“UNDER HOUSE ARREST THEY HAD EXPRESSLY DISCOURAGED RESCUE ATTEMPTS THAT MIGHT CAUSE THE DEATHS OF OTHERS”

Russia was in turmoil long before Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks. The first of two revolutions in one year erupted in early 1917 – as World War I raged on – from mass protests in the capital of Petrograd (St Petersburg), forcing Nicholas to abdicate and ending more than 300 years of imperial rule. Then, later that year, a second revolution broke out, which saw Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks seize power,