The Romanov family is executed at Ekaterinburg
Bolsheviks shoot Nicholas II, his wife, and their five children in a cellar as White forces close in on the city.
Quick facts
- Date
- 16-17 July 1918
- Location
- Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg
- Ordered by
- Lenin, approved 16 July 1918
What happened
The former Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei, had been held under guard at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg since April 1918. As anti-Bolshevik White forces approached the city, Lenin approved the execution of the family on 16 July 1918. That night, the Bolshevik commissar Yakov Yurovsky led ten or eleven armed men into the cellar where the family had been gathered and shot them, along with four members of their household staff: court physician Eugene Botkin, lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova, footman Alexei Trupp, and cook Ivan Kharitonov. All seven royals were killed and their bodies secretly buried. DNA testing on remains found decades later, most recently in 2007, confirmed the identities of all seven family members by 2015.
Why it matters
The execution ended the Romanov dynasty completely and removed any figure the Whites could rally around as a restored monarch. The order came from Lenin directly, and the killings became one of the defining atrocities historians point to when assessing the character of Bolshevik rule from its earliest months.
How we know
World History Encyclopedia's dedicated account of the murder documents Lenin's approval, Yurovsky's role leading the execution, and the DNA confirmation of the family's remains through 2015 testing.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. The Murder of the Romanov Family · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. The Murder of the Romanov Family · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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