happens very, very quickly. Yes, you've already

covered it. So there's two things worth saying. One is Alexander was alone in Petrograd when protest began spontaneously without leadership in calls for food, basically. None of the celebrated Bolsheviks like Lenin are even in Russia. No, and the reason for that is that the Russian secret police, the Zah's secret police, the Akranha, the Akranca was the only efficient organization in the whole of Russia and had penetrated, undermined, exiled and imprisoned all the leaders of the revolutionary parties, not just the Bolshev, but Stalin and Khamenev were in Siberia. Trotsky.

Trotsky was abroad. Lenin was abroad, and so no one was there. The only Bolshevik in Petrograd was Molotov, who was a very uninspiring character. So she was on her own. The revolution starts. It immediately gathers like a snowball. The troops start to defect. That seems to be the key thing in Beaver's version of events, that the Cossacks go across.

That's correct. Well, the reason why the troops go across, which is the most important point about this, is that the Romanovs had always been saved by the Imperial Guard, founded by Peter the Great as a sort of Praetorian Guard, and they were in Petrograd. But in 1916, in the Brusilov offensive, Nicholas had been forced to feed the entire guards regiments into the meat grinder on that front. All the people who could have saved him were now dead. Well, in 1905, the guards had saved him, and they put down the revolution brutally,

encouraged by him who demanded blood and killing. But now they didn't exist. So they defected. But meanwhile, Paul Nicholas is in Mogilev, far at 600 miles away, and he rushes back, sends reliable troops back to put down the revolution, which could have happened. But he was actually kind of cornered in a railway station, hundreds of miles from Petrograd by his generals. And the railway workers blocked the railroad. What's important here is that the revolution of March 17 is usually presented as a sort of spontaneous street revolution. It wasn't really. It was also a military

coup. This is relevant for Putin today. Russian leaders are very rarely overthrown by street protests. But Nicholas was trapped in this Ineris Railway, in the Imperial Railroad carriage, and all his generals basically voted for him to abdicate. And so he was overthrown in what was really effectively a military coup. That's a very, very clever insight. They do. They bully him. They sit in the railway carriage and they tell him it's all over. He never gets to St. Petersburg. And he's exhausted. And after ruling for 23 or 24 years or whatever it is, he's exhausted.

He's got a terrible cold, by the way, which he took cocaine for, which is always an interesting detail. But anyway. As we all do. Hello. Who needs Lemsip? Hello. Speak for yourself. Yes, I know.

Indeed. Lord. The Benelin of the Zars. And so he abdicates. First of all, he abdicates for his son, Alexi, as is constitutional in the constitution set out by Paul, who we talked about, remember. And then he suddenly has second thoughts and worries that Alexi will die young. And it's an unfair burden for a boy, for a teenager who is a hemophiliac. So he changes his abdication to leave the throne to the last Tsar, who is in fact Michael

the second, his younger brother, a very listless, rather feckless character and who very quickly abdicates as well. Well, he doesn't want it, does he? I mean, this has happened in Russian history before. Zah for a day and he abdicates. So Nicholas finally returns in misery, having lost the thing that he's devoted his entire life for preserving the autocracy for Russia and for his son Alexei, who's now a young teenager. And he joins the family in the Alexander Palace, which is their main home at Zarsko Sello, where they are now prisoners. And his name is just Nikolai Romanov. See, back, there's a really intriguing light that you shine on this, that there are all sorts of of plans and what will become of him afterwards. And that one of these plans that's floated is that

he might well end up going to Balmoral and enjoying a retirement. Tell us more about that. Well, you know, the idea is that the one place that they hope to get asylum is Britain. And it's often said that, you know, the British, George V, betrayed him. And to some extent, he did portray him. But actually, as anyone who knows about Britain knows, it's actually the Prime Minister. The King doesn't have power to make such decisions, in fact. It's the Prime Minister, who was extremely autocratic himself, David Lloyd George, the dynamic David Lloyd George, who also had deep worries about how the sort of nascent Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and how the workers who were very restless, would react to this.

And so between the King, the King's principal private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, and the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, the offer is rescinded. It's also very questionable if they'd ever have been able to reach Murmansk, all the Baltic to escape, and also the children fell ill and so were unable to be moved. It's an extraordinary thought experiment, though, if they had made it to Balmoral, to sit them doing Scottish Reels and turning the Braemar games, tossing the caber with Nicholas and Alexander. I mean, this wasn't in any books, but I once asked Prince Michael of Kent, who was very interested in the role of, and later attended the funeral in 1998, as the

Queen's representative of the retired family, by the way. I said to him, where we were, where would Nicholas and Alexander have stayed? And he said, oh, in the family, it's always said that they were going to be given a house at Bar Morrow. I mean, that's so, it's so interesting, but it doesn't happen. The escape route is closed down. So they're in the Alexander Palace. I mean, how are the conditions? Are they being fed? Are they being watered? Are they being well treated? Yes, because the new government of Prince Levov and then of Alexander Kerensky is called the provisional government. It sticks to the Russian war aims. It continues the war. It remains in the Western Alliance. And it's not hostile to the Tsar. Now he's out of power. And when he

starts to be threatened by crowds of workers and Bolsheviks and other factions, Alexander Karenski, who is now Prime Minister and fancies himself as a sort of Napoleonic warlord, comes to see the Tsar and decides that he must be sent away, far away from Petrograd to safety. And they send him far, far away. In mid-1917, they send him to Bolsk, which is in Western Siberia. I mean, he says to him, look, the Bolsheviks are after me, Karenski, in this meeting. The Bolsheviks are after me, and soon they will be after you. And so, you know, it is almost an act of mercy, although it doesn't feel like it, probably, to the Tsar or the former Tsar. They, you know, to go to Siberia. Yes, it's to be sent away to where he'd sent many of the

revolutionaries, of course. But actually, Kerenzky is trying to do a good thing here. And though Karenski is increasingly threatened by the Bolsheviks. There's not a soul who thought the Bolsheviks would ever actually become rule as a Russia at this point. But he sent off with the whole family to Bolsk. They're set up in the governor's mansion there and some comfort, though, strict isolation. And they begin to get used to the life there. And they're not unhappy. They play card games. They're bored. That's about it. That's as bad as it gets. They do plays. The Tsar reads in his lovely English accent. to the family. He reads the family war and peace, as William was saying, but he also reads them

the protocols of the elders and Zion. His entire interpretation of the revolutionists, the Jews have got him. And he's an absolute believer in anti-Semitic Jewish conspiracy theories. And the Prodigals of the Elder's Zion, a famous anti-Semitic tract, which is in fact cited by Hamas. But let's not get onto that subject now in its constitution. Still very much alive in the Middle East, absolutely. Still very much alive in the Middle East. But the interesting thing about it was it was invented or adapted by his own secret police as a weapon against the Jews to incite pogroms against the Jews. And of course, the word pogrom comes from Russia and comes from this period from the Russian pogromit to wreak havoc.

But Nicholas obviously believes it's genuine and he reads it to his family. So that's one thing. They do that. They have a quiet time there. But meanwhile, back in Petrograd, Lenin is back. And Lenin is plotting to seize power. Among the central committee, he's the only one, along with two hardliners who back the plan to seize power in October 1917. Most of his leaders, Zinov, Kamenev, Rikov, Bukhar and Ghentz, seizing power. But two support him, his favorites, Trotsky and Stalin. And in October, he launches a coup. Seems totally unlikely that the Bolsheviks would seize power or stay in power. but they manage it. They then seize power in Moscow,

and now really dangerous people are in charge of Russia who really hate the Tsars, and the Tsars are under their control. And who have personal animosity, Lenin's own brother has been hung by the Zah? Correct. So does it, I mean, do we know what they say in their sort of splendid isolation, reading books to each other?

When do they get the news? How do they greet the news? And what do they say? They know this is extremely dangerous. And it's like their worst nightmare. actually. You know, Nicholas has sat through almost daily briefings from the Akrona about who these people are, and he regards them as, you know, absolutely beyond the pale. And Alexandra realizes that this is terrible news and they have no escape. And of course, soon Lenin Trotsky and Svordloff,

who are the kind of real leaders, who are now in Moscow, the Bolsheviks moved the capital to central Moscow, and they set up their headquarters now in the Kremlin, where the Russian state has been run ever since. Because it's central, and a good place to command centrally, Russia. They're facing the beginnings of a civil war, the beginnings of an intervention by whites. I'm sure Anthony Beevers referred to some of this. And one of the extraordinary things is that you have managed to find the diaries and letters of all this time.

We know exactly what they're thinking most days. They're writing to each other. They're writing to their cousins. Yes, they're writing to their cousins. But gradually, that closes down because as soon as Lenin is kind of in the saddle and is in control, he starts to look into where are the Tsar, what's the Tsar doing, and he immediately sends out, I think in March 1918, he sends out a commissar, Vasili Yakovlev, to take control of the family. Now, one of the things that's happening, and happens even more

in Yakkirunberg, is you've got to remember, you've got these young guards guarding the imperial family, and you've got these four beautiful girls, and particularly Maria, who they all have, of course, they all have different characters. And Maria, who is the third daughter, now in her late teens, is a stunningly beautiful going. You can look at the pictures of them. They're in my book. And you can see how beautiful they are. But she is playful, very ungranned, very unhaughty. And of course, half the guards are now falling in love with her. And Commissar Yakovlev is immediately worried that the guards are going to be suborn by these beautiful princesses and have affairs with them. He actually sees, doesn't he comes on an initial visit

and he spots the fact that the guards are falling for Maria. Yes. And so that's the first time. So then they decide they need to move them and they decide to move them to Yakaterinburg, which is where much more hard-line connoisseurs are in power. It's a good place to take a break. Join us after the break when we find out just how much harder life gets for this family in Ekaterinaberg. Welcome back. So just before the break, Seabag, were telling us that, you know, things had been, you know, not great, but this family had maintained

congeniality of sorts. You know, they were reading to each other. They were, you know, they were playing cards. They were, they were biding their time and whiling away the time. It does seem to me that the only way that that can happen is because their father is actually keeping from them how serious the situation is. Do they have the other members, you know, the children, his wife, do they have no idea of just how dangerous it is that they are going to be moved to, Kateroenberg? We don't know. I think the grown-up children have an ink. I think they all have an ink. They're all sort of in their late teens. The oldest one is, Olga is 22. The youngest one of the youngest one of the youngest one of the girls who's very close to Maria and possibly even sleeping with Maria is dismissed and sent away. Yes. And there's a lot of flirtation going. The girls sort of need male company and they're meeting. They're meeting. these young, ordinary young men of Russian men who they're flirting with. So this is one reason why they have to be moved.

And at this point they begin to sow diamonds and their treasures into their underwear and so on to hide them from the guards. Well, I mean, let's not throw that away. Hang on a minute. Let's dwell on that for a second. What happens is they have brought the Romanov diamonds with them, Anita. How many Romanoff diamonds? And when we're talking about the Romanoff diamonds, people may not understand that we're talking

about piles of stones? They're 17 pounds of diamonds, which I think is 1.3 kilograms of diamonds. It's like a heap of Romanov diamonds. And so what they've done is they've sewn these things into their pants. Into their underwear. And their corsets, their pants, and into their night shirts. And they have coat names for them. And their code name is that the jewels are called the medicine.

Right. So they always say, you need to take the medicine. They mean you need to dress up, pull these. things on quickly. Now, at the same time in Moscow, Lenin is planning a show trial of the mother and father, Nicholas and Alexandra, after which, of course, they would be shot. They would be found guilty and shot. But then the civil war is beginning now. We're in sort of mid-1918, and they now are given the orders to move the entire family to the much more hard line, but also nearer Moscow, Yeah, Katerinberg, where the couple could be brought to Moscow to face a show trial or the family could be kept.

Now, Lenin is deliberately collecting the whole Romanov family in the area of the Urals, which is just east of the Moscow area. And he's also gathering Grand Duke Michael, the last son, Michael the second, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth and lots of other cousins. These guys have been sometimes allowed to be under house arrest, have sometimes been in prison in St. Petersburg. but they're all being shipped by train to the Urales within a small area of each other. And by the way, when they're moved, Alexi is having a hemophiliac attack. So he's left behind with the sisters

and Nicholas and Alexandra settle first in a series of carriages which are called Tarantases, which is rather one of form of word. And they go first, and they are settled in the Apatyev house in great secrecy in Yaciterinburg. And Alexi recovers,

and then him and his three of the sisters follow afterwards. It's a chaotic journey. Groups of Red Guards try to kidnap them and try to, in order to kill them instantly. Because the rage at the family is such that they don't care if they're not, so they're just drunkenly breaking off and trying to get out there. Well, different squadrons of Bolshevik Red Guards who are under complete discipline are trying to seize the family and kill them. But, and there's absolute chaos. One is killed now, Grand Duke Michael, the last, Michael the second. but the rest of the family are actually will be killed the day after the central part of the royal family. But they all arrive at the Apatyev house.

Well, describe the Apatiev house? I mean, what does it look like? It's a well-off merchant's house in the middle of Iqatirimberg, a city that was later called Svardlovsk, after Svordlov, who is one of the people who ordered the killing in Soviet times. And it's a two-story house with a cellar, and it's got its own compound, so it's easily guarded. New tough guards are brought in, but very quickly, these guards start to fraternise with the family. The windows are closed, they're banned from looking out of the window. They obviously had real charm.

Of course. They had real charm. Anastasia was incredibly naughty, and one of the guards described her was a naughty little minks. How old was Anastasia? Because, I mean, she's the one most fixate on in this story. She's the younger, so she's got to be about 17. And so they're sort of much more locked in there. But they're not in the basement. They're in the house. They're in the house.

They're sharing a very much more modest reality than they've ever been used to before. And so what happens is that now one of the guards in particular probably kind of falls in love with. And when Moscow, that's Lenin and Spurdlov, send a new commissar to take strict control, now his mission, his name is Yakov-Yarovsky. He's a diehard Bolshevik, already a Czechist. Lenin had already founded the secret police, the Chequem. And his mission is, if necessary, to kill the royal family. And so it's been discussed in the Central Committee, in Moscow, the discussions are very secret. Even now we don't know all the details, but it's absolutely clear

that Lenin and Sperdlov, between them, decide that if the white armies, that the whites of the people opposing the Reds, the Bolsheviks, if the white armies get too close to the Yucetraim, they're going to have to be killed. And not just the parents. And there's a Czech legion which is sort of fighting its way towards them, isn't there? What to happen was the Russians had captured all sorts of Austro-Hungarian troops from the Habsburg-Ostero-Gungarian Empire. And some of these were a Czech regiment that had been captured and then freed as prisoners

of war when the revolution happened and had decided to support the Russians. I mean, lots of prisoners of war, as we'll see, from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became Bolsheviks. And some of them would be killed. of the royal family. But these ones supported the whites. And suddenly, in June 1918, they suddenly start to approach Yakaterinberg. So Lenin and Sverdlov, tough Bolshevik leaders, now have to decide what to do with this family. But when they're talking about, you know, the possible liquidation, if the enemy is pressing too close, we must get, are they talking at that time about just Formasar and Formasarina, or are they talking about every Romanov, the children as well?

It's certain that they were talking about every Romanov. And in fact, Nachiaf, an early revolutionary from the 19th century, had written that when the revolution happens, we have to kill every single member of the royal family. And Lenin had actually written about that. He said, like, the simplicity of it is genius, he said. But even Lenin is quite careful not to leave a paper trail about this, isn't it? He doesn't want to be blamed by posterity.

No. But actually, Nicholas II had also been extremely careful not to write down orders to make punitive executions in 1905. So that isn't in itself a sort of astonishing. I mean, in its common sense, he kept it very secret, but he also said frequently, you know, a revolution who is meaningless without firing squads. Now, the closest we get, we know that the orders were given to Goloszschechen, Philippe Goloszschev, who was head of the Euro-Soviet, goes to Moscow and he discusses it with Lenin and he comes back with orders to Yorovsky to prepare to execute the entire family, all of them. And Trotsky leaves the best record of this.

When he later arrives and says, he says to Svurdlov, what happened? So what happened to the Zahar and the family? And Svurdlov says, all of them. We killed all of them. And Lenin says, well, even the children. And he says, yeah, all of them. Trotsky says, who made that decision? And Sperdlov said, Illich, that's Lenin. Lenin decided we could not leave a single living banner for the whites to capture. They all had to go. So, I mean, let's then deal with that day. It's the 16th of July.

Yoroski has got petrol to put in trucks so he could take the bodies. He had selected a hit squad to be the killers. There were 11 victims were chosen. Now, that's the Royal Family. It's important to mention the others because they're always forgotten. And actually, we live in more egalitarian times now.

So that is, Nicholas and Alexandra, husband and wife, he's 50, she's 48, the children, Otmar, the daughters, who vary from 22 Olga to 17, Anastasia, and Alexi, a son, an heir, who is 16. Plus, we have Dr. Botkin, the family doctor, Anna Demidova. Who's there voluntarily, isn't he? He's found his way. These people are all their voluntary to stay with the family out of loyalty. The Empress's maid, Anna, Demidova, the chef Hariton, and the footman truck. So there are 11 victims. Yorovsky's worked very hard to get petrol, to get acid, to get trucks to take the victims

into the woods, to throw them down the mine shaft, which he's selected. And he's left a party out there of red guards to work on that and prepare and dig around the mine shaft to prepare. Meanwhile, back in Eukaterian Berg, he gives them eggs so that they can have a nice breakfast on the 16. There's others are in aative. They have breakfast. Fresh eggs come. They write their diaries. Nothing. It's a normal day. Yeah. And meanwhile, Yorovsky is preparing a list of hitmen. Now, his chief assistant is called Peter Ermakov,

who is a genuine sort of Charles Manson-esque psychopath with a kind of beard. During a bank robbery, Ermacov actually beheaded a bank. with the saw. So he's a complete lunatic. Urovsky is a fanatic. And the other, they only manage to get between eight and ten killers because some of the killers who are a mixture of Russians, Latvians, who are particularly pro-Bolshevik, and also German, Austrian, Hungarian prisoners of war who have embraced Bolshevism. So there are less killers, this is important, there may have been only eight killers in the kill squad, but there are 11 victims. Still quite a lot of assassins.

And there are only 14 guns. Now, they're often shown with rifles, but actually, these are all Mouser pistols or huge handheld revolvers. Again, like Colt 45s. Oh, there are also bayonets down there. There are bayonets. They all have bayonets and they have them stuck into their belt. Right.

Now, at two in the morning, they all go to bed as normal. And at two in the morning, a truck arrives sinisterly in the courtyard. 17th July now. Yeah, we're now, it's past midnight. It's dawn. It's the early hours. Yorovsky wakes up the family and he says, we're moving. The whites are getting close.

We need to move. No one suspects anything. They all get dressed, but they say, remember the medicine. And that's their code name. By the way, the operation to kill is called trial, the trial, which is cover for the show trial. But the actual operational details of the killing

is called chimney sweep. So the Bolsheviks have sent that order to Yekaterimba, to Yorovsky. Meanwhile, Ermakov is gathering all these weapons and he's laying out all these pistols and giant Colt 45. We're in the same house, Seabag? Or is it in the basement? Yes, in the basement, in the room next to the basement where they've decided is the place to kill them. And the assassins are in there already? They're all waiting in there very nervously. How big is the rooms? See, Bag, let's paint a picture. It's a small room, and the room next door is a small room. It's a cellarer. room and in the guards room, they lay out all the guns on the table and several bayonets. They also are all extremely nervous. And two of the killers say they can't kill women and refuse

to take part. He's in danger if he doesn't get on with this of losing his killers. Meanwhile, upstairs, Nicholas and Alexander are dressing and they say, remember the medicine, they all put on, this is important, these hugely heavy 17 pounds of jewels. I mean, they were in chains. mail seabag. I mean, it's just the most expensive chain mail. Yeah. Some of their pants were four pounds in weight. Gosh. So they put all these on over their clothes. You know, they're hoping one day to buy their way out and escape to Crimea or England. So they all come downstairs, but Alexi is still weak from his hemophiliac attack. So his dad carries him and they come downstairs and they can hear the truck has started outside because Yorovsky wants the truck to be running so that the gunshots aren't heard. So they

come downstairs and they hear the truck and they think we're going to be moved, they're shown into the basement and they all say, where are we going next, I wonder. And as they're shown in, Alexandra says, can't we get a chair? I'm feeling she's quite unwell. Two chairs are brought in, one for the Empress and one for Alexei, who's weak and he sits in it. And significantly, the Tsar takes his place in front of him and stands in front of the boy. He must suspect. He suspect something perhaps. And at the same time, I mean, they'd often said, you know, we're living in the realms of death. Nicholas and Aixander knew they were going to be killed, but I don't think it ever occurred to them that the children would be killed. And can I just, again, remind everybody that

what you said is the space of this is such that all of these men who know that they are going to kill this family are quite close. They can smell each other. They're next door. You know, they can feel each other's feelings, you know, the terror, the tension, all of that. You can't hide that in a small space. No, so they're standing there with the two sitting in front, the Tsar in front and the rest of the group behind. So it must have looked like a family portrait, if you can imagine that. And at this point, Yorovsky looked around, he sees they're all there and he rushes out and he comes back in with 10 men heavily armed, with giant, giant bayonets. You know, there's World War I bayonets in their belts. And also some of them have at least two pistols in their belts.

and they all come in and stand there. And there's a terrible moment of sort of realization. And then Yorovsky says, you have been sentenced to death by the Ural Soviet. You are sentenced to die. And Nicholas says something like, what, what do you mean? What are you saying?

And he gives the order and he says fire. At which point, everybody opens fire. Now, I've got to stop here just to say that when they were waiting in the room, there'd been a plan that each one of the killers would kill one member of the group, of the 11 victims, remember. But no one really wants to kill women. Particularly girls who are 17, yeah.

And also there's a maid, you know, who's a middle-aged woman. There's the Empress. The Empress and Nicholas, you know, they all hate it. But the other ones, you know, not so much. And so the idea, everybody is given a target. But when the shooting starts, everyone breaks the rules and just shoots the Tsar in the chest. So everyone opens fire and none of them shoot the girls. All the servants, they all shoot Nicholas, who shot by about 10 people in the chest.

And his chest explodes. Well, I mean, but the effect of that is that his family now know, and they see in slow motion the disaster that's headed their way. You know, they know. Yes. And everybody starts screaming. And it's a small space and so there's blood everywhere. As soon as they've shot the Tsar, he collapses.

They then turn and shoot the emperors in there. head and her head explodes. And then everybody just starts shooting. Everybody is screaming. Grand Duchess Maria is running for the door at the back, which is locked. And it's total smoke. No one can see a thing. At one point one of the hitmen is shot in the hand. A bullet whizzes past Jorovsky's own head. It's bedlam. The plaster in the walls is caused even more cloud and chaos. Dust. It's filled with dust and everybody is screaming. But the hit men continue shooting. Some of them are quite drunk. I mean, they've had to try and fortify themselves to do this.

So they are very drunk, yeah. Many of them drunk, and at the centre of them is Ermakov, who is loving this. The psychopath, the psychomanston. So now they keep shooting and they wait a second. It's just screaming and they wait a second and it clears. And then they start shooting again. But as they shoot at the girls and the boy, the bullets bounce off them because they are wearing the most expensive bulletproof.

vests on earth, which are solid diamonds. Solid diamonds, closely packed, extremely heavy, the hardest material on earth, and the bullets bound off them. But they're terror. I mean, that's fine. It's terrible. They know they're being killed in slow motion, really, because they're not going to get out. This is now getting on from what should have been instantaneous.

This is now moving into minutes. So the other killers are extremely incompetent. Half of them are drunk, and they're not very effective at doing this. I mean, they're just soldiers. So Urofsky, the commissar in charge, and Ermakov start to wade into this scene where everybody is into link screaming, wriggling, and they walk in and they go in with bayonets. And when they try and shoot people in the body, bullets bound off and they realize that they're these diamonds. That's when they realize.

So Ermakov wades in, and with his bayonet, he starts to stab them madly. some of them he stabs so crazily that the bayonet goes through their bellies and sticks to the floor and it's hard to pull out and he wades in and meanwhile Yorovsky goes from person to person shooting them in the head, they execute Alexei in the head and they go from child to child to servant

shooting them in the head or stabbing them with insane killing frenzy and this sort of vile scene of blood now and brains all over the place I mean hideous hideous yes and the only way they can kill them is to shoot them right in the face in the head. So at this point, finally, after all this,

and this has taken, by the way, 20 minutes. 20 minutes. Imagine. Two of the girls still alive right at the end of that. Well, it looks like everybody's dead. Everyone's been shot at least once. And now the killers start to get their confidence back. They've noticed that there are watches, there are diamonds, there are jewels. And they start to help themselves to everything in a sort of drunken and frenzy, working from body to body. And Yorovsky is a pure Bolshevik Puritan is furious with this. He calls them together and says, if all the jewelry is not returned now, you will be executed. So they all give back the jewelry. And then it's time to take the bodies out. Everybody is dead. It's been a disaster. They're spattered in blood. The bodies are all lying on top of each other,

interlinked, and most tragically, the teenage children. And they are carried out. As they're carried out to the truck, remember who's standing outside, waiting for them, two of the girls start to splutter and try and sit up. One of them is Anastasia, and the other one may be Maria, we're not sure. But this happens in front of

a lot of drunken Bolshevik soldiers. And I think this is the origin of the story, that one of the girls, probably Anastasia, is the usual one, somehow survived. And part of the story is the kind of myth that comes from the killing of a family, the sort of wish that

somebody has survived. And of course, one of the girls would be the one that people would wish to do. But this waking up is, I think, the basis of the story that a girl survived. But Ermakov is immediately on it with his bayonet and kills both of the girls finally. They are loaded onto these trucks. And the truck is taken off into the woods and they are thrown into the mine. But on the way, they meet the completely drunk platoon that's been waiting, contingent that's been waiting for them that say what, you've killed them all already, and then they stripped them naked. And there are terrible scenes here of the girl's bodies, naked bodies being abused by these disgusting ghouls. And they abused the naked bodies of the children and the Empress. And they then thrown down a

mine shaft. But when Yorovsky arrives, he finds out that the mine shaft is extremely shallow. And this will not do-do. The bodies will be found instantly. Because remember, Gatunberg is about to fall. So he's in a complete panic and he realizes he's screwed up badly. You know, Lenin is going to be furious. So he rushes back in a slightly sort of almost farcical moment. He rushes back to the town to try and get more petrol to burn the bodies and acid to destroy them. And meanwhile, he tries to find somewhere else to bury them. And so, you know, these drunken contingent is absolutely useless at digging at a thing. So there's a sort of moment of tragedy farce here. He has to rush back. He's up all night. So, you know, by sort of dawn, he's back again and with a more trustworthy group of

red guards. And they dig graves, get the bodies out of the shaft. Again, the bodies are abused, mocked, and they're naked, of course. And of course, now they've discovered the diamonds in the clothes. And so there's a lot of talk about that. And there's 17 pounds of diamonds. And even this is not the end, because there's still two aunts around. Well, the next day, another group of the Romanov family. I would have to check the number, but I think it's about eight Romanov Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses are killed the next day.

Again, Lenin has ordered sort of them all to be kind of collected in a very sinister way, and they all killed the next day. And Grand Duchess Elizabeth, the sister of Alexandra, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, is said to have been thrown down the lift shaft. They then throw a grenade after all of them to make sure they're dead. And they still hear singing. They hear hymns.

They hear hymns being sung down in the lift shaft afterwards, which is a detail that makes your hair stand on end, doesn't it? It really does. So they then put logs down to try and burn them alive? Yes, they throw logs down, they throw grenades down, and in the end, hauntingly, the singing stops. So, I mean, the singing stops, the Romanovs have now been deleted from history. Do we know, I mean, the bodies, are they ever found? I mean, what happens to the remains then?

Yes, in 1979, an amateur historian, Alexford Varnoff, who's doing research, works out from the records and from all the memoirs of the Czechist killers, the kill squad. He works out where they are, and he finds the bodies, the bones, they're only bones left because the bodies have been destroyed with acid and burnt, and he finds bones in the right place, he excavates them, but then he puts them back. And in 1998, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the order goes, out from the government to find these bodies. And by the way, the Epateev health was destroyed. And in the 90s, in the woods, little chapels were built where they thought they were. But now in 1998, they go back and they find the bodies. And the bodies are that of Nicholas and a girl and

Alexi are missing. At this stage, the condition of the bones is such that they can't actually identify the individuals, just the fact that they are the Romanovs. They do DNA testing and they they confirm that the bodies are indeed those of the Tsar and his family and of three of the children and the empress. I actually talked to the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, being a close relative of the woman or family. He gave blood and he was very moved to do so. And his blood, he told me, had confirmed that this was indeed Nicholas and his family. And in 1998, President Boris Yeltsin gave the order that there would be a funeral of the bones that they had, which was Nicholas Alexander and three of the girls. And the queen sent Prince Michael as her

representative. And Boris Yeltsin gave an amazing speech that is a good place to finish this story. It's one of the great speeches of the 20th century. And in the speech, he said that this is a great crime we've committed. And we've learned that we can commit political crimes and such crimes has never be committed again. And the family are buried in the... the family tomb in Petrograd, and there they remain. They were joined later in the 2000s by the bones of Alexi and the girls, let's call her Anastasia. And that is the story of the death and the killing of Nikki and Alex and the Royal Family of Russia. Tragic, tragic story. Absolutely. And told so well, once again, our enormous thanks.

Seabag, you, just amazing, just amazing. Thank you. Thanks for having me. No, I would like to say a pleasure, but it's actually been quite a haunting podcast this one. It's been an extremely harrowing story. Thank you so much. We should say that the story is told in extraordinary detail by Seabag in his wonderful book, The Robinov's, which also contains the stories of Potemkin, Catherine, Ivan the Terrible, all those extraordinary episodes that Seabag was talking about. So much, so much that you've been dazzling us with.

I strongly recommend anyone to go and buy that book. And it is that those final chapters will reduce. the hardest of you to tears and sobs. On that note, that is it from us on Empire. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Duremple.