N. (Nikolai) Sokolov

Born in 1882, Nikolai Alekseevich Sokolov was a Russian magistrate, jurist, memoirist, and publicist. He is chiefly remembered for leading an investigation into the deaths of Tsar Nicholas II and the Romanov family during the Russian Civil War, work that later shaped the book most often associated with his name in English, The Last Days of the Romanovs.

Sokolov’s importance as an author comes from that unusual position: he was not writing as a distant historian, but as an investigator gathering evidence, testimony, and documents connected to one of the most famous political killings of the 20th century. That gives his work an immediate, documentary quality, even as readers today may approach it as both a historical source and a reflection of its turbulent moment.

He died in France in 1924, still relatively young. Though he is remembered more for a single subject than for a broad literary career, his writing remains part of the long historical record surrounding the fall of the Romanovs and the enduring fascination with their final days.