Timeline Testimony: Yurovsky/Others

[Anya]

What happened to Yakov Yurovsky after the terrible night of July 17th??Did he still work for the Comunists for the rest of his life? I've read that his daughter died in one of Stalin's gulags, is that truth??

Thanks.
Anya

[Greg_King]

See my short biography of him on this site under "Palace Biographies," or for a long discussion you can check out "The Fate of the Romanovs" by myself and Penny Wilson.

Greg King

[Anya]

Thanks! It helped a lot!

Anya

[AGRBear]

Find Yurovsky's 1934 testimony on the following URL:

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/yurovmurder.html

I think I've seen only two photographs of Yurovsky.  Anyone have either that they can post here?

See my short biography of him on this site under "Palace Biographies," or for a long discussion you can check out "The Fate of the Romanovs" by myself and Penny Wilson.
Greg King

Where [URL] is "Palace Biographies"?  

AGRBear

[Forum Admin]

Palace Biographies main page:
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/characterstext.html

Yurovsky bio, with photo:
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/yurovski_bio.html  

[LisaDavidson]

Yurovsky died in the 1930's. If his son is to be believed, he came to regret his role in murdering the Romanovs. He did, however, remain a loyal Bolshevik throughout the purges and yes I believe his daughter was sent to the gulag.

[Forum Admin]

Penny sent me three photos of Yurovsky. One early-mid 1918, about the time of the Ekaterinburg imprisonment. The second is Y with his family ca. 1925. The third is Y in Moscow c. 1933-4, fairly shortly before his death.

[Candice]

When did Yurovsky's daughter go to the gulag?

Candice

[Alexa]

When did Yurovsky's daughter go to the gulag?

Candice

And what did she apparantly do to get sent there?

Alexa

[IlyaBorisovich]

If you believe Solzhenitsyn (Gulag Archipeligo, The First Circle, One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich), then it may have been as simple as a phone call to the CHEKA from a jealous co-worker.  Millions went into Gulag never knowing what they did, or were supposed to have done, if anything.

Ilya

[Annie]

If you believe Solzhenitsyn (Gulag Archipeligo, The First Circle, One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich), then it may have been as simple as a phone call to the CHEKA from a jealous co-worker.  Millions went into Gulag never knowing what they did, or were supposed to have done, if anything.

Ilya

I do believe him! Similar stuff happens in the US today, not with the government, but with employers, and neighbors turning each other in for things to get them into trouble, coworkers claiming sexual harrassment after a relationship went sour, (I know 2 people this happened to personally, one a man, one a woman) and things like that. Oh, and school too, kids get other kids in trouble for things they didn't do, or weren't alone in doing. It's sad people have to do such mean spirited vindictive thngs to each other and nobody bothers to check it out.

[LisaDavidson]

I am not an expert on the Soviet period, but I believe there was a gradual correction of wrongs under Stalin. First came the denunciations by Khruschev and others. Then prisoners were released, then mechanisms were set up to review the millions of cases. Many people did not have their names cleared until the 1980's. The sheer numbers of cases must have been staggering. I believe Bukharin - who did nothing wrong - did not have his name cleared until the 1980's. So the 1970's would have been relatively soon, Soviet-wise.

[Alexa]

Thanks for all the information on Rimma Yakovlena.  I never knew any of that happened, and find it interesting that the government Yurovsky and his family helped create turned on them.

Alexa

[jackie3]

Thanks for all the information on Rimma Yakovlena.  I never knew any of that happened, and find it interesting that the government Yurovsky and his family helped create turned on them.

Alexa

Indeed. I haven't read Greg and Penny's book (yet!) but I wonder if Yurovsky ever thought of the young lives he snuffed out in such a brutal manner when he looked upon his daughter or perhaps thought it was fate/karma coming back to him his daughter was sent to the labor camps by the government and apparatus of terror he had helped create.

I know we've gone over in several threads the  deserved hatred for the Romanovs by (some) Russians but I'm sorry - I'll never be able to understand how someone with young children can so easily kill (and in the most brutal and prolonged way possible) other innocent children. The closest modern counterpart IMO is the suicide bombers in Israel who so convinced in the rightness of their cause and their ideology/religion target areas where there are children (or buses containing children) but who themselves have children at home.  Perhaps Yurovsky was like that.

[AGRBear]

According to the British officer Francis McCullagh who interviewed Yurovsky on 8 March 1920,   Yurovsky's attitudes about the executions and aftermath are  in various lines found on pps. 510-11 in the King and Wilson book The Fate of the Romanovs:

(1) "Yurovsky...hated to be recognized, with the whispers and fears of vengeance that inevitably followed."
(2) "...McCullagh became conscious of Yurovsky's 'feelings of remorse and horror' at the murders of the Romanovs."
(3) "He also had a distinct impression of a 'dreadful secret' that 'weighed on Yurovsky when I met him.'"

What was this "dreadful secret"?

Did the arrest of his daughter Rimma  have anything to do with her actitivities or was it done to show Yurovsky that he best continue to keep  some "dreadful secret"?

I dug around Radzinsky's book on The Last Tsar and found on p. 428 his mention of Medvedev's son who had talked about Yurovsky who "had a bad heart and suffered dreadfully over his daughter.  But there was nothing he could do.  There was no way he could help her."  

Nearing death, Yurovsky wrote a letter to his children. . 429  "Dear Zhenya and Shura?...."  Ahhhh, and here we find his thoughts of his past and his part in the execution:  "...fate has not insulted me, a man who has passed through three storms with Lenin and Lenin's men may consider himself the happiest of mortals...." Then he goes on to say "I embrace you, I kiss Rimma, your wives, and my grandchildren.  Father."  He speaks of no regrets of his part in what happen the night of 16/17 July 1918.

Even on his dying day,  if he did have a "secret" he couldn't speak about "the secret" because  Stalin might have  threated Yurovsky that his son Alexander or other members of his family  [even all of them] might end up in prision too.

Stalin was not anyone's fool.  He knew if he placed the ill Yurovsky into prison that questions from the foreign press would dig up old news and old news with Yurovsky was the missing Romanov grave/graves....

My question to the photograph above on the family.  I see two sons.  What was the name of the other son in the photo and what happened to him?  Did Yurovsky have other children not shown in this particular photo?  He mentioned grandchildren, does anyone know their names?


p. 511  King and Wilson go into detail about Yurovsky's daughter Rimma who was "leader in the Konsomol Youth Organization" and "secretary of the Konsomol Central Committee" Doesn't sound line she was a threat to the communist....  Yet, she was arrested for "revolutionary activitiy and sent to a Soviet labor camp, where she spent the next quarter century imprisioned under Stalin."   Any data on her release since it appears someone knows she spent about 25 years in prison?  Is she still alive?  Dead?  If so, when did she die and where?  Did she ever claim she was a "revolutionary"?

AGRBear

PS
Almost forgot.  Yurovsky mentions  "...fate has not insulted me, a man who has passed through three storms with Lenin and Lenin's men may consider himself the happiest of mortals...."  What were the three storms to which he was referring???  

PSS  
I wandered here and there on this post.  Sorry.