Helen Rappaport concentrates on the Romanovs' time in the House of Special Purpose before 'political logic' dicated the deaths of the entire family, says Rosita Sweetman

THIS is the truly terrible story of the imprisonment and murder of the Romanovs, the Russian Imperial Family. The Tsar and Tsarina, their four daughters -- Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia -- and haemophiliac son, Alexei, who, along with their family doctor and three loyal servants, were put to death in a botched, and unbelievably bloody, bloodbath after three months cooped up in the spookily named "House of Special Purpose", in Ekaterinburg, in the Urals. The family were woken at 1am by their Bolshevik guards, led by hand-picked party appartachik Yakov Yurovsky, and herded down to a roughly prepared basement room "for their safety" (Czech armies were only 20 miles away), where they were shot, bayoneted, hacked and battered to death in a ghastly 20-minute orgy by barely compos mentis guards, fuelled by hate, (of the Tsars), adrenaline, killing madness and vodka.

It was murder most unbelievably foul, that Yurovsky and his band of drunken soldiers, then tried to cover up by dragging the bloodied and battered corpses out to a forest where they attempted to burn them with sulphuric acid and dump then down a mineshaft. When that looked as if it wasn't going to work -- the mineshaft wasn't deep enough -- the liquidators returned 24 hours later, pulled out the now naked bodies, and eventually, as the sun was coming up, and the horror of what had taken place in danger of being seen by peasants going about their work, buried them in a shallow grave by the roadside, after dousing the bodies in more sulphuric acid, smashing their faces to pulp to further deter recognition, covering the corpses with quicklime, and in an attempt to further confuse, the bodies of Maria and Alexei were interred in a separate grave having been burnt and their bones smashed with rifle butts.

Of course, Yurovsky and his men were only pawns in a much bigger game. The Tsar and Tsarina's fate, and the fate of their family, had been decided much higher up the line -- by Lenin himself, though he took extreme measures to distance himself from all such "dirty work".

As Helen Rappaport writes, "Human consideration were not part of either Lenin's or the Bolsheviks' mindset, only political logic". A logic that decreed that "no living banner" around which ordinary people could rally, would be allowed to remain. "Eradicating the Romanovs, destroying tsarism and everything it represented was a fundamental part of Lenin's policy of 'cleansing' Russia -- the ultimate act of political expendiency ... He was impatient to see all these class enemies wiped out wholesale ... Not quite genocide, but a new kind of necessary murder ... "

The high ideals of Marxism -- to each according to his need. From each according to his means -- imploded into mayhem.

The Tsar, who had brought Russia into the First World War, had prevaricated while the communists pushed for desperately-needed social change, allowed the Tsarina her dependence on Rasputin,the "mad monk", and the only man who could stop Alexei's bleeding, became the butt of everyone's fury.

As revolution slipped into mayhem, the savagery and brutality of Tsarist Russia was replaced by the savagery and brutality of Bolshevism (in the years after the Romanov murders, 13 million Russians died).

The great strength of Rappaport's book though is her tight focus on the royal family's final three months in Ipatiev House. The extraordinary bonds between the four sisters and their younger, delicate brother, cut off as they had been from most 'normal' society by their status, and their mother's and brother's delicate health, meant their world, was each other. Photo after grainy photo shows them entwined, all long hair, white lace dresses, huge sun hats and smiles, watched over by their adoring Papa, the Tsar. And if in Ipatiev House, he, or the Tsarina, or the family doctor, secretly knew what was coming their focus was making every day, amidst ever tightening deprivations and captivity, as normal as possible.

Breakfast was followed by chores, by mending threadbare clothes, by reading religious books to their sick mother, by afternoon walks in the garden, by supper, by games of bezique, by bed.

By being normal, the Tsar shielded them all as best he could from the horror ahead.

Shamefully, no one, but no one, in the whole of Europe, or the whole of Russia, came to help, despite the fact that the Tsarina was Queen Victoria's granddaughter, and the Tsar himself, first cousin to King George of England, who attended cricket matches at Lord's while final preparations for the assasination were being put into place, and allowed his adviser put him off the idea of offering the doomed family asylum ("There would be riots in the streets because she is German"). The same year the same adviser dreamed up the House of Windsor tag for the British Royals to mask their German origins.

Oh yes, it's not just Lenin who comes badly out of this story -- all Europe's royals, most of whom were direct descendants of Queen Victoria, and therefore directly related to the Tsar and Tsarina, knew what was to come for the unfortunate Romanovs, and did nothing.

In the years after the murders, such were the convulsions of war in Europe and Russia, the Romanov story thrived as legend, but it wasn't until a local amateur historian joined forces with a filmmaker from Moscow and found the original grave in 1979, and 10 years later, under perestroika, revealed their findings, that the truth finally emerged.

DNA testing established authenticity, and the forest where the bodies were dumped has since been sown with thousands of lilies, in Russian iconography "symbolising the restored innocence of the soul at death", Russian Orthodox Churches have been erected in Ekaterinburg and in the forest, and the family's bones interred in special tombs in St Petersburg. In the meantime, the industry that is Romanov nostalgia, Romanov tribute videos and special Romanov websites are all over the internet, and in Ekaterinburg itself a thriving tourist industry where you are "welcome to join a special guided tour and visit all Romanovs places".

July 17 this year was the 90th anniversary of the murders, and the publication of Helen Rappaport's book was timed to coincide with it. Footnotes would have been a good addition to her book, and perhaps just a few pages on Tsarist Russia to explain the savagery, but these are quibbles, she has told the human story, and the truly appalling tale of what man can do to man. And his wife. And their four completely innocent daughters. And their invalid son.

- Rosita Sweetman