The outcome was obvious, the Tzar had to die. The only questions were how and when. Political expediency required it. The Reds and the Whites were engaged in a civil war that would determine the fate of Russia. Allowing the Whites to rescue the Tzar would provide them with extra incentive to continue fighting.

Years later Leon Trotsky would describe the decision as follows:

‘The decision…[to kill the Romanovs] was not only expedient but necessary. It showed everyone that we would continue to fight, stopping at nothing. It was needed not only to frighten, horrify and instil a sense of hopelessness in the enemy but to shake up our own ranks, to show that there was no retreating, that ahead lay either total victory or total doom.’

The outcome was determined but the details still remained. On April 30, 1918 the royal family arrived in Ekaterinburg, a Bolshevik stronghold. As relayed by Simon Sebag Montefiore at the train station the royal family was met by a mob who were shouting “Hang them here!” Montefiore described the scene further, “Setting up machine guns, Yakovlev refused to hand them over. After a three-hour stand-off, Goloshchekin presided over a motorcade that took the Baggage [the Romanov family] to their new home.” The Romanovs we’re in hostile territory with people actively seeking their death.

The Romanovs would remain in Yekaterinburg until their deaths. In Early July Goloshchekin returned to Moscow to determine if a decision about the royal family had been made. At that point according to Robert Massie the Bolshevik leadership was “still toying with Trotsky’s idea of holding a public trial at the end of July with Trotsky himself as prosecutor.”

The situation on the battlefield made the idea of a public trial unrealistic. As the white army got closer to Ekaterinburg action needed to be taken. Massie recalls “On July 12, Goloshchekin returned from Moscow and appeared before the Ural Soviet to declare that the party leaders were willing to leave the fate of the Romanovs in their hands. The commander of the Red military forces was asked how long Ekaterinburg could hold out against the Whites. He reported that the Czechs already had outflanked the city from the south, and that Ekaterinburg might fall within three days. Upon hearing this, the Ural Soviet decided to shoot the entire family as soon as possible and to destroy all evidence of the act.”

Montefiore also points out “ It is clear from Yurovsky’s orders, received while Goloshchekin was in Moscow, that Lenin had approved the killing of the entire family in discussions with Sverdlov in the Kremlin. The timing was left to the Urals commissars because it depended on the security of Ekaterinburg.”

In order to secure power and remove any threat to that power Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership determined that the Tzar had to die. On July 17, 1918 shortly after 2 am Tzar Nicholas II and his entire family were executed.

Sources: The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie