Czar Nicholas II with his family. The short girl standing to his left is his legendary daughter Anastasia.
I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
— Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
On July 17, 1918 the Czar, his wife, his son, his four daughters and a number of servants were taken into the basement of the building where they were being held and brutally shot. The Romanov family has been trying for official state recognition of the innocence of the Czar for decades, but it’s finally happened. The Czar’s wikipedia entry has damning evidence that Lenin personally ordered the executions.
Wikipedia account of the execution:
With no hesitation, Yurovsky quickly informed the Tsar and his family that they were all to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only “What?” and turn to his family before he was assassinated with a bullet to the head. The Tsaritsa and her daughter Olga tried to make the sign of the cross, but were killed in the initial volley of bullets fired by the executioners, both suffering gunshot wounds to the head.
Skip to the end:
Anastasia and Maria were said to have crouched up against a wall covering their heads in terror until they were shot down by bullets, recalled [Yakov] Yurovsky. However, another guard, Peter Ermakov, told his wife that Anastasia had been finished off with bayonets. As the bodies were carried out, one or several of the girls cried out and were clubbed on the back of the head, wrote Yurovsky.
The murdered Romanovs and their servants were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1981, as “passion bearers,” or people who met their deaths with Christian humility.
