Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky (, ; – 2 August 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet Chekist (secret policeman). Yurovsky was commander of the guard at Ipatiev House during the murder of the Romanov family on the night of 17 July 1918. He is known as the chief executioner of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his family, and four of their servants. Yurovsky was responsible for the distribution of weapons, ordering the family to the cellar room, announcing the execution to the family, and the disposal of the eleven bodies.

Biography

Early life

Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky was the eighth of ten children born to Chaim, son of Izka, a glazier, and his wife Ester daughter of Moishe (1848–1919), a seamstress. He was born on in the Siberian city of Tomsk, Russia. The Yurovsky family was Jewish. The historian Helen Rappaport writes that the young Yurovsky studied the Talmud in his early youth. While the young Yurovsky was raised as a Jew, his family seemed to have later attempted to distance themselves from their Jewish roots. This may have been prompted by the prejudice toward Jews frequently exhibited in Russia at the time, which included antisemitic pogroms in the empire. Shortly before fully devoting himself to the cause of revolution, in the early twentieth century, Yurovsky converted to Lutheranism. Four members of the imperial household–court physician Eugene Botkin, chambermaid Anna Demidova, cook Ivan Kharitonov and footman Alexei Trupp–were also killed. All were shot in a half-cellar room (measured to be x ) of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg where they were being held prisoner.

It has since been documented that the order to assassinate the imperial family came from Yakov Sverdlov in Moscow.

According to Leon Trotsky's diaries, Lenin supported and decided upon the killing of the Tsar and his family. After Trotsky returned from the front (of the Russian Civil War) he had the following dialogue with Sverdlov:

To prevent the development of a personality cult of the former imperial family, the corpses were stripped and dismembered; then taken to the countryside, where they were initially thrown into an abandoned mineshaft. The following morning, when rumours spread in Yekaterinburg regarding the disposal site, Yurovsky removed the bodies. When the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way to the next chosen site, he made new arrangements and threw the bodies into a pit on Koptyaki Road, a since-abandoned cart track north of Yekaterinburg, and doused the dismembered remains with sulfuric acid before burying them and sealing the pit with wooden railroad ties.

Post–Civil War and death

During and after the Russian Civil War, Yurovsky worked as a head of local Cheka in Moscow, then a member of Vyatka Cheka, head of Yekaterinburg Cheka (1919). In 1921, he worked in the Rabkrin and became Chief of the Gold Department of the Soviet State Treasury. Yurovsky achieved a solid reputation by combating corruption and theft. He also worked in management at the Polytechnical Museum starting in 1928 and became its director in 1930.

Yurovsky had a history of health problems, including stomach issues and heart disease. In 1938, his daughter Rimma was arrested and deported to the gulag as a Trotskyite, which reportedly had a severe impact on his health. Yurovsky begged his old friend Goloshchyokin, then president of the State Council of Arbitration, for clemency, but Goloshchyokin informed him there was nothing to be done.

After an especially painful ulcerative episode, Yurovsky was hospitalized and unexpectedly transferred to the Kremlin Hospital, which was normally off limits to all but the most high level government officials. He died on 2 August 1938 reportedly of a duodenal, or peptic ulcer.

There have been allegations that Yurovsky was in fact poisoned at the behest of the NKVD in connection with the arrest of his daughter as a Trotskyist. Popular historian Edvard Radzinsky stated that Yurovsky's death was hastened by the administration of a lethal poison in the Kremlin Hospital by the NKVD. Unproven allegations have also been made he was deliberately denied adequate medical treatment. His death occurred during the height of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, in which many of his Ural compatriots were executed.

Rimma was released in 1946 and remained in Kazakhstan until her political rehabilitation ten years later. She then moved back to Leningrad.

Yurovsky's eldest son Alexander, a Rear Admiral in the Soviet Navy, was arrested in 1952, but was released a year later after Stalin's death. He said that his father greatly regretted his role in the execution of the Romanovs.

Notes

References

Sources

  • Yurovsky's account of the execution of the Imperial Family
  • Yakov Yurovski, Executioner of the Romanovs
  • Юровский Я. М. Анкета для вступления в Общество старых большевиков (Yurovsky Old Bolshevik Society questionnaire)