Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Last of the Romanovs

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

For over 300 years, the Romanov family ruled over the Russian Empire.  After the Communist Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, and he and his family were placed under house arrest, where they ultimately met a grizzly fate. For decades after their deaths, the world wondered what happened to them until their bodies were discovered and identified 80 years later.  Learn more about the fate of the last Russian Tsar and his family on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast. Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For over 300 years, the Romanov family ruled over the Russian Empire. After the communist revolution, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, and he and his family were placed under house arrest, where they ultimately met a grisly fate. For decades after their deaths, the world wondered what happened to them until their bodies were discovered and identified 80 years later. Learn more about the fate of the last Russian Tsar and his family,

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past, We're wrong. Throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Nicholas II was not what you would call a great ruler. As the heir apparent to the Russian throne, he spent a great deal of time on pursuits like hunting and partying. He traveled around Europe on a grand tour and then found himself very unprepared when he assumed the throne at the age of 24 in 1896. Nicholas was simply

not prepared to be Tsar, and his mismanagement of Russia over the next 20 years led to an overall decline in the country. As the rest of Europe industrialized, Russia remained a stagnant agricultural economy. Nicholas believed in the divine right of kings and suppressed almost every attempt at elections and popular representation. Russia lost a disastrous war with Japan in 1905 and then had a failed campaign in World War I. Nicholas had become deeply unpopular, resulting in major revolutions in 1905 and 1917. The revolution of 1917 eventually ended his reign, forcing him to abdicate the throne on March 26th, right in the middle of the First World War. He was going to advocate in favor of his 12-year-old son, Alexi, but he had hemophilia and his parents believe that he wouldn't

survive long if they were sent into exile without him. Instead, he selected his brother Grand Duke Michael. However, Michael refused the crown unless there was an election where the people could choose the system they wanted. So, the monarchy was abolished. 1917 was a year of extreme turmoil and instability in Russia. There were different governments and many different factions vying for power. The original plan was for the Romanov family to go into exile in Britain. He was the first cousin to King George V. However, he and his family were denied entry, and likewise they were also denied entry into France and Finland. Here I should note just who the Romanov family was. The group consisted of the Tsar, his wife Alexandria, and their five

children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexi. Because there was no place they could go, the provisional government in Russia put the Tsar and his family under house arrest in the Alexander Palace, just outside of St. Petersburg. Here they were able to maintain their standard of living with servants, albeit under very regulated conditions. However, with fighting nearby the palace, the decision was made in July to move the family to the remote Siberian town of Toboliska. It took them four days of travel by train and boat

to reach the town, and eventually they settled in a former governor's mansion. Here the family lived well, albeit confined. They read, played games, and chopped firewood. Everything changed in October, however, with what became known as the October Revolution, which brought the communists under the control of Vladimir Lenin into power. The communists had no love for the Tsar and his family. They began to cut back on expenses for the family and removed many of their privileges.

The family didn't worry too much because they believed that they would be rescued by pro-monarchy forces or their allies in the West. Unfortunately for them, once the communists took power, they signed the Treaty of Brestletovsk, which ended Russia's involvement in World War I. And once Russia was out of the war, the West ceased caring about the Romanovs. There was no rescue mission. The Romanov's became a political football with various communist factions wanting to control them and or kill them. The plan was to take them to the city of Yatirinburg, where they would wait until they could be taken to Moscow for a show trial. In April of 1918, the Tsar and his family wound up at the Yipativ house in Yatirinburg.

It was the home to a former merchant in the city. The group was now down to Nicholas, his wife, their five children, their personal doctor, and three servants. They all lived upstairs in the house while guards were stationed on the ground floor. Their rations had been cut back to that of a common soldier. Their freedom to move about had been severely limited. The windows in the rooms had been painted over. By this time, it wasn't so much house arrest as it was just being held prisoner. The situation on the ground was also beginning to deteriorate.

A civil war had broken out between the various factions trying to fill the vacuum left by the Tsar. There were many executions during this period, including that of the Tsar's brother, Grand Duke Michael, who was executed on June 19th. One anti-Bolshevik group, known as the Czechoslovak Legion, was quickly moving towards Yet Katerinsburg. There was a fear that the Bolsheviks would lose possession of the family if they managed to take the city. Bolshevik leaders, such as Leon Trotsky, openly began discussing the execution of the Tsar.

On July 16th, the Bolshevik leadership in Yet Katerinburg decided to execute the family so they couldn't serve as a living banner to rally around. The local communist leader, Yaakov Svdlov, said he was, would carry out the executions as soon as he received word from Moscow. At 2 a.m., the family and their staff were awakened and told to move to the basement as there would be shooting from nearby military units, and it was for their own safety. Unbeknownst to them, a firing squad had been assembled in a nearby room. The leader of the executioners was Yaakov Yorovsky.

He and his seven executioners bust into the room and notified the Tsar and his family that they were to be executed. He said, quote, Nikolai Alexandrovich, in view of the fact, that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you." End quote. What happened next has been disputed, but what we do know is that the executioners pulled out pistols and began firing. The Tsar was the first to die, having been shot three times

in the torso. His wife, Alexandria, was then shot in the head. The men began firing indiscriminately, filling the room with smoke, with gunshots in the confined area so loud that nobody could hear orders. After several minutes of firing, they stopped only to find that all of the children and one of the servants were still alive. They began systematically stabbing the survivors with their bayonets and shooting them in the head. Many of the daughters had diamonds sewn into their garments to carry some form of wealth with them should they escape. They ended up protecting them from bullets and bayonets. One of the girls, it isn't known who, was still alive when she was taken out of the room on a stretcher. When they realized she was alive, they tried to stab her again, and when that didn't work,

She, too, was shot in the head. The entire episode took 20 minutes, and they fired 70 bullets. The bodies were taken to a nearby mine, where they were undressed and drenched in sulfuric acid to disfigure them so they couldn't be identified. They were then dumped into a mine shaft, which, it turned out, wasn't very deep, only about three meters or ten feet. They tried to collapse the mine's shaft with hand grenades, but that didn't work. The next day, they came back for the bodies to deliver them to another deeper mine.

However, when they drove to the mine the next day on July 19th, the truck carrying the bodies became stuck, so the decision was made to bury everyone right where the truck was. They dug a very shallow gray for everyone, which is only about two feet deep. They put everyone in, save for two of the children, and poured yet more acid on them, and then covered them with dirt and railroad ties. The two other children were buried some distance away to confuse anyone who might later find the bodies. What happened to the Tsar and his family became a mystery for decades. decades. The Soviets at first denied that the Tsar and his family were even dead. Years later,

when they finally admitted that they were dead, they blamed it on extremist groups in the area, and they never accepted responsibility for the act. The assumption has always been that the order was given by Lenin. However, no documentation supporting this directly has ever been found. Leon Trotsky did record something in his diary, which implicated Lenin. He wrote of an encounter he had with Yaakov Sferlov shortly after the executions. He wrote, My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Yet Katerinberg. Talking to Svardlov, I asked him in passing, Oh, yes, and where is the Tsar?

It's all over, he answered. He has been shot. And where's the family? And the family with him. All of them, I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. All of them replied Svardlov. What about it? He was waiting to see my reaction.

I made no reply. And who made the decision? I asked. We decided it here. Lenin believed that we shouldn't leave. the whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances. End quote. Given the organization of the Bolsheviks, it's highly unlikely anyone would have taken such an

action without the approval of Lenin. Even though no documents have been found, it's assumed that they were either destroyed or given verbally. For decades after the family was killed, there were rumors swirling that some of the children, in particular Anastasia, had survived. Several women claimed to be Anastasia, most famously a German woman by the name of Anna Anderson who died in 1984. DNA testing later proved she was not at all related to the Romanovs. The truth about the Romanov murders didn't begin to surface until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

It had been an open secret in certain Soviet circles as to the general location where the bodies were buried. The exact spot was established by a geologist and amateur archaeologist by the name of Alexander Avdonen in 1979. He worked with a filmmaker who had previously interviewed some of the executioners, and found the remains, but otherwise left them alone and never mentioned it to anyone. His findings never became public until 1989. In 1991, the new president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, ordered the bodies to be exhumed and identified. In the grave were found nine of the 11 victims, which conformed to the testimony of those involved that two of the bodies were buried separately, some distance away,

just to confuse anyone who might come upon them. What the executioners who carried out the act couldn't have known about was DNA testing. Samples were taken from the nearest living relatives of the Romanov family, including Britain's Prince Philip. In 1998, the remains of the Tsar, his wife, and three of the children, along with their servants, were identified. On July 17, 1998, on the 80th anniversary of their murder, the Tsar and his family were reinterred at the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg,

the traditional burial site of Russian Tsars. In 1981, the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia recognized the family as saints, and this was confirmed by the synod of the Russian church inside of Russia in 2000. They were not recognized as martyrs, but rather as passion bearers. The search continued for the bodies of the two remaining children. In 2007, the remains of 12-year-old Alexi and his sister Maria were discovered 70 meters from the main burial site. In 2008, they were also positively identified via DNA analysis. Interest in the fate of the Tsar and his family has grown in Russia.

In 2010, the government opened up a murder investigation on the case, even though all those involved were dead at the time. In 2015, the Russian Orthodox Church exhumed their remains to perform additional DNA testing with more advanced techniques, which again confirmed their identities. The Apativ House, where the murders took place, became a Soviet tourist attraction for years. Communist Party officials would often visit

to have their photos taken in the room where the family was killed. However, over time, it became a pilgrimage site for those who wanted to honor the Tsar and his family. By the 1970s, these visits had actually outnumbered the visits by Communist Party members. The Soviet government made the decision to demolish the house, which it did in September 1977. However, people still kept making pilgrimages to the site as the basement was still there. After the Soviet Union fell, groundbreaking began in 1992 for a major church to be located at the site of the murders. In 2003, the Church on Blood in honor of all saints resplendid in the Russian land was open.

While most of the Romanovs were killed by the communists, including many members of the extended family that I didn't even mention, not all of them were. There were some distant relatives who survived. That raises the question. Who would be the Tsar today if the Russian monarchy were to be restored? Not that that's going to happen. It's actually a difficult question to answer. You have to go all the way back to Tsar Nicholas I, the grandfather of the murdered Tsar, and the problem has to do with the best claimants not having children and claims going through

female lines. The person who claims to be the current head of House Romanov is Prince Karl Imich of Leinengen, who has a very German name. His claim comes from being the grandson of Grand Duke Kiriel Vladimirovich, who was a cousin of Nicholas II and a grandson of Alexander the Second. He has been recognized by the monarchist party in Russia as the heir ever since he converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 2014. He also goes by the title Emperor Nicholas III using his Russian name. The Russian Orthodox Church, however, recognizes another claimant, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna. While Tsar Nicholas II was an inept ruler, the fate which befell him, his family, and his servants was something totally unjustified.

There was no trial or no hearing. Even if his actions justified his removal from power and perhaps even his punishment, there was no excuse for the murder of his wife, children, and servants. The murder of Tsar Nicholas and the Russian royal family is one of the greatest acts of regicide in history, and certainly the most significant of the 20th century. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thorne Thompson and Peter Bennett.

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