Last of the Czars - 03 - Death of the Dynasty (1996)

in october 1916 as world war one raged on the children of tsar nicholas ii of russia visited him at his military headquarters the family seemed happy and carefree despite the long years of war and internal strife within six months the whole dynasty would be swept away in the tumult of revolution after a year commanding his battalions in the brutal war with germany nicholas had made little headway against the enemy the fighting was bleeding the nation dry of men resources and morale before it was all over his army would suffer millions of casualties on the home front both food and government were bad and in short supply in the czar's absence his wife alexandra ruled the country disastrously born a german the empress was widely but wrongly believed to be a german spy hatred for her was fueling the fires of discontent in the capital petrograd revolution was brewing from their home the alexander palace outside petrograd alexandra wrote to nicholas daily even hourly be peter the great ivan the terrible crush them all under you remember the tsar rules how long years people have told me russia loves to feel the whip it's their nature i am fighting for your reign and baby alex a's future we must give a strong country to baby and dare not be weak for his sake my dear tender thanks for the severe scolding i read it with a smile because you speak to me as though i were a child yes truly you ought to be my eyes and ears there in the capital well i have to stay here at times when i think of how things will go it seems my head will burst your poor weak willed hubby nikki nicholas returned home from the front for christmas and the new year of 1917. more than ever before this naturally private family withdrew into their own world but some of those closest to the family wrote about it such as lily dane the empress's confidante every thursday evening a small romanian orchestra played in the red drawing room the empress said by the fire staring into the glowing embers she seemed unusually sad i whispered anxiously oh madam why are you so sad tonight the empress turned and looked at me why am i sad lily i can't say really i think my heart is breaking not only her heart the romanov empire itself was about to crumble this year that will there was talk in the streets in drums everywhere people were saying that all our troubles come from the south's court that zarin is a german so she's a traitor in petrograd rumor ruled alexandra was a spy she was giving nicholas drugs he was permanently drunk the truth was that nicholas was exhausted and as every decision he made worked out badly it was better perhaps to make no decision at all the family began to realize that in some way that saun had given up he had somehow innerly abdicated probably some six months before the real abdication he he didn't believe in himself anymore the relatives were desperate the tsar's brother-in-law grand duke alexander came to plead with nicholas on behalf of the whole dynasty for the first time in history a revolution is being engineered not from below but from above not by the people against their government but by the government against the welfare of the people nicholas ii tsar of all the russians said simply i was born on may the 6th the day of job the sufferer i am ready to accept my doom the tsar's ministers and members of the duma or parliament believed his passivity would destroy them all the chairman of the duma was mikhail rodzianco my grandfather liked so much the emperor that he always had on his desk i remember it very well the famous sheriff's picture and he considered him almost as a friend the only difficulty with him was that he inherited probably from his mother's side the kindness which was uh also sometimes sort of a impossibility to be forceful the man who would eventually emerge as the russian people's revolutionary hero was still in exile lenin greeted the new year of 1917 in europe where he addressed a group of swiss workers the hall was practically empty and lenient drawing his conclusions at the end of his speech said there are revolutionary currents in europe but i think a socialist revolution is still a long way off we old boys won't leave to see it you young man will but we won't he didn't know that in less than three months three months in his own country there would be a revolution as lenin continued to try to build his tiny bolshevik party in europe in petrograd the strikes and protests were multiplying daily we wrote a declaration to the factory management asking for a rise if they didn't increase our wages we would stop work and color strike and that's what we did the weather made it worse in february 1200 locomotive engines froze and burst food and fuel could not be transported in petrograd hunger sharpened the people's anger at this critical point nicholas made a decision to leave his strife torn capital and returned to the headquarters at the front he arrived on thursday the 8th of march on that very same day crowds in the capital broke into food shops and helped themselves the sledgehammer shoot the next morning when i went to school i saw the destroyed breadshop the sign was torn off the door was hanging just on one hinge windows everything was turned upside down there were papers everywhere by saturday even the traditionally loyal cossacks were assuring the demonstrators that they would not use their guns or whips revolution was imminent alexandra wrote despairingly to nicholas on the very eve of the russian revolution sunday the 11th of march the 24th of february by the old russian calendar yesterday there were rows on the nevsky prospect because the poor people stormed the bread shops they ransacked one shop completely the tsar cabled his response to his frantic ministers i command that the disorders in the capital intolerable during these difficult times of war with germany be ended tomorrow the order was useless a fantasy in the very square where nicholas had unveiled a statue to his father years before the revolution brewing for days now broke out spontaneously soldiers and citizens became one we saw two dead horses lying across the street and all the signs imperial signs on the shops were being taken down and many of them already lying on the street it's a revolution they said coats of arms on gates and railings the two-headed eagle which was the symbol of autocracy people began to tear them down and smash them my younger sister katja didn't like it at all she was about seven or eight and had was determined to become a social hostess and you give parties and bulls i said well now what now there won't be any society i won't be able to be a social hostess anymore the rush of labor was marching towards power without suspecting it the russia of the ruling class had lost without realizing it so wrote alexander kerensky who was to become one of the leaders of the new provisional government i saw soldiers surrounded by civilians lining up on the opposite side of the street they wanted to know what we intended to do with the members of the tsar's family and they demanded harsh treatment for them i said that the most dangerous of them would be kept in custody but that under no circumstances was the crowd to take the law into its own hands i insisted that bloodshed be avoided isolated from the capital the empress alexandra's main concern was that four of her children had developed measles in those days a serious disease my own angel love well now olga and alexei have the measles olga's face all covered and a baby more in the mouth and coughs very much and eyes ache in the palace alexandra stayed up all night to greet her husband now on his way back to his family and capital but he did not arrive lily dan remembered the anxious hours the empress was told he had been delayed perhaps the blizzard detains him she said and lay back on her couch anastasia was instantly alarmed and turned to me but lily the train is never late oh if only papa would come quickly but papa was trapped with revolutionary troops blocking the railway lines bazar's only option seemed to be to head for the small town of scoff where loyal troops were said to remain on wednesday the 14th of march the imperial train slipped into a siding outside scoff nicholas appealed to his generals for support in vain the weakened nicholas would have to go it was time to pass on the throne the most bitter words came from nicholas's uncle nikolai whom the czar had removed as head of the army as a loyal subject i consider it my duty to beg you your majesty on my knees to save russia and your heir cross yourself and pass the throne to your son there is no other way out grand duke nikolai could not quite bring himself to say the word abdicate from the capital two duma representatives guccikoff and shulgin came to deliver the order of abdication the 85 year old shulgin himself the sole surviving witness appears in this film about the events of that fateful march day in the carriage of nicholas's imperial train this is that virtuality with is is 15th of march for the sake of russia i decided to take this step all around me i see treason cowardice and deceit alexandra had no way of knowing that her husband had lost the throne my own beloved precious angel light of my life my heart breaks thinking of you all alone going through all this anguish anxiety and we know nothing of you nor you of us to protect his invalid son alex say nicholas had insisted on abdicating in favor of his brother grand duke michael back at the duma shulgin and guccikoff duly reported on their historic mission the soldiers gathered and questioned them about how the tsar had abdicated his throne i abdicate in favor of grand duke michael why not alexey no he said my son is ill i'm not going to give him up we will go to the crimea and grow flowers when they said that's abdicated we rejoiced i remember my father coming in and saying you can taste some champagne because it's so abdicated with rain champagne but it wasn't that we were glad that the tsar had abdicated it was a question of another government which was going to be better yeah i remember people who came out onto the streets and by kissing each other hugging each other as they were saying that autocracy is all finished they will be democratically public now freedom equality my grandfather when he heard that desire abdicated not only for himself but also for his son alexis he became pale like snow and started having tears and even sobbed and said well now russia is finished just like that no one saw the once imperial family as a priority alexandra did not learn of her husband's abdication until the next day in the palace both water and electricity had been cut off and not only had her adored nicki been forced to abdicate but also his brother michael had rejected the throne now there was no czar at all the tutor pierre gilliard spoke to his student the former heir alex say about the terrible turn of events you know your father does not want to be tsar anymore alex say he looked at me in astonishment trying to read in my face what had happened what do you mean why who's going to be tar then i don't know perhaps nobody now there was a silence and then he said but if there isn't at all who's going to rule russia by the time nicholas returned home the alexander palace was in the hands of the revolutionary guards no one was present when the exar met his wife alexandra they themselves never wrote about it it was said by the courtiers that nicholas sank into his wife's arms and wept sometime afterward ludmila cracina and her sisters walked past the palace which was now patrolled by revolutionary guards and one of these men dressed in kaki who looked like a soldier was shoveling the snow away from the footpaths i looked and i thought this is not a soul this is the tsar himself cleaning the purves of his garden what is he doing when was that i asked he can't do this up yes she said you see he's been deposed it's the revolution he's a prisoner in his own palace and he's not allowed to go out he is guarded and he's doing this to get some exercise what amazed me i was a little girl then was that the czar was dressed in an old coat which was all stained it wasn't even clean there were no decorations nor epaulets many years have passed i'm 90 now but i still remember it i still remember the czar's expression there was such pain and suffering and tears in his eyes the family's situation at the winter palace was house arrest rather than imprisonment but it was still a far cry from their previous life still the family retained its humor and humanity the teacher gidiart wrote of the girl's reaction to a humiliating treatment for the measles from which they had just recovered the grand duchesses have had their heads shaved as a result of their illness when they go out in the park they wear scarves arranged so as to conceal the fact just as i was going to take their photograph at a sign from olga they all suddenly removed their hats i protested but they insisted much amused at the idea of seeing themselves photographed like this the leaders of the new provisional government were nervous about having the former czar so close to the capital the simplest solution would have been to send the family abroad to one of their european relatives but they could hardly go to their cousin the kaiser with whom russia was still at war so the new government requested and received asylum in great britain for the romanovs but the english king george v the cousin of both nicholas and alexandra was unprepared for the public outcry inside england of course tempers were running against the tsar and his german spy wife all nonsense of course she was not a german spy she was more english than anything else but that was the situation in england george v in 1917 is very worried about the threat to conservatism in general but to the dynasty in particular from the socialist movement from the working class he doesn't want his dynasty to be associated with the hated romanovs let alone the hated and fallen romanovs so king george withdrew the offer of asylum his cousin the former czar was now an international pariah i'm certainly not ready to criticize king george for withdrawing an invitation to come to the tsar secondly i'm sure and a grandmother used to tell me that that saud never wanted to leave russia he would have left only if his wife would have asked him to leave but there is no record of such a request from alexandra for the time being the family stayed at sarsko yes cello but the world had not stopped russia was still at war with germany but the germans had a secret weapon the banned radical vladimir lenin whom they now sent back to russia on a sealed train the germans knew they could count on a favor from lenin if he took power a legend has grown up around his triumphant return to petrograd's finland train station but in fact there was a scramble to find people to greet him i met lenin at the finland station it was the second day of easter lenin's sister maria produced his telegram saying i will arrive tonight at 11. she said how are we going to manage to collect people to meet lineage to give him a fitting welcome and they answered that's all right the soldiers are on leave and at the meetings taking place all over the town they will be informed that lenin is arriving lenin's trick was to say what many wanted to hear and what the germans had sent him back to say the lenin had the populist touch peace and land for the people he proclaimed you soldiers and there were about two hundred thousand soldiers in petrograd none of you will have to go to the front if you support the bolsheviks and they all supported lenin who'd want bloody and dirty trenches when it was much better here in the capital lenin's true hour of glory was still to come first he had to tackle kerensky who was becoming a leader of the new provisional government lenin's propaganda machine went to work on kerensky but lennon's ultimate focus was on the romanovs who had been responsible for the hanging of his older brother years before lenin wanted them all dead even though the deposed tsar and his family were becoming a liability the moderate revolutionary kerensky felt responsible for the ramana of safety i had the thankless task of telling the former tsar he would have to move away the bolsheviks are after me i said and soon they will be after you contrary to my expectations he took the news calmly and expressed his wish to go to the crimea instead i chose tabolsk in siberia which was without railway communications i knew that the governor's house was fairly comfortable and could provide decent accommodation for the imperial family as the sun rose on august the 14th the moment came for the once imperial family with their many trunks and cases and at least two dozen members of the tsarist household to it leave quite light we drank tea and finally at 5 15 karinsky said we could go the sunrise that saw us off was beautiful we left saskatchewan at 6 10 in the morning the journey into exile was long and slow four days in a train two more on a paddle steamer on the evening of the 20th of august they finally reached tobolsk nicholas had once visited the kremlin here a quarter of a century before he had stayed in the governor's house and it was in this very house renamed freedom house since the revolution that the romano family were now to be prisoners we examined everything in the house from bottom to attic many rooms have an unattractive view and then went to the so-called garden nasty the sense of being locked up is much stronger than at sasque cello by the late fall of 1917 lennon and his bolsheviks were poised to seize power on november 7th by the western calendar the bolsheviks headed for the winter palace now the stronghold of kerensky's seven-month-old government it is one of soviet history's most legendary moments the location is genuine enough but the film's depiction of the famous storming is remembered differently by some there was no storming as such well there was a storming but there was no bloodshed because all the young cadets they were just boys they just threw down their arms and surrendered vladimir antonovsienko was in charge of the famous storming of the winter palace my father called it cool a take over and that's why they were practically in all casualties he could have been short and his sailors too but nothing like that happened the government fell like a ripe pair from the tree the provisional government was destroyed but the damage to the palace consisted of chipped paintwork and a broken window kerensky managed to flee petrograd never to return lenin and the bolsheviks were now the rulers of russia whose return to russia had been engineered by germany pushed for peace in one stroke of the pen he conceded great tracts of the russian empire's western borderlands nearly half a million square miles and more than one-third of the population peace was popular enough with the demoralized soldiers who fraternized with german soldiers at the front but it split the country in the south an anti-bolshevik white army came into being it was immediately countered by a bolshevik red army a civil war was brewing in which the bolsheviks main weapon was coercion the red terror interboss nicholas eventually heard of the disintegration of his russia the tutor juliart still part of the household saw the intensity of the effect it had on him i then for the first time heard that i regret his abdication it now gave him pain to see that his renunciation had been in vain i frequently heard nicholas muttering disgrace suicide for russia and to think that they called her majesty a traitor the family had now spent more than six months as prisoners in tobolsk in the shadow of its ancient kremlin and cathedral new harsher guards had taken over and alexandra and her daughters secretly sowed into their bodices all that was left of the romanov riches their jewelry i make everything now i am knitting stockings for alexay his father's trousers are torn and darned the girls underlining all in rags i am sad because they are allowed no walks except in front of the house inside the high fence but at least they have fresh air and we are grateful for anything i would say that the romanov's fate was sealed from the moment that the bolsheviks came to power the new regime seized power in what was a coup d'etat the bolshevik regime then went on to sign the treaty of breslitovsk with germany and signed away everything that russia had gained for 300 years having done that civil war was a certainty and once you had civil war lenin and his party were going to react ruthlessly i think at that point there was no hope for the romanovs they were bound to die on top of everything alex say now nearly 14 years old was to suffer another serious bout of hemophilia he would never walk again he is frightfully thin and yellow i sit with him all day yesterday he said to me mama i would like to die i am not afraid of death but i am so afraid of what they will do to us here in late april 1918 the bolshevik high command now established in the kremlin in moscow issued new orders the romanovs were told to get ready to leave but not where they were going across the road from the governor's house lived the tsar's much reduced retinue including dr bortkin the family physician and his daughter tanya shortly before easter a small gift arrived for tanya and with it a note just a few days before their departure for a katarinenburg three months before their death christ has risen my dear tanya here are two eggs from all of us it's very sad we can't all be together with fondest kisses olga romanov this fragile family heirloom is the last surviving letter from any of the grand duchesses under guard nicholas and his family were sent on yet another exhausting journey while root their train was hijacked by a band of hardened revolutionaries their new wardens took them to the town of ekaterinburg in the urals they arrived on april 18th 1918 and were installed in the former house of a merchant named epatief it was renamed the house of special purpose nobody knows for sure whether the family realized their fate there were rumors of escape plans but it is now known that they were spread deliberately by the bolsheviks lenin in his kremlin citadel faced enemies on all sides the white army was threatening a katarinburg and the german kaiser alexandra's cousin was now expressing concern for the safety of his relatives enter yaakov yurovsky the romanov's new warden one summer day he was seen wandering in the forest he and his cronies located an abandoned mine shaft they bought drums of gasoline and sulfuric acid they arranged for a truck back at the apatiev house alexandra continued to write in a diary which had been given to her by her daughter tatiana to my sweet darling mammothy with my best wishes for a happy new year may god's blessings be with you and guard you forever your own loving girl that's jana the 46 year old alexandra dated her diary through to the end of the summer but the last entry is on july the 16th gray morning after lovely sunshine tatyana started to read from the prophet obadiah though thou exalt thyself as the eagle and though thou set thy nest among the stars thence will i bring thee down saith the lord played physique with nicholas 10 30 to bed 15 degrees at 1 30 a.m on july 17th the family was woken up by yourofsky and told to prepare to move once again they were led into a small basement room there the 11 prisoners the family and a small retinue were suddenly confronted by 11 armed men there had only been time for incoherent exclamations both yurovsky and one of the guards medvedev recorded in legal depositions their versions of what had happened all the members of the sons family were lying on the floor very severely wounded the blood was running in streams jakov yurovsky i myself killed nicolas point blank alexandre feodrovna died immediately alexey and three of his sisters were still alive we had to finish them off we tried to ban at one of the girls but the bayonet would not penetrate her corsage we undressed the girl and found a corset torn in places by bullets through which diamonds could be seen pavel medvedev the heir to the throne was still alive and mourning a little yurovsky fired two or three times at him then the air was still this telegram to the bosses in moscow announced in a pre-arranged code that the whole family was dead nicholas has been shot and his family sent to a safe place the bodies of the ramana family were taken by truck to the mine hacked to pieces soaked in sulfuric acid burned on a bonfire and then thrown down the shaft but yourofsky worried that his efforts had been rather too public the next night in deepest secrecy the fragments of skeleton and burnt flesh were exhumed and buried elsewhere for half a century the romanovs and their mortal remains would disappear the white army took a katarinburg within a week of the assassination they had no doubts about what had happened and the tsar's family was not alone every ramana off the bolsheviks could find they murdered nicholas's brother michael nine uncles and cousins and alexandra's sister ella 18 romanovs in all for years it was debated what part if any lennon had played in ordering the execution of nicolas and his family long secret bolshevik papers have now revealed the following lenin trotsky lenin trotsky and sverdlov worked out this very cunning plan empowering the yucatan work soviet to liquidate the family using as a pretext all sorts of fabricated plots attacks and attempts to rescue them and i have documentary proof of this for example golovkin head of the yucatan burg soviet went to moscow twice just before the killings twice he was in moscow for instructions for meetings with lenin sverdloff and others it was all pre-planned the foul act of annihilating nicholas ii was not accidental the local bolsheviks appeared to have carried out the murders on their own initiative but it now seems clear that it was on orders from lenin lenin took great care however to hide the truth even from his ambassador to berlin adolf iowa in 1918 when my father was soviet ambassador in berlin he received a communication down the line from moscow that the former tsar nicholas ii had been shot and what about the family he got no reply and somehow the question was hushed up and when zizinski head of the secret police passed through berlin father lent on him and said why did you not reply to my queries when everyone was asking me from the kaiser down or alexandre's relatives you know replied it was a special order from lenin he said let joffer be told nothing it would be easier for him to lie about it there in berlin for over half a century lennon and his lies held sway no one even knew where the remains of the imperial family were buried until 1979 when years of private and top secret research pinpointed a certain submerged bridge not far from the original mine one morning at the beginning of may we came here at six o'clock when there was no one around we removed a few planks and immediately buried not very deep we found some human remains there were several of us when we found the remains we were all in a state of shock it was terrible it was really frightening because the remains were mutilated by sulfuric acid and the bones were all black and green this heap of bones filled us with horror we were lucky in that we found three skulls almost immediately we covered everything up straight away but kept the skulls with us as we wanted to have them identified identification was to become the key issue in 1991 the remains were exhumed yet again officially but two skeletons were missing so were these bones truly those of the last tsar and his family the latest dna analysis would provide the answer by comparing the romanov bones with tissue from living relatives exactly 100 years to the day after the accession of nicholas ii to the romanov throne queen elizabeth ii of britain visited the peter and paul fortress traditional burial place of all the other romanov tsars it was the queen's husband prince philip one of the closest living relatives of both nicholas and alexandra who gave the crucial blood sample for dna comparison after exhaustive testing and squabbling the results proved with 99 accuracy that the remains are indeed those of some of the romanovs one daughter and the sun have not been accounted for so rumors of romanov surviving the assassination live on however unlikely even the dna results failed to convince the russian church to consecrate the remains however because nicholas's skull was not tested they forbade burial until still further tests were complete you

Channel: Charles Atencio

Views: 710,943

Rating: 4.7542534 out of 5

Keywords: 03, Death, of, the, Dynasty

Id: f1em_lDQzmA

Length: 50min 58sec (3058 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 04 2013