Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky (Russian: Яков Михайлович Юровский, pronounced [ˈjakəf mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ jʊˈrofskʲɪj]; 19 June [O.S.

Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky was the eighth of ten children born to Chaim, son of Izka, a glazier, and his wife Ester daughter of Moishe (1848–1919), a seamstress.

This may have been prompted by the prejudice toward Jews frequently exhibited in Russia at the time,[1] which included antisemitic pogroms in the empire.

Citing the dire military situation on the Eastern Front, the Ural Soviet had decided in either late June or early July to execute Nicholas, and the decision was communicated to Yurovsky, the commandant of the Ipatiev House.

On the night of 16/17 July 1918, a squad of Bolshevik secret police (Cheka) led by Yurovsky executed Russia's last emperor, Nicholas II, along with his wife Alexandra, their son Alexei, and their four daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.

[3] Four members of the imperial household–court physician Eugene Botkin, chambermaid Anna Demidova, cook Ivan Kharitonov and footman Alexei Trupp–were also killed.

After Trotsky returned from the front (of the Russian Civil War) he had the following dialogue with Sverdlov:[4] My next visit to Moscow took place after the [temporary] fall of Ekaterinburg [to anti-Communist forces].

Ilyich believed that we shouldn't leave the Whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances."

To prevent the development of a personality cult of the former imperial family, the corpses were stripped and dismembered; then taken to the countryside, where they were initially thrown into an abandoned mineshaft.

When the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way to the next chosen site, he made new arrangements and threw the bodies into a pit on Koptyaki Road, a since-abandoned cart track 19 kilometres (12 mi) north of Yekaterinburg, and doused the dismembered remains with sulfuric acid before burying them and sealing the pit with wooden railroad ties.

Popular historian Edvard Radzinsky stated that Yurovsky's death was hastened by the clever administration of a lethal poison in the Kremlin Hospital by the NKVD.

[5] Yurovsky's eldest son Alexander, a Rear Admiral in the Soviet Navy, was arrested in 1952, but was released a year later after Stalin's death.