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Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Livadiya in 1913. From left to right, Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Alexandra Fyodorovna, Anastasia, Alexei, and Tatiana. Image courtesy Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.

  • Shortly after midnight the Soviet revolutionary Yakov Yurovsky and a group of secret police enter the bedroom of former Tsar Nicholas II. The Tsar, his wife and children, and four servants, are escorted to the cellar whereupon Yurovsky declares:

Nikolai Alexandrovich, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you

The police then proceed to assassinate the imperial family.