The Killing of the Romanovs

In the night between the 16th and 17th of July 1918, the family of Russia's last emperor, Nicolas II, was killed in Ekaterinburg (Shenkman, 2013).  The killing of the Romanovs denotes the vicious nature of the social upheavals in post-revolutionary Russia. The executioners shot the Romanov family with extreme prejudice, and they even killed the pet dog of young Alexei, the Crown Prince.     Following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, he and his wife, Alexandra, along with their five children, were eventually exiled to the city of Yekaterinburg. The family, along with four loyal members of their staff, was held captive by members of the Ural Soviet. According to historical reports, in the early morning hours of July 17, 1918, the entire family, along with four loyal members of their staff, was executed by a firing squad (Coble, 2009).  The killing squad was led by two men named Yakov Yurovsky and Medvedev-Kudrin. Yakov Yurovsky claimed that he personally fired the bullet that killed Czar Nicholas II (Shenkman, 2013).   In 1920, a British officer interviewed Yakov Yurovsky in Moscow. He reported that Yurovsky was remorseful over the killings of the Romanovs. In the later years, Yakov Yurovsky went into seclusion. In his final days, he wrote an appeal to Stalin when his daughter was arrested by Stalin’s secret police. He pleaded with Stalin to release her, describing his dedication to the October Revolution. Distressed with loads of ruminations, Yakov Yurovsky died of a peptic ulcer in 1938.