Yurovski had made his preparations but kept his precise plan to himself until the moment for action. He did, though, have to explain to Medvedev that they had to wait for a signal from the Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee. Nothing could happen until a comrade arrived at the house and uttered the code word ‘chimney-sweep’. Yurovski meanwhile divulged the plan to his chosen firing squad, and when giving the details to them, he heard murmurings of dissent. Some of the Latvians were troubled about the idea of killing defenceless young women. Yurovski stood them down rather than proceed with people who lacked a firm commitment to their revolutionary duty.1 It was going to be a bloody business and he needed ready butchers. Once he had finalized his selection, he told each of them whom to aim at. Then he handed out the Nagant revolvers.2 Why revolvers rather than rifles? The answer must be that he aimed to take the Romanovs by surprise, and they were unlikely to recognize what was afoot if the soldiers were carrying hand-weapons only.
Amidst all this, the boom of the Czechoslovak artillery could be heard, and it was getting louder.3 The guard detachment were acutely aware that the ultimate moment of crisis was at hand. Yet nothing could happen inside the Ipatev house until Moscow gave permission and its telegram had been delivered. Guards were told to wait and be patient. On no account were the Romanovs to discover what was in store for them. Outside on the street, unbeknownst to the family inside, the Bolsheviks installed machine guns and blocked access to everyone.4
The hours of waiting dug into everyone’s nerves as midnight approached, and Yurovski had no idea what was holding things up. The tension mounted. By one o’clock he was distinctly concerned: there was still no signal from the leadership. The more time that passed, the harder it was to keep up morale in the firing squad. Word finally reached him at 1.30 a.m., when a party comrade turned up at the guard point and passed on the ‘chimney sweep’ instruction. At last Yurovski could take action. The moment had arrived. As a Chekist officer he was ready to do whatever he thought would serve the revolution’s interests, and if orders came to kill the hated Romanovs, he was eager to carry them out. But as with everything else that had happened since February 1917, leaders could not assume that they would be obeyed. Luckily for him, he had selected his squad with care and knew that they would do whatever he commanded.5
Yurovski himself roused Dr Botkin from his sleep and told him to get dressed. He used the pretext of disturbances in the city that required him to move the Romanovs to a place of greater safety. The same message was repeated to the imperial family, who were told to dress and go down to the cellar. Yurovski deliberately avoided hurrying them so as to maintain a calm atmosphere, and although it was an unusual wholly unheralded command, the family took it equably and washed before presenting themselves to the guards.6
At two o’clock, Nicholas carried Alexei in his arms down to the cellar from the upper storey. Yurovski assumed control when everyone was assembled. Before addressing the group, he ordered Alexandra and Alexei to be seated in the two armchairs that had been placed in readiness. The rest were asked to stay standing. Yurovski had Nikulin with him; there were also Pavel Medvedev, Mikhail Medvedev and Pëtr Yermakov and seven Latvians. The twelve men each clasped one of the dozen Nagant revolvers that Yurovski had sequestered earlier.7 (According to Medvedev’s later testimony, Yurovski ordered him to go outside the cellar and listen as to whether the shots were audible,8 but, as likely as not, he said this in the vain hope of avoiding self-incrimination.) Yurovski then curtly announced the Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee’s order to execute them. Nicholas turned and, astonished, tried to ask a question.9
Yurovski repeated his statement and, without hesitation, shouted: ‘Fire!’ He himself, as had been arranged, took aim and killed Nicholas. Some of the other shootings were chaotic and bullets ricocheted off the walls. Despite the short distance, not all the guards took accurate aim, and some accounts have it that Mikhail Medvedev of the Urals Cheka was Nicholas’s killer, having specifically asked for him as his target.10 Outside the house, arrangements had been made for lorry engines to be revved up to drown out the noise coming from inside the walls. The shooting continued until Yurovski called a halt after establishing that nobody had survived. He then walked across to examine the victims.11
It was a sickening sight. The cellar resembled a butcher’s cold store, spattered with blood, exposed bone and pieces of ripped flesh. Pavel Medvedev was to testify that all the victims were dead except for Alexei, who was still groaning. Yurovski shot him another two or three times to finish him off. Some members of the squad could no longer stomach the scene, and Yurovski shouted to Pavel Medvedev to go and calm the other guards in the duty room. They had heard the shooting and wanted to learn what had happened. A few of them encountered him before he could say anything. They pointed out to him that he would have to take responsibility for what had been done; they certainly wanted no future blame to attach itself to them. Medvedev ordered them back on duty. When Yurovski learned about their misgivings, he told Medvedev to go back and talk to the guards again. Yurovski had completed the task that the Executive Committee had set him, and he did not want things to unravel because criticisms reached the streets of Ekaterinburg. The guards had to keep their mouths shut about what had taken place.12
Yurovski gave instructions to wash down the floors and walls of the cellars.13 Buckets, mops and brooms were supplied. It was an unpleasant, awkward task as corpses, clothes and the corporeal debris had to be moved aside before the work could commence. Afterwards the guards wanted to go back to their quarters at the Popov house for a rest. Medvedev forbade this out of fear that they would blab the news all over town. Instead, he forced them to sleep in the Ipatev bathhouse.14
Meanwhile, the bodies of the Romanovs and their retainers had been heaped into a lorry at the Ipatev house and driven out of Ekaterinburg under the command of Pëtr Yermakov. The intention was to cremate the bodies and dump them down a mineshaft. The road was bumpy and the journey took longer than had been expected. When the lorry reached its destination, Yermakov gave orders for a thorough search of the corpses for jewels and other possessions, and it was found that the Romanovs had hidden all manner of small valuables in their clothes. A pile was made of bodies with dresses and coats to act as tinder, and cans of petrol were poured on top before a match was lit and the flames leapt up to the sky. It was a crude cremation, and Yermakov decided that, in order to leave no traces, it would be wise to move the remains to another nearby mineshaft and soak everything in acid. While Yermakov could not imagine why anyone would want to climb down a disused shaft, he did not want any of the corpses to be recognizable.
Yermakov was acting on orders. The Czechoslovak Legion would be fighting their way into the city within days. Peasants who lived in the vicinity of the mineshafts and who were told to stay away from the lorry were bound to notice the burning pyre and were hardly going to keep what they had seen secret. The Urals communist leadership had not thought through the implications of the plan, and it would not take a genius to work out what might have been happening out in the woods. The Bolsheviks were already planning the Red evacuation of Ekaterinburg: they knew that unless a miracle occurred, the Czechoslovaks and their Russian allies would be the new powers in the city. The British still had a consulate across the road from the Ipatev house. Even if they had been fooled by the revving-up of lorry engines during the killing of the imperial family, they were bound to have suspected something untoward, and Yurovski had already had difficulty in keeping a lid on public information. Moreover, the businessman Ipatev would soon be reclaiming his property and could tell the world about what he discovered there.
Yurovski and his team aimed to reduce the evidence to a minimum. Fire and acid would do their job at the mineshaft; brushes and detergents would complete the task at the Ipatev house. When the Bolshevik leadership departed the Urals capital, they and their misdeeds would simply disappear. They achieved most of what they wanted. Their greatest magic trick had been performed: the captive Romanovs had vanished into the night air.