Does anybody know what REALLY happened to the last czar of Russia and his family?

Question

I saw it on Yahoo! Featured articles yesterday but I didn't get a chance to look at it. Then today they took it off and I can't find the article anywhere. If you read the article or know something about it, please answer.

Answer 1

Here's the Associate Press Article which ran on Yahoo! Answers yesterday. (The one you saw, but missed reading)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-russia-czars-son,0,7701553.story

I'd give you a detailed account of what happened to Romanovs, but I don't have enough time, and I don't approve of simply copying and pasting from Wikipedia for an answer.

I hope the article answers your questions.
Peace.

Answer 2

The account that has the most credibility is the eyewitness account of Pavel Medevdev:
"In the evening of 16 July, between seven and eight p.m., when the time or my duty 'had just begun; Commandant Yurovsky, [the head of the execution squad] ordered me to take all the Nagan revolvers from the guards and to bring them to him. I took twelve revolvers from the sentries as well as from some other of the guards and brought them to the commandant's office.

Yurovsky said to me, 'We must shoot them all tonight; so notify the guards not to be alarmed if they hear shots.' I understood, therefore, that Yurovsky had it in his mind to shoot the whole of the Tsar's family, as well as the doctor and the servants who lived with them, but I did not ask him where or by whom the decision had been made...At about ten o'clock in the evening in accordance with Yurovsky's order I informed the guards not to be alarmed if they should hear firing.

About midnight Yurovsky woke up the Tsar's family. I do not know if he told them the reason they had been awakened and where they were to be taken, but I positively affirm that it was Yurovsky who entered the room occupied by the Tsar's family. In about an hour the whole of the family, the doctor, the maid and the waiters got up, washed and dressed themselves.

Just before Yurovsky went to awaken the family, two members of the Extraordinary Commission [of the Ekaterinburg Soviet] arrived at Ipatiev's house. Shortly after one o'clock a.m., the Tsar, the Tsaritsa, their four daughters, the maid, the doctor, the cook and the waiters left their rooms. The Tsar carried the heir in his arms. The Emperor and the heir were dressed in gimnasterkas [soldiers' shirts] and wore caps. The Empress, her daughters and the others followed him. Yurovsky, his assistant and the two above-mentioned members of the Extraordinary Commission accompanied them. I was also present.

During my presence none of the Tsar's family asked any questions. They did not weep or cry. Having descended the stairs to the
The Ipatiev house
first floor, we went out into the court, and from there to the second door (counting from the gate) we entered the ground floor of the house. When the room (which adjoins the store room with a sealed door) was reached, Yurovsky ordered chairs to be brought, and his assistant brought three chairs. One chair was given to the Emperor, one to the Empress, and the third to the heir.

The Empress sat by the wall by the window, near the black pillar of the arch. Behind her stood three of her daughters (I knew their faces very well, because I had seen them every day when they walked in the garden, but I didn't know their names). The heir and the Emperor sat side by side almost in the middle of the room. Doctor Botkin stood behind the heir. The maid, a very tall woman, stood at the left of the door leading to the store room; by her side stood one of the Tsar's daughters (the fourth). Two servants stood against the wall on the left from the entrance of the room.

The maid carried a pillow. The Tsar's daughters also brought small pillows with them. One pillow was put on the Empress's chair; another on the heir's chair. It seemed as if all of them guessed their fate, but not one of them uttered a single sound. At this moment eleven men entered the room: Yurovsky, his assistant, two members of the Extraordinary Commission, and seven Letts [operatives of the infamous Cheka or Secret Police]..

Yurovsky ordered me to leave, saying, 'Go on to the street, see if there is anybody there, and wait to see whether the shots have been heard.' I went out to the court, which was enclosed by a fence, but before I got to the street I heard the firing. I returned to the house immediately (only two or three minutes having elapsed) and upon entering the room where the execution had taken place, I saw that all the members of the Tsar's family were lying on the floor with many wounds in their bodies. The blood was running in streams. The doctor, the maid and two waiters had also been shot. When I entered the heir was still alive and moaned a little. Yurovsky went up and fired two or three more times at him. Then the heir was still."

References:
Medvedev's account appears in: Wilton, Robert, The Last Days of the Romanovs (1920); Massie, Robert, The Romanovs, the Final Chapter (1996); Massie, Robert, Nicholas and Alexandra (1967).

Answer 3

The royal family along with rasputin all had their heads shaved and were brought down into a cellar by the Bolsheviks (Lenin's men).

The women (Czarina and her daughters) were all slowly raped by the communists before being kicked and stomped and beaten to near-death, then shot. The Czar and his son were kicked and stomped on until near dead, then shot.

The women, young girls, men, and the young prince all died brutal deaths at the hands of the communists (Lenin's men).

Rasputin was beaten, stomped, kicked, shot, then thrown in a hole in the ice in the river, but the autopsy determined he did not die of his afflicted wounds but drowned.

The bodies of the royal family have yet to be recovered.

An article yesterday claimed to have found the remains of the young son Alexander.

Answer 4

They were all shot in Ekaterinaberg

Answer 5

Nicholas II of Russia (Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov) (18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July [O.S. 4 July] 1918) (Russian: Никола́й II, Nikolay II) was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Poland,[1] and Grand Duke of Finland. He ruled from 1894 until his forced abdication in 1917. Nicholas proved unable to manage a country in political turmoil and command its army in World War I. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917, after which he and his family were shot by Bolsheviks. Nicholas's full name was Nikolay Aleksandrovich Romanov (Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Рома́нов). His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.[2] He is sometimes referred to as Nicholas the Martyr due to his execution and as Bloody Nicholas because of the tragic events during his coronation, Bloody Sunday and his government's subsequent suppression of dissent. As a result of his canonization, he has been regarded as Saint Nicholas The Passion Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.the Provisional Government placed Nicholas and his family under house arrest in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, 15 miles (24 km) south of Petrograd. In August 1917 the Kerensky government evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk in the Urals, allegedly to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. There they lived in the former Governor's Mansion, known as the Ipatiev House, in some comfort.

After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the conditions of their imprisonment grew stricter and talk of putting Nicholas on trial grew more frequent. As the counterrevolutionary White movement gathered force, leading to full-scale civil war by the summer, Nicholas, Alexandra and their daughter Maria were moved during April to Yekaterinburg. Alexis was too ill to accompany his parents and remained with his sisters Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia, not leaving Tobolsk until May 1918. The family were imprisoned with a few remaining retainers in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, a militant Bolshevik stronghold. Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, their physician, and three servants were woken and taken into a basement room and shot at 2:33 A.M. on July 17. An official announcement appeared in the national press two days after the killing of the former tsar and his family. It informed that the former monarch had been executed on the order of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet under pressure of the dangers posed by the approach of the Czechoslovaks. [6] Whether this was on direct orders from Vladimir Lenin in Moscow (as many believe, though scholarly research has found no hard evidence), or an option approved in Moscow should White troops approach Yekaterinburg, or at the initiative of local Bolsheviks, remains in dispute, as does whether the order (if there was an order) was for the execution of Nicholas alone or the entire family.

Then in 1989, Yakov Yurovsky's own report was published, which seemed to show conclusively what had happened that night. The execution took place as units of the Czechoslovak Legion, making their retreat out of Russia, approached Yekaterinburg. Fearing that the Legion would take the town and free him, the Emperor's Bolshevik jailers pursued the immediate liquidation of the Imperial Family, arguing that there was "no turning back".[7] The telegram giving the order on behalf of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow was signed by Yakov Sverdlov, after whom the town was subsequently renamed, Svderdlovsk. Nicholas was the first to die. He was shot with multiple bullets to the head and chest. The last ones to die were Anastasia, Tatiana, Olga, and Maria, who were wearing several pounds of diamonds within their clothing, thus rendering them bullet-resistant to an extent. They were speared with bayonets.


Yekaterinburg's "Church on the Blood", built on the spot where the Ipatiev House once stood. The lare sculpture in front of the church depicts the royal familyIvan Plotnikov, History Professor at the Ural State University "M.Gorky", has established that the execution squad comprised the following members: Y.M.Yurovsky, G.P.Nikulin, M.A.Medvedev (Kudrin), P.Z.Yermakov, S.P.Vaganov, A.G.Kabanov, P.S.Medvedev, V.N.Netrebin, and Y.M.Tselms. All were Russians with the exception of Tselms, who was Latvian. Three other Latvians refused at the last minute to take part in the execution.[8]

The bodies of Nicholas and his family, after being soaked in acid and burned, were long believed to have been disposed of down a mineshaft at a site called the Four Brothers. Initially, this was true — they had indeed been disposed of there on the night of July 17. The following morning — when rumours spread in Yekaterinburg regarding the disposal site — Yurovsky removed the bodies and concealed them elsewhere. When the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way to the next chosen site, Yurovsky made new arrangements, and buried most of the bodies in a sealed and concealed pit on Koptyaki Road, a cart track (now abandoned) 12 miles (19 km) north of Yekaterinburg. The remains of all the family and their retainers with the exception of two of the children were later found in 1991 and reburied by the Russian government following a state funeral. The process to identify the remains was exhaustive. Samples were sent to Britain and the United States for DNA testing. The tests concluded that five of the skeletons were members of one family and four were unrelated. Three of the five were determined to be the children of two parents. The mother was linked to the British royal family, as was Alexandra. (Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, grandson of Alexandra's oldest sister Victoria, Marchioness of Milford-Haven, gave a DNA sample which matched with that of the remains) The father was determined to be related to Grand Duke George Alexandrovich, younger brother of Nicholas II. British scientists said they were more than 98.5% sure that the remains were those of the Emperor, his family and their attendants. Relics from the Ōtsu Scandal (a failed assassination attempt on Tsarevich Nicholas (future Nicholas II) in Japan) failed to provide sufficient evidence due to contamination.

A ceremony of Christian burial was held in 80 years to the day of the their death in 1998. The bodies were laid to rest with state honors in the St. Catherine Chapel in the St. Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, where all other Russian emperors since Peter the Great lie. President and Mrs. Yeltsin attended the funeral along with Romanov relations including Prince Michael of Kent. The last Imperial Family of Russia have been made saints not only by the Russian Orthodox Church in exile but also by Patriarch Alexis II in M