*Information on “disturbances,” whether by workers or peasants, was censored and newspapers which published it were often fined and even suspended. By early 1919, all such information had to be cleared by military censors, who routinely removed it from the handful of non-Bolshevik papers still allowed to appear:
*Lenin,
*This resembled the authority vested in the 1880s in tsarist governors, by virtue of which they were empowered to remove elected
†E. H. Carr, (
*“When I put a question to [Lenin] about socialism in agriculture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer peasants against the richer ones, ‘and they soon hanged them from the nearest tree—ha! ha! ha!’ His guifaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold.” Bertrand Russell,
17
Murder of the Imperial Family
On the night of July 16–17, 1918, at approximately 2:30 a.m. in the Ural city of Ekaterinburg, a squad of Chekists murdered, in the basement of a private home, the ex-Emperor, Nicholas II, his wife, their son and four daughters, the family physician, and three servants. This much is known with certainty. The steps that led to this tragedy, however, remain obscure, despite the immense literature, and will remain such until all the pertinent archives are thrown open to scholars.*
Two other European monarchs had lost their lives in consequence of revolutionary upheavals: Charles I in 1649 and Louis XVI in 1793. Yet, as is the case with so much that concerns the Russian Revolution, while the superficial features of events are familiar, all else is unique. Charles I was tried by a specially constituted High Court of Justice, which lodged formal charges and gave him an opportunity to defend himself. The trial was held in the open and its records were published while it was still in progress; the execution took place in public view. The same held true of Louis XVI. He was tried before the Convention, which sentenced him to death by a majority vote after a long debate, in the course of which a lawyer defended the king. The trial records, too, were published. The execution was carried out in broad daylight in the center of Paris.
Nicholas II was neither charged nor tried. The Soviet Government, which had condemned him to death, has never published the relevant documents: such facts as are known of the event are mainly the result of the efforts of one dedicated investigator. In the Russian case, the victims were not only the deposed monarch but also his wife, children, and staff. The deed, perpetrated in the dead of night, resembled more a gangster-type massacre than a formal execution.
The Bolshevik seizure of power at first brought no significant change to the ex-Tsar’s family and its retainers living in Tobolsk, where they had been exiled by Kerensky. In the winter of 1917–18, life in the Governor’s House and its annexes went on much as before. The family was allowed to take walks, to attend religious services in a nearby church, to receive newspapers and correspond with friends. In February 1918, their state subvention was cut off and their allowance reduced to 600 rubles a month, but even so they lived in reasonable comfort. The Bolsheviks, who had their hands full with more urgent matters, gave little thought to the Romanovs, all of whom had withdrawn from public affairs. They discussed what to do with the ex-Tsar as early as November 1917 but took no decision.1
