The Russian people learned of the ex-Czar’s execution through a brief official press release from Moscow on July 19 announcing that “sentence of death had been passed on Nicholas Romanov and carried out” by the Ekaterinburg Soviet. It is now admitted, even in the USSR, that in reality it was Lenin himself who ordered the execution, while another member of the central government, Jacob Sverdlov, was responsible for co-ordinating the details with the local authorities in Ekaterinburg. Nothing was ever said officially about the killing of the Czarina and the Romanov children.
