TRULY demonic monster though he was, many in the Western media still nurse an odd infatuation with Lenin, father of Russian communism. That was again reflected in much of the coverage of last month’s ceremonial burial of the martyred Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children, their bones at last laid to rest in the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul in St Petersburg, where the Tsar’s Romanov ancestors repose.

On my desk I have a thick packet from the SA and international press, dealing with this vitally important historic event: a final judgement on the Soviet period. From all this reportage one bleak fact emerges. On the critical question of guilt for the executions, the general media consensus is that the Romanovs were "executed by a Bolshevik firing squad," "assassinated by fanatics," "shot by a small band of Bolshevic zealots," "shot by Bolshevik secret police."

All of which illustrates once again the residual apologetic bias of many writers when it comes to Lenin and communism. Despite 72 years of official denials during the Soviet period, we know today that the killing of the royal family was directly ordered by Lenin himself; that the executions were approved by Trotsky and planned at the very highest level of Soviet power; then blamed on others, some of whom were shot. Purpose? An effort to eradicate any monarchist sentiment among the Russian people.

Proof of Lenin’s culpability in the murders is today beyond doubt. For a good many years now both Russian and Western historians have been busy ferreting out the truth about the Romanov assassinations. They have established irrefutably that the mass murders were certainly not the work of local zealots, acting on their own initiative.

As noted by Robert K Massie in his 1995 work, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, Leon Trotsky stated in his diary: "We decided (on the assassinations) here (in Moscow). Ilyich (Lenin) believed that we shouldn’t leave the Whites a living banner around which to rally." Trotsky in exile defended Lenin’s extermination of the entire family, writing:

the malignant dwarf who inspired The Great Terror, and Danton, the homicidal maniac who incited the Tuileries riots of August 1792 and the infamous September massacres. No doubt inspired by these events, very early on Trotsky said: "We must put an end, once and for all, to the Papish-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life."

What is now known about the murders cuts to the very heart of the official communist myth. Nicholas, a kindly and deeply well-intentioned man, together with his German-born Tsarina, Alexandra, their five children and their family physician, Dr Botken, were arrested by the Cheka in 1917. At the end of May, 1918, the imperial family was moved to Ekaterinburg, some 1 300 km east of Moscow and known till 1991 as Sverdlovsk in honour of Yakov Sverdlovsk, who acted as Lenin’s right-hand man in firming up the details for the royal family’s liquidation.

The Romanovs were installed on the second floor of a brick-and-stone house requisitioned from an engineer, one N N Ipatiev. The family suspected nothing when a member of the secret police, Yakov Yurtovsky, was appointed commander of the house. At midnight on July 17, 1918, the royal family, Dr Botken and three servants were moved to the basement, on the pretext that this was for their safety as there was unrest in the town. Massie’s details of the killings make grim reading:

"Yurtovsky re-entered the room followed by his entire Cheka, carrying revolvers. Nicholas, his arm still round Alexis, began to rise from his chair to protect his wife and son. He had just time to say ‘What . . .?’ before Yurtovsky pointed his revolver directly at the Tsar’s head and fired. Nicholas died instantly. Alexandra had time only to raise her hand and make the sign of the cross before she too was killed by a single bullet. Olga, Tatiana and Marie were hit.

"Demidova, the maid, survived the first volley and, rather than reload, the executioners took rifles from the next room and pursued her, stabbing with bayonets as she ran screaming, running back and forth along the wall like a trapped animal. At last she fell, pierced by bayonets more than 30 times.