- Russia what happened to the Romanov family
- Question C and D
- c) Source D must be reliable because it is an eyewitness account. Do you agree?
- Source D is an eyewitness account this does not necessarily make it reliable, there a number of factors to consider, one being who it was that wrote the source. In this case in was the ‘Whites’ who may or may not have altered what Pavel Medvedev said to suit them. The source also says that he was probably tortured this could alter the information he gave. Also the eyewitness himself maybe lying, this could be the case because he said in the interview that he was on the street when the tsar was shot. However to contradict this his wife says “My husband fired too” [source E]. I consider what his wife said to be more reliable, because in the same source another guard also says, “emptied two or three bullets into the tsar” [source E].
- Having said these minor details coincide with other sources for example he told the interviewers that “the corpses were taken out to the lorry” [source D] and in source C it says that “a lorry carried the corpses.” This could suggest that the source is entirely unreliable.
