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True Crime of the Historical Kind returns to the scene of the crime...
We uncover the deeper story. The world that shaped the violence, and the humans that played a hand in history's tragedies.
Because the past may be distant, but human nature rarely is.
The Romanovs had ruled the mighty Russian Empire for centuries. But by 1917, they were prisoners, hiding their few remaining jewels within their underclothes only to be gunned down in the dead of night. This is true crime of the historical kind. You're listening to the executions and murders of the Romanovs part one, imperial twilight. The story of the Romanov family's tragic end is one of the most haunting chapters in modern history.
Speaker 1:For three centuries, the Romanovs ruled Russia. Their name was synonymous with imperial power, opulence, and divine right. How could they fall so far at the turn of the century? To fully understand how the imperial family was executed in cold blood, we have to take a step back into the social unrest, poignant global events, and the old dying systems on the verge of extinction. Russia's imperial system was a world teetering on the edge long before the final blow.
Speaker 1:The cracks began generations earlier. This was a world of striking polarities, from glittering palaces to starving peasants. Russia in the late nineteenth century was a massive, complicated empire. You might think of it like a patchwork with dozens of ethnic groups, languages, and cultures all loosely held together under a single crown. The sheer size of land can be hard to comprehend.
Speaker 1:It stretches from the snowy forests of Eastern Europe all the way to the Pacific Coast. It even spans 11 time zones. While its scale is impressive, it was also extreme in its inequalities. Most Russians, nearly 80 to 90%, were peasants, many still living in the conditions that hadn't changed much since the Middle Ages. They worked the land often for landowners they didn't know, scraping together a living while a tiny number of elites lived in palaces and attended opulent balls in Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 1:There had been attempts at reform, like when Tsar Alexander the second freed the serfs in 1861, which was nearly four hundred years after serfdom declined throughout Europe. While this reform ended formal serfdom, it didn't bring true freedom. Most peasants still lived in poverty. They were bound by debt and tied to the same land but with fewer real opportunities. Meanwhile, the aristocracy clung to their privileges, like the Romanovs, living at the top of the food chain maintaining their tight grip on power.
Speaker 1:After all, Russia had no parliament, no constitution, and no legal limits on the tsar's rule. He governed by divine right, a concept that we covered in episode one and two in the disappearance of the princes in the tower. But as a reminder, the divine right is the idea that rulers are chosen by God, that by their blood, they have a superior right to rule over others. The czar's will was law, but this concept was being shaken by a changing world that was outgrowing such outdated notions. For one, industrialization was churning.
Speaker 1:Factories were rising in Moscow and Saint Petersburg with workers pouring into cities and a new urban underclass was forming quickly. Conditions were brutal. The hours were long, the wages were low, and there were no protections for the workers. As frustration mounted, new ideas began to spread in those factories and tenements. Ideas of socialism, anarchism, and Marxism were creeping in.
Speaker 1:Radical pamphlets moved from hand to hand, and underground circles debated something that had seemed too far out of reach before, revolution. It was also treason. But keep in mind, this is in the late eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen hundreds. The United States experienced revolution in 1776, France in 1789, and the Austria Habsburg revolution was in 1848. Imperialism was dead or dying, and monarchies needed to either adjust to the changing times or expect to break.
Speaker 1:Yet, imperial Russia was especially clinging on to the old traditions. And across the empire, people were becoming more and more disillusioned by the czar. It was into this simmering world that the grand duke Nicholas would be born into on 05/18/1868. His parents were Alexander the third, the current reign czar of Russia, and his mother was Maria Fyodorovna. Nicholas would be the eldest of six children.
Speaker 1:He was born into a family that was both close knit and deeply traditional. His father, Alexander the third, had come to power after the assassination of his own father, Alexander the second. A trauma that left him deeply suspicious of reform and determined to rule with an iron hand. Even rolling back many of his father's reforms and keeping revolutionary movements firmly under his boot. Known as the peacemaker for keeping Russia out of war, Alexander was nonetheless a towering authoritarian figure at home devoted to strengthening autocracy and crushing dissent.
Speaker 1:Nicholas's mother, Maria Feodorovna, was born princess Dagmar of Denmark. She was thought to be warm, charming, and elegant, beloved in both Russian society and European courts. Where Alexander was stern, Maria was sociable, ensuring her children had balance between rigid discipline and maternal affection. For Nicholas, childhood meant the comfort of palaces like Gacina and Paderhof, but also a deliberate effort by his father to keep his upbringing simple and Russian. He was taught languages and history and trained for military service from a very young age.
Speaker 1:Despite his father's intimidating presence, Nicholas grew up as a gentle, polite, and conscientious young man. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian empire stood at the edge of change. In October 1894, Nicholas's father, the formidable Tsar Alexander the third, died of kidney disease. Now at 26 years old, Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov became Tsar. His full titles are about a paragraph long, so for the sake of brevity, he's most often referred to as Nicholas the second, emperor, an autocrat of all the Russias, which many people would dream of.
Speaker 1:But just hours after his father's death, Nicholas reportedly turned to his cousin and whispered, what is going to happen to me and to all of Russia? I am not ready to be czar. I never wanted to be one. Even into adulthood, Nicholas the second or Nikki as his family called him was noticeably different from his father. He was quiet and sheltered, family oriented, and emotionally dependent on those closest to him.
Speaker 1:He was concerned about the brutal realities of ruling the largest empire on Earth. Yet he was raised to believe that he would rule by divine right, and that is what he had to cling to to be able to move forward. That didn't, however, change the fact that he was woefully out of touch with the true state of the country he would now rule. The empire looked to him for strength. What they got was something else entirely.
Speaker 1:In a modernizing, increasingly restless empire, that flimsy world view would prove catastrophic. Just a few weeks after ascending the throne, Nicholas married in 1894. He married Princess Alex Victoria Helene Louise Beatrix of Hesse and by Rhine. She converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and was named Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. Nicholas and Alexandra had a lot in common.
Speaker 1:For one, Alexandra was Victoria's And through that sprawling royal web, she and Nicholas were third cousins once removed. They were also second cousins once removed from the Hess line because Alexandra was from the House of Hess, a German princess who was more interested in her family than public appearances, which in an imperial setting can come off as a bit aloof and failing to rise to expectations. But their marriage was a love match, which can be rare for royal unions, of course, but it also carried the genetic shadow that would plague them. Their marriage was quickly met by immense pressure to produce a male heir as was the job of royal families. Their first child was not a boy.
Speaker 1:Grand Duchess Olga was born in 1895. Before her birth, Alexandra had consulted mystics who promised that her firstborn would be a son, the heir to secure the Romanov dynasty. And, of course, when Olga arrived a girl, the prophecy was quickly reframed. The son, they insisted, would come next. Olga was thoughtful and serious and grew up into an intelligent and sensitive young woman, though prone to moodiness.
Speaker 1:She was closest to her father and carried a strong sense of responsibility as the oldest. Two years after Olga was born came Tatiana, the second daughter. Again, Alexandra had been assured a boy was coming, but once more, it was a girl. The prophecy shifted again with promises that the sun was still to come. Tatiana was thought to be tall, elegant, and organized.
Speaker 1:She was often called the governor of the family, the sister who kept order and Alexandra's most trusted helper. She was dutiful and selfless, though less approachable than her siblings. In 1899, Maria was born. Alexandra had prayed with particular intensity for a son this time, but instead welcomed her third daughter. Maria was warm, affectionate, and gentle.
Speaker 1:She was known for her big blue eyes and her kind nature. She loved children and often spoke of wanting a large family of her own someday. In nineteen o one, Alexandra was once again awaiting childbirth. This time, she was assured it would be a boy. And yet, another girl arrived.
Speaker 1:Anastasia entered the world. The court and the public were openly disappointed since the first birth. But now after the fourth daughter, there was an exceptional pressure. Mystics continued to reassure Alexandra that the boy would surely come. Anastasia became famous for her humor, her pranks, her fiery personality.
Speaker 1:She was said to be spirited and mischievous. Tutors often found her rebellious streak exasperating, but she was adored for her liveliness. Finally, in nineteen o four, Alexandra gave birth to a long awaited son, Alexei, the heir to the Romanov throne. His birth was celebrated as the fulfillment of every prophecy and the salvation of the dynasty. Kinda forgetting all the times that they got it wrong, but moving on.
Speaker 1:Sadly, the family's joy soon turned to fear. Alexei began to show signs that he suffered from hemophilia, though they didn't completely understand that at first. Hemophilia is a life threatening blood disorder that ran through their lineage. After centuries of intermarriage among Europe's royal houses, the mutation appeared repeatedly in the descendants of Queen Victoria, whose daughters unknowingly carried the gene into other ruling dynasties. With this disorder, blood doesn't clot in the way that it should, so even the smallest injury could cause internal bleeding.
Speaker 1:Blood would pool with nowhere to go, put pressure on the organs and bones under the skin. It could be excruciating and, of course, incredibly difficult for a young boy to understand. It makes sense that Alexei's condition would create waves of fear and anxiety, not just from the constant need to monitor him, prevent him from jumping, playing, or falling, but also to keep this illness hidden from the world. This became the family's most closely guarded secret, and it drew them into even greater seclusion. Alexandra, in particular, grew increasingly private and protective, surrounding her children with loyalty and discretion.
Speaker 1:Just like they had been desperate for a male heir, they were now desperate to find a solution to Alexei's ailment. Alexandra, in this desperation to soothe her son's pain, began to trust people she perhaps wouldn't have in any other circumstance. By word-of-mouth, they found a holy man or mystic that seemed to be the answer to their prayers, Grigory Rasputin. Rasputin was a Siberian peasant and a so called mystic, a self proclaimed holy man. He claimed to have the power to ease Alexei's suffering, something his desperate mother sought urgently for.
Speaker 1:And whether it was through hypnosis, prayer, or sheer coincidence, sometimes it seemed to work. He became unconventionally close to the family. To them, he was like a godsend. At first, the elite found him fascinating. He received gifts and praise all while his status skyrocketed.
Speaker 1:Yet for Alexei, he was not actually getting better. Alexei's condition was pretty difficult to hide. This led to court appearances becoming rarer and rarer. Bassa began to spread about the family's isolation and about Alexandra's reliance on mystics and healers. It also supported the initial dislike of her as an outsider because she was a German princess who didn't seem to be able to connect to the Russian people.
Speaker 1:The Russian people never warmed to Alexandra. She spoke Russian with a heavy accent and anti German sentiment was impossible to shake. Yet behind the palace walls, the Romanovs were deeply devoted to each other. They preferred evenings reading aloud, playing games, or walking in the gardens to court life. To the Russian elite, this appeared cold and disinterested.
Speaker 1:But to Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children, it was a cocoon, a tightly knit family life built to shield them from the unrelenting pressures of an empire on edge. And whether Nicholas knew it or not, the world outside was rapidly slipping out of his control. By the early nineteen hundreds, Russia was still clinging to its image as a global superpower, but the illusion was starting to crack. Nicholas had badly miscalculated much in his reign, and one disastrous example is the Russia Japanese war. In nineteen o four, Tsar Nicholas the second led his empire into a war that he believed would be short and glorious.
Speaker 1:A military campaign against Japan over control of Manchuria and Korea. The war became a slow motion disaster. Russian troops were slaughtered in battle after battle. The navy, humiliated in the catastrophic battle of Tsushima, lost nearly its entire fleet. Supply lines collapsed and morale plummeted.
Speaker 1:On top of losing the lives of so many soldiers, it was also draining the empire's already thin resources. So food prices began to soar, workers went unpaid, and the people, already frustrated by poverty and repression, began to ask what exactly their sons were dying for. He was not just dependent and unprepared as a ruler. He was also deeply stubborn, which is a dangerous combination. He stalled and was reluctant.
Speaker 1:But the distance was growing harder to maintain. The war with Japan hadn't just wounded Russia's pride, it also exposed how vulnerable the empire really was. And by the time the peace treaty was signed in nineteen o five, the revolution had already begun. On a bitter January morning in nineteen o five, thousands of Russian workers and their families gathered in the snow covered streets of Saint Petersburg. They carried crosses and porches of the czar as they marched slowly, peacefully toward the winter palace.
Speaker 1:They weren't coming with rifles or torches. They came with hope. At the front of the procession was a Russian Orthodox priest, father Gregory Gapon. He believed, like so many did, that the tsar just didn't know how bad things had gotten. That if Nicholas could only hear their voices, hear their pleas for better wages, shorter workdays, and basic political rights, he would act.
Speaker 1:But Nicholas wasn't even there. The troops guarding the palace didn't wait for an explanation. They opened fire on the crowd, their own people. Men, women, and children dropped in the snow. The massacre became known as Bloody Sunday, and it shattered something in the Russian psyche.
Speaker 1:For generations, the Romanovs had styled themselves as fathers of the people or little father of Russia when referring to the czar. They were supposed to be divinely chosen, beloved, above the chaos of politics. But after Bloody Sunday, that myth was broken. The people couldn't see Nicholas as a benevolent father figure even if they wanted to. They now saw him as a tyrant.
Speaker 1:The country exploded. Massive strikes shut down factories and peasants began burning estates. Sailors in the navy mutiny, hoisting a red flag and turning their guns on their officers. Nicholas, rattled and under pressure, agreed to concessions. He created a parliament known as the Duma.
Speaker 1:It was meant to signal progress, a shift towards constitutional monarchy, but the insincerity of the compromise quickly showed. When the Duma tried to exercise real power, Nicholas dismissed it. Then he restructured it to make sure future versions couldn't challenge his authority. So it was clear it was reform in name only, and for many Russians, it confirmed what they already feared. The czar would never give up real power, at least not willingly.
Speaker 1:In the following years, the Romanovs managed to hold on, but just barely. From the outside, it looked like Russia had calmed down. Factories were running and the streets were quieter. But just under the surface, the empire was still sinking. Nicholas had no real intention of sharing power but didn't have the ability or skills to fix anything either.
Speaker 1:He dissolved the dhumma again and again, each time reshaping it to be more conservative, more loyal, and less effective. The message was clear. The czar was still in charge, and he wasn't interested in a constitutional monarchy. At home, things were no better. The royal family, once symbols of strength and stability, were now becoming bigger targets of gossip and suspicion.
Speaker 1:The secret the family tried desperately to keep was showing traces of something wrong, and their close relationship with Rasputin was not helping. To Alexandra, it was a miracle. To Nicholas, it was tolerated for her sake. To the Russian public, it was a scandal. Rasputin's influence grew, not just over the family, but over appointments at court, government policy, and even military leadership.
Speaker 1:He was rumored to be sleeping with noblewomen, blackmailing officials, and pulling the strings of the empire from the shadows. Whether those rumors were completely true or not didn't matter. What mattered was people's perception. And the perception was that the monarchy looked weak, corrupt, isolated, and lost. Meanwhile, socialist movements, once fringe, were becoming harder to ignore.
Speaker 1:These new revolutionaries had splintered from older reformist traditions to rejecting compromise with the monarchy altogether. Out of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, two rival factions emerged. On one side stood the Mensheviks, who believed change could come gradually through broad membership, alliances with liberals, and a long march towards constitutional democratic socialism. On the other side were the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, who argued that nothing short of a complete overthrow of the imperial order would suffice. Lenin's vision was starkly different.
Speaker 1:He imagined power not in the hands of nobles, landowners, or even a parliament, but in the hands of workers councils, the Soviets. Savvya is the Russian word for council. Where the Mensheviks spoke of patience, coalition, and reform, the Bolsheviks demanded something sharper, a revolution that would tear the old world down to its foundations. At first, these ideas spread quietly, whispered in university classrooms, on factory floors, and in clandestine meetings. The climate of repression made every pamphlet and midnight gathering feel electric with danger.
Speaker 1:The Tsar secret police, the Okhrana, infiltrated their ranks, yet the spark could not be stamped out. Intellectuals, students, workers, even soldiers wearied by the empire's endless demands found themselves drawn into secret circles of descent. So while the Romanovs clung to tradition, history was already moving past them. Fragile as their hold already was, the gathering storms of world conflict would push the imperial family into choices they could no longer avoid. In the 1914, Europe caught fire, and Russia, already strained, already unstable, was swept into the blaze.
Speaker 1:When war broke out between Austria Hungary and Serbia, Russian moved quickly to defend its Slavic ally. What followed was a chain reaction of alliances and declarations that ignited the First World War. Initially, it had been called the Great War because it was meant to end all wars. Patriotism surged across the Russian empire and men enlisted by the thousands. Crowds filled the streets of Saint Petersburg waving flags, singing anthems, and shouting Nicholas' name.
Speaker 1:For a brief moment, it looked like the war might unify the country. The czar's popularity seemed to tick upward, but it didn't last long. The Russian military was vast but disorganized. It was not prepared for the scale or brutality of modern warfare. Troops lacked rifles, boots, and even food.
Speaker 1:Railroads were overwhelmed, and command was chaotic. By the end of the first year, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were dead, wounded, or captured. Russia's fragile economy began to buckle and inflation soared. Resentments began to rise again, not just toward the war, but toward the seemingly useless Romanovs. In 1915, Nicholas made what would become one of the most disastrous decisions of his reign.
Speaker 1:He left the capital to take personal command of the Russian army. It was meant to be a show of strength, yet Russia was bleeding. The front lines were a graveyard. Thousands of soldiers were dead, wounded, or missing. And now every defeat on the battlefield could be tied directly to the czar.
Speaker 1:Back in Saint Petersburg, the empire was unruffling. The food charges turned to famine, and inflation continued to soar. Strike shut down entire industries. Cities became pressure cookers with silent factories, bread lines growing, and tempers fraying. In the czar's absence, Alexandra was looked to for solutions.
Speaker 1:For a deeply private woman already mistrusted for her German heritage, it was a nightmare, not to mention her unwavering devotion to rest Putin. This all came together to make her the perfect scapegoat. Perhaps the public's rejection of her made her lean harder than ever on Rasputin, who appeared to fill in the power vacuum with his whispered advice, favored appointments, and shadowy influence. To the Russian elite, it wasn't just incompetence anymore. It was betrayal.
Speaker 1:Rumors exploded that Alexandra was a spy, that Rasputin was sleeping with her, that the Romanovs had betrayed Russia from within. True or not, the reception was devastating. Faith in the monarchy, already fragile, collapsed. Greedery, Rasputin, filthy, drunk, and magnetic, had become the most hated man in Russia. They called him the mad monk.
Speaker 1:Cartoons showed him wrapped in Alexandra's arms, whispered into the tsar's ear, controlling the empire like a puppet master. Government ministers were appointed and dismissed at his word. Policy decisions seemed to hinge on mysticism rather than strategy. And behind closed doors, even members of the extended Romanov family began to panic. The war, far from saving the Romanovs, tightened around them more like a silken noose.
Speaker 1:If Rasputin was the rot in the system, they believed cutting him out might save what was left of the monarchy. So in December 1916, a small group of aristocrats took matters into their own hands. They lured Rasputin to a nobleman's palace with promises of wine and women. There, they poisoned him, beat him, and shot him, finally dumping his body in the nearby frozen Neva River. His murder was brutal.
Speaker 1:And while Rasputin may have died that night, the damage he symbolized had already metastasized. By early nineteen seventeen, Russia was teetering. The war dragged on with no end in sight. The front was collapsing, and at home, hunger turned to fury. In Petrograd, the capital renamed from Saint Petersburg to shed its German sounding name during the war, the streets boiled over.
Speaker 1:It started with bread riots. Women stood for hours in freezing lines only to be told that the bakeries were empty. Workers walked out of factories, streetcars stopped running, and by the February, the city was in open revolt. The police had lost control, and then something unthinkable happened. Soldiers, some of them fresh from the front, turned their rifles away from the crowds and pointed them at their officers.
Speaker 1:The mutiny spread fast. In just a few days, the czar's power base had vanished. Nicholas the second, isolated at military headquarters, tried to return to the capital, but his train was blocked by revolutionaries. His generals, men who once had sworn to die for him, now urged him to step down. On 03/02/1917, according to the Julian calendar still used in Russia, Nicholas second signed his abdication.
Speaker 1:At first, he considered passing the throne directly to his only son, 12 year old Alexei. But Alexei's hemophilia made that impossible. The boy was gravely ill at the time, and Nicholas feared that separating him from his parents in the chaos of revolution would be a death sentence. So, reluctantly, Nicholas renounced the throne, not only for himself, but also on behalf of Alexei. Instead, he named his younger brother, grand duke Michael Alexandrovich, as heir.
Speaker 1:But Michael, seeing the writing on the wall, perhaps wanted no part of a crumbling monarchy. He declared he would only accept the crown if it came by the will of the people, something that was never going to happen in 1917. And just like that, after more than three hundred years of Romanov rule, Russia had no czar. In the vacuum that followed, a provisional government was formed. It was led by a shaky coalition of moderate liberals and socialists.
Speaker 1:They promised reform, promised elections, and promised to carry on the war just for a little longer. Yet already, power was slipping from their hands too. Because as the government struggled to rule, power was already shifting away from palaces into the Soviets of workers and soldiers who claimed the streets as their own. The provisional government placed the imperial family under house arrest at the Alexander Palace just outside of Petrograd in the royal enclave of Sarskoye Salo. Grand halls were eerily quiet now, and the court had vanished.
Speaker 1:The guards at the gates were no longer there to protect them. They were there to make sure that they didn't leave. Nicholas and Alexandra lived in a strange in between, still a family, still together, but watched at every turn. Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei were kept on a strict routine. They rose early, did chores, played games, and read books.
Speaker 1:Nicholas chopped wood to keep them warm. Alexandra prayed and wrote letters. The girls took turns nursing Alexei during his flare ups. Servants were permitted, but only a few, and their family dogs accompanied them as well. The family still had clean clothes, still ate from proper dishes.
Speaker 1:They were allowed to take short walks in the palace gardens, but always under guard. Outside the palace walls, their connection to the world was slipping further away. The Russian people certainly weren't crying for their return. The provisional government debated what to even do with them. Send them abroad?
Speaker 1:Put them on trial? Keep them detained? But no one wanted to take the responsibility. Exile to England was considered. After all, Nicholas and King George the fifth were first cousins.
Speaker 1:You may have even seen the infamous photo of them together. Their resemblance is something more like identical twins than cousins. But, sadly, public pressure in Britain was rising against it. The idea of harboring a toppled autocrat, especially during wartime, was political poison. So the Romanovs stayed.
Speaker 1:Their titles were gone and their allies were fading fast. As every day passed, the safety net beneath them unraveled just a little bit more. By the 1917, the provisional government was unraveling almost as quickly as that had formed. They had promised reform but kept Russia in the war. They had promised bread but the shortages only worsened.
Speaker 1:They had promised elections, but offered little real change. In the cities, discontent turned to rage. In the countryside, peasants began seizing land, and in the trenches, soldiers were deserting by the thousands. Into this chaos stepped the Bolsheviks. Vladimir Lenin had recently returned from exile in Switzerland.
Speaker 1:They offered solutions in a simple message. Peace, land, bread. No more imperial wars. No more landlords. And no more czars.
Speaker 1:To a population exhausted by suffering, it was more than a slogan. It was a lifeline. While the provisional government stalled, the Bolsheviks organized. They spoke directly to the people's hunger, fear, and fury. It was exactly what the people wanted to hear.
Speaker 1:And all the while, Romanovs lingered in house arrest, hanging in some sort of strange limbo. They were no longer a political threat, but to the Bolsheviks and to many who supported them, the Romanovs were a symbol, a living monument to the old world. The autocracy, the war, the wealth hoarded while the nation starved, that couldn't be easily forgotten. Lenin didn't want figureheads the people could rally behind. He wanted the past erased, and the clock was starting to run out.
Speaker 1:This was true crime of the historical kind. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure that you like and follow so that you don't miss part two next Friday. Until next time. Bye.