Murder of the Romanovs

Murder of the Romanovs

On July 17, 1918, the last Russian Emperor, Nicholas II, along with his wife Alexandra, their five children, and four loyal attendants, were executed by Bolshevik forces in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The family had been held under house arrest since the February Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent abdication of Nicholas II.

The executions took place in the basement of the Ipatiev House, where the family had been confined. The killings were carried out by a detachment of the Ural Soviet, under orders from Bolshevik leaders in Moscow. The victims were shot and killed, and efforts were made to conceal the bodies, which were later moved and partially destroyed to prevent discovery.

The murder of the Romanovs marked the definitive end of the Russian imperial family and became a symbol of the violence of the Russian Civil War. The remains of the family were later recovered and identified using DNA analysis in the 1990s, and they were interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.