100th Year of the killing of the Russian Imperial Family

On #ThisDayinHistory 1918, Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed by Bolsheviks, bringing an end to the 300 year-old Romanov dynasty.
The disastrous outcome of the Russo-Japanese War led to the Russian Revolution of 1905, which ended only after Nicholas approved a representative assembly and promised constitutional reforms. The czar soon retracted these concessions and repeatedly dissolved assembly when it opposed him,.

In 1914, Nicholas led his country into #WWI, another costly war Russia was ill-prepared to win. Discontent grew as food became scarce, soldiers became war weary and defeats at the hands of Germany demonstrated the Russia's ineffectiveness under Nicholas. In March 1917, revolution broke out on the streets of what's now St. Petersburg and Nicholas was forced to abdicate his throne later that month.
That November, the radical socialist Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power in Russia from the provisional government and set about establishing the world's first #communist state. Civil war broke out in Russia in June 1918, and in July the anti-Bolshevik forces advanced on Yekaterinburg, where Nicholas and his family were located. Local authorities were ordered to prevent a rescue of the family, and after a secret meeting of the Yekaterinburg Soviet, a death sentence was passed on the imperial family. Late in the night of July 16, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children and four servants were ordered to dress quickly and go down to the cellar of the house in which they were being held. There, they were arranged in two rows and were told they were posing for a photograph. Suddenly, a dozen armed men burst into the room and gunned down the imperial family in a hail of gunfire.

Those who were still breathing when the smoke cleared were stabbed to death. The remains of Nicholas, Alexandra and three of their children were secretly discovered in 1976 and excavated in 1991. The Crown Prince Alexei and one #Romanov daughter were not accounted for, fueling the persistent legend that Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter, had survived the execution of her family.

Their graves were finally found in 2007


I'm reposting from History Channel's Ig page since I couldn't say it differently.


A reminder of one of the first crimes committed by Comunism and how utopian hysteria derailing into revolutionarian radicalisms shrank a country's critical thinking and possibility of multilateral progress