Illustration depicting the execution of the Russian ex-Tsarist Romanov family, July 17, 1918.

Illustration depicting the execution of the Russian ex-Tsarist Romanov family, July 17, 1918.

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Today 106 years ago, in the early hours of July 17, 1918, Russian ex-Tsar Nicholas, his wife and five children were executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries in the Ipatiev House basement in Yekaterinburg. 

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On March 15, 1917, upon the outbreak of the Russian February Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne, ending 304 years of the House of Romanov's reign over Russia. On March 20, 1917, the new Russian Provisional Government decided to hold the Romanov family under house arrest at the Alexander Palace near St. Petersburg.

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The Romanov family, consisting of Tsar Nicholas, his wife the Empress Alexandra, their four daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and their son Alexei, was eventually moved to Tobolsk in Western Siberia in August 1917. In April 1918 they were moved again to the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, where they were essentially imprisoned and kept under strict conditions by Bolshevik guards.

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By then the Russian Civil War was fully under way, and by June 1918 the Czechoslovak Legion, siding with the counter-revolutionary White Army, was steadily approaching Yekaterinburg. Fearing that these forces were on a rescue mission for the Romanovs, in late June the decision was made to execute the family.

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On July 16, the Bolshevik guards, led by Yakov Yurovsky, was given the order to execute the ex-Tsar family by firing squad.

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At around 2 AM on July 17, 1918, the family was awakened and got dressed under the impression they were being moved to a safer location. Yurovsky and his guards then led the family down into the half-basement room of the Ipatiev House.

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A few minutes later, an execution squad was brought in and Yurovsky read aloud his order of execution, reportedly prompting a stunned Nicholas to exclaim: "What? What did you say? You know not what you do!"