Context: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12257526.trotskys-view-on-an-execution/

A more sober and objective view of the circumstances of the execution of the Romanovs can be found in Leon Trotsky’s Diary in Exile (1935) where he recalls the events of July 1918.

''My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Ekaterinburg. Talking to Sverdlov, I asked in passing: ‘Oh yes, and where is the Czar?’ ‘It’s all over,’ he answered. ‘He has been shot.’ ‘And where is the family?’ ‘And the family along with him.’ ‘All of them?’ I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. ‘All of them,’ replied Sverdlov. ‘What about it?’

''He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply. ‘And who made the decision?’ I asked. ‘We decided it here. Ilyich [Lenin] believed that we shouldn’t leave the Whites a live banner to rally round, especially under the present difficult circumstances . . .’ I did not ask any further questions, and considered the matter closed.

''Actually, the decision was not only expedient, but necessary. The severity of this summary justice showed the world that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Czar’s family was needed not only to frighten, horrify, and dishearten the enemy, but also in order to shake up our own ranks, to show them that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either complete victory or complete ruin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_the_Romanov_family

According to the official state version of the Soviet Union, the imperial family and retinue were killed by firing squad by order of the Ural Regional Soviet.^([19])^([20]) Historians have debated whether the execution was sanctioned by Moscow leadership.^([21]) Some Western historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the Russian Civil War.^([22])^([23]) This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky’s diary.^([24]) However, other historians have cited documented orders from the All-Russian Central Committee of the Soviets preferring a public trial for Nicholas II with Trotsky as chief prosecutor and his family spared.^([25])^([26])

A 2011 investigation concluded that, despite the opening of state archives in the post-Soviet years, no written document has been found which proves Lenin or Sverdlov ordered the executions.^([27]) However, they endorsed the killings after they occurred.^([28])

^(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror)

The Red Terror (Russian: красный террор,romanized: krasnyy terror) was a campaign of political repression and mass executions in Soviet Russia and other Soviet republics, which was carried out by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police force. It officially started in early September 1918 and it lasted until 1922,^([4])^([5]) though violence committed by Bolshevik soldiers, sailors, and Red Guards had been ongoing since late 1917.^([6])

Decreed after assassination attempts on Vladimir Lenin along with the successful assassinations of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and party editor V. Volodarsky^([7]) in retaliation for Bolshevik mass repressions, the Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution,^([8]) and the Paris Commune.^([9]) The policy sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.^([10])^([11])

While recovering from his wounds, Lenin instructed: “It is necessary – secretly and urgently to prepare the terror.”^([40]) In immediate response to the two attacks, Chekists killed approximately 1,300 “bourgeois hostages” held in Petrograd and Kronstadt prisons.^([41])

There is no consensus among the Western historians on the number of deaths from the Red Terror. James Ryan writes that there were “at lowest estimates” “on average” 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922,^([78]) and that the number of people shot during the initial period of the Red Terror is at least 10,000.^([55]) Estimates for the whole period range from 50,000^([79]) executions to an upper of 140,000^([79])^([80]) to 200,000 people, plus an additional 400,000 killed in prisons or in suppressions of local rebellions.^([1])

According to Robert Conquest, a total of 140,000 people were shot in 1917–1922, but Jonathan D. Smele estimates they were considerably fewer, “perhaps less than half that many”.^([81]) According to others, the number of people shot by the Cheka in 1918–1922 is about 37,300 people, shot in 1918–1921 by the verdicts of the tribunals – 14,200, although executions and atrocities were not limited to the Cheka, having been organized by the Red Army as well.^([52])^([82]) The lowest among the estimates “of those who died at the hands of the Soviet government” cited by Evan Mawdsley is a figure of 12,733 executed by the Cheka between 1917 and 1920 as estimated by Martin Latsis; Mawdsley writes that “Latsis’s figures seem too low, and Conquest’s too high, but one can only guess”, implying the figures of 50,000 victims presented by William Henry Chamberlin and 140,000 victims presented by George Leggett to be more plausible.^([83]) Ronald Hingley wrote that Chamberlin’s estimate “must be nearer the truth” than “1,700,000, which appears to be a considerable exaggeration.”^([3]) According to historian W. Bruce Lincoln (1989), the best estimations for the number of executions in total put the number at about 100,000.^([84])

Some contemporary historians present figures exceeding a million victims: Dietrich Beyrau [de] believes the number of victims of the Red Terror to be “up to 1.3 millions” compared to between 20,000 and 100,000 of the White Terror,^([85]) while a Russian historian V. Erlikhman, whose estimates are cited by Jonathan D. Smele, presents the figure of 1,200,000 deaths caused by the Red Terror compared to 300,000 victims of the White Terror.^([86])

In 1924, Popular Socialist, Sergei Melgunov (1879–1956), published a detailed account on the Red Terror in Russia, where he cited Professor Charles Saroléa’s counts of 1,766,188 executions. He questioned the accuracy of the figures, but endorsed Saroléa’s “characterisation of terror in Russia”, stating it “in general matches reality”.^([87])^([b]) Other sources have also characterized the widely circulated claim of 1,700,000 deaths to be a “wild exaggeration” and placed estimations closer to 50,000 over the three year Civil War period.^([89]) British historian Ronald Hingley attributed the exaggerated claim of 1,700,000 to a quoted statement from White Army leader Anton Denikin.^([3])