PHOTO: the desecrated grave of the regicide Peter Ermakov in Ivanovo Cemetery in Ekaterinburg

Every year on 17th July – the day marking the anniversary of the murder of Emperor Nicholas II and his family – the grave of the Bolshevik revolutionary Peter Ermakov, has been vandalized by local monarchists, who douse his gravestone with red paint.

This annual protest began shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The red paint symbolizes the blood which this evil man spilled, and his involvement in the regicide.

Pyotr (Peter) Zakharovich Ermakov (1884–1952), was one of several men responsible for the murder of Emperor Nicholas II, his wife, their five children, and their four faithful retainers in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg.

He was also among the men in the firing squad, and considered to be the most bloodthirsty of the executioners. His Mauser revolver, which he alleges fired the fatal shot which ended the life of the Tsar is preserved today in the Museum of History and Archaeology of the Urals in Ekaterinburg.

According to his own recollections, it was he who also murdered the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the cook Ivan Kharitonov and the doctor Eugene Botkin. He often boasted of his crime, without feeling any sense of remorse: “I shot the Tsarina who was seated only six feet away, I could not miss. My bullet hit her right in the mouth, two seconds later she was dead. Then I shot Dr. Botkin. He threw up his hands and half turned away. The bullet hit him in the neck. He fell backwards. Yurovsky’s shot knocked the Tsesarevich to the floor, where he lay and groaned. The cook Kharitonov was huddled over in the corner. I shot him first in the torso and then in the head. The footman Troupe also fell, I don’t know who shot him … ”

PHOTOS: (above) Ermakov standing on the grave of members of the Imperial Family and their retainers at Porosenkov Log in the 1920s; (below) Ermakov (far right) posing with a group of prominent Ural Bolsheviks on the Tsar’s grave, his Mauser pistol can be seen in the foreground in front of P.M. Bykov, author of The Last Days of Tsardom (1934)

In the 1920s, Yermakov returned to Porosenkov Log where he had his photograph taken standing on the railway ties which concealed the second grave of the Imperial Family. On the reverse of this photo, he wrote: “I am standing on the grave of the Tsar”.

In 1951, at a reception, which gathered all the local Party elite in Sverdlovsk [Ekaterinburg], Peter Ermakov approached Soviet Red Army General Georgy Zhukov (1896-1974) and held out his hand. Frowning in disgust Zhukov looked Ermakov in the eye, and muttered, “I do not shake the hands of the murderers.”

Ermakov died in Sverdlovsk on 22 May 1952 from cancer at the age of 67, he was buried in Ivanovo Cemetery in Ekaterinburg.

In January 2022, the famous Russian sculptor Konstantin Vasilievich Grunberg has proposed replacing monuments of the Bolshevik leaders Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) and Yakov Sverdlov in Ekaterinburg.

Grunberg also called for debunking the image of the revolutionary “hero” Pyotr Yermakov. “People still bring flowers to his grave. We need to destroy this regicide’s grave!” the sculptor said.

PHOTO: Ermakov’s Mauser revolver, which he alleges fired the fatal shot which ended the life of Russia’s last Tsar is preserved today in the Museum of History and Archaeology of the Urals in Ekaterinburg

Click HERE to read my article Yakov Yurovskys’ ashes remain hidden from vandals in Moscow, originally published on 23rd November 2019

Click HERE to read my article The fate of the regicides who murdered Nicholas II and his family, originally published on 28th October 2020

© Paul Gilbert. 17 January 2023