A Russian historian said Wednesday that U.S. tycoons gave the order to assassinate the entire family of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II.
Pyotr Multatuli, a researcher with the Academy of Sciences, did not deny that the Bolshevik leadership in Moscow initiated plans to murder Nicholas II in 1918 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg but said a U.S. mission was behind the decision to murder the tsar's close family.
In an Argumenty i Fakty report, Multatuli cited secret conversations between the head of the Bolshevik Central Executive Committee and one of the executioners as proving that a U.S. financial-industrial organization told Russian officials of "the necessity of killing the whole family."
The order was sent to Moscow via a U.S. organization stationed in Vologda, Multatuli said, adding that its members saw the complete destruction of tsarist Russia as essential to fulfilling their plans to a fashion a unipolar world with the United States as the sole power.
