NARRATOR: Shortly after
the course of Russian
history was changed with one
act of brutal violence.
[gunshots]
Czar Nicholas II and
the royal Romanov family
were executed on orders from
the revolutionaries who had
taken control of their country.
The Romanov's rule over Russia
had begun over 300 years
earlier, during Russia's
Time of Troubles,
a 15-year period of
dynastic confusion
and foreign invasions.
Mikhail Romanov,
the 16-year-old son
of Russia's religious
patriarch, was ultimately chosen
to take the throne in 1613.
From there, the
Romanov line continued.
And in 1894, Nicholas
II took power.
But Nicholas was not the most
capable of Russia's czars,
described by contemporaries
and historians
as weak, submissive,
and insecure.
He only chose advisors
who didn't pose
an intellectual threat, leading
to questionable decisions
throughout his reign.
In 1904, Nicholas
started a war with Japan
after refusing to
negotiate Russia's
further expansion into Asia.
Japan decisively won the war.
The next year,
workers in the capital
marched to protest
unfair labor conditions.
Imperial soldiers
fired on the crowds,
killing hundreds and
sparking the failed
Revolution of 1905, which caused
the deaths of thousands more.
Through all of this
conflict, Nicholas
was still supported by
the love of his life,
the Empress Alexandra.
The couple had four daughters
and one son in succession--
Olga, Tatiana, Maria,
Anastasia, and Alexei.
While loved by her
husband, Alexandra
was viewed as an outsider
by her own people.
She was German by birth
and her first cousin
was Kaiser Wilhelm II.
And like Nicholas,
Alexandra only
trusted a select few
advisors-- but mainly,
the infamous mystic, Rasputin.
And by easing the chronic
pain of their hemophiliac son,
Alexei, Rasputin gained
a prominent place
in the Romanov's inner circle.
In September 1915, Nicholas
left Russia to personally take
command of the army on the
front lines of World War I,
leaving his wife to
oversee the government's
day-to-day operations.
Alexandra was ill-equipped
to govern a country at war,
where wages were depressed,
food was unaffordable,
and industrial workers were
abused to meet wartime quotas.
To make matters worse,
Alexandra gave Rasputin
a formal role in government.
He was allowed to hire and fire
government ministers at will,
angering the rest of
Russia's nobility.
Meanwhile, on the front,
Nicholas and the Russian army
suffered defeat after defeat.
By November 1916, the country
had lost 1.7 million troops
to the Great War.
The Russian people had
reached their breaking point.
First in December 1916, Rasputin
was shot, and maybe poisoned,
and maybe drowned, by a group
of disgruntled noblemen.
Then on the morning
of March 8, 1917,
thousands of Russian women took
to the streets of the capital
to protest the government on
International Women's Day.
By midday, 100,000 women and
men had joined the march.
The protests continued for days.
By Saturday, March 10, more
than 250,000 protesters
forced the city to shut down.
Czar Nicholas, still
commanding troops in Europe,
wired his generals
to fire on the mobs.
But when given the
order the next day,
Russian soldiers instead turned
their guns on their officers.
By Thursday, Nicholas II had
abdicated the Russian throne.
His palace was overrun
by revolutionary troops,
ending 304 years of
Romanov rule over Russia.
The family was initially
placed under house
arrest at the Alexander palace,
south of St. Petersburg.
But the new provisional
government wanted the Romanovs
out of the country.
So they asked Nicholas' first
cousin, King George V of Great
Britain, to take them in.
At first, the King accepted,
but then changed his mind
after realizing
just how unpopular
the Romanovs were
with both parliament
and the British public.
In August of 1917,
the Romanovs were
moved to Tobolsk in Siberia,
where their situation
continued to deteriorate.
In November, Vladimir
Lenin and his Bolsheviks
seized control of
the government.
They had a much more
hostile attitude
towards the former monarchy,
expelling many of the Romanov's
servants and
restricting the family
to a diet of army rations.
The next spring,
the Romanovs were
moved to their final
location in Yekaterinburg--
to a building called the
House of Special Purpose.
On July 17, 1918, Nicholas
Romanov and his family
were awoken from bed
shortly after midnight.
They were told that
counterrevolutionary troops
were approaching
and that the family
had to move into the basement
for their own safety.
The Romanovs and four
loyal servants obliged.
Several were wearing clothing
with precious jewels sewn
into the seams, which they
had smuggled with them
throughout their captivity.
Once the family was in, the
basement room was sealed,
and Yakov Yurovsky,
their chief executioner,
informed them they
would be executed.
Nicholas could only
respond with one word--
[speaking russian]
Yurovsky and his men
opened fire on the family,
killing Nicholas and Alexandra.
But some, including
the children,
survived the initial attack.
The jewels lining their
clothing had acted as armor.
The Bolsheviks finished them
off with bayonets and gunshots
to the head.
[gunshots]
Yurovsky had the
family buried in two
separate, unmarked graves
off the side of a local road.
The first grave wasn't
rediscovered until 1979,
the other until 2007.
The Romanov family
has since been
reinterred at Peter and Paul
cathedral in St. Petersburg.
In July of 2018,
Yekaterinburg commemorated
the 100th anniversary of
the family's execution.
More than a century
after their deaths,
100,000 pilgrims attended
the ceremony, still
mourning Russia's lost royalty.
