The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were shot and bayoneted to death by Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg on the night of 1617 July 1918. Also murdered that night were members of the imperial entourage who had accompanied them: court physician Eugene Botkin; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and head cook Ivan Kharitonov. The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped, buried, and mutilated with grenades to prevent identification.Following the February Revolution, the Romanov family and their servants had been imprisoned in the Alexander Palace before being moved to Tobolsk, Siberia in the aftermath of the October Revolution. They were next moved to a house in Yekaterinburg, near the Ural Mountains before their execution in July 1918. The Bolsheviks initially announced only Nicholas's death; for the next eight years, the Soviet leadership maintained a systematic web of misinformation relating to the fate of the family, from claiming in September 1919 that they were murdered by left-wing revolutionaries, to denying outright in April 1922 that they were dead. The Soviets finally acknowledged the murders in 1926 following the publication in France of a 1919 investigation by a White migr but said that the bodies were destroyed and that Lenin's Cabinet was not responsible. The Soviet cover-up of the murders fuelled rumors of survivors. Various Romanov impostors claimed to be members of the Romanov family, which drew media attention away from activities of Soviet Russia.In 1979, amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin discovered the burial site. The Soviet Union did not acknowledge the existence of these remains publicly until 1989 during the glasnost period. The identity of the remains was later confirmed by forensic and DNA analysis and investigation, with the assistance of British experts. In 1998, 80 years after the executions, the remains of the Romanov family were reinterred in a state funeral in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. The funeral was not attended by key members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who disputed the authenticity of the remains. In 2007, a second, smaller grave which contained the remains of the two Romanov children missing from the larger grave, was discovered by amateur archaeologists; they were confirmed to be the remains of Alexei and a sister by DNA analysis. In 2008, after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian Prosecutor General's office rehabilitated the Romanov family as "victims of political repressions". A criminal case was opened by the post-Soviet Russian government in 1993, but nobody was prosecuted on the basis that the perpetrators were dead.According to the official state version of the Soviet Union, ex-Tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, were executed by firing squad by order of the Ural Regional Soviet. Most historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the Imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the ongoing Russian Civil War. This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky's diary. A 2011 investigation concluded that, despite the opening of state archives in the post-Soviet years, no written document has been found which proves Lenin or Sverdlov ordered the executions; however, they endorsed the murders after they occurred. Other sources argue that Lenin and the central Soviet government had wanted to conduct a trial of the Romanovs, with Trotsky serving as prosecutor, but that the local Ural Soviet, under pressure from Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists, undertook the executions on their own initiative due to the approach of the Czechoslovaks.

Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov (18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer, was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. During his reign, Nicholas gave support to the economic and political reforms promoted by his prime ministers, Sergei Witte and Pyotr Stolypin. He advocated modernization based on foreign loans and close ties with France, but resisted giving the new parliament (the Duma) major roles. Ultimately, progress was undermined by Nicholas's commitment to autocratic rule, strong aristocratic opposition and defeats sustained by the Russian military in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. By March 1917, public support for Nicholas had collapsed and he was forced to abdicate the throne, thereby ending the Romanov dynasty's 304-year rule of Russia (1613–1917).

Nicholas signed the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which was designed to counter Germany's attempts to gain influence in the Middle East; it ended the Great Game of confrontation between Russia and the British Empire. He aimed to strengthen the Franco-Russian Alliance and proposed the unsuccessful Hague Convention of 1899 to promote disarmament and solve international disputes peacefully. Domestically, he was criticised for his government's repression of political opponents and his perceived fault or inaction during the Khodynka Tragedy, anti-Jewish pogroms, Bloody Sunday and the violent suppression of the 1905 Russian Revolution. His popularity was further damaged by the Russo-Japanese War, which saw the Russian Baltic Fleet annihilated at the Battle of Tsushima, together with the loss of Russian influence over Manchuria and Korea and the Japanese annexation of the south of Sakhalin Island.During the July Crisis, Nicholas supported Serbia and approved the mobilization of the Russian Army on 30 July 1914. In response, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and its ally France on 3 August 1914, starting the Great War, later known as the First World War. The severe military losses led to a collapse of morale at the front and at home; a general strike and a mutiny of the garrison in Petrograd sparked the February Revolution and the disintegration of the monarchy's authority. After abdicating for himself and his son, Nicholas and his family were imprisoned by the Russian Provisional Government and exiled to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution, the family was held in Yekaterinburg, where they were executed on 17 July 1918.In 1981, Nicholas, his wife, and their children were recognized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, based in New York City. Their gravesite was discovered in 1979, but this was not acknowledged until 1989. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the remains of the imperial family were exhumed, identified by DNA analysis, and re-interred with an elaborate state and church ceremony in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998, exactly 80 years after their deaths. They were canonized in 2000 by the Russian Orthodox Church as passion bearers. In the years following his death, Nicholas was reviled by Soviet historians and state propaganda as a "callous tyrant" who "persecuted his own people while sending countless soldiers to their deaths in pointless conflicts". Despite being viewed more positively in recent years, the majority view among historians is that Nicholas was a well-intentioned yet poor ruler who proved incapable of handling the challenges facing his nation.