July 17 marks exactly ninety two years since the Bolsheviks executed the last Russian Emperor, Nicholas II, and his family. What was supposed to be an execution turned into brutal murder, historian says.
“What concerns me is the terrible inefficiency with which they murdered them,” historian and Romanov expert Helen Rappaport told RT. “It was a dreadful, ill-conceived, ill executed murder. You cannot say it was an execution.”
“It was brutal because Yurovsky (chief executioner of the tsar’s family) did not plan it, he did not check whether these guys were good shots. He did not check the guns. There had been a mixture of some efficient guns – Brownings and Colts – and also old army issued Nagants, which probably did not work,” she said.
“They did not account for the fact they were killing eleven people in a small dark basement room which rapidly became full of acrid smoke. Noise, panic, hysteria, people screaming and running around,” Rappaport added. “It was an absolute catastrophe because they then had to brutally finish them off.”