Leonid Ivanovich Sednev (

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

: Леонид Иванович Седнев) (1903 – 1941 or 1942) was a chef's assistant who, together with his uncle Ivan Dmitriyevich Sednev, served former

Emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

Nicholas II of Russia Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Pola ...

and his family during their exile in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

n villages of

Tobolsk Tobolsk (russian: Тобо́льск) is a town in Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh rivers. Founded in 1590, Tobolsk is the second-oldest Russian settlement east of the Ural Mountains in Asian Russia, and i ...

and

Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg ( ; rus, Екатеринбург, p=jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnˈburk), alternatively romanized as Ekaterinburg and formerly known as Sverdlovsk ( rus, Свердло́вск, , svʲɪrˈdlofsk, 1924–1991), is a city and the administra ...

from 1917 to 1918. Six hours before the Imperial family and their four retainers were murdered in the cellar of the

Ipatiev House Ipatiev House (russian: Дом Ипатьева) was a merchant's house in Yekaterinburg (later renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924, renamed back to Yekaterinburg in 1991) where the former Emperor Nicholas II of Russia (1868–1918, reigned 1894–1917), h ...

on the night of July 16/17, 1918, Sednev was taken to a neighboring house, where he was held until July 20. Officials from the Ural Regional Soviet then shipped him off to live with relatives in

Kaluga Kaluga ( rus, Калу́га, p=kɐˈɫuɡə), a city and the administrative center of Kaluga Oblast in Russia, stands on the Oka River southwest of Moscow. Population: Kaluga's most famous resident, the space travel pioneer Konstantin Tsiol ...

. Sednev is alleged to have written a brief set of memoirs of his time in the Ipatiev House, though its existence is disputed. There are conflicting accounts of his ultimate fate; according to one report, he was shot in 1929 in Yaroslavl on charges of participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, while other evidence suggests that he was killed during the

Battle of Moscow The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between September 1941 and January ...

in 1941; according to the obd-memorial.ru (CAMO) he was executed on the verdict of the tribunal of the Bryansk Front for an unspecified crime on 17 July 1942, exactly 24 years to the day the Romanovs were executed. On October 1, 2008, the

Presidium A presidium or praesidium is a council of executive officers in some political assemblies that collectively administers its business, either alongside an individual president or in place of one. Communist states In Communist states the presidi ...

of the

Russian Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (russian: links=no, Верховный суд Российской Федерации, Verkhovny sud Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is a court within the judiciary of Russia and the court of last resort in R ...

approved a petition to recognize the Imperial Family and many of their servants, including Sednev, as victims of political repression. However, of those listed on the original petition only Nicholas, his wife and their five children received mention in the verdict.

In popular culture

* Leonid serves as the narrator in the novel ''The Kitchen Boy'', giving his account of the last days of the Romanovs. * He appears twice in The Missing series by

Margaret Peterson Haddix Margaret Peterson Haddix (born April 9, 1964) is an American writer known best for the two children's series, ''Shadow Children'' (1998–2006) and ''The Missing'' (2008–2015). She also wrote the tenth volume in the multiple-author series '' ...

; in ''Risked'' he is a secondary character, and in ''Rescued'' he is the protagonist.

Notes and sources

References

* Rappaport, Helen (2014) ''The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra.'' St. Martin's Press. * King, Greg and Wilson, Penny (2003) ''The Fate of the Romanovs.'' John Wiley and Sons, Inc. * King, Greg and Wilson, Penny (2011) ''The Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson, and the World's Greatest Royal Mystery.'' John Wiley & Sons, Inc. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sednev, Leonid Victims of Red Terror in Soviet Russia 1903 births 1942 deaths Court of Nicholas II of Russia Soviet military personnel killed in World War II