Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

by Stephen Kotkin

in the dead of night July 16–17, 1918, without formal charges, let alone a trial, a “sentence” of death by firing squad was carried out against Nicholas, Alexandra, their son, Alexei (aged thirteen), their four daughters (aged seventeen to twenty-two), the family physician, and three servants. Yakov Yurovsky, the eighth of ten children of a Jewish seamstress and a glazier (and suspected thief), led the eleven-person execution squad. Their hail of pistol bullets ricocheted off the brick walls around the half basement, and burned the executioners (some would become deaf). Alexei survived the barrage—he let out a moan—but Yurovsky went up and shot him point blank. Some of the daughters, whose bodies held concealed jewels that repelled the bullets, were bayoneted to pieces. Yurovsky’s squad buried the bodies off a dirt road at a village (Koptyaki) twelve miles north of Yekaterinburg. They poured sulfuric acid over the corpses to disfigure them beyond recognition, and burned and separately buried the corpses of Alexei and a daughter mistaken for Alexandra. That same day, July 19, Yurosovky left for Moscow to report.341 The central Bolshevik government never admitted its responsibility, and the act was attributed to the Urals Bolsheviks.342