THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg

Book excerpt: THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg Helen Rappaport, an expert in the field of Russian history, brings you the riveting day-by-day account of the last fourteen days of the Russian Imperial family, in this first of two books about the Romanovs. The brutal murder of the Russian Imperial family on the night of July sixteenth to seventeenth, 1918 has long been a defining moment in world history. The Last Days of the Romanovs reveal in exceptional detail how the conspiracy to kill them unfolded. In the vivid style of a TV documentary, Helen Rappaport reveals both the atmosphere inside the family's claustrophobic prison and the political maneuverings of those who wished to save--or destroy--them. With the watching world and European monarchies proving incapable of saving the Romanovs, the narrative brings this tragic story to life in a compellingly new and dramatic way, culminating in a bloody night of horror in a cramped basement room. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg On 4 July 1918, a new commandant took control of a closely guarded house in the Russian town of Ekaterinburg. His name was Yakov Yurovsky, and his prisoners were the Imperial family: the former Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexey. Thirteen days later, at Yurovsky's command, and on direct orders from Moscow, the family was gunned down in a blaze of bullets in a basement room. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg This is the story of those murders, which ended 300 years of Romanov rule and began an era of state-orchestrated terror and brutal repression. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg Published in 1920 During the night between the 16th and 17th of July, 1918, the former Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his family, as well as all the persons attached to it, were murdered by the order of the Yekaterinburg soviet of workmen’s deputies. The news of this crime broke through the closed ring that surrounded Bolshevist Russia and spread over the entire world. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg At the end of July, 1918, the town of Yekaterinburg was taken from the Bolsheviks by the forces of the Siberian Government. Shortly after their occupation of the district an investigation was ordered to be made of the circumstances attendant on the murder. A judicial examination therefore took place of the witnesses connected with the life of the imperial family at Czarskoe-Selo, Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg by N. A. Sokoloff, the Investigating Magistrate for Cases of Special Importance of the Omsk Tribunal. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg Upon the fall of the Kolchak régime, copies of the depositions were taken from the archives by M. George Gustav Telberg, Professor of Law at the University of Saratov and Minister of Justice at Omsk, when he fled with the other ministers of the Omsk government. These combined statements reconstruct the life-story of the imperial family from the time of the emperor’s abdication until the murder of himself, his wife, his children, including the czarevitch, and their few faithful servants in Ipatieff’s house at Yekaterinburg. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg The translator has endeavored to preserve the original simplicity, and in some cases the crudeness and lack of education apparent in the witnesses. Colonel Kobylinsky, M. Gilliard and Mr. Gibbes are educated men who apparently gave their evidence without displaying any outward emotion, but, though they did not exaggerate the sufferings of the imperial family, they were not eye-witnesses of the final hours of their captivity. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg The testimony of the soldiers strikes a more sinister note. Two of them witnessed most of the daily happenings at Ipatieff’s house, but they display certain evidences of pity and of having been well-disposed towards the prisoners whose murder they condemned. Indeed these men are most insistent that the crime was committed by the “Letts.” The third soldier (Medvedeff) took an active part in the murder. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg The narrative of Mr. Robert Wilton which supplements the translations of the official records is, we think, a document of incalculable value. Written by a man who for sixteen years was correspondent for the London Times in Russia, and who not only speaks Russian but was present throughout the investigation of the scene of the murder and during the search for the relics, his story has a poignancy and an intrinsic value that cannot be overestimated. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg It is proper here to explain to the reader that the contents of this volume as represented by the Official Depositions in Part I and Mr. Robert Wilton’s Narrative in Part II came into existence quite independently and without the design, originally, of publishing them together. Mr. Wilton, who escaped from Siberia after the fall of the Kolchak Government, took with him one of three copies of the dossier of the official investigation. Upon this original source he based his story, adding to it certain facts which he had personally gathered. By a most fortunate circumstance, George H. Doran Company, who were preparing for the press the depositions secured by M. George Gustav Telberg, learned of Mr. Wilton’s narrative, and arrangements were immediately made to combine the records in one volume. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg As the two parts of the book are from different sources, no effort has been made to secure uniformity in certain minor variations in the spellings of proper names. The Index in Part III adopts the spelling used by Mr. Wilton, but the reader will readily recognize the same persons and places in Mr. Telberg’s translation in Part I. THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS : Ekaterinburg