Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of
Russia (Anastasia Nikolaevna
Romanova), ( ) ( – July 17, 1918), was the youngest
daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of
Russia, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia
, and his wife Alexandra
Fyodorovna.
Anastasia was a younger sister of
Grand Duchess Olga,
Grand Duchess
Tatiana and
Grand
Duchess Maria, and was an elder sister of
Alexei Nikolaevich,
Tsarevich of Russia. She was murdered with her family on July
17, 1918 by forces of the
Bolshevik
secret police.
Persistent rumors of her possible escape have circulated since her
death, fueled by the fact that the location of her burial was
unknown during the decades of Communist rule. The mass grave near
Ekaterinburg which held the remains of the Tsar, his wife, and
three daughters was revealed in 1991, but the bodies of Alexei
Nikolaevich and one of his sisters — either Anastasia or her elder
sister
Maria
— were not discovered there.
Her possible survival has been entirely disproven.
In January 2008,
Russian scientists announced that the charred remains of a young
boy and a young woman found near Ekaterinburg
in August 2007 were most likely those of the
thirteen-year-old Tsarevich and one of the four Romanov grand
duchesses. Russian forensic scientists confirmed on April
30, 2008 that the remains were those of the Tsarevich Alexei and
one of his four sisters. In March 2009, the final results of the
DNA testing were published by Dr. Michael Coble of the US
Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory,
proving once and for all that the remains of all four Grand
Duchesses have now been accounted for, and no one escaped.
Several women have falsely claimed to have been Anastasia, the most
notorious of whom was
Anna Anderson.
Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984, but
DNA testing in 1994 on available
pieces of Anderson's tissue and hair showed no relation to DNA of
the Imperial family.
Biography
Life and childhood
When Anastasia was born, her parents and
extended family were disappointed to have a
fourth daughter. Tsar Nicholas II went for a long walk to compose
himself before going to visit
Tsarina Alexandra and
the newborn Anastasia for the first time. One meaning of her name
is "the breaker of chains" or "the prison opener".The fourth grand
duchess received her name because, in honor of her birth, her
father pardoned and reinstated students who had been imprisoned for
participating in riots in St. Petersburg and Moscow the previous
winter. Another meaning of the name is "of the resurrection," a
fact often alluded to later in stories about her rumored survival.
Anastasia's title is most precisely translated as "Grand Princess,"
meaning that Anastasia, as an "Imperial Highness" was higher in
rank than other Princesses in Europe who were "Royal Highnesses."
"Grand Duchess" became the most widely used translation of the
title into English from Russian.
The Tsar's children were raised as simply as possible. They slept
on hard camp cots without pillows, except when they were ill, took
cold baths in the morning, and were expected to tidy their rooms
and do needlework to be sold at various charity events when they
were not otherwise occupied. Most in the household, including the
servants, generally called the Grand Duchess by her first name and
patronym, Anastasia Nikolaevna, and did not
use her title or "Her
Imperial
Highness." She was occasionally called by the French version of
her name, "Anastasie," or by the Russian nicknames "Nastya,"
"Nastas," or "Nastenka." Other family nicknames for Anastasia were
"Malenkaya," meaning "little (one)," or "shvibzik," the Russian
word for "imp." Anastasia also had a deformity of her left foot, as
did famous imposter, Anna Anderson.
Living up to her nicknames, young Anastasia grew into a vivacious
and energetic child, described as short and inclined to be chubby,
with blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair.
Margaretta Eagar, a governess to the four
Grand Duchesses, said one person commented that the toddler
Anastasia had the greatest personal charm of any child he had ever
seen.
While often described as gifted and bright, she was never
interested in the restrictions of the school room, according to her
tutors
Pierre Gilliard and
Sydney Gibbes. Gibbes, Gilliard, and
ladies-in-waiting Lili Dehn and
Anna
Vyrubova described Anastasia as lively, mischievous, and a
gifted actress. Her sharp, witty remarks sometimes hit sensitive
spots.
Anastasia's daring occasionally exceeded the limits of acceptable
behavior. "She undoubtedly held the record for punishable deeds in
her family, for in naughtiness she was a true genius," said
Gleb Botkin, son of the court physician
Yevgeny Botkin, who later died with
the family at Ekaterinburg. Anastasia sometimes tripped the
servants and played pranks on her tutors. As a child, she would
climb trees and refuse to come down. Once, during a
snowball fight at the family's Polish estate,
Anastasia rolled a rock into a snowball and threw it at her older
sister Tatiana, knocking her to the ground. A distant cousin,
Princess Nina Georgievna, recalled that "Anastasia was nasty to the
point of being evil," and would cheat, kick and scratch her
playmates during games; she was affronted because the younger Nina
was taller than she was. She was also less concerned about her
appearance than her sisters. Hallie Erminie Rives, a best-selling
American author and wife of an American diplomat, described how
10-year-old Anastasia ate chocolates without bothering to remove
her long, white opera gloves at the St. Petersburg opera
house.
Grand Duchess Anastasia enjoying the
outdoors at Tsarskoe Selo in about 1910.
Courtesy: Beinecke Library.
Anastasia and her older sister Maria were known within the family
as "The Little Pair." The two girls shared a room, often wore
variations of the same dress, and spent much of their time
together. Their older sisters Olga and Tatiana also shared a room
and were known as "The Big Pair." The four girls sometimes signed
letters using the nickname,
OTMA, which was
derived from the first letters of their first names.
Despite her energy, Anastasia's physical health was sometimes poor.
The Grand Duchess suffered from the painful condition
hallux valgus (bunions), which affected
both of her big toes. Anastasia had a weak muscle in her back and
was prescribed twice-weekly massage. She hid under the bed or in a
cupboard to put off the massage. Anastasia's older sister, Maria,
reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to
remove her tonsils, according to her paternal aunt
Grand Duchess Olga
Alexandrovna of Russia, who was interviewed later in her life.
The doctor performing the operation was so unnerved that he had to
be ordered to continue by Maria's mother, Tsarina Alexandra. Olga
Alexandrovna said she believed all four of her nieces bled more
than was normal and believed they were carriers of the
hemophilia gene, like their mother. Symptomatic
carriers of the gene, while not hemophiliacs themselves, can have
symptoms of hemophilia including a lower than normal
blood clotting factor that can lead to heavy
bleeding. Anastasia, like all her family, doted on the long-awaited
heir Tsarevich Alexei, or "Baby," who suffered frequent attacks of
hemophilia and nearly died several times.
Association with Grigori Rasputin
Her mother relied on the counsel of
Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant and
wandering
starets or "holy man",
and credited his prayers with saving the ailing Tsarevich on
numerous occasions. Anastasia and her siblings were taught to view
Rasputin as "Our Friend" and to share confidences with him. In the
autumn of 1907, Anastasia's aunt
Grand Duchess Olga
Alexandrovna of Russia was escorted to the nursery by the Tsar
to meet Rasputin. Anastasia, her sisters and brother Alexei were
all wearing their long white nightgowns.
The Romanov family at breakfast in
1910.
Courtesy: Beinecke Library.
"All the children seemed to like him," Olga Alexandrovna recalled.
"They were completely at ease with him." Rasputin's friendship with
the Imperial children was evident in some of the messages he sent
to them. In February 1909, Rasputin sent the imperial children a
telegram, advising them to "Love the whole of God's nature, the
whole of His creation in particular this earth. The Mother of God
was always occupied with flowers and needlework."
However, one of the girls' governesses, Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva,
was horrified in 1910 that Rasputin was permitted access to the
nursery when the four girls were in their nightgowns and wanted him
barred. Nicholas asked Rasputin to avoid going to the nurseries in
the future. The children were aware of the tension and feared that
their mother would be angered by Tyutcheva's actions. "I am so
afr(aid) that S.I. (governess Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva) can
speak...about our friend something bad," Anastasia's
twelve-year-old sister Tatiana wrote to their mother on March 8,
1910. "I hope our nurse will be nice to our friend now." Alexandra
eventually had Tyutcheva fired.
Tyutcheva took her story to other members of the family. While
Rasputin's visits to the children were, by all accounts, completely
innocent in nature, the family was scandalized. Tyutcheva told
Nicholas's sister,
Grand Duchess Xenia
Alexandrovna of Russia, that Rasputin visited the girls, talked
with them while they were getting ready for bed, and hugged and
patted them. Tyutcheva said the children had been taught not to
discuss Rasputin with her and were careful to hide his visits from
the nursery staff. Xenia wrote on March 15, 1910 that she couldn't
understand "...the attitude of Alix and the children to that
sinister Grigory (whom they consider to be almost a saint, when in
fact he's only a
khlyst!)"
In the spring of 1910, Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, a royal
governess, claimed that Rasputin had raped her. Vishnyakova said
the empress refused to believe her account of the assault, and
insisted that "everything Rasputin does is holy." Grand Duchess
Olga Alexandrovna was told that Vishnyakova's claim had been
immediately investigated, but instead "they caught the young woman
in bed with a
Cossack of the Imperial
Guard." Vishnyakova was kept from seeing Rasputin after she made
her accusation and was eventually dismissed from her post in
1913.
However, rumours persisted and it was later whispered in society
that Rasputin had seduced not only the Tsarina but also the four
grand duchesses. The gossip was fueled by ardent, yet by all
accounts innocent, letters written to Rasputin by the Tsarina and
the four grand duchesses which were released by Rasputin and which
circulated throughout society. "My dear, precious, only friend,"
wrote Anastasia. "How much I should like to see you again. You
appeared to me today in a dream. I am always asking Mama when you
will come...I think of you always, my dear, because you are so good
to me ..."
This was followed by circulation of
pornographic cartoons, which depicted
Rasputin having relations with the Empress, her four daughters and
Anna Vyrubova. After the scandal, Nicholas ordered Rasputin to
leave St. Petersburg for a time, much to Alexandra's displeasure,
and Rasputin went on a pilgrimage to
Palestine. Despite the rumors, the imperial
family's association with Rasputin continued until his murder on
December 17, 1916. "Our Friend is so contented with our girlies,
says they have gone through heavy 'courses' for their age and their
souls have much developed," Alexandra wrote to Nicholas on December
6, 1916.
In his memoirs, A.A. Mordvinov reported that the four Grand
Duchesses appeared "cold and visibly terribly upset" by Rasputin's
death, and sat "huddled up closely together" on a sofa in one of
their bedrooms on the night they received the news. Mordvinov
recalled that the young women were in a gloomy mood and seemed to
sense the political upheaval that was about to be unleashed.
Rasputin was buried with an icon signed on its reverse by
Anastasia, her mother and her sisters. She attended his funeral on
December 21, 1916, and her family planned to build a church over
the site of Rasputin's grave. After they were killed by the
Bolsheviks, it was discovered Anastasia and her sisters were all
wearing amulets bearing Rasputin's picture and a prayer.
World War I and revolution
During
World War I Anastasia, along with her
sister Maria, visited wounded soldiers at a private hospital on the grounds at Tsarskoye Selo
. The two teenagers, too young to become
Red
Cross
nurses like their mother and elder sisters, played
games of checkers and billiards with the soldiers and tried to uplift
their spirits. Felix Dassel, who was treated at the hospital
and knew Anastasia, recalled that the grand duchess had a "laugh
like a squirrel," and walked rapidly "as though she
tripped along."
In
February 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the
throne and Anastasia and her family were placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace
in Tsarskoye Selo during the Russian Revolution. As the Bolsheviks approached, Alexander Kerensky of the Provisional Government had them moved
to Tobolsk
, Siberia
.
After the
Bolsheviks seized majority control of Russia, Anastasia and her
family were moved to the Ipatiev House
, or House of Special Purpose, at Yekaterinburg
.
The stress and uncertainty of captivity took their toll on
Anastasia as well as her family. "Goodby," she wrote to a friend in
the winter of 1917. "Don't forget us." At Tobolsk, she wrote a
melancholy theme for her English tutor, filled with spelling
mistakes, about
Evelyn Hope, a poem by
Robert Browning about a young girl: "When
she died she was only sixteen years old," Anastasia wrote. "Ther(e)
was a man who loved her without having seen her but (k)new her very
well. And she he(a)rd of him also. He never could tell her that he
loved her, and now she was dead. But still he thought that when he
and she will live [their] next life whenever it will be that
..."
Grand Duchess Anastasia sits with her mother, Alexandra, and sister
Olga in her mother's sitting room ca. 1916.
Courtesy: Beinecke Library
At Tobolsk, she and her sisters sewed jewels into their clothing in
hopes of hiding them from their captors, since Alexandra had
written to warn them that she, Nicholas and Maria had been searched
upon arriving in Ekaterinburg, and had items confiscated. Their
mother used predetermined
code words
"medicines" and "Sednev's belongings" for the jewels. Letters from
Demidova to Tegleva gave the instructions.Pierre Gilliard recalled
his last sight of the children at Yekaterinburg: "The sailor
Nagorny, who attended to Alexei Nikolaevitch, passed my window
carrying the sick boy in his arms, behind him came the Grand
Duchesses loaded with valises and small personal belongings. I
tried to get out, but was roughly pushed back into the carriage by
the sentry. I came back to the window. Tatiana Nikolayevna came
last carrying her little dog and struggling to drag a heavy brown
valise. It was raining and I saw her feet sink into the mud at
every step. Nagorny tried to come to her assistance; he was roughly
pushed back by one of the commisars ..."
Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden told
of her sad last glimpse of Anastasia: "Once, standing on some steps
at the door of a house close by, I saw a hand and a pink-sleeved
arm opening the topmost pane. According to the blouse the hand must
have belonged either to the Grand Duchess Marie or Anastasia. They
could not see me through their windows, and this was to be the last
glimpse that I was to have of any of them!"
Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia
making faces for the camera in captivity at Tsarskoe Selo in the
spring of 1917.
However, even in the last months of her life, she found ways to
enjoy herself. She and other members of the household performed
plays for the enjoyment of their parents and others in the spring
of 1918. Anastasia's performance made everyone howl with laughter,
according to her tutor Sydney Gibbes. In a May 7, 1918 letter from
Tobolsk to her sister Maria in Yekaterinburg, Anastasia described a
moment of joy despite her sadness and loneliness and worry for the
sick Alexei: "We played on the swing, that was when I roared with
laughter, the fall was so wonderful! Indeed! I told the sisters
about it so many times yesterday that they got quite fed up, but I
could go on telling it masses of times ... What weather we've had!
One could simply shout with joy." In his memoirs, one of the guards
at the Ipatiev House, Alexander Strekotin, remembered Anastasia as
"very friendly and full of fun," while another guard said Anastasia
was "a very charming devil! She was mischievous and, I think,
rarely tired. She was lively, and was fond of performing comic
mimes with the dogs, as though they were performing in a circus."
Yet another of the guards, however, called the youngest grand
duchess "offensive and a terrorist" and complained that her
occasionally provocative comments sometimes caused tension in the
ranks. In the summer, the privations of the captivity affected her
most grievously, and at one point she became so upset about the
locked, painted windows that she burst one open to look outside and
get fresh air. A sentry saw her and fired, narrowly missing her.
She did not try again.
On July 14, 1918, local priests at Yekaterinburg conducted a
private church service for the family. They reported that Anastasia
and her family, contrary to custom, fell on their knees during the
prayer for the dead, and that the girls had become despondent,
hopeless, and no longer sang the replies in his service. Noticing
this dramatic change in their demeanor since his last visit, one
Priest told the other, "Something has happened to them in
there".
Anastasia was executed along with her family by a
firing squad in the early morning
of July 17, 1918. The execution was carried out by forces of the
Bolshevik secret police under the command
of
Yakov Yurovsky.
Captivity and execution
After the
Bolshevik revolution in
October 1917, Russia quickly disintegrated into civil war.
Negotiations for the release of the Romanovs between their
Bolshevik (commonly referred to as 'Reds') captors and their
extended family, many of whom were prominent members of the Royal
Houses of Europe, stalled. As the Whites (loyalists still faithful
to the Tsar and the principles of autocracy) advanced toward
Yekaterinburg the Reds were in a precarious situation. The Reds
knew Yekaterinburg would fall to the better manned and equipped
White Army. When the Whites reached
Yekaterinburg, the Imperial Family had simply disappeared. The most
widely accepted account was that the family had been executed.
This was
due to an investigation by White Army Investigator Nicholas
Sokolov, who came to the conclusion based on items that had
belonged to the family being found thrown down a mine shaft at Ganina Yama
.
The "Yurovsky Note", an account of the event filed by Yurovsky to
his Bolshevik superiors following the execution, was found in 1989
and detailed in Edvard Radzinsky's 1992 book
The Last
Tsar. According to the note, on the night of the murders the
family was awakened and told to dress. They were told they were
being moved to a new location to ensure their safety in
anticipation of the violence that might ensue when the White Army
reached Yekaterinburg. Once dressed, the family and the small
circle of servants who had remained with them were herded into a
small room in the house's sub-basement and told to wait. Alexandra
and Alexei sat in chairs provided by guards at the empress'
request. After several minutes, the executioners entered the room,
led by Yurovsky. Yurovsky quickly informed the Tsar and his family
that they were to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only
"What?" and turn to his family before he was killed by several
bullets to the chest (not, as is commonly stated, to the head; his
skull, recovered in 1991, bears no bullet wounds). The Tsar, the
empress and two menservants were killed in the first episode of
gunfire; Marie, Dr Botkin and the empress' maid Demidova were
wounded. Thick smoke had filled the room from so many weapons being
fired at close quarters, as well as from plaster dust released from
the walls by bullets. To allow the haze to clear, the gunmen left
the room for some minutes, leaving all the victims behind. When the
gunman returned, Dr Botkin was shot and the Tsarevich Alexei was
slaughtered, one gunman repeatedly trying to shoot or stab the boy
in the torso. The jewels sewn in his clothes protected him, and
finally another gunman fired two shots into his head. Tatiana and
Olga were then killed by single bullets to the head.
The last victims, Maria, Anastasia and the maid Demidova, were on
the floor beneath the room's one window. As the gunman approached,
Maria stood and struggled with Ermakov as he tried to stab her. The
jewels in her clothing shielded her, and Ermakov claimed that he
killed her with a shot to the head. Ermakov then struggled with
Anastasia, failed to stab her, and said he killed her, too, with a
shot to the head. Maria's skull shows no trace of bullet wounds and
it is unclear how she died. Ermakov was quite drunk during the
murders and possibly his shot only creased Maria's scalp, knocking
her unconscious and producing considerable blood flow, but not
killing her. Then, as the bodies were taken out of the cellar room,
two of the grand duchesses showed signs of life. One sat up and
screamed, throwing her arm over her head, while the other, bleeding
from the mouth, moaned and moved slightly. Since the head wounds
inflicted on Olga and Tatiana were instantly fatal, it is likely
that Marie, perhaps only unconscious, was the sister who screamed,
while Anastasia may still have been able to move and moan. Although
Ermakov's archived statement does not say so, he told his wife that
Anastasia was finished off with
bayonets,
while Yurovsky wrote that as the bodies were carried out, one or
more of the girls cried out and were clubbed on the back of the
head. But again, the back of Maria's skull shows no traces of
violence, and Anastasia's burned and fragmented remains, identified
in 2009, offer no clues to the cause of her death.
False reports of survival and identification of Romanov
remains
Anastasia's supposed survival was one of the celebrated mysteries
of the 20th century.
Anna Anderson,
the most notorious Anastasia
impostor, first surfaced publicly between
1920 and 1922. She contended that she had feigned death amongst the
bodies of her family members and servants, and was able to make her
escape with the help of a compassionate guard who rescued her from
amongst the corpses after noticing that she was still alive. Her
legal battle for recognition from 1938 to 1970 continued a lifelong
controversy and was the longest running case ever heard by the
German courts where it was officially filed. The final decision of
the court was that Anderson had not provided sufficient proof to
claim the identity of the grand duchess.
Anderson died in 1984 and her body was cremated. DNA tests were
conducted in 1994 on a tissue sample from Anderson located in a
hospital and the blood of
Prince Philip, Duke of
Edinburgh, a grandnephew of Empress Alexandra. According to Dr.
Gill who conducted the tests, "If you accept that these samples
came from Anna Anderson, then Anna Anderson could not be related to
Tsar Nicholas or Tsarina Alexandra."
Anderson's
mitochondrial DNA was a
match with a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska, a missing
Polish factory worker. Some supporters of Anderson's claim
acknowledged that the DNA tests proving she could not have been the
Grand Duchess had "won the day."
Anna Anderson was one of at least ten women who claimed to be
Anastasia. Some other lesser known claimants were
Nadezhda Ivanovna Vasilyeva and
Eugenia Smith.
Two young women
claiming to be Anastasia and her sister Maria were taken in by a
priest in the Ural
Mountains
in 1919
where they lived as nuns until their deaths in 1964. They
were buried under the names Anastasia and Maria Nikolaevna.
Rumors of Anastasia's survival were embellished with various
contemporary reports of trains and houses being searched for
'Anastasia Romanov' by Bolshevik soldiers and secret police.
When she
was briefly imprisoned at Perm
in 1918,
Princess Helena Petrovna, the wife
of Anastasia's distant cousin, Prince Ioann
Konstantinovich of Russia, reported that a guard brought a girl
who called herself Anastasia Romanova to her cell and asked if the
girl was the daughter of the Tsar. Helena Petrovna said she
did not recognize the girl and the guard took her away. Although
other witnesses in Perm later reported that they saw Anastasia, her
mother
Alexandra
Fyodorovna and sisters in Perm after the murder, that story is
now widely discredited as nothing more than a rumor. Ironically, it
now appears that rumors started to hide the fact that the family
was dead actually fueled the rumors they were alive. A few days
after they had been executed, the German government sent several
telegrams to Russia demanding 'the safety of the princesses of
German blood'. Russia had recently signed a
peace treaty with the Germans, and did not want
to upset them by letting them know the women were dead, so they
told them they had been moved to a safer location. This may well be
the source of the 'Perm' stories.
In another incident, eight witnesses reported the recapture of a
young woman after an apparent escape attempt in September 1918 at a
railway station at Siding 37, northwest of Perm. These witnesses
were Maxim Grigoyev, Tatiana Sitnikova and her son Fyodor Sitnikov,
Ivan Kuklin and Matrina Kuklina, Vassily Ryabov, Ustinya Varankina,
and Dr. Pavel Utkin, a physician who treated the girl after the
incident. Some of the witnesses identified the girl as Anastasia
when they were shown photographs of the grand duchess by
White Russian Army investigators. Utkin also
told the White Russian Army investigators that the injured girl,
whom he treated at
Cheka headquarters in Perm,
told him, "I am the daughter of the ruler, Anastasia." Utkin
obtained a prescription from a
pharmacy for
a patient named "N" at the orders of the secret police. White Army
investigators later independently located records for the
prescription. During the same time period in mid-1918 there were
several reports of young people in Russia passing themselves off as
Romanov escapees. Boris Soloviev, the husband of Rasputin's
daughter
Maria, defrauded prominent
Russian families by asking for money for a Romanov impostor to
escape to China. Soloviev also found young women willing to
masquerade as one of the grand duchesses to assist in deceiving the
families he had defrauded.
Some biographer' accounts speculated that the opportunity for one
or more of the guards to rescue a survivor existed. Yakov Yurovsky
demanded that the guards come to his office and turn over items
they had stolen following the murder. There was reportedly a span
of time when the bodies of the victims were left largely unattended
in the truck, in the basement and in the corridor of the house.
Some guards who had not participated in the murders and had been
sympathetic to the grand duchesses were reportedly left in the
basement with the bodies.
There
were also reports from Bulgaria
of the survival of Anastasia and her younger
brother Tsarevich Alexei. In 1953, Peter Zamiatkin, who was
reportedly a member of the guard of the
Russian
Imperial Family, told a 16-year-old fellow hospital patient
that he had taken Anastasia and Alexei to his birth village near
Odessa at the request of the Tsar. After the assassination of the
rest of the royal family, Zamiatkin reportedly escaped with the
children via ship, sailing from Odessa to Alexandria.
The alleged
survivors, "Anastasia" and "Alexei," reportedly lived out their
lives under assumed names in the Bulgarian town of Gabarevo near
Kazanlak
. The Bulgarian Anastasia claimant called
herself
Eleonora Albertovna Kruger
and died in 1954.
Romanov graves
In 1991,
the presumed burial site of the Imperial family and their servants
was excavated in the woods outside Yekaterinburg. The grave had been found nearly a decade
earlier, but was kept hidden by its discoverers from the Communists
who still ruled Russia when the grave was originally found. The
grave only held nine of the expected eleven sets of remains. DNA
and skeletal analysis matched these remains to Tsar Nicholas II,
Tsarina Alexandra, and three of the four Grand Duchesses (Olga,
Tatiana and Maria). The other remains, with unrelated DNA,
correspond to the family's doctor (
Yevgeny
Botkin), their valet (
Alexei
Trupp), their cook (
Ivan
Kharitonov) and Alexandra's maid (
Anna
Demidova). The late forensic expert Dr. William Maples decided
that the Tsarevitch Alexei and Anastasia's bodies were missing from
the family's grave. Russian scientists contested this conclusion,
however, claiming that it was the body of
Maria
that was missing. The Russians identified Anastasia by using a
computer program to compare photos
of the youngest grand duchess with the skulls of the victims from
the mass grave. They estimated the height and width of the skulls
where pieces of bone were missing. American scientists found this
method inexact.
American scientists thought the missing body to be Anastasia
because none of the female skeletons showed the evidence of
immaturity, such as an immature collarbone, undescended
wisdom teeth, or immature vertebrae in the
back, that they would have expected to find in a seventeen year
old. In 1998, when the remains of the Imperial Family were finally
interred, a body measuring approximately 5'7" was buried under the
name of Anastasia. Photographs taken of her standing beside her
three sisters up until six months before the murders demonstrate
that Anastasia was several inches shorter than all of them.
The account of the "Yurovsky Note" indicated that two of the bodies
were removed from the main grave and cremated at an undisclosed
area in order to further disguise the burials of the Tsar and his
retinue, if the remains were discovered by the Whites, since the
body count would not be correct. Searches of the area in subsequent
years failed to turn up a cremation site or the remains of the two
missing Romanov children. However, on August 23, 2007, a Russian
archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial
skeletons at a bonfire site near Yekaterinburg that appeared to
match the site described in Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists
said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of
ten and thirteen years at the time of his death and of a young
woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three
years old. Anastasia was seventeen years, one month old at the time
of the assassination, while her sister Maria was nineteen years,
one month old and her brother Alexei was two weeks shy of his
fourteenth birthday. Anastasia's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana
were twenty-two and twenty-one years old at the time of the
assassination. Along with the remains of the two bodies,
archaeologists found "shards of a container of
sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a
wooden box, and bullets of various caliber." The bones were found
using
metal detectors and metal rods
as probes.
DNA
testing by multiple international laboratories such as the Armed Forces DNA
Identification Laboratory and Innsbruck
Medical University
confirmed that the remains belong to the Tsarevich
Alexei and to one of his sisters, proving once and for all that
every member of the family, including Anastasia, died in
1918. The parents and all five children are now accounted
for, and each has his or her own unique
DNA
profile.
Sainthood
- For more information, see Canonization of the
Romanovs
In 2000, Anastasia and her family were
canonized as
passion
bearers by the
Russian
Orthodox Church. The family had previously been canonized in
1981 by the
Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad as
holy martyrs.
The
bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their
daughters were finally interred in the St. Catherine Chapel at
St. Peter
and Paul Cathedral
in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998, eighty years
after they were murdered.
Influence on culture
The purported survival of Anastasia has been the subject of both
theatrical and
made-for-television
films. The earliest, made in 1928, was called
Clothes Make the
Woman. The story followed a woman who turns up to play the
part of a rescued Anastasia for a Hollywood film, and ends up being
recognized by the Russian soldier who originally rescued her from
her would-be assassins.
The most famous is probably the highly fictionalized 1956
Anastasia starring
Ingrid Bergman as
Anna Anderson,
Yul
Brynner as General Bounine (a
fictional character based on several
actual men), and
Helen Hayes as the
Dowager Empress
Marie, Anastasia's paternal grandmother.
The film tells the
story of a woman from an asylum who appears in Paris
in 1928 and
is captured by several Russian émigrés who feed her information so
that they can fool Anastasia's grandmother into thinking Anderson
actually is her granddaughter in order to obtain a Tsarist
fortune. As time goes by they begin to suspect that this
"Madame A. Anderson" really is the missing Grand Duchess.
The story served as the basis for the short-lived 1965 musical
Anya.
In 1986, NBC broadcast a
mini-series
loosely based on a book published in 1983 by Peter Kurth called
Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson. The movie,
Anastasia: The
Mystery of Anna was a two-part series which began with the
young Anastasia Nicholaievna and her family being sent to
Yekaterinburg, where they are executed by Bolshevik soldiers. The
story then moves to 1923, and while taking great liberties,
fictitiously follows the claims of the woman known as Anna
Anderson.
Amy Irving portrays the adult
Anna Anderson.
The most recent film is 1997's
Anastasia, an animated
musical adaptation of the story of Anastasia's fictional escape
from Russia and her subsequent quest for recognition. The film took
greater liberties with historical fact than the 1956 film of the
same name.
In
The Romanov Prophecy, a
2004 novel by
Steve Berry,
the wounded Anastasia and Alexei are rescued by guards and spirited
away to the United States, where they live under assumed names with
a family of loyalists paid by
Felix
Yusupov. In the novel, both children died of illnesses in the
1920s, but not before Alexei married and fathered a son.
Ancestry
References
- Bokhanov Alexander, Knodt Manfred, Oustimenko Vladimir,
Peregudova Zinaida, Tyutynnik Lyubov (1993). The Romanovs:
Love, Power, and Tragedy. Leppi Publications. ISBN
0-9521-6440-X
- Christopher Peter, Kurth Peter, Radzinsky Edvard (1995).
Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra. Little Brown and Co. ISBN
0-3165-0787-3
- Dehn, Lili (1922). The
Real Tsaritsa. alexanderpalace.org.
- Eagar, Margaret (1906). Six Years at the Russian Court.
alexanderpalace.org.
- Gilliard, Pierre. Thirteen Years at the Russian Court
alexanderpalace.org.
- King Greg, Wilson Penny (2003). The Fate of the
Romanovs. John Wiley and
Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-20768-3
- Kurth, Peter (1983). Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna
Anderson. Back Bay Books. ISBN 0-316-50717-2
- Lovell, James Blair (1991). Anastasia: The Lost
Princess. Regnery Gateway. ISBN 0-89526-536-2
- Mager, Hugo (1998). Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of
Russia. Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc. ISBN
0-7867-0678-3
- Massie, Robert K. (1967). Nicholas and Alexandra.
Dell Publishing Co. ISBN
0-4401-6358-7
- Massie, Robert K. (1995). The Romanovs: The Final
Chapter. Random House. ISBN
394-58048-6
- Maylunas Andrei, Mironenko Sergei (eds), Galy, Darya
(translator) (1997). A Lifelong Passion, Nicholas and
Alexandra: Their Own Story. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-48673-1
- Occleshaw, Michael (1993). The Romanov Conspiracies: The
Romanovs and the House of Windsor. Orion Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN
1-85592-518-4
- Radzinsky, Edvard (1992). The Last Tsar. Doubleday.
ISBN 0-385-42371-3
- Radzinsky, Edvard (2000). The Rasputin File.
Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-48909-9
- Sams, Ed. Victoria's Dark Secrets.
curiouschapbooks.com.
- Shevchenko, Maxim. The Glorification of the Royal Family.
Nezavisemaya Gazeta, May 31, 2000.
- Vorres, Ian (1965). The Last Grand Duchess. Scribner.
ASIN B-0007-E0JK-0
- Vorres, Ian (1985). The Last Grand Duchess London,
Finedawn Press (3rd edition)
- Vyrubova, Anna. Memories of the Russian Court.
alexanderpalace.org.
- Zeepvat, Charlotte (2004). The Camera and the Tsars: A
Romanov Family Album. Sutton Publishing. ISBN
0-7509-3049-7
Notes and sources
- DNA Confirms Remains Of Czar's Children -
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/30/tech/main4057567.shtml
- Massie (1995), pp. 194–229
- Massie (1967), p. 153
- Zeepvat, (2004), p. xiv
- Kurth (1983), p. 309
- Massie (1967), p. 134
- Eagar, Margaret, "Six Years at the Russian Court"
- King and Wilson (2003), p. 250
- King and Wilson (2003), p. 50
- Lovell (1991), pp. 35–36
- Christopher, Kurth, Radzinsky (1995), pp. 88–89
- Kurth (1983), p. 106
- Maylunas, Andrei, Mironenko, et al. (1997), p. 327
- Vorres (1965), p. 115
- Zeepvat (2004), p. 175
- Massie (1967), pp. 199–200
- Maylunas, Andrei, Mironenko, et al. (1997), p. 321
- Maylunas, Andrei, Mironenko, et al. (1997), p. 330
- Massie (1967), p. 208
- Moss, Vladimir (2005). " The Mystery of Redemption". St. Michael's
Press. Retrieved on February 21, 2007
- Radzinsky (2000), pp. 129–130
- Mager, Hugo. "Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia," Carroll and
Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998
- Christopher, Kurth, Radzinsky (1995), p. 115
- Christopher, Kurth, Radzinsky (1995), p. 116
- Maylunas, Andrei, Mironenko, et al. (1997), p. 489
- Maylunas and Mironenko (1997), p. 507
- Maylunas and Mironenko (1997), p. 511
- Robert K. Massie, "The Romanovs: The Final Chapter" p.8
- Kurth (1983), p. 187
- King and Wilson (2003), pp. 57–59
- King and Wilson (2003), pp. 78–102
- Kurth (1983), p. xiv
- Robert Wilton, "Last Days of the Romanovs", 1920, p.30
- Bokhanov, Knodt, Oustimenko, Peregudova, Tyutynnik (1993), p.
310
- Christopher, Kurth, Radzinsky (1995), p. 177
- Maylunas and Mironenko (1997), p. 619
- King and Wilson (2003), p. 251
- Robert Wilton, "Last Days of the Romanovs", p.407
- Helen Rappaport, "Last Days of the Romanovs, Tragedy at
Ekaterinburg," p.162-163
- King and Wilson (2003), p. 203
- King and Wilson (2003), pp. 353-367
- Kurth (1983), pp. 33–39
- Christopher, Kurth, and Radzinsky (1995), p. 218
- "Anastasia: Dead or Alive".
Michael
Barnes,(screenwriter) & Michael Barnes (director) & Paula S.
Apsell, (executive producer) & Michael Barnes {producer} &
Julia Cort & Julian Nott {co-producers}. NOVA.
1995-10-10. Season 23 Ep. 1.
- Massie (1995), pp. 145–146
- Massie (1995), p. 157
- Massie (1995), p. 146
- Kurth (1983), p. 44
- Kurth (1983), p. 43
- Alexeev, V.V., "Last Act of a Tragedy", documents from German
gov't files discovered by Sokolov.
- Occleshaw (1993), p. 46
- Occleshaw (1993), p. 47
- King and Wilson (2003), p. 314
- Massie (1995), p. 67
- King and Wilson (2003), p. 469
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