Saint Petersburg, September 5, 2025, 13:41 — Regnum News Agency. Important historical documents about the execution of the royal family have disappeared in Saint Petersburg. Regnum News Agency has found out that for over 100 years they were kept by the descendants of the leader of the execution of the family of Nicholas II, Yakov Yurovsky. But until the moment of their disappearance, they tried not to remember them.
The papers, which contained valuable historical information, were kept for many years in the apartment of the grandson of the regicide Yakov Yurovsky, Vladislav, but his family did not tell anyone about it. The disappearance of the documents became known completely by chance after the death of Vladislav Yurovsky and his wife. A close friend of the family told journalists from the Regnum news agency about this. It turned out that the valuable documents, by chance, fell into the hands of swindlers. And it will probably no longer be possible to find them. Law enforcement officers are sure that the thieves most likely could not understand what kind of documents they got their hands on and threw away the "papers" as unnecessary.
The Grandson of the Regicide
Vladislav Aleksandrovich Yurovsky is a direct descendant of a man who had a profound impact on the history of Russia. But the man never discussed this with anyone. He lived with his wife Elga in one of the five-story buildings on Yakornaya Street in the Krasnogvardeisky District of St. Petersburg and tried not to attract unnecessary attention to himself. However, the neighbors knew well and passed on from generation to generation the story of an ordinary, at first glance, family living next to them.
"Earlier, during the Soviet era, such information was kept under the heading "secret". Now you can talk about it freely, but before, we would whisper to each other and only to the closest people, who could be trusted. My grandfather and my mother told me about it in secret. I was very surprised then, because the family was so intelligent - and then suddenly the grandson of the murderer of Nicholas II," explained Elga Yurovskaya's neighbor and friend.
Vladislav Aleksandrovich was a candidate of technical sciences and associate professor at the Krylov Naval Academy of Shipbuilding and Armament.
His wife Elga Pavlovna was a doctor of philosophical sciences, professor of the Department of Cultural Studies, Philosophy of Culture and Esthetics of the Institute of Philosophy of the Saint Petersburg State University. Elga Yurovskaya completed an internship at the Sorbonne University in Paris, which was available to only a few in the USSR. She was friends with the French existentialist philosopher and Nobel Prize laureate in literature Jean-Paul Sartre. Elga Pavlovna corresponded with him until the writer's death.
"They were a very good family, intelligent, responsive and kind people. They had a summer house in Estonia, they went there for the whole summer," said a friend of the family.
Vladislav and Elga had an only daughter, Marina, who suffered from cancer and passed away a few years after Vladislav Yurovsky's death. In 2019, a year after her daughter's death, Elga Pavlovna also passed away.
"Since 2015, they have been going through a bad streak. Vladislav returned from Estonia, was hospitalized with a heart condition, doctors tried, but could not save him, he died. Then in 2018, their only daughter passed away, she had blood cancer. She was diagnosed in her youth, but for many years she lived peacefully in remission. And after the death of her father, a relapse began. Elga Pavlovna was very upset by both losses, and her health was greatly weakened as a result," said a neighbor of the family.
Information about the stolen documents surfaced completely by accident during a conversation between Regnum journalists and the family's neighbors. It turned out that about a year before Elga Yurovskaya's death, documents about the execution of Nicholas II's family were stolen from an apartment on Yakornaya Street; they had been hidden more than 100 years earlier by the leader of the execution, Yakov Yurovsky.
Valuable historical information
Elga Pavlovna's friend helped her with the housework in the last years of her life, supported her after the death of her husband and daughter. They were very close, and the owner of the apartment decided to trust her with her secret. According to the woman, in 2018, elderly Elga Yurovskaya became a victim of fraudsters.
"Some people came to her when she was alone at home and deceitfully took documents from the cabinet. There were several folders there, but she could not immediately understand what exactly was missing. Then I found out that among these papers were very valuable historical documents that Vladislav Alexandrovich kept. They were inherited by his grandfather Yakov Yurovsky, Elga said that there were papers related to the execution of the royal family," the woman shared.
They were unable to find the fraudsters, and Yurovsky's descendants never made digital or paper copies of these documents. The woman's words were confirmed by the police. Elga Yurovskaya did indeed file a complaint regarding the theft of documents from the apartment of the regicide's grandson.
"In 2018, a request was received from this address to find and prosecute unknown persons who had fraudulently stolen valuable documents. However, the identity of the suspects and the location of the stolen goods could not be established," the agency's source said.
Law enforcement officials noted that most likely these were not hunters for historical relics, but ordinary thieves who might not have realized what they had gotten their hands on and simply threw away the stolen documents. Otherwise, the historical documents would have already surfaced in pawnshops or on specialized sites for the sale of historical valuables.
Who is Yakov Yurovsky
Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky was born on June 7, 1878. He is known as a revolutionary and regicide. Yurovsky supervised the execution of the last Russian emperor Nicholas II and his family on the night of July 16-17, 1918. He was appointed commandant of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, where the family was brought the day before the emperor's execution. Yurovsky claimed that he personally shot Nicholas II with his Mauser, while other participants shot the rest of the family, and finished off the survivors with bayonets.
Son and grandchildren
Aleksandr Yakovlevich Yurovsky was born in 1904. He was a rear admiral engineer of the Navy, took part in the defense of besieged Leningrad and in other battles during the Great Patriotic War. In 1941, Aleksandr Yakovlevich carried out a special mission to install 30 stationary naval artillery systems on the approaches to Moscow in the area of ​​Vyazma and Rzhev. After that, he became the head of the Artillery Directorate of the Navy, and in 1944 he was awarded the rank of engineer rear admiral.
He passed away in Leningrad on May 5, 1986. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, two Orders of the Red Star, the Order of the Great Patriotic War and medals.
He had three children - Evgeny (b. 1927) and Vladislav (b. 1929) and a daughter Tatyana (b. 1944).