Read The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia Online
Authors: Candace Fleming
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This 1916 cartoon depicts Rasputin as an evil puppet master, pulling both Nicholas’s and Alexandra’s strings.
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Prince Felix Yusupov, the mastermind behind Rasputin’s murder, c. 1915.
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A photograph of Rasputin’s battered corpse after being pulled from the Neva River three days after the murder.
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Somber, hungry Petrograd citizens line up outside a bakery for bread, c. 1915.
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Carrying a red banner reading “Long Live the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Deputies,” a group of mostly women and children, along with former tsarist soldiers, marches through the streets of St. Petersburg in February 1917.
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Alexander Kerensky in 1917. Just thirty-six years old, he took on the hard task of maintaining a link between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet.
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The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soliders’ Deputies meets in the Tauride Palace, February 1917.
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After Nicholas’s abdication, citizens jubilantly dismantled tsarist symbols in and around cities. Here children gaze at the giant bronze head of Alexander III—Nicholas’s father—after crowds pulled it off the statue.
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Nicholas poses for a photograph aboard the imperial train, site of his eventual abdication.
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Enthusiastic crowds welcome Lenin back to Petrograd, April 1917.
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Nicholas under guard at Tsarskoe Selo, 1917.
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Alexandra sits in her wheelchair while watching her family (not pictured) working in the garden at Tsarskoe Selo, 1917.
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From left to right: Olga, Alexei, Anastasia (holding Jemmy in her lap), and Tatiana resting after gardening in May 1917.
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Alexei, just hours before the family’s removal from Tsarskoe Selo, takes one last swim in the estate’s lake, August 1917.
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Forces of the Provisional Government fire on Bolshevik rioters, necessitating their lying down in the street to avoid being shot, July 1917.
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The Governor’s Mansion in Tobolsk, where the Romanovs were imprisoned. This picture was taken before the tall wooden fence was built, although guards can be seen patrolling the street. From the balcony, the family could sit and wave to the passersby below.
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Perched on the platform that Nicholas built on the roof of the greenhouse in Tobolsk are (from left to right): Olga, Anastasia, Nicholas, Alexei, and Tatiana. Marie is standing.
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This retouched photograph shows a column of Bolshevik soldiers seizing the Winter Palace after the Provisional Government’s surrender.
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The House of Special Purpose surrounded by its fence, which would later be extended to the house’s eaves.
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White Army troops move through the forests of Siberia in January 1918.
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