The Romanovs: The Final Chapter

nine o’clock on the night of July 17, the Kremlin received a coded telegram from the Ural Regional Soviet saying, “Tell Sverdlov that the whole family has suffered the same fate as the head. Officially the family will perish during the evacuation.” Sverdlov, expecting this message, telegraphed in reply: “Today [July 18] I will report your decision to Presidium of Central Executive Committee. There is no doubt it will be approved. Notice about the execution must follow from the central authorities. Refrain from publication until its receipt

in a deliberate attempt to make the corpses unrecognizable, the faces had been crushed by blows from rifle butts. Nevertheless, as the six women—four of them young and, twelve hours earlier, beautiful—lay on the ground, their bodies were touched. “I felt the empress myself and she was warm,” said one of the party later. Another said, “Now I can die in peace because I have squeezed the empress’s——.

The “whole procedure,” as Yurovsky later described it, including feeling the pulses and loading the truck, had taken twenty minutes.

Yurovsky stood in front of Nicholas, his right hand in his trouser pocket, his left holding a small piece of paper from which he began to read: “In view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you.