YEKATERINBURG 1918

TO PLAY

Drag the Y_gameplan.gif and Y_pieces.gif (below) onto your desktop, resize as required and print onto thin card. In the case of the board you will want to enlarge the image and print in A4 landscape format. Cut out the pieces and fold along lines as indicated.

RULES

This is a game for between two and twenty two players.

Each player chooses a role and plays with the appropriate piece.

You will need a die. The player who throws the eventual highest score starts.

Players divide into two teams:

1. Those belonging to the Royal family contingent
2. Yurovsky and the members of his Cheka Detachment

Each player starts to play from their respective start point as labelled on the board.

The die is thrown in turn by members of opposing teams and each player moves around the board one room at a time, through open doorways only, according to the number on the die.

The player may move back and forth between two adjoining rooms if necessary to use up their number.

When a player’s piece lands in a room occupied by another player’s piece the player already present dies and is removed from the board and placed in the possession of the opposing team. If a player is killed by a member of their own team then the dead player is still claimed by the opposing team.

The winning team is the one that has remaining players on the board and their score is the number of players from the opposing team they have killed.

BACKGROUND

In the town of Yekaterinburg, situated in the Ural Mountains of Eastern Russia, is the house where on the night of July 17^th, 1918 the Russian Royal Family met its end.

Under instructions from VI Lenin and Sverdlov in the Central Committee in Moscow a twelve-man Cheka Detachment, led by Yurovsky, entered the house and shot dead the Tsar, his family, their Doctor, maid and dog. The corpses were taken into the woods, dismembered and buried.

On the morning after the murder Yurovsky sent a telegram to the Central Committee which read:

MOSCOW. THE KREMLIN. TO THE SECRETARY OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS, GORBUNOV. CHECKED WITH SOURCE. INFORM SVERDLOV THAT THE ENTIRE FAMILY MET THE SAME FATE AS ITS HEAD. OFFICIALLY THE FAMILY WILL DIE DURING EVACUATION.