By July 1918, the story goes that Socialist control of Russia was still in its infancy, and no-one really knew who was actually in control. Exactly who gave the order is not clear, but on the night of July 16th 1918, an official named Yakor Yarovsky gave orders to the Royal Family - via their physician, Dr Botkin - that they should move downstairs to a basement room "because of a danger of gunfire from riots in the town". In the basement, however, the "photographers" who were supposedly going to photograph the family safe and well, turned-out to be Red Army marksmen. Each had a target amongst the family, and those whom the bullets left alive were bayoneted. The bodies were disfigured to prevent identification, and hidden down a disused mineshaft in the forest, at a place known as The Four Brothers.
However, by 1976, the grandson of one of the shooting party had helped local Party Officials find the burial site, and instructions were sent to the City Mayor to have the Apatiev House bulldozed - in case it became a rallying-point. The orders were carried out by the Mayor, one Mr Boris Yel'tsin, who went on to become rather famous. In 1991, the news of the discovery of the bodies leaked to the Russian Press, and by 1994, DNA tests were being conducted on the remains to check their authenticity.
Finally, in August 1998, there was a ceremony in Ekaterinburg, after which the bodies were taken by special plane to St Petersburg for reburial in the same crypt as the rest of the Romanov family in the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul, within the Peter & Paul Fortress.
The Russian Orthodox Church has been unable to accept the remains as authentic - because it rushed-in to identify a completely different set of remains which turned-up in Paris in the 1920's. Thus the Church would have to admit that people had venerated complete fakes for several decades.
The absence - in the "Paris" bodies - of Anastasia Romanova, prompted an American woman, Anna Anderson, to claim she was the true Anastasia, rescued from the slaughter by a tender-hearted rifleman who could not bring himself to bayonet a young girl. (She also claimed that the shock of the incident made her, ummmm, forget every word of her native language?) Anderson's relatives permitted a DNA test, but this finally proved that she had been, in fact, Franziska Schanzkowksa, a Polish refugee, who adopted the name "Anna Anderson" on arrival in the USA. This didn't stop Fox Movies Inc making her story into a major animation movie, released in the year of the reburial of the real Anastasia, whose remains were certainly amongst those found in that desolate forest location.
The site of the Apatiev House is now marked with a small Memorial (picture above), but this is due to be dismantled, and a new Cathedral built on the spot, commemorating not only the Royal Family, but all who died during the Revolution.
