The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia from 1613 and for the following 300 years.
Notable tsars (meaning Caesar) included Peter the Great who, through successful wars, turned Russia into a major European power. There was also Tsarina Catherine the Great.
But then came the Bolsheviks or the Reds, later to become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Lenin had returned to Russia in 1917, which had been an unhappy country under the autocratic rule of Tsar Nicholas II but was now also very demoralised by the defeats of World War 1 at the hands of the better-led and supplied Germans. Nicholas was a poor leader, obstinate and delusional.
Adding to the abhorrence of their rulers was that the tsar’s wife Alexandra was a German and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the populace didn’t like her close relationship with the despised mystic Rasputin.
All of this led to the Russian revolution of 1917 and the ultimate abdication of Nicholas, terminating the Romanov’s three-century rule over Russia.
The tsar and his family were put under house arrest and eventually sent to Ekaterinburg.
The order to kill Nicholas and his family came from Moscow and though there is no evidence to link Lenin with that command, it is difficult to believe he wasn’t involved in the decision.
In the early hours of the July 17, 1918, the family was assembled in a basement. As well as Nicholas and Alexandra, there were their four daughters Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana and the young son Alexei who had been ill much of his life with haemophilia. There were also four servants.
The captors’ commandant read out the execution order and the execution squad opened fire.
The account of the next 20 minutes is harrowing and tells the story of an inept and brutal murder and assassination.
The disposal of the bodies was even more incompetent than the murders if that is possible. In the end they were buried beneath the cart track where the truck carrying them got bogged in a forest 19km outside the city.
Conjecture of their fate and whereabouts continued throughout the Soviet era but the secret of their burial died with their executioners who themselves mostly had bad endings during the civil war that followed the revolution and Soviet purges.
Two amateur archaeologists eventually found the gravesite and exhumed some of the skulls but couldn’t find any experts prepared to secretly help identify them so quietly reinterred the remains.
When the Soviet empire crumbled and the new era of Glasnost (openness and transparency) arrived, they took their secret to the authorities in 1991 and the grave was exhumed, the remains studied and DNA analysis done.
The skeletons were confirmed to be of the tsar, his wife and three of the daughters and were buried in the family vault in St Petersburg.
Over the previous 70 years conspiracy theories and rumours had abounded that Anastasia had escaped the massacre and was the living heir of the Romanov dynasty. Indeed, there were more than 100 imposters claiming to be her scattered around the world.
However, in 2007, a grave near the other was found to contain the charred and smashed bones of two individuals which DNA testing showed to be Alexi and one of his sisters, thus ending speculation they had escaped.
All this is an interesting footnote in history but its impact still resounds 100 years later as the end of the Romanovs allowed the Soviets to consolidate power and led to the cold war following WWII.
Now we see Putin, a tsar in all but name, building Russian influence as seen in the recent examples of the likelihood of manipulating the United States presidential elections and the Brexit vote.
Surely the most successful clandestine operations in history given the turmoil that has occurred since both events.
Trump’s meetings with the European Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the British and Putin himself are a fascinating though unnerving result of all of this.
