What day was Tsar Nicolas killed?

On July 18, 1918, the day after the shooting at Yekaterinburg of the last Tsar, Nicholas II and family, members of the extended Russian royal family, the Romanovs, including a nun, and their servants, met a brutal death here being thrown down a mineshaft near Alapayevsk by Bolsheviks. All except Grand Duke Sergey Mikhaylovich (who was the first one to die; he was shot before they could throw him in) survived the fall, hand-grenades were thrown down after them killing Grand Duke Sergey's secretary, Fyodor Remez. Other victims died a slow death including the Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia, Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, Prince Igor Konstantinovich of Russia and Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna (born Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine), a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Grand Duchess Elizabeth was the sister of Empress Alexandra; when her husband, the Tsar's uncle, was murdered in 1905, she gave all her wealth to the poor and became a nun, but she was shown no mercy. Killed with her was a nun who had accompanied her - Varvara Yakovleva.

Alapayevsk

Alapayevsk () is a town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Neyva and Alapaikha Rivers. Population: 44,263 (2002 Census); 50,060 (1989 Census); 49,000 (1968).

Alapayevsk is one of the oldest centers of ferrous metallurgy in the Urals with the first factory built in 1704. The town proper was founded in 1781.

The bodies were recovered from the mine by the White Army in September 1918. The bodies were placed in coffins and despite the struggles between the Whites and the opposing Red Army, they were moved to the far east. Grand Duchess Elizabeth's remains were ultimately taken to Jerusalem, where they were laid to rest in the Church of Maria Magdalene, while the coffins of the others were interred in a former Russian Mission in Beijing, now beneath a parking area.

In 1981, Grand Duchess Elizabeth was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and in 1992 by the Moscow Patriarchate.

Alapayevsk is a place of pilgrimage to the memory of Grand Duchess Elizabeth.

Within the framework of the administrative divisions, it is, together with nine rural localities, incorporated as the Town of Alapayevsk—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the Town of Alapayevsk is incorporated as Alapayevsk Urban Okrug.

The Alapayevsk narrow-gauge railway serves the communities around Alapayevsk

Local orphanage (Alapaevsk Family-Type Orphanage) proclaims itself as the largest in the Urals.

The composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky spent a part of his childhood in Alapayevsk.

The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and all those who chose to accompany them into imprisonment—notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov, according to the conclusion of the investigator, were shot and bayoneted to death in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. According to the official state version in the USSR, former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, was executed by firing squad, by order of the Ural Regional Soviet, due to the threat of the city being occupied by Whites (Czechoslovak Legion). By the assumption of a number of researchers, this was done according to instructions by Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky. Their bodies were then taken to the Koptyaki forest where they were stripped and mutilated. In 1919, White Army investigation (of Sokolov) failed to find the gravesite, concluding that the imperial family's remains had been cremated at the mineshaft called Ganina Yama, since evidence of fire was found.. In 1979 and 2007, the remains of the bodies were found in two unmarked graves in a field called Porosenkov Log.

Execution of the Romanov family

Following the February Revolution, the Romanov family and their loyal servants were imprisoned in the Alexander Palace before being moved to Tobolsk and then Yekaterinburg, where they were killed, allegedly at the express command of Vladimir Lenin. Despite being informed that "the entire family suffered the same fate as its head", the Bolsheviks only announced Nicholas's death, with the official press release that "Nicholas Romanov's wife and son have been sent to a secure place." For over eight years, the Soviet leadership maintained a systematic web of disinformation as 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. They acknowledged the murders in 1926 following the publication of an investigation by a White émigré, but maintained that the bodies were destroyed and that Lenin's Cabinet was not responsible. The Soviet cover-up of the murders fuelled rumours of survivors, leading to the emergence of Romanov impostors that drew media attention away from Soviet Russia. Discussion regarding the fate of the family was suppressed by Joseph Stalin from 1938.

The burial site was discovered in 1979 by an amateur sleuth, but the existence of the remains was not made public until 1989, during the "glasnost" period. The identity of the remains was confirmed by forensic and DNA investigation. They were reburied in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg in 1998, 80 years after they were killed, in a funeral that was not attended by key members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who disputed the authenticity of the remains. A second, smaller grave containing the remains of two Romanov children missing from the larger grave was discovered by amateur archaeologists in 2007. However, their remains are kept in a state repository pending further DNA tests. 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 government in 1993, but nobody was prosecuted on the basis that the perpetrators were dead.

Some historians attribute the order to the government in Moscow, specifically Sverdlov and Lenin who wished to prevent the rescue of the Imperial Family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion (fighting with the White Army against the Bolsheviks) during the ongoing Russian Civil War. This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky's diary. An investigation led by Vladimir Solovyov concluded in 2011 that, despite the opening of state archives in the post-Soviet years, there is yet no written document found that indicates that either Lenin or Sverdlov instigated the orders; however, they did endorse the executions after they occurred. Lenin had close control over the Romanovs although he ensured his name was not associated with their fate in any official documents. President Boris Yeltsin described the killings as one of the most shameful pages in Russian history.

On 22 March 1917, Nicholas, no longer a monarch and addressed by the sentries as "Nicholas Romanov", was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. He was placed under house arrest with his family by the Provisional Government, surrounded by guards and confined to their quarters.

In August 1917, Alexander Kerensky's provisional government evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk, allegedly to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. There they lived in the former governor's mansion in considerable comfort. After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the conditions of their imprisonment grew stricter, and talk of putting Nicholas on trial grew more frequent. Nicholas was forbidden to wear epaulettes, and the sentries scrawled lewd drawings on the fence to offend his daughters. On 1 March 1918, the family was placed on soldier's rations, which meant parting with 10 devoted servants and giving up butter and coffee. As the Bolsheviks gathered strength, the government in April moved Nicholas, Alexandra, and their daughter Maria to Yekaterinburg under the direction of Vasily Yakovlev. Alexei, who had severe haemophilia, was too ill to accompany his parents and remained with his sisters Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia, not leaving Tobolsk until May 1918. The family was imprisoned with a few remaining retainers in Yekaterinburg's Ipatiev House, which was designated The House of Special Purpose ().
The imperial family was kept in strict isolation at the Ipatiev House. They were strictly forbidden to speak any language other than Russian. They were not permitted access to their luggage, which was stored in an outhouse in the interior courtyard. Their brownie cameras and photographic equipment were confiscated. The servants were ordered to address the Romanovs only by their names and patronymics. The family was subjected to regular searches of their belongings, confiscation of their money for "safekeeping by the Ural Regional Soviet's treasurer", and attempts to remove Alexandra's and her daughters' gold bracelets from their wrists. The house was surrounded by a 4 metre (14 ft) high double palisade that obscured the streets from the house. The initial fence enclosed the garden along Voznesensky Lane. On 5 June a second palisade was erected, higher and longer than the first, which completely enclosed the property. One of the reasons for the construction of the latter was the discovery that onlookers outside could see Nicholas' legs over the palisade when he used the double swing in the garden.
The windows in all the family's rooms were sealed shut and covered with newspapers (later painted with whitewash on 15 May). The family's only source of ventilation was a fortochka in the grand duchesses' bedroom, but peeking out of it was strictly forbidden; in May a sentry fired a shot at Anastasia when she peeked out. After repeated requests, one of the two windows in the tsar and tsarina's corner bedroom was unsealed on 23 June 1918. However, the guards were ordered to increase their surveillance accordingly and the prisoners were warned not to look out the window or attempt to signal anyone outside, on pain of being shot. From this window, they could see only the spire of the Voznesensky Cathedral located across the road from the house. An iron grille was installed on 11 July after Alexandra ignored repeated warnings from Yurovsky not to stand too close to the open window.

The guard commandant and his senior aides had complete access at any time to all rooms occupied by the family. The prisoners were required to ring a bell every time they wished to leave their rooms to use the bathroom and lavatory on the landing. However, strict rationing of the water supply was enforced on the prisoners after the guards complained that it regularly ran out. Recreation was only allowed twice daily in the garden for half an hour morning and afternoon. However, the prisoners were under strict instructions not to engage in conversation with any of the guards. Rations were mostly tea and black bread for breakfast and cutlets or soup with meat for lunch; the prisoners were informed that "they were no longer permitted to live like tsars". In mid-June, nuns from the Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery also brought the family food on a daily basis, most of which was siphoned off on arrival by the captors. The family was not allowed visitors or to receive and send letters. Princess Helen of Serbia visited the house in June but was refused entry at gunpoint by the guards, while Dr Vladimir Derevenko's regular visits to treat Alexei were curtailed when Yurovsky became commandant. No excursions to Mass at the nearby church were permitted. In early June, the family no longer received their daily newspapers.

To maintain a sense of normality, the Bolsheviks assured the Romanovs on 13 July 1918 that two of their loyal servants, (Alexei's sailor nanny) and (OTMA's footman; Leonid Sednev's uncle), "had been sent out of this government" (i.e. out of the jurisdiction of Yekaterinburg and Perm province). However, both men were already dead: after the Bolsheviks had removed them from the Ipatiev House in May, they had been shot by the Cheka with a group of other hostages on 6 July, in reprisal for the death of, a local Bolshevik hero, killed by the Whites. On 14 July, a priest and deacon conducted a liturgy for the Romanovs. The following morning, four housemaids were hired to wash the floors of the Popov House and Ipatiev House; they were the last civilians to see the family alive. On both occasions, they were under strict instructions not to engage in conversation of any kind with the family. Yurovsky always kept watch during the liturgy and while the housemaids were cleaning the bedrooms with the family.

The 16 men of the internal guard slept in the basement, hallway and commandant's office during shifts. The external guard led by Pavel Medvedev numbered 56 and were accommodated in the Popov House opposite. The guards were allowed to bring in women for sex and drinking sessions in the Popov House and basement rooms of the Ipatiev House. There were four machine gun emplacements: one in the bell tower of the Voznesensky Cathedral aimed toward the house; a second in the basement window of the Ipatiev House facing the street; a third monitored the balcony overlooking the garden at the back of the house; and a fourth in the attic overlooking the intersection, directly above the tsar and tsarina's bedroom. There were ten guard posts in and around the Ipatiev House, and the exterior was patrolled twice hourly day and night. In early May, the guards deprived the prisoners of the piano in the dining room and moved it to the commandant's office located next door to the Romanovs' bedrooms. Here they took pleasure in humiliating them in the evenings by singing Russian revolutionary songs while drinking and smoking. They also listened to the Romanovs' gramophone records on the confiscated phonograph. The lavatory on the landing was also used by the guards who scribbled political slogans and crude graffiti on the walls. The number of Ipatiev House guards totaled 300 when the imperial family was killed.

When Yurovsky replaced Aleksandr Avdeev as commandant on 4 July, he moved the old internal guard members to the Popov House. The senior aides were retained but were designated to guard the hallway area and no longer had access to the Romanovs' rooms, a privilege granted only to Yurovsky's men. Replacements were chosen by the local Cheka from the volunteer battalions of the Verkh-Isetsk factory at Yurovsky's request. He wanted dedicated Bolsheviks who could be relied on to do whatever was asked of them. They were hired on the understanding that they would be prepared, if necessary, to kill the tsar, about which they were sworn to secrecy. Nothing at that stage was said about killing the family or servants. To prevent a repetition of the fraternization that had occurred under Avdeev, Yurovsky chose mainly foreigners. Nicholas noted in his diary on 8 July that "new Latvians are standing guard", describing them as Letts - a term commonly used in Russia to define someone of European, non-Russian origin. The leader of the new guards was led by Adolf Lepa, a Lithuanian.

The Romanovs were being held by the Red Army in Yekaterinburg, since Bolsheviks initially wanted to put them on trial. As the civil war continued and the White Army (a loose alliance of anti-Communist forces) was threatening to capture the city, the fear was that the Romanovs would fall into White hands. This was unacceptable to the Bolsheviks for two reasons: first, the tsar or any of his family members could provide a beacon to rally support to the White cause; second, the tsar, or any of his family members if the tsar were dead, would be considered the legitimate ruler of Russia by the other European nations. This would have meant the ability to negotiate for greater foreign intervention on behalf of the Whites. Soon after the family was executed, the city fell to the White Army. In mid-July 1918, forces of the Czechoslovak Legion were closing on Yekaterinburg, to protect the Trans-Siberian Railway, of which they had control. According to historian David Bullock, the Bolsheviks, falsely believing that the Czechoslovaks were on a mission to rescue the family, panicked and executed their wards. The Legions arrived less than a week later and on 25 July captured the city.

During the imperial family's imprisonment in late June, Pyotr Voykov and Alexander Beloborodov, president of the Ural Regional Soviet, directed the smuggling of letters written in French to the Ipatiev House claiming to be a monarchist officer seeking to rescue them, composed at the behest of the Cheka. These fabricated letters, along with the Romanov responses to them (written on either blank spaces or the envelopes), provided the Central Executive Committee (CEC) in Moscow with further justification to 'liquidate' the imperial family. Yurovsky later observed that by responding to the faked letters, Nicholas "had fallen into a hasty plan by us to trap him". On 13 July, across the road from the Ipatiev House, a demonstration of Red Army soldiers, Socialist Revolutionaries, and anarchists was staged on Voznesensky Square, demanding the dismissal of the Yekaterinburg Soviet and the transfer of control of the city to them. This rebellion was violently suppressed by a detachment of Red Guards led by Peter Ermakov, which opened fire on the protesters, all within earshot of the tsar and tsarina's bedroom window. The authorities exploited the incident as a monarchist-led rebellion that threatened the security of the captives at the Ipatiev House.

The Ural Regional Soviet agreed in a meeting on 29 June that the Romanov family should be executed. Filipp Goloshchyokin arrived in Moscow on 3 July with a message insisting on the Tsar's execution. Only seven of the 23 members of the Central Executive Committee were in attendance, three of whom were Lenin, Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky. It was agreed that the presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet should organize the practical details for the family's execution and decide the precise day on which it would take place when the military situation dictated it, contacting Moscow for final approval.

The killing of the Tsar's wife and children was also discussed but had to be kept a state secret to avoid any political repercussions; German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach made repeated enquiries to the Bolsheviks concerning the family's well-being. Another diplomat, British consul Thomas Preston, who lived near the Ipatiev House, was often pressured by Pierre Gilliard, Sydney Gibbes and Prince Vasily Dolgorukov to help the Romanovs, the latter smuggling notes from his prison cell before he too was murdered by Grigory Nikulin, Yurovsky's assistant. However, Preston's requests to be granted access to the family were consistently rejected. As Trotsky would later explain, "The Tsar's family was a victim of the principle that form the very axis of monarchy: dynastic inheritance", for which their deaths were a necessity. Goloshchyokin reported back to Yekaterinburg on 12 July with a summary of his discussion about the Romanovs with Moscow, along with instructions that nothing relating to their deaths should be directly communicated to Lenin.

On 14 July, Yurovsky was finalizing the disposal site and how to destroy as much evidence as possible at the same time. He was frequently in consultation with Peter Ermakov, who was in charge of the disposal squad and claimed to know the outlying countryside, to which Yurovsky placed his trust in him. Yurovsky wanted to gather the family and servants in a closely confined space from which they could not escape. The basement room chosen for this purpose had a barred window which was nailed shut to muffle the sound of shooting and in case of any screaming. Shooting and stabbing them at night while they slept or killing them in the forest and then dumping them into the Iset pond with lumps of metal weighted to their bodies were ruled out. Yurovsky's plan was to perform an efficient execution of all 11 prisoners simultaneously, though he also took into account that he would have to prevent those involved from raping the women or searching the bodies for jewels. Having previously seized some jewellery, he suspected more was hidden in their clothes; the bodies were stripped naked in order to obtain the rest (this, along with the mutilations were aimed at preventing investigators from identifying them).

On 16 July, Yurovsky was informed by the Ural Soviets that Red Army contingents were retreating in all directions and the executions could not be delayed any longer. A coded telegram seeking final approval was sent by Goloshchyokin and at around 6:00pm to Lenin in Moscow. There is no documentary record of an answer from Moscow, although Yurovsky insisted that an order from the CEC to go ahead had been passed on to him by Goloshchyokin at around 7:00pm. This was consistent with a former Kremlin guard, Aleksey Akimov, who in the late 1960s claimed that Sverdlov personally instructed him to take a telegram to the telegraph office confirming the CEC's approval of the 'trial' (code for execution), but with strict instructions that both the written form and ticker tape should be brought back by him immediately after it had been sent. At 8:00pm, Yurovsky sent his chauffeur to acquire a truck for transporting the bodies, bringing with it rolls of canvas to wrap them in. The intention was to park it as close to the basement entrance as possible, with its engine running to mask the noise of gunshots. Yurovsky and Pavel Medvedev collected 14 handguns to use that night, comprising two Browning pistols (one M1900 and one M1906), two Colt M1911 pistols, two Mauser C96s, one Smith & Wesson and seven Belgian-made Nagants. The Nagant operated on old black gunpowder which produced a good deal of smoke and fumes; smokeless powder was only just being phased in.

In the commandant's office, Yurovsky assigned victims to each killer before distributing the handguns. He took a Mauser and Colt while Ermakov armed himself with three Nagants, one Mauser and a bayonet; he was the only one assigned to kill two prisoners, Alexandra and Botkin. Yurovsky instructed his men to "shoot straight at the heart to avoid an excessive quantity of blood and get it over quickly." At least two of the Letts, an Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war named Andras Verhas and Adolf Lepa, himself in charge of the Lett contingent, refused to shoot the women. Yurovsky sent them to the Popov House for failing "at that important moment in their revolutionary duty". Neither Yurovsky nor any of the killers went into the logistics of how to efficiently destroy eleven bodies. He was under pressure of ensuring that no remains would later be found by monarchists who would exploit them to rally anti-communist support.

While the Romanovs were having dinner on 16 July 1918, Yurovsky entered the sitting room and informed them that the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev was leaving to meet his uncle Ivan Sednev, who had returned to the city asking to see him; Ivan had already been shot by the Cheka. The family was very upset as Leonid was Alexei's only playmate and he was the fifth member of the imperial entourage to be taken from them, but they were assured by Yurovsky that he would be back soon. Alexandra did not trust him, writing in her final diary entry just hours before her death, "whether its ["sic"] true & we shall see the boy back again!" Leonid was in fact kept in the Popov House that night. Yurovsky saw no reason to kill him and wanted him removed before the execution took place.

Around midnight on 17 July, Yakov Yurovsky, the commandant of The House of Special Purpose, ordered the Romanovs' physician, Dr. Eugene Botkin, to awaken the sleeping family and ask them to put on their clothes, under the pretext that the family would be moved to a safe location due to impending chaos in Yekaterinburg. The Romanovs were then ordered into a semi-basement room. Nicholas asked if Yurovsky could bring two chairs, on which Tsarevich Alexei and Alexandra sat. Yurovsky's assistant Grigory Nikulin remarked to him that the "heir wanted to die in a chair. Very well then, let him have one." The prisoners were told to wait in the cellar room while the truck that would transport them was being brought to the House. A few minutes later, an execution squad of secret police was brought in and Yurovsky read aloud the order given to him by the Ural Executive Committee:

Nicholas, facing his family, turned and said "What? What?" Yurovsky quickly repeated the order and the weapons were raised. The Empress and Grand Duchess Olga, according to a guard's reminiscence, had tried to bless themselves, but failed amid the shooting. Yurovsky reportedly raised his Colt gun at Nicholas's torso and fired; Nicholas fell dead, pierced with at least three bullets in his upper chest. The intoxicated Peter Ermakov, the military commissar for Verkh-Isetsk, shot and killed Alexandra with a bullet wound to the head. He then shot at Maria, who ran for the double doors, hitting her in the thigh. The remaining executioners shot chaotically and over each other's shoulders until the room was so filled with smoke and dust that no one could see anything at all in the darkness nor hear any commands amid the noise.

Alexey Kabanov, who ran out onto the street to check the noise levels, heard dogs barking from the Romanovs' quarters and the sound of gunshots loud and clear despite the noise from the Fiat's engine. Kabanov then hurried downstairs and told the men to stop firing and kill the family and their dogs with their gun butts and bayonets. Within minutes, Yurovsky was forced to stop the shooting because of the caustic smoke of burned gunpowder, dust from the plaster ceiling caused by the reverberation of bullets, and the deafening gunshots. When they stopped, the doors were then opened to scatter the smoke. While waiting for the smoke to abate, the killers could hear moans and whimpers inside the room. As it cleared, it became evident that although several of the family's retainers had been killed, all of the Imperial children were alive and furthermore, only Maria was even injured.

The noise of the guns had been heard by households all around, and had awakened many people. The executioners were ordered to proceed with their bayonets, a technique which proved ineffective and meant that the children had to be dispatched by still more gunshots, this time aimed more precisely at their heads. The Tsarevich was the first of the children to be executed. Yurovsky watched in disbelief as Nikulin spent an entire magazine from his Browning gun on Alexei, who was still seated transfixed in his chair; he also had jewels sewn into his undergarment and forage cap. Ermakov shot and stabbed him, and when he failed, Yurovsky shoved him aside and killed the boy with a gunshot to the head. The last to die were Tatiana, Anastasia, and Maria, who were carrying a few pounds (over 1.3 kilograms) of diamonds sewn into their clothing, which had given them a degree of protection from the firing. However, they were speared with bayonets as well. Olga sustained a gunshot wound to the head. Maria and Anastasia were said to have crouched up against a wall covering their heads in terror until they were shot down. Yurovsky himself killed Tatiana and Alexei. Tatiana died from a single bullet through the back of her head. Alexei received two bullets to the head, right behind the ear. Anna Demidova, Alexandra's maid, survived the initial onslaught but was quickly stabbed to death against the back wall while trying to defend herself with a small pillow which she had carried that was filled with precious gems and jewels. While the bodies were being placed on stretchers, one of the girls cried out and covered her face with her arm. Ermakov grabbed Alexander Strekotin's rifle and bayoneted her in the chest, but when it failed to penetrate he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head.

While Yurovsky was checking the victims for pulses, Ermakov went back and forth in the room, flailing the bodies with his bayonet. The execution lasted about 20 minutes, Yurovsky later admitting to Nikulin's "poor mastery of his weapon and inevitable nerves". Future investigations calculated that a possible 70 bullets were fired, roughly seven bullets per shooter, of which 57 were found in the basement and at all three subsequent gravesites. Some of Pavel Medvedev's stretcher bearers began frisking the bodies for valuables. Yurovsky saw this and demanded that they surrender any looted items or be shot. The attempted looting, coupled with Ermakov's incompetence and drunken state, convinced Yurovsky to oversee the disposal of the bodies himself. Only Alexei's spaniel, Joy, survived to be rescued by a British officer of the Allied Intervention Force, living out his final days in Windsor, Berkshire.

Alexandre Beloborodov sent a coded telegram to Lenin's secretary, Nikolai Gorbunov. It was found by White investigator Nikolai Sokolov and reads:

Aleksandr Lisitsyn of the Cheka, an essential witness on behalf of Moscow, was designated to promptly dispatch to Sverdlov soon after the executions of Nicholas and Alexandra's politically valuable diaries and letters, which would be published in Russia as soon as possible. Beloborodov and Nikulin oversaw the ransacking of the Romanov quarters, seizing all the family's personal items, the most valuable piled up in Yurovsky's office whilst things considered inconsequential and of no value were stuffed into the stoves and burned. Everything was packed into the Romanovs' own trunks for dispatch to Moscow under escort by commissars. On 19 July, the Bolsheviks nationalized all confiscated Romanov properties, the same day Sverdlov announced the tsar's execution to the Council of People's Commissars.

The bodies of the Romanovs and their servants were loaded onto a Fiat truck equipped with a 60-hp engine, with a cargo area 6 × 10 feet in size. Heavily laden, the vehicle struggled for nine miles on boggy road to reach the Koptyaki forest. Yurovsky was furious when he discovered that the drunken Ermakov had brought only one shovel for the burial. About half a mile further on, near crossing no. 185 on the line serving the Verkh-Isetsk works, 25 men working for Ermakov were waiting with horses and light carts. These men were all intoxicated and they were outraged that the prisoners were not brought to them alive. They expected to be part of the lynch mob and were hoping to abuse the women before killing them. Yurovsky maintained control of the situation with great difficulty, eventually getting Ermakov's men to shift some of the bodies from the truck onto the carts. A few of Ermakov's men pawed the female bodies for diamonds hidden in their undergarments, two of whom lifted up Alexandra's skirt and fingered her genitals. Yurovsky ordered them at gunpoint to back off, dismissing the two who had groped the tsarina's corpse and any others he had caught looting. One of the men sniggered that he could "die in peace", having touched the "royal cunt".

The truck was bogged down in an area of marshy ground near the Gorno-Uralsk railway line, during which all the bodies were unloaded onto carts and taken to the disposal site. The sun was up by the time the carts came within sight of the disused mine, which was a large clearing at a place called the 'Four Brothers'. Yurovsky's men first gobbled on hardboiled eggs supplied by the local nuns (food that was meant for the imperial family), while the remainder of Ermakov's men were ordered back to the city as Yurovsky did not trust them and was displeased with their drunkenness.

Yurovsky and five other men laid out the bodies on the grass and undressed them, the clothes piled up and burned while Yurovsky took inventory of their jewellery. Only Maria's undergarments contained no jewels, which to Yurovsky was proof that the family had ceased to trust her ever since she became too friendly with one of the guards back in May. Once the bodies were "completely naked" they were dumped into a mineshaft and sprinkled with sulphuric acid to disfigure them beyond recognition. Only then did Yurovsky discover that the pit was less than 3 metres (9 feet) deep and the muddy water below did not fully submerge the corpses as he had expected. He unsuccessfully tried to collapse the mine with hand grenades, after which his men covered it with loose earth and branches. Yurovsky left three men to guard the site while he returned to Yekaterinburg with a bag filled with 18 lb of looted diamonds, to report back to Beloborodov and Goloshchyokin. It was decided that the pit was too shallow.

During transportation to the deeper copper mines on the early morning of 19 July, the Fiat truck carrying the bodies got stuck again in mud near Porosenkov Log (Pig's Meadow). With the men exhausted, most refusing to obey orders and dawn approaching, Yurovsky decided to bury them under the road where the truck had stalled. They dug a grave that was 6 × 8 ft in size and barely 60 centimetres (2 ft) deep. Alexei Trupp's body was tossed in first, followed by the Tsar's and then the rest. Sulphuric acid was again used to dissolve the bodies, their faces smashed with rifle butts and covered with quicklime. Railroad ties were placed over the grave to disguise it, with the Fiat truck being driven back and forth over the ties to press them into the earth. The burial was completed at 6:00am on 19 July.

Yurovsky separated the Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters to be buried about 15 metres (50 ft) away, in an attempt to confuse anyone who might discover the mass grave with only nine bodies. Since the female body was badly disfigured, Yurovsky mistook her for Anna Demidova; in his report he wrote that he had actually wanted to destroy Alexandra's corpse. Alexei and his sister were burned in a bonfire and their remaining charred bones were thoroughly smashed with spades and tossed into a smaller pit. Only 44 partial bone fragments from both corpses remained, which were not found until August 2007.

After Yekaterinburg fell to the anti-communist White Army on 25 July, Admiral Alexander Kolchak established the Sokolov Commission at the end of that month to investigate the murders., a legal investigator of the Omsk Regional Court, interviewed several members of the Romanov entourage in February 1919, notably Pierre Gilliard, Alexandra Tegleva and Sydney Gibbes.
Sokolov discovered a large number of the Romanovs' belongings and valuables that were overlooked by Yurovsky and his men, in and around the mineshaft where the bodies were initially disposed of. Among them were dismembered and burned bone fragments, congealed fat, Dr Botkin's upper dentures and glasses, corset stays, insignias and belt buckles, shoes, keys, pearls and diamonds, a few spent bullets and part of a severed female finger. Only the corpse of Anastasia's King Charles Spaniel, Jimmy, was found in the pit. The shallow pit revealed no traces of clothing, which was consistent with Yurovsky's account that all the victims' clothes were burned before the bodies were thrown down the mineshaft. Sokolov ultimately failed to find the concealed burial site on the Koptyaki Road; ironically he photographed the spot as evidence of where the Fiat truck had got stuck on the morning of 19 July. The impending return of Bolshevik forces in July 1919 forced him to evacuate, bringing with him the box containing the relics he recovered. Sokolov accumulated numerous photographic and eyewitness accounts filling eight volumes. He died in France in 1924 of a heart attack before he could complete his investigation. The box remains kept in the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Job in Uccle, Brussels.

His preliminary report was published in a book that same year in French and then Russian, and was the only accepted historical explanation about the murders for 65 years until 1989. He wrongly concluded that the prisoners died instantly from the shooting with the exception of Alexei and Anastasia, who were shot and bayoneted to death, and that the bodies were destroyed in a massive bonfire. Publication and worldwide acceptance of the investigation prompted the Soviets to issue a government-approved textbook that largely plagiarized Sokolov's work in 1926, admitting that the empress and her children had been murdered with the Tsar. In 1938, Josef Stalin issued a clampdown on all discussion of the Romanov murders. Sokolov's report was also banned. The Ipatiev House was deemed to be not of "sufficient historical significance" by Leonid Brezhnev's Politburo and was demolished in September 1977 by KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, less than a year before the sixtieth anniversary of the murders. Yeltsin wrote in his memoirs that "sooner or later we will be ashamed of this piece of barbarism". The destruction of the house did not stop pilgrims or monarchists from visiting the site.

Local amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin and filmmaker located the shallow grave on 30–31 May 1979 after years of covert evidence-gathering and a study of the primary evidence. Three skulls were removed from the grave, but after failing to find any scientist and laboratory to help examine them, and worried about the consequences of finding the grave, Avdonin and Ryabov reburied them in the summer of 1980. The presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev brought with it the era of "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (reform), which prompted Ryabov to reveal the Romanovs' gravesite to "The Moscow News" on 10 April 1989, much to Avdonin's dismay. The remains were disinterred in 1991 by Soviet officials in a hasty 'official exhumation' that wrecked the site, destroying precious evidence. Since there were no clothes on the bodies and the damage inflicted was extensive, controversy persisted as to whether the identified and interred in St Petersburg as Anastasia's were really hers or in fact Maria's.

On 29 July 2007, another amateur group of local enthusiasts found the small pit containing the remains of Alexei and his sister, located in two small bonfire sites not far from the main grave on the Koptyaki Road. Although criminal investigators and geneticists identified them as Alexei and Maria, they remain stored in the state archives pending a decision from the church, which demanded a more "thorough and detailed" examination.

Ivan Plotnikov, history professor at the Maksim Gorky Ural State University, has established that the executioners were Yakov Yurovsky, Grigory P. Nikulin, Mikhail A. Medvedev (Kudrin), Peter Ermakov, Stepan Vaganov, Alexey G. Kabanov (former soldier in the tsar's Life Guards and Chekist assigned to the attic machine gun), Pavel Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, and Y. M. Tselms. Filipp Goloshchyokin, a close associate of Yakov Sverdlov, being a military commissar of the Uralispolkom in Yekaterinburg, however did not actually participate, and two or three guards refused to take part. Pyotr Voykov was given the specific task of arranging for the disposal of their remains, obtaining 570 litres (150 gal) of gasoline and 180 kilograms (400 lbs) of sulphuric acid, the latter from the Yekaterinburg pharmacy. He was a witness but later claimed to have taken part in the murders, looting belongings from a dead grand duchess. After the killings, he was to declare that "The world will never know what we did with them." Voykov served as Soviet ambassador to Poland in 1924, where he was assassinated by a Russian monarchist in July 1927.

The men who were directly complicit in the murder of the imperial family largely survived in the immediate months after the murders. Stepan Vaganov, Ermakov's close associate, was attacked and killed by peasants in late 1918 for his participation in local acts of brutal repression by the Cheka. Pavel Medvedev, head of the Ipatiev House guard and one of the key figures in the murders, was captured by the White Army in Perm in February 1919. He denied taking part in the murders during his interrogation, dying in prison of typhus. Alexandre Beloborodov and his deputy Boris Didkovsky were both killed in 1938 during the Great Purge. Filipp Goloshchyokin was shot in October 1941 in an NKVD prison and consigned to an unmarked grave.

Three days after the murders, Yurovsky personally reported to Lenin on the events of that night and was rewarded with an appointment to the Moscow City Cheka. He held a succession of key economic and party posts, dying in the Kremlin Hospital in 1938 aged 60. Prior to his death, he donated the guns he used in the murders to the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow, and left behind three valuable, though contradictory, accounts of the event. Yurovsky never expressed regret or remorse over the murders. Instead he reminisced, in a final letter to his children shortly before his death, on his revolutionary career and how "the storm of October" had "turned its brightest side" towards him, making him "the happiest of mortals". He and his assistant Nikulin, who died in 1964, are buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. His son, Alexander Yurovsky, voluntarily handed over his father's memoirs to amateur investigators Avdonin and Ryabov in 1978.

Lenin saw the House of Romanov as "monarchist filth, a 300-year disgrace", and referred to Nicholas II in conversation and in his writings as "the most evil enemy of the Russian people, a bloody executioner, an Asiatic gendarme" and "a crowned robber." The written record taking the chain of command and the ultimate responsibility for the fate of the Romanovs back to Lenin was, from the beginning, either never made or carefully concealed. Lenin operated with extreme caution, his favoured method being to issue instructions in coded telegrams, insisting that the original and even the telegraph ribbon on which it was sent be destroyed. Uncovered documents in Archive No. 2 (Lenin), Archive No. 86 (Sverdlov) as well as the archives of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Executive Committee reveal that a host of party 'errand boys' were regularly designated to relay his instructions, either by confidential notes or anonymous directives made in the collective name of the Council of People's Commissars. In all such decisions Lenin regularly insisted that no written evidence be preserved. The 55 volumes of Lenin's "Collected Works" as well as the memoirs of those who directly took part in the murders were scrupulously censored, emphasising the roles of Sverdlov and Goloshchyokin.

Lenin was, however, aware of Vasily Yakovlev's decision to take Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria further on to Omsk instead of Yekaterinburg in April 1918, having become worried about the extremely threatening behaviour of the Ural Soviets in Tobolsk and along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The "Biographical Chronicle" of Lenin's political life confirms that first Lenin (between 18:00 and 19:00) and then Lenin and Sverdlov together (between 21:30 and 23:50) had direct telegraph contact with the Ural Soviets about Yakovlev's change of route. Despite Yakovlev's request to take the family further away to the more remote Simsky Gorny District in Ufa province (where they could hide in the mountains), warning that "the baggage" would be destroyed if given to the Ural Soviets, Lenin and Sverdlov were adamant that they be brought to Yekaterinburg. Lenin also welcomed news of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth's death, who was murdered in Alapayevsk along with five other Romanovs on 18 July 1918, remarking that "virtue with the crown on it is a greater enemy to the world revolution than a hundred tyrant tsars".

Soviet historiography portrayed Nicholas as a weak and incompetent leader whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects, while Lenin's reputation was protected at all costs, thus ensuring that no discredit was brought on him; responsibility for the 'liquidation' of the Romanov family was directed at the Ural Soviets and Yekaterinburg Cheka.

Early the next morning, when rumours spread in Yekaterinburg about the disposal site, Yurovsky removed the bodies and hid them elsewhere (). When the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way to the next chosen site, Yurovsky made new arrangements, and buried most of the acid-covered bodies in a pit sealed and concealed with rubble, covered over with railroad ties and then earth () on Koptyaki Road, a cart track (subsequently abandoned) north of Yekaterinburg.

On the afternoon of 19 July, Filipp Goloshchyokin announced at the Opera House on Glavny Prospekt that "Nicholas the bloody" had been shot and his family taken to another place. Sverdlov granted permission for the local paper in Yekaterinburg to publish the "Execution of Nicholas, the Bloody Crowned Murderer – Shot without Bourgeois Formalities but in Accordance with our new democratic principles", along with the coda that "the wife and son of Nicholas Romanov have been sent to a safe place". An official announcement appeared in the national press, two days later. It reported that the monarch had been executed on the order of Uralispolkom under pressure posed by the approach of the Czechoslovaks.

Over the course of 84 days after the Yekaterinburg murders, 27 more friends and relatives (14 Romanovs and 13 members of the imperial entourage and household) were murdered by the Bolsheviks: at Alapayevsk on 18 July, Perm on 4 September, and the Peter and Paul Fortress on 24 January 1919. Unlike the imperial family, the bodies at Alapayevsk and Perm were recovered by the White Army in October 1918 and May 1919 respectively. However, only the final resting places of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and her faithful companion Sister Varvara Yakovleva are known today, buried alongside each other in the Church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem.

Although official Soviet accounts place the responsibility for the decision with the Uralispolkom, an entry in Leon Trotsky's diary reportedly suggested that the order had been given by Lenin himself. Trotsky wrote:

However,, there has been no conclusive evidence that either Lenin or Sverdlov gave the order. V. N. Solovyov, the leader of the Investigative Committee of Russia's 1993 investigation on the shooting of the Romanov family, has concluded that there is no reliable document that indicates that either Lenin or Sverdlov were responsible. He declared:

In 1993, the report of Yakov Yurovsky from 1922 was published. According to the report, units of the Czechoslovak Legion were approaching Yekaterinburg. On 17 July 1918, Yakov and other Bolshevik jailers, fearing that the Legion would free Nicholas after conquering the town, murdered him and his family. The next day, Yakov departed for Moscow with a report to Sverdlov. As soon as the Czechoslovaks seized Yekaterinburg, his apartment was pillaged.
Over the years, a number of people claimed to be survivors of the ill-fated family. In May 1979, the remains of most of the family and their retainers were found by amateur enthusiasts, who kept the discovery secret until the collapse of Communism. In July 1991, the bodies of five family members (the Tsar, Tsarina, and three of their daughters) were exhumed. After forensic examination and DNA identification, the bodies were laid to rest with state honors in the St. Catherine Chapel of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, where most other Russian monarchs since Peter the Great lie. Boris Yeltsin and his wife attended the funeral along with Romanov relations, including Prince Michael of Kent. The Holy Synod opposed the government's decision in February 1998 to bury the remains in the Peter and Paul Fortress, preferring a "symbolic" grave until their authenticity had been resolved. As a result, when they were interred in July 1998, they were referred to by the priest conducting the service as "Christian victims of the Revolution" rather than the imperial family. Patriarch Alexy II, who felt that the Church was sidelined in the investigation, refused to officiate at the burial and banned bishops from taking part in the funeral ceremony.

The remaining two bodies of Tsesarevich Alexei and one of his sisters were discovered in 2007.

On 15 August 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church announced the canonization of the family for their "humbleness, patience and meekness". However, reflecting the intense debate preceding the issue, the bishops did not proclaim the Romanovs as martyrs, but passion bearers instead (see Romanov sainthood).

Over the years 2000 to 2003, the Church of All Saints, Yekaterinburg was built on the site of Ipatiev House.

On 1 October 2008, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation ruled that Nicholas II and his family were victims of political repression and rehabilitated them.

On Thursday, 26 August 2010, a Russian court ordered prosecutors to reopen an investigation into the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, although the Bolsheviks believed to have shot them in 1918 had died long before. The Russian Prosecutor General's main investigative unit said it had formally closed a criminal investigation into the killing of Nicholas because too much time had elapsed since the crime and because those responsible had died. However, Moscow's Basmanny Court ordered the re-opening of the case, saying that a Supreme Court ruling blaming the state for the killings made the deaths of the actual gunmen irrelevant, according to a lawyer for the Tsar's relatives and local news agencies.

In late 2015, at the insistence by the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian investigators exhumed the bodies of Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, for additional DNA testing, which confirmed that the bones were of the couple.

A survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center on 11 July 2018 revealed that 57% of Russians aged 35+ "believe that the execution of the Royal family is a heinous unjustified crime", 46% among those aged between 18 and 24 believe that Nicholas II had to be punished for his mistakes, and 3% "were certain that the Royal family's execution was the public's just retribution for the emperor's blunders". On the centenary of the murders, over 100,000 pilgrims took part in a procession led by Patriarch Kirill in Yekaterinburg, marching from the city center where the Romanovs were murdered to a monastery in Ganina Yama. However, the centenary was overlooked by the Russian government, which did not organize any official commemorations.


Who won the Survivor Series in 1993?

The event consisted of four tag-team elimination matches and a bout for the Smoky Mountain Wrestling Tag Team Championship. The main event match saw the All-Americans, a team of face wrestlers from the United States, competing against the Foreign Fanatics, a team of heels that represented other countries. The All-Americans won the match when Lex Luger was the last man remaining. In an undercard match, four members of the Hart family competed against Shawn Michaels and a group of masked men. The original plan was for the Harts to face Jerry Lawler, with whom they were feuding, but Lawler was not able to appear at the event having been fired after being indicted for raping a 13 year old girl. The Harts won the match, but a confrontation between Bret Hart and Owen Hart after the match led to Owen turning against the family the following year.

Survivor Series (1993)

Survivor Series (1993) was the seventh annual Survivor Series professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). It took place on Thanksgiving Eve, November 24, 1993, at the Boston Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.

The majority of the feuds remained unresolved and carried on to future events. Bam Bam Bigelow was scheduled to face his main rival, Doink the Clown, but Bigelow's team ended up facing four other wrestlers wearing clown makeup instead. Matches from the Survivor Series also helped set up feuds for Royal Rumble 1994, the WWF's next pay-per-view. Razor Ramon's rivalry with Irwin R. Schyster intensified at Survivor Series and led to Ramon defending his WWF Intercontinental Championship against Schyster at the Royal Rumble. This event also marked the beginning of The Undertaker's feud with Yokozuna, and Yokozuna defended his WWF World Heavyweight Championship against The Undertaker at the Royal Rumble.

Several feuds surrounded the opening match, which saw the team of Razor Ramon, Marty Jannetty, the 1–2–3 Kid and Mr. Perfect face the team of Irwin R. Schyster (I.R.S.), Diesel, Rick Martel, and Adam Bomb. Diesel made his WWF debut on June 6, 1993 as a bodyguard for Shawn Michaels in a match between Michaels and Jannetty. Diesel's interference in the match helped Michaels to defeat Jannetty and win the WWF Intercontinental Championship. Diesel was also at ringside to help Michaels when Michaels faced Mr. Perfect for the title belt at SummerSlam 1993. Diesel attacked Perfect on multiple occasions during the match and ultimately caused Perfect to lose the match via countout. In September 1993, Michaels was stripped of the Intercontinental Championship by WWF President Jack Tunney. A battle royal was scheduled to determine the top two contenders for the championship. Ramon and Martel were the last two wrestlers in the ring, and they faced each other in a title match on the September 27 episode of "Monday Night Raw". Ramon won the match and was awarded the championship belt. Schyster had initiated a feud with Ramon in May 1993 after Ramon lost a match to The Kid (later the 1–2–3 Kid), who was competing as a jobber at the time. Schyster and his tag team partner Ted DiBiase made fun of Ramon for the loss and offered him a job as a servant. In response, Ramon teamed with the 1–2–3 Kid for a series of matches against Schyster and DiBiase, and he also distracted Schyster during a match and caused him to lose to jobber P.J. Walker. Adam Bomb was not involved in any feuds with his opponents at Survivor Series, but there was animosity between Bomb and his teammate Rick Martel. Bomb's manager, Harvey Wippleman, was at ringside to help Martel in a match against Ramon. Wippleman was standing in the way of the match, and Martel ran in to him. While Martel was distracted, Ramon pinned him to win the match. Martel then yelled at Wippleman and pushed him. Bomb came to the ring to defend his manager, and an argument ensued until Diesel and Schyster came to the ring to calm their teammates.

Jerry Lawler spent much of 1993 building a feud with the Hart family. Lawler had been using the nickname "The King" since defeating Jackie Fargo for the AWA Southern Heavyweight Championship in 1974. After Bret Hart won the WWF's 1993 King of the Ring tournament, Lawler confronted him and claimed to be the only king in the WWF. Lawler then attacked Hart from behind, hitting Hart with the scepter and throne that had been set up for the coronation ceremony. The feud escalated when Lawler involved Helen and Stu Hart, Bret's parents, by insulting them while serving as commentator for WWF television programs. In what was billed as a "Family Feud" match, Bret Hart was joined by his brother Owen, who also worked for the WWF at the time, as well as his brothers Bruce and Keith, both of whom had also wrestled professionally. Lawler's partners were three masked wrestlers known only as the Blue Knight, the Red Knight, and the Black Knight. Lawler was unable to appear at the event, however, as he was indicted after being accused of raping and sodomizing a teenage girl. Shawn Michaels, who replaced Lawler in the match, also had a rivalry with Bret Hart dating back to the previous year. Hart, who held the Intercontinental Championship for much of 1992, defended the belt against Michaels many times, including in the WWF's first ladder match. They had also wrestled each other in the main event of Survivor Series 1992, when Hart defended his newly-won WWF World Heavyweight Championship against Michaels.
The Smoky Mountain Wrestling Tag Team Championship was defended at Survivor Series as part of a working agreement between WWF owner Vince McMahon and Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW) owner Jim Cornette. The Rock 'n' Roll Express, who held the belts going into the event, had been feuding with The Heavenly Bodies over the title for over a year. The rivalry had been violent at times, including a barbed wire cage match and a Texas deathmatch.

Doink the Clown had annoyed Bam Bam Bigelow throughout October and November with such pranks as throwing water and confetti on him and dumping a pail of water on Bigelow's on-screen girlfriend Luna Vachon. He also tied a tripwire across the aisle during one of Bigelow's matches; after Bigelow fell over the wire, Doink attacked him with a broom. Bigelow responded by coming to the ring during one of Doink's matches and destroying Doink's toy wagon. The character of Doink was played by several wrestlers, who occasionally appeared at the same time. The match booked for Survivor Series advertised Bigelow teaming with Bastion Booger, who portrayed an overweight and dirty glutton, and The Headshrinkers (Samu and Fatu), a team of Samoans who were portrayed as savages, to face four Doinks. To promote the match, Doink appeared on the video wall that was part of the set during Bigelow's matches leading up to the event. The wall used a split screen to show multiple Doinks talking and laughing at the same time.

In the main event, the team of the All-Americans, which consisted of Lex Luger, Tatanka, and the Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner and Scott Steiner) faced the Foreign Fanatics, which consisted of Yokozuna, Ludvig Borga, and The Quebecers (Jacques and Pierre). The main storyline behind the match began that summer when Yokozuna, a Japanese sumo wrestler, challenged any American athlete to bodyslam him on the deck of the USS "Intrepid" during an event on Independence Day. After several challengers were unable to lift Yokozuna, Luger arrived via helicopter and successfully performed what was termed "the bodyslam heard around the world". Luger was granted a match for Yokozuna's WWF World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam. Luger got a victory via countout but did not win the title. In the dressing room after the match, Borga, a Finnish wrestler, interrupted Luger's celebration by criticizing Luger and initiating a new feud. The Steiner Brothers spent the fall 1993 feuding with The Quebecers, a Canadian tag team. They had faced each other several times since The Quebecers had won the WWF Tag Team Championship from the Steiners on September 13. Since arriving in the WWF, Tatanka had been on a two-year winning streak. Borga ended the streak on the October 30, 1993 episode of "WWF Superstars" by pinning Tatanka after hitting him with a chair. After the match, Borga and Yokozuna attacked Tatanka, causing kayfabe injuries that forced Tatanka to withdraw from the match at Survivor Series. The All-Americans recruited The Undertaker to replace Tatanka. On the November 15 episode of "Monday Night Raw", Luger defeated Pierre; as a result of a kayfabe injury in the match, the Foreign Fanatics had to replace Pierre with Crush, the sole American of the team. Crush was feuding with Randy Savage going into the event. They had been on-screen friends, but Crush was angry that Savage had not saved him from an attack by Yokozuna on the July 12, 1993 episode of "Monday Night Raw". To make his injuries seem real, Crush did not appear on WWF television programming for several months. He made his return on October 18, accompanied by Yokozuna's manager, Mr. Fuji, claiming that they sympathized with Crush's sense of betrayal by Savage. Savage tried to make amends with Crush, who then attacked Savage and announced that he had turned against Savage and the United States and was aligning himself with Yokozuna, Fuji, and Japan.

Prior to the televised broadcast, Billy Gunn defeated The Brooklyn Brawler in a dark match. The first match on the pay-per-view event saw Razor Ramon, Randy Savage, the 1–2–3 Kid, and Marty Jannetty face Diesel, Irwin R. Schyster, Rick Martel, and Adam Bomb. Prior to the match, Ramon announced that Savage was taking the place of Perfect, who was unable to appear. Martel and Ramon began the match in the ring, but Martel soon tagged out to bring Bomb into the match. Ramon performed a suplex on Bomb and attempted to pin his opponent. Martel tried to rescue his partner but ended up hitting Bomb instead and causing an argument. The 1–2–3 Kid entered the match but was overpowered by Bomb and Diesel. After the Kid tagged out, Savage performed a diving elbow drop on Diesel before getting the pinfall to eliminate Diesel from the match. Ramon was attacked by his opponents but eventually tagged Savage back into the match. Savage got distracted when Crush appeared in the aisle, however, which allowed Schyster to eliminate him from the match. Ramon then performed a Razor's Edge on Schyster and pinned him. Ramon attempted the same move on Martel, but Schyster snuck back into the ring and hit Ramon with a briefcase. Ramon fell out of the ring and was counted out of the match. The remaining four wrestlers fought back and forth, but the 1–2–3 Kid eventually pinned Martel after a sunset flip. Almost immediately, Jannetty performed a sunset flip on Bomb to win the match for his team.
The next bout was the "Family Feud" match that saw the Hart brothers (Bret, Owen, Bruce, and Keith) facing Shawn Michaels and His Knights. The knights wore masks to hide their identities, but it has been revealed that Jeff Gaylord was the Black Knight, Greg Valentine was the Blue Knight, and Barry Horowitz was the Red Knight. Ray Combs, then host of "Family Feud", told jokes to insult Shawn Michaels prior to the bout and later served as guest commentator for the match. Michaels began the match by wrestling Bruce Hart. Although Michaels was able to go on the offensive against the Hart brothers, the knights were unable to achieve much success against the Harts. At one point, all four wrestlers brawled in the ring, but Owen was able to eliminate the Black Knight after performing a missile dropkick. Michaels and the knights regained control of the match, but Bret turned things around by eliminating the Red Knight via submission to the Sharpshooter. Bret sustained a kayfabe injury after being thrown out of the ring and sat out of the match for a few minutes. Meanwhile, Michaels provoked Stu Hart into punching him. Inside the ring, Owen forced the Blue Knight to submit to the Sharpshooter, which left Michaels by himself. While Bret was standing on the ring apron, however, Owen ran in to him and got distracted. This allowed Michaels to pin Owen and eliminate him from the match. Bret dominated the rest of the match against Michaels until Michaels walked back to the locker room. As a result, Michaels was counted out, and the Harts won the match. After the match, Owen returned to the ring and yelled at Bret, blaming Bret for causing him to be eliminated from the match.

All four men began the SMW Tag Team Championship match in the ring. The Rock 'n' Roll Express (Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson) controlled most of the opening of the match with aerial maneuvers against The Heavenly Bodies (Jimmy Del Ray and Tom Pritchard). Del Ray tried to help his partner but superkicked him instead. The Heavenly Bodies gained the advantage after Pritchard performed a powerbomb on Morton, which Del Ray followed with a moonsault. Del Ray and Morton fought back and forth, with Del Ray performing another moonsault and Morton executing a hurricanrana. After all four wrestlers brawled in the ring once more, Del Ray hit Gibson in the back with a tennis racquet. Pritchard then pinned Gibson to win the belts for The Heavenly Bodies.
The next match pitted Bam Bam Bigelow, Bastion Booger and The Headshrinkers (accompanied by Luna Vachon and Afa) against a team calling themselves the Four Doinks. After Bigelow's team was introduced, Doink the Clown's theme song began to play, but immediately switched to the theme of The Bushwhackers and Howard Finkel introduced the pair as Luke Doink and Butch Doink as they came down wearing clown wigs, with Luke riding a scooter and Butch pulling a wagon. As the fans waited to see who would be the other two Doinks, the intro to Doink's theme played again and the two Doinks were joined by Mabel Doink and Mo Doink with their rapping manager Oscar Doink; as they came to the ring they were referred to by Bobby Heenan as "Doinks on a Mission". Headshrinker Samu was eliminated first after he bit several of the balloons being carried by his opponents. He was purposely offered one more balloon by the Doinks, which he willfully bit into. Samu was stunned to find out that the balloon was full of water, which caused him to stumble back in surprise and Luke rolled him up and pinned him. Later, Booger has a chance to pin Luke after he hit the Trip to the Batcave on him. However, Booger got off of Luke and went to the corner where Headshrinker Fatu offered him a banana. As Booger was looking to perform the move again, his teammates dragged him away and Booger landed on his knees. Luke and Butch performed their trademark battering ram on Booger. Mabel then executed a leg drop on Booger and pinned him. Down four wrestlers to two, Bigelow's team appeared to be making a comeback when Fatu began taking down his opponents with the carcass of a turkey that Afa had been eating from the entire match. He then performed a top rope splash onto Mo. Fatu got distracted, however, and examined a banana peel with curiosity. Butch entered the ring with a bucket and faked out Fatu by making like he was going to toss the contents of the bucket onto him. This resulted in Fatu slipping on the banana peel, and Butch pinned him to eliminate him from the match. Left by himself, Bigelow began brutally atracking three of the Doinks and seemed to get the upper hand when Mabel entered the ring and Bigelow was unable to do much to him. Meanwhile, Butch dumped a bucket of confetti all over Luna, which caused Bigelow to become momentarily distracted and Mabel and Mo sandwiched him in the corner. Bigelow fell, Mabel performed a splash on him, and the referee counted the pin as the other three Doinks piled on. After the match, the real Doink the Clown appeared on the video screen to taunt Bigelow.

In the final match of the evening, The All-Americans, consisting of Lex Luger, The Undertaker, and The Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner and Scott Steiner), competed against the Foreign Fanatics (Yokozuna, Ludvig Borga, Quebecer Jacques, and Crush). Scott Steiner and Jacques began the match, but Scott soon tagged in his brother Rick. Rick knocked Yokozuna out of the ring, but he was unable to perform much offense against Borga. Rick attempted a crossbody, during which Borga was supposed to catch him. Borga botched the move, but he pinned Rick anyway to eliminate him from the match. Crush faced Scott Steiner inside the ring, but Randy Savage then appeared in the aisle trying to get to the ring but was restrained by officials and The Smoking Gunns. Scott knocked Crush out of the ring, and Crush fought with Savage until being counted out of the match. Scott then turned his attention to Jacques before tagging Luger into the match. Luger eliminated Jacques with an elbow drop and a pinfall. Scott Steiner re-entered the match and executed a superplex on Borga. When he tried to pin Borga, however, Yokozuna entered the ring. Yokozuna performed a leg drop on Steiner and pinned him to even the match at two wrestlers each. Luger fought with Borga and Yokozuna before tagging The Undertaker into the match. The Undertaker gained control of the match, but Yokozuna turned the momentum around by performing his signature move, the Banzai drop, on The Undertaker. When he attempted the move a second time, The Undertaker sat up. The two men then fought outside the ring until both were counted out and eliminated from the match. Luger and Borga then fought back and forth until Luger performed a running forearm smash and pinned Borga to win the match. After the match, Santa Claus came to the ring to celebrate with Luger.

Razor Ramon continued with two of his feuds after Survivor Series. Irwin R. Schyster stole Ramon's gold chains, which set up a match for the Intercontinental Championship at Royal Rumble 1994. Despite interference from Shawn Michaels, Ramon pinned Schyster to retain the title. Michaels and Ramon then faced each other at WrestleMania X. Diesel got involved, but Ramon won the match. Ramon then defended his title against Diesel on April 13, 1994. Diesel won the match and became the new WWF Intercontinental Champion. Ramon regained the belt in a rematch at SummerSlam 1994, however. Meanwhile, the 1–2–3 Kid and Marty Jannetty continued with their push from the promotion and won the WWF Tag Team Championship on January 10, 1994.

Owen Hart challenged Bret Hart to a match after Survivor Series, but Bret refused to fight his brother. The two reunited to face The Quebecers for the Tag Team Championship at Royal Rumble 1994. Bret sustained a kayfabe injury during the match, which forced the referee to stop the match. Owen blamed Bret for the loss and attacked him after the match. They faced each other at WrestleMania X, where Owen defeated Bret. The rivalry continued, however, and the brothers feuded throughout 1994 and into 1995. Bret's feud with Lawler remained, but the two did not face each other again until In Your House 1 in May 1995. The feud was reignited at that time, and they feuded at several pay-per-view events in 1995.

Bam Bam Bigelow's feud with Doink the Clown remained unresolved for several months. They were in the ring at the same time during the main event of the 1994 Royal Rumble, which was a battle royal-style match. Bigelow attacked Doink and eliminated him from the match. The blow off match came at WrestleMania X, where Doink and his midget sidekick Dink faced Bigelow and his girlfriend Luna Vachon in a mixed tag team match. Bigelow and Vachon won the match to settle the feud.

The Steiner Brothers continued to challenge The Quebecers, but they were unable to regain the Tag Team Championship. As a result of their confrontation at Survivor Series, The Undertaker and Yokozuna faced each other at Royal Rumble 1994 in a casket match for Yokozuna's WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Mr. Fuji, Yokozuna's manager, recruited several heel wrestlers to help Yokozuna win the match. The Undertaker supposedly died and disappeared from the WWF for several months, although, in reality, he was simply recovering from injuries. He resumed the feud with Yokozuna upon his return, however, and defeated Yokozuna in a casket match at Survivor Series 1994. Luger also continued his rivalry with Yokozuna. As a co-winner of the 1994 Royal Rumble match, Luger was granted a shot at Yokozuna's WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Mr. Perfect, who had returned to the WWF, was the referee for the match and turned heel by disqualifying Luger during the match.

Ludvig Borga was scheduled to continue his feud with Tatanka in a match at Royal Rumble 1994. Borga sustained a legitimate ankle injury, however, and never returned to the WWF. WWF writers had also planned to have Borga feud with Luger, but they were forced to drop the storyline because of Borga's departure.

Crush and Randy Savage also continued their feud. They fought each other during the battle royal at Royal Rumble 1994 until Crush eliminated Savage. To end the rivalry, they faced each other in a Falls Count Anywhere match at WrestleMania X, which Savage won.

The attendance for the event was 15,509, which generated $180,000 in ticket sales. This was the lowest attendance for a Survivor Series event since 1989. The pay-per-view buyrate was 0.82, down from 1.4 the previous year, and was the lowest buyrate in Survivor Series history to that point.

The event has been rated by several sources. Adam Gutschmidt, writing for "Online Onslaught", stated that "many of the substitutions hurt the matches" and that "the main event was bland". "The Other Arena" opined that the Four Doinks match was the worst on the card and that the confrontation between Lex Luger and Ludvig Borga was boring. Scott Criscuolo and Justin Rozzero reviewed the event for "The History of WWE". Both writers gave Survivor Series 1993 a "C" rating and viewed the Family Feud match as the worst on the card. Matt Peddycord, writing for "411mania.com", gave the event a 5.5 out of 10 rating. He pointed to the crowd's chant of "We want Doink!" as evidence that fans were upset by the Four Doinks match.

Survivor Series 1993 was released on VHS by Coliseum Video on December 15, 1993 in North America. It was released in the United Kingdom by Silver Vision; the VHS version was released on March 14, 1994, and the DVD was released as part of the WWE Tagged Classics line (packaged together with Survivor Series 1994) on September 4, 2006.