17 July : the Romanovs

On the morning of the 17th of July, 1918, Nicholas II and his wife and children and remaining staff were shot dead.  The executions took place in the basement of the Ekaterinburg house in which they had been held under arrest.  Only eight days later, the city would be taken by the White Army.  During the year in which Ekaterinburg remained under White control, Nikolai Sokolov conducted a formal investigation into the deaths.  The Library has his account in Russian (at 586:9.c.90.76 and 586:9.c.90.42), English (9586.c.429), and French (586:9.c.90.61).

On show here is the cover of a 1922 book about the assassinations which was published in the last White capital on Russian soil: Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan.  Mikhail Diterikhs – the book’s author – was the Vladivostok White government’s final military leader.  In October 1922, after a last defeat at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Diterikhs and his forces left for China.

Ubiistvo tsarskoi semʹi i chlenov doma Romanovykh na Uralie / M.K. Diterikhs (1922)  586:9.c.90.95

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