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The End of the Romanovs

Author	Victor Alexandrov
Country	London
Language	English
Publisher	Hutchinson
Publication date	1966
Pages	264

The End of the Romanovs is a book wrote by Victor Alexandrovich Alexandrov, a Russian historian and writer, and it was published in English in 1966. The English version was released before the French one, that was titled La Fin Des Romanov – d'après les precieuses Cassettes de Sokolov and was published in 1968.

The book analyzes the background and the motives of the execution of the imperial Russian family during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918. The author relied on the evidence gathered by Nikolaj Sokolov, who during the Russian Revolution investigated about the destiny of the tzar and his family. In this work there is a section with pictures, mainly from the private photographs taken by the imperial family itself.

Author

Victor Alexandrovich Alexandrov (Saint Petersburg, 1908 - Paris, 3 July 1984) was a Russian intellectual, historian and writer. Alexandrov was an intellectual and a writer. He was born in 1908 in Saint Petersburg, but we (who?) only assume this is the correct year. At the age of fourteen he was an orphan, and he was cast out by the Russian Revolution. We do not know much about his life, but he lived both in Europe and in the United States of America, spending much of his life in France. During his life he did different jobs as he later said in his first work Journey Through Chaos. He wrote most of his books in English, French and German and the topics were about the 20th-century history: in fact, for example, he wrote about the downfall of the tsarist regime, the history of USSR and the Eichman's trial. He died in Paris in 1984.

Other works

Besides The End of the Romanov, Victor Alexandrov authored other books like:

• Journey Through Chaos (published in German in 1946). This is the first book he published and it is an autobiographical novel about how life in Europe during the 20th-century was.
• Six Millions de Morts. La vie d'Adolf Eichmann (published in French in 1960). This book is about the life of Adolf Eichman and his trial.

• The Kremlin. Nerve-center of Russian History (1963). This book is about the history of the Kremlin from the XII century to the death of Stalin in 1953.
• The Tukhachevsky Affair (1963). The author here analize the demise of the Soviet military leader Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was later charged of conspiracy with Germany, and he was executed as a spy and counter-revolutionary on 12 June 1937, together with eight Red Army Generals.

Contents

The Romanovs in 1913, before the October Revolution. In this pictures there are the tzar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna and their children: the four Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia and the Tsesarevich Alexei.

The book The End of the Romanov is divided in two parts:

1. Part One – The Romanov Dossier. In this part we can find the pictures (also the private ones taken by the imperial family itself) and the proofs about the execution taken by Nikolai Sokolov.
   1. Historical Outline
   2. Tsarskoe-Selo, where they stayed from 3 March 1917 (day of Nicholas II abdication) to 19 August 1917.
   3. Into Exile
   4. Tobolsk, where they stayed from 19 August 1917 to 30 April 1918.
   5. Ekaterinburg, where they stayed from 30 April 1918 to their death, on 17 July 1918.
2. Part Two – The End of the Romanovs. This the book wrote by Victor Alexandrov. Here the author tries to explain the background and the motives that led to the execution of the Romanovs.

   

   Tolbosk- Siberia. In this building stayed the ex-imperial family during their exile in 1917 and before Ekaterinburg.

   1. The Kremlin Chimes
   2. The Red Urals
   3. The Tribunal of the Hotel Amerika
   4. State Secret
   5. Rasputin’s Prediction
   6. A Sleep-walking Tsar
   7. The Abdication
   8. “Deprived of Liberty”
   9. She Whom the People Hated
   10. Under the Sign of the Swastika
   11. Abandoned by the Allies
   12. Kerensky’s Secret Aims
   13. Deported to Siberia
   14. Hopes of Escape
   15. The Mysterious Yakovlev
   16. Journey to the End of the Steppe
   17. “Green Center” or Intelligence Service?
   18. The Last Respite
   19. The Execution
   20. A Diplomatic Comedy
   21. Epilogue

Part One - The Romanov Dossier

Historical Outline

Nikolaj Sokolov, investigator pointed by the admiral Kolchak to investigate on the Romanovs Case. Here is dressed as a peasant in order to disguise from the Reds and to reach the White Armi into the Ural.

This part is a collection of pictures and documents that the magistrate Nikolai Sokolov gathered during his investigation in Russia. He was appointed to understand what happened to the imperial family by the counter-revolutionary movement, the Whites. These evidences were discovered and collected by Sokolov (in fact he was appointed by the admiral Kolčak on 5 February 1919 to investigate about the Romanov’s Case) from the 1918 (on 30 July 1918 the White Army entered in Ekaterinburg, where the Romanovs were killed by Jurovsky and other men) to 1920 (in March 1920 the White Army lost the civil war against the Bolsheviks and Sokolov ran away in west Europe). We can find in this dossier pictures, besides the one taken by Sokolov, that were from the private collection of the Romanovs: in fact, the tzar loved photography and before and after the Revolution he took a lot of pictures. This material stayed hidden for forty years, until the author discovered two suitcases in 1962 in Paris. The suitcases were three at first (Sokolov in 1920 gave them to general Janin, but he was not able to have them back), but Alexandrov discovered only two and the last one is still missed. Alexandrov found them in the attic in Val-de-Grâce (Paris) of the antiquarian M.I. Gurvič (he bought them during an auction after the death of the prince N. Orlov at the Fontainebleau castle in 1950). The author when he visited Gurvič’s attic was looking for some books of Catherine II, but then he found the two suitcases and he started to wrote this book.

Pictures, Documents and Evidence

Into the dossier there are different type of sources, for example:

• There are pictures taken both by Sokolov (for example the place where the execution took place) and the imperial family (in fact the Romanovs could, during their exile, have a camera and take pictures).
• There documents, like for example pages from the tsarevic’s diary or telegrams.
• There are also evidence, such as the bullets used during the execution of the imperial family ore the objects of the Romanovs retrieved by the White Army at Ipatiev House.

Part Two - The End of the Romanov

See also: Execution of the Romanov family and Russian Civil War

The first twelve chapters of the book narrate about the Romanovs during the October Revolution and the Provisory Government with Kerensky: in this period the ex-imperial family was living in their castle of Tsarskoe-Selo. Here the author tries to explain how the Romanovs situation was and how the new government and Bolsheviks saw them. For example, in the first chapter (The Kremlin Chimes) Alexandrov describes what was the opinion about the Romanovs in the Bolshevik party and in Lenin's mind (he did not like the idea of having a public trial against Nicholas Romanov). Another interesting fact is in chapter five: is about an alleged prediction made by the Siberian monk Rasputin. In 1916 Rasputin send a telegram to the tzar, who at the time was in Mogilev (Russian military headquarters during World War I), with a warning: the number 17 was unlucky for him and his family. Many thought this was a prediction, because Nicholas II and his family died on 17 July 1918, but the author here demonstrates with a deep analysis that those are allegations. He also, in these twelve chapters, uses two sources: a diary of Anna Vyrubova (a chaperone of the tsarina), and a book wrote by Kerensky about the massacre of the Romanovs.

Ipatiev House (Ekaterinburg) - basement. Here took place the execution of the Romanov family on 17 July 1918.

From XII to XVII chapter the author analyzes the period of the Romanovs exile: first in Tobolsk (a city in Siberia) and then at Ipatiev House (Ekaterinburg). One of the most important chapters of this book is the one about the strange figure of Yakovlev. Nowadays this man is a mystery, but the author here tries to explain who he was and what he tried to do. In April 1918, the imperial family was in Tobolsk, and they met Yakovlev, who told them he was there to transfer them to Ekaterinburg. But he did not so. Yakovlev tried to transfer the imperial family to Moscow and to escape in Europe. This the theory that the author has (he thought that Yakovlev was a spy for the English Intelligence Service), but there is no evidence that tells us the truth.

The last two chapters are about the execution of the Romanovs: they were killed by Jurovsky after the declaration of death made by the Soviet of the Urals on 17 July 1918 (they wanted the imperial family dead, beacuse they feared they could be released by the White Army). Here the author used a book wrote by P. M. Bikov, the ex-president of the Soviet of the Ural located at Ekaterinburg. In the last chapter, Alexandrov demonstrates that no one from the Romanovs survived to the execution, because the sources (and nowadays the discovery of the bodies), like the narration of their death by Jurovsky, made them clear.

Epilogue

In the last chapter of the book Alexandrov narrates how the life of people, who participated in this execution, continued. For example, Jurovsky (he will always be remembered as the one who read the sentence of death and killed the Romanovs) he died in his bed in 1962 after a lengthy illness. In his obituary there is no reference about his role in the execution of the ex-imperial family, but he is just remembered as a hero of the Revolution. In conclusion, the author says that until historians could not read the documents in the Kremlin archive, there will always be different opinions and theories about the end of the Romanovs.

See also

• Romanov family
• Nicholas II
• Russian Revolution
• Execution of the Romanov family
• Russian civil war

Further readings

• Vyrubova, Anna (1928). Le journal secret d'Anna Virubova (in French). Paris: Payot.
• Bikov, Pavel Mikhailovich (1935). The Last Days of the Tsar Nicholas. New York: International Publishers.
• Kerensky, Alexander (1936). La vérité sur le massacre des Romanov (in French). Paris: Payot.
• Gérard, Walter (1953). Histoire de la Révolution russe (in French). Paris.
• Coble, Michael D.; Loreille, Odile M.; Wadhams, Mark J.; Edson, Suni M.; Maynard, Kerry; Meyer, Carna E.; Niedestätter, Harald; Berger, Cordula; Berger, Burkhard; Falsetti, Anthony B.; Gill, Peter (2009-03-11). Hofreiter, Michael (ed.). "Mistery Solved: The Identification of the Two Missing Romanov Children Using DNA Analysis". PLoS ONE. 4 (3): e4838.
• Rappaport, Helen. (2010) The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0312603472
• Massie, Robert K. (2012), The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. Random House. ISBN 9780307873866

External links

• "Literacy Legacy of Victor Alexandrov". Archived from the original on 01 July 2022. Retrieved on 30 June 2022.
• The End of the Romanovs at Internet Archive. Retrieved on 30 June 2022.