N. (Nikolai) Sokolov

Born in 1882, Nikolai A. Sokolov was a Russian investigating magistrate remembered for leading the inquiry into the disappearance and killing of Tsar Nicholas II and the imperial family after anti-Bolshevik forces took Yekaterinburg in 1918. His investigation gathered witness testimony and physical evidence at a moment when reliable information was scarce.

That work later reached a wider audience through The Last Days of the Romanovs, a book built from the results of his judicial examination. On many editions and library listings, he appears as N. or N. A. Sokolov, reflecting the transliteration of his Russian name.

Sokolov died in France in 1924. Though he was a magistrate rather than a literary figure in the usual sense, his writing remains important for readers interested in the Romanovs, the Russian Revolution, and the early efforts to reconstruct what happened in July 1918.