In 1887, their grandfather, Czar Alexander the third had Lenin's brother put up against a wall and shot. How unfortunate for the czar who signed that death warrant to have his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren fall into the hands of the brother of the "nobody" he had had executed. The nobility had said that God's hand had given the royals the power and authority to rule Russia, but God's hand seemed not to have been much of a match to the bullet of Bolshevik soldiers.