Critical assessment of the last days of the Tsar

Polina Muranova

A critical assessment of the evidence surrounding the death of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

A. A plan of investigation

In this essay I am going to assess questions like for example; upon who’s order was the Royal family killed and for what reasons, why are is there a great number of interpretations of what happened to the royal family, and why do we still do not know the truth?

The main question is who gave the order to kill the royal family and who carried it out. One of the most common interpretations is that Lenin gave the order to kill the Romanovs, and the red army soldiers under the commandment of Yurovski shot the entire family in the Ipatiev house. The Bolsheviks could have done it themselves, without necessarily the order from Lenin or the commissariat of Yekaterinburg made the decision, and this is how the Bolsheviks interpreted it to the entire Russian nation. The last common explanation of the murder is that it could have possible happened due to a misunderstanding, and by this I mean that a gang of anti-Tsarist commoners, could carry out the murder without being directed by any authority, so that the murder could have been accidental.

To help me write this essay I will need to find as many different sources to compare and contrast the different interpretations of the murder of the Romanovs. I will need to then investigate their reliability, and rely on sources written by known historians rather than an unknown writer. I will have to read a background book about Tsar Nicholas II and his family, to have a better idea about their personalities and their lifestyle. I will also read a biography of Mr. Gibbes, the English tutor the Tsar’s children, who returned to England after the entire family was sent to Yekaterinburg.

How did it affect the revolution and how would it help the Bolsheviks? (Short term)

Whites liberate Yekaterinburg and Tjumen
Peasants rise
Whites lose hope and go into exile or executed
Lenin is a dictator of USSR
Lenin’s promise ‘ Peace, bread and land,’- does this happen? (S.H.)

Section B C D & E

Section B –Introduction, background information, key dates.

Section C-1st paragraph critically analyses Source A. origin, purpose, value and limitation

Section C-2nd paragraph critically analyses Source B. origin, purpose, value and limitation

Section D- 3rd paragraph compares the two sources.

Section D- 4th paragraph gives more interpretations, not so detailed as 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.

Personal thoughts, ideas???

Section E Conclusion

A critical assessment of the evidence surrounding the death of the Tsar and his family

B. Summary of evidence

The death of Nicholas Romanov, the last Tsar of Russia and his ...

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Section B C D & E

Section B –Introduction, background information, key dates.

Section C-1st paragraph critically analyses Source A. origin, purpose, value and limitation

Section C-2nd paragraph critically analyses Source B. origin, purpose, value and limitation

Section D- 3rd paragraph compares the two sources.

Section D- 4th paragraph gives more interpretations, not so detailed as 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.

Personal thoughts, ideas???

Section E Conclusion

A critical assessment of the evidence surrounding the death of the Tsar and his family

B. Summary of evidence

The death of Nicholas Romanov, the last Tsar of Russia and his family is surrounded by mystery. In this essay I am going to critically assess the different interpretations of the last days of the Tsar concerning the question of who and why gave the order to kill him and his family. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia from 1613 until the overthrow of Nicholas II in 1917. The Tsar had the absolute power, meaning that he had to take all the decisions, as Russia had no Parliament. By 1917, as a cause of national distress caused by the First World War, hunger, unemployment and many other reasons, the Russian nation looked forward to a change in their country. Many people wanted a radical change, which the Bolsheviks with Ilyich Lenin as their leader suggested. Bolsheviks wanted to overthrow the Tsar and to make Russia into a totalitarian state, promising people a better life and their slogan was, “ Peace, bread and land.” Source A states the Romanovs were shot by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg on July 17, and the order came straight from St. Petersburg, and the telegram was written in the presence of Lenin.

C. Evaluation of sources

One of the most common interpretations of the murder of the royal family, that the order to kill them was given out by Lenin himself, and was carried out by the Red Army soldiers in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg, where the family were home arrested for the last weeks of their lives. Source A, which is an article taken out from the Independent newspaper April 16 2006, has another source within itself. By this I mean that the source states that the self- proclaimed heirs of Tsar Nicholas II have documentary proof that the Tsar was murdered on explicit orders of the Bolshevik government. Interestingly enough this documents were found, but experts are still debating whether they are reliable or not, as they can be fake, and there is always that question of why the Bolsheviks did not destroy a document of such great secrecy and confidentiality. We can see that even though more than ninety years have passed since the assassination of the Romanov family, people are still discussing it, as the truth is very well hidden and one of the other mysteries of this event is that two bodies were missing, when in June 1991 (find) found the mass grave of the Romanovs alongside their doctor and a maid.

Source B is a very different interpretation compared to the Source A and I think that it is very biased. It is the official statement by the Soviet government in the newspaper Izvestia (1918), which was given to the people to explain of who and why killed the Tsar and his family. I personally think that it makes no sense, as it says that the presidium of the Ural Territorial Soviet decided to shoot Nicholas Romanov, as the Czechoslovak bands threatened Ekaterinburg. The presidium of the Ural Territorial Soviet could not possibly have any authority to carry out such an important decision, however we can also see this murder as a misunderstanding of instructions or a rush decision that was not made by a strong or powerful authority. Either way the Bolshevik statement was the only proof that the Tsar was shot and this certainly does not give The source also states that the Tsarina and her son were sent to a safe place, however it does not mention his daughters, which is quite bizarre. In a way this article wants to show the people that the Bolsheviks are not tyrants who kill women and children, but only the Tsar upon whom the Bolsheviks blame all the problems of the country. I think that this is very unfair as Nicholas II was not the one who brought Russia to such a bad estate. Nicholas was not a strong leader, but was more of a family man, who thought of his family before the country. He and the Tsarina, who only thought about her ill son, who suffered from hemophilia, was the last drop, which brought the Russian Revolution in 1917.

D. Analysis

We can see that sources A and B contradict each other, and they are also different at different time. Source A is quite biased as it was written, when the Bolsheviks censored the media, and would kill anyone who writes against their party and their beliefs.

E. Conclusion

It is still unclear who gave the order to kill Tsar Nicholas II and his family, and the question remains quite open whether they were really killed or not. There is a theory that the entire family managed to survive, and yet another one that only the smallest children- Alexei and Anastasia, were saved. This however is untraceable, as the Bolsheviks made sure to make this information as well hidden as possible.

F. List of sources

Source A- Last Tsar killed on orders of Lenin, say Romanov family

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Almost 90 years after Nicholas II, Russia's last Tsar, was executed with his family, his self-proclaimed heirs say they have documentary proof that he was murdered on the explicit orders of the Bolshevik government. Descendants of the Romanov dynasty say papers in the archives of the modern-day Russian government show that the killing deserves to be classed as an act of "political repression", and that Nicholas should therefore be officially rehabilitated. The Tsar, who stepped down in 1917 as revolution swept Russia, was executed by a Bolshevik firing squad with his family in the basement of a merchant's house in the city of Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918. His purported remains and those of his wife and three of his five children, were found in 1991 and laid to rest in St Petersburg's Peter and Paul Fortress in 1998.Whether there were clear orders for the execution, and who might have given them, has long been a matter of dispute. But next week a Moscow court is due to rule on the issue in a suit brought against the government by one of the most active pretenders to the Romanov mantle, the self-styled Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia. The 52-year-old resident of Spain and her aides say the documentary evidence they have turned up includes a telegram from a Bolshevik committee in Yekaterinburg confirming it had carried out the execution, as well as minutes of a meeting of the government in St Petersburg, showing that it discussed the matter on the day of the killings at the initiative of Yakov Sverdlov, the head of the government, in the presence of Vladimir Lenin. There is also an extract from Leon Trotsky's memoirs, in which he says Sverdlov told him: "Ilyich Lenin thought we shouldn't leave them [the imperial family] a living banner in such hard times. "The Russian legal system has never conceded that a crime was committed in 1918, effectively acquiescing in the view that the Romanovs deserved their bloody fate. The Tsar's self-styled heirs argue that it is time for "historical justice" to be restored. Skeptics believe there is more to their claim than meets the eye: a ruling in the Tsar's favor could give anyone successfully claiming to be his heir the chance to gain at least a portion of the family's one-time wealth. Alexander Zakatov, an aide to "Grand Duchess Maria", denied the Romanovs wanted to reclaim their property. But, he told the IoS, it would it would be nice if the government gave them "a building" in Moscow "as a sign of respect to a dynasty that ruled Russia for 300 years".

Source B Official statement issued by the Soviet government in Izvestia (1918)

Lately the approach of the Czechoslovak bands seriously threatened the capital of the Red Urals, Ekaterinburg. In view of this the presidium of the Ural Territorial Soviet decided to shoot Nicholas Romanov, which was done on July 16. The wife and son of Nicholas Romanov were sent to a safe place. The All-Russian Soviet Executive Committee, through its presidium, recognizes as correct the decisions of the Ural Territorial Soviet.

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/