Alexander Georgiyevich Beloborodov
Александр Георгиевич Белобородов
1891–1938
✕ Executed · Rehabilitated 1958
NKVD chief who signed the Romanov execution and joined the Left Opposition
"Inform Sverdlov the whole family have shared the same fate as the head. Officially the family will die at the evacuation." — coded telegram to Lenin's secretary after the Romanov execution, 17 July 1918
A Bolshevik who rose to prominence in the Urals, he signed the Ural Soviet's decision to execute Nicholas II and the Romanov family in 1918 as its chairman. As People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR (1923–1927), succeeding Dzerzhinsky, he oversaw Soviet police and penal administration. He joined the Left Opposition by signing the Declaration of 46 in 1923, was expelled from the party in 1927, recanted in 1930, but was arrested during the Great Purge and executed in 1938.
Career Timeline
- 1917Member, Ural Regional Party Committee
- 1918Chairman, Central Executive Committee of the Ural Soviet
- 1919–1920Full member, Orgburo; member, Central Committee of the RCP(b)
- 1919–1920Member, Revolutionary Military Council of the 9th Army
- 1921–1923Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, RSFSR
- 1923–1927People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, RSFSR
- 1930–1936Worked in Committee of State Purchases and People's Commissariat of Internal Trade
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRevolutionary Military Council member
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeFormer People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and Left OppositionistArrested 15 August 1936, sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court on 21 October 1937, and shot at Kommunarka on 10 February 1938. Posthumously rehabilitated in 1958.
The Execution of the Romanovs
As Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Ural Soviet in 1918, Beloborodov was a central figure in the execution of Nicholas II and the Romanov family. In June 1918, he approved an initiative by regional Cheka head Gavril Myasnikov to execute Grand Duke Michael, either in advance or after the fact. While the military commissar Filipp Goloshchekin was in overall charge of the Imperial family's incarceration at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg and Yakov Yurovsky was appointed commandant, the final decision to execute rested with the Ural Soviet, of which Beloborodov was chairman.
Along with Pyotr Voykov, Beloborodov directed the smuggling of fabricated letters written in French to the imprisoned Romanovs, claiming to be from a monarchist officer seeking to rescue them. Composed at the behest of the Cheka, these letters, and the Romanovs' responses written on the blanks or envelopes, were intended to provide a pretext for execution as the White Army advanced on the city.
On the night of 16 July 1918, with Yekaterinburg at imminent risk of capture by the Czechoslovak Legion, the Ural Soviet determined the executions could no longer be delayed. Beloborodov and Georgy Safarov remained at Cheka headquarters in the Amerikanskaya Hotel while Goloshchekin arrived at the Ipatiev House to personally direct the killings. In the early hours of 17 July, immediately after the execution, Beloborodov sent a coded telegram to Lenin's secretary Nikolai Gorbunov: "Inform Sverdlov the whole family have shared the same fate as the head. Officially the family will die at the evacuation." This telegram was later discovered by White investigator Nikolai Sokolov and became decisive evidence of the Romanovs' fate.
After the killings, Beloborodov and Yurovsky's deputy Nikulin oversaw the ransacking of the Romanov quarters, seizing personal items: valuables were piled in Yurovsky's office while items deemed inconsequential, such as family photo albums, were burned in the stoves. Only a day later, on 18 July, the Ural Soviet ordered the summary execution of the Tsarina's sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, and five other members of the House of Romanov at Alapayevsk.