The Home of the Last Tsar - Romanov and Russian History

Moscow, October 27, Interfax - Investigators consider it necessary to intensify the search for the remains of the representatives of the House of Romanov executed in 1918, senior criminal investigator Vladimir Solovyov of the Main Forensics Directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee told a press conference at the Interfax head office.

"I think it is necessary to step up the search and bury the martyrs with dignity, especially because there are grounds for the search. It is well known that the martyrs were buried in China," Solovyov said.

Head of the Chancellery at the House of Romanov Alexander Zakatov said that the martyrs were buried at an Orthodox church in China.

"During the cultural revolution in China the church was demolished. Now we know roughly the place of the burial," Zakatov said.

The expression 'Alapayevsk martyrs' (or the martyrs of the Alapayevsk mine) is used to call the members of the House of Romanov and the people close to them, who were executed by the Soviets on July 18, 1918, the day after the execution of the royal family, within 18 kilometers from the town of Alapayevsk near the Nizhnyaya Selimskaya mining site. Their bodies were dumped into one of the mines. On June 8, 2009, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office rehabilitated posthumously the Alapayevsk victims killed near Alapayevsk.

Only two of those executed near Alapayevsk - Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna and nun Varvara - were canonized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church.