Section 05: Alapaevsk, 1918

The martyrdom of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and the nun Barbara: the path from the Convent of Sts. Martha and Mary in Moscow to a schoolhouse in the Urals, and the night of July 5/18, 1918, when they were thrown alive into the Nizhnyaya Selimskaya mine. This section traces the documented history — the refusals of rescue, the Cheka arrest, the confinement at Alapaevsk, the killing, and the recovery of the bodies — as the White-investigation materials and the standard lives attest it.

Contents

File Topic
Arrest and Exile The 1917 revolutions reaching the obitel; the mob searches; the refused rescue offers of the Kaiser and the Swedish minister; the arrest on the third day of Pascha 1918; Barbara and Catherine Yanysheva following voluntarily; Barbara’s insistence at Yekaterinburg; the Napolnaya School confinement and the Romanov prisoners
The Mine Shaft The night of July 5/18, 1918; the staged “abduction”; the Nizhnyaya Selimskaya mine and the documented method; the hymns from the shaft pinned to the Sokolov-era testimonies; the recovery of the bodies in October 1918; the bandaging of Prince Ioann’s wound and its evidentiary source; the perpetrators’ fates

How to Use

  • Read Arrest and Exile first for the chain of events that carried Elizabeth from Moscow to the Urals, and for the choices — hers to stay, Barbara’s to follow — that defined the martyrdom.
  • Read The Mine Shaft for the martyrdom itself and the forensic record that underlies the most-quoted details of the saint’s life.

Cross-References