<P> After Ekaterinburg fell to the anti-communist White Army on 25 July, Admiral Alexander Kolchak established the Sokolov Commission at the end of that month to investigate the murders . Nikolai Sokolov, a legal investigator of the Omsk Regional Court, interviewed several members of the Romanov entourage in February 1919, notably Pierre Gilliard, Alexandra Tegleva and Sydney Gibbes . </P> <P> Sokolov discovered a large number of the Romanovs' belongings and valuables that were overlooked by Yurovsky and his men, in and around the mineshaft where the bodies were initially disposed of . Among them were dismembered and burned bone fragments, congealed fat, Dr Botkin's upper dentures and glasses, corset stays, insignias and belt buckles, shoes, keys, pearls and diamonds, a few spent bullets and part of a severed female finger . Only the corpse of Anastasia's King Charles Spaniel, Jimmy, was found in the pit . The shallow pit revealed no traces of clothing, which was consistent with Yurovsky's account that all the victims' clothes were burned before the bodies were thrown down the mineshaft . Sokolov ultimately failed to find the concealed burial site on the Koptyaki Road, photographing the spot as evidence of where the Fiat truck had got stuck on the morning of 19 July . The impending return of Bolshevik forces in July 1919 forced him to evacuate, bringing with him the box containing the relics he recovered . Sokolov accumulated numerous photographic and eyewitness accounts filling eight volumes . He died in France in 1924 of a heart attack before he could complete his investigation . The box remains kept in the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Job in Uccle, Brussels . </P> <P> His preliminary report was published in a book that same year in French and then Russian, and was the only accepted historical explanation about the murders for 65 years until 1989 . He wrongly concluded that the prisoners died instantly from the shooting with the exception of Alexei and Anastasia, who were shot and bayoneted to death, and that the bodies were destroyed in a massive bonfire . Publication and worldwide acceptance of the investigation prompted the Soviets to issue a government - approved textbook that largely plagiarized Sokolov's work in 1926, admitting that the empress and her children had been murdered with the Tsar . In 1938, Josef Stalin issued a clampdown on all discussion of the Romanov murders . Sokolov's report was also banned . The Ipatiev House was deemed to be not of "sufficient historical significance" by Leonid Brezhnev's Politburo, and was demolished in September 1977, less than a year before the sixtieth anniversary of the murders . Yeltsin wrote in his memoirs that "sooner or later we will be ashamed of this piece of barbarism". The destruction of the house did not stop pilgrims or monarchists from visiting the site . </P> <P> Local amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin and filmmaker Geli Ryabov located the shallow grave on 30 - 31 May 1979 after years of covert evidence - gathering and a study of the primary evidence . Three skulls were removed from the grave, but after failing to find any scientist and laboratory to help examine them, and worried about the consequences of finding the grave, Avdonin and Ryabov reburied them in the summer of 1980 . The presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev brought with it the era of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform), which prompted Ryabov to reveal the Romanov's gravesite to The Moscow News on 10 April 1989, much to Avdonin's horror . The remains were disinterred in 1991 by Soviet officials in a hasty' official exhumation' that wrecked the site, destroying precious evidence . Since there were no clothes on the bodies and the damage inflicted was extensive, controversy persisted as to whether the skeletal remains identified and interred in St Petersburg as Anastasia's were really hers or in fact Maria's . There was considerable dissent within the Russian Orthodox Church about whether or not the bones actually discovered in the forest were those of the Romanovs at all . The Holy Synod opposed the government's decision in February 1998 to bury the remains in the Peter and Paul Fortress, preferring a "symbolic" grave until their authenticity had been resolved . As a result, when they were interred in July 1998, they were referred to by the priest conducting the service as "Christian victims of the Revolution" rather than the imperial family . </P>

Who gave the order for the romanov family to be executed