This was one case in which date drives context. Dating the Tsar's killing--not murder--before the Bolsheviks' October coup and the outbreak of the civil war implies a very different legal judgement about their execution of the Tsar who was responsible for:

1. Numerous murders of civilians--1905's Bloody Sunday massacre.

2. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery.

3. Numerous pogroms against Jews, including the 1903 Kishinev pogrom my grandfather survived.

4. Continuing the bans on the Ukrainian language his two predecessors had instituted.

Just the first three of a much longer list of Nicholas II's crimes against his people.