The Romanovs’ final move was to the house shown here, in central Ekaterinburg (later Sverdlovsk).  This real photo postcard, never used, has the following caption towards the bottom: “The city of Sverdlovsk.  The house where, in 1918, the Romanovs were executed”.  Looking closely at the top of the central part of the house, we can see a two-line banner.  This reads:

‘НИ ОДНОЙ ПЯДИ ЧУЖОЙ ЗЕМЛИ НЕ ХОТИМ. НО И СВОЕЙ ЗЕМЛИ И ОДНОГО ВЕРШКА СВОЕЙ ЗЕМЛИ НЕ ОТДАДИМ НИКОМУ.’  СТАЛИН

‘We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone.’  Stalin

The quotation comes from a section about foreign policy in Stalin’s Political Report of the Central Committee at the Sixteenth Soviet Communist Party Congress in June 1930.  We can therefore date the photo at least to a point from that year onwards.

In a few months, the Romanovs would meet their deaths in the house.  Those events will be covered in the July 1918 section.

Dom v kotorom… (1930s?)  Cooke.Postcards