Lilia Vasilievna is the daughter of Anastasia Romanova. The tragic fate of Anastasia Romanova: execution and false resurrection. Lion head monster
The work was awarded by the jury for research interest in Russian history
On June 18, 2013, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova would have turned 112 years old. Or did it come true? I was interested in this issue and I decided to study this problem in more detail.
To expand on the topic, I want to start with the history of the emergence of the last ruling Romanov family. Nicholas II was married to Princess Alice - in Orthodoxy, Alexandra Feodorovna. The wedding took place in November 1894, despite the death of the father of Nicholas II. In society, the newlyweds were condemned for such haste, but the desire of the lovers was above all conventions. In the early years, the happiness of the newlyweds was immeasurable. The mood was darkened only by the absence of an heir. Alexandra Fedorovna gave birth to one daughter after another.
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanova was born in November 1895, becoming the first child in the family of Nicholas II. Parents could not get enough of her appearance. The girl distinguished herself by her abilities in the study of sciences, loved solitude and books, was very smart, she had Creative skills. Olga behaved with everyone simply and naturally. The princess was surprisingly responsive, sincere and generous. The first daughter of Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova inherited facial features, posture, as well as golden hair from her mother. Olga, like her father, had an amazingly pure Christian soul. The princess was distinguished by an innate sense of justice, did not like lies.
Grand Duchess Tatyana Nikolaevna Romanova was born on June 11, 1897 and was the second child of the Romanov couple. Like Olga Nikolaevna, Tatyana outwardly resembled her mother, her father's character was. She was less emotional than her sister. The eyes of the princess were similar to the eyes of the Empress, the figure was graceful, and the color of blue eyes harmoniously combined with brown hair. Tatyana was rarely naughty, and had amazing, according to contemporaries, self-control. The girl had a highly developed sense of duty, and a penchant for order in everything. Because of her mother's illness, Tatyana Romanova often managed the household, and this did not burden the Grand Duchess in any way. She loved needlework, embroidered and sewed well. The princess was of sound mind. In cases requiring decisive action, she always remained herself.
Maria Nikolaevna Romanova was born on June 27, 1899, was the third child in the family. Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna was a typical Russian girl. She was characterized by good nature, gaiety, and affability. Maria had a beautiful appearance and vitality. According to the memoirs of some of her contemporaries, she was very similar to her grandfather. Alexander III. The young girl loved her parents very much, was attached to them, much more than the rest of the children of the royal couple.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova was born on June 18, 1901. The sovereign had been waiting for an heir for a long time, and when the daughter turned out to be the long-awaited fourth child, he was saddened. Soon the sadness passed, and the Emperor loved the fourth daughter, no less than his other children. The princess, by her agility, could give odds to any boy. She wore simple clothes inherited from older sisters. The bedroom of the fourth daughter was not richly cleaned. Necessarily every morning Anastasia Nikolaevna took a cold shower. It was not easy to see her. As a child, she was very nimble. In addition to gaiety, Anastasia reflected such character traits as wit, courage and observation.
In her desire to give birth to a boy, the Empress prayed for a miracle. And finally her dream came true. Tsarevich Alexei was the fifth child in the family of Nicholas II, was born on August 12, 1904. Alexei inherited all the best from his father and mother. Parents loved the heir very much, he answered them with great reciprocity. The father was a real idol for the prince. The boy tried to imitate him in everything. How to name a newborn child, the royal couple did not even think about it. Nicholas II had long wanted to name his future heir Alexei. The tsar said that "it's time to break the line of Alexandrov and Nikolaev." Also, Nicholas II was sympathetic to the personality of Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, and the Emperor wanted to name his son in honor of the great ancestor.
Alexandra Fedorovna, with the advent of children, gave them all her attention. She spent a lot of time in the classroom leading their classes. She taught needlework to the Grand Duchesses from childhood. The Empress was completely alien to the empty atmosphere of Petersburg society, in which she hoped to instill a taste for work. To this end, she founded a needlework society, whose members, ladies and young ladies, were supposed to make a certain annual minimum of things for the poor. In addition, an industrious society, linen warehouses for the wounded, disabled homes with workshops, a folk art school for teaching handicrafts, and a society for collecting donations for the upbringing and training of poor children in the profession were organized.
I consider this family to be truly holy. Modern man it is difficult to grow up to comprehend their life. In essence, the whole life of the royal family is Christ-like. Christ was born in a den. The Royal Family is one of the richest in the world, but it was distinguished by simplicity and humility; cordial, attentive attitude towards all people, indifference to luxury, diligence and spiritual height of faith in God.
But it was destroyed on the night of July 16-17, 1918. Yakov Yurovsky woke up the members of the royal family and ordered them to gather on the ground floor. After reading out the death sentence, he shot Nicholas II in the head, which served as a signal to other participants in the execution to open fire on pre-planned targets. Those who did not die immediately were stabbed with bayonets.
At the July 18 meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, its chairman, Ya. M. Sverdlov, announced the execution of the imperial family. Almost immediately, rumors appeared that Alexandra Feodorovna and her children had been saved. Nevertheless, since the former queen did not appear anywhere with her children, the fact of the death of the Romanovs was considered generally accepted. Since that time, miraculously surviving children appear, they were considered impostors.
As you know, imposture first appeared in Russia at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. What drives impostors? Someone wants to be famous, someone wants power, someone loves money, and someone wants everything at once. In this situation, applicants for the "role" of the surviving Anastasia had a vested interest in receiving foreign bank deposits of Nicholas II. I would like to consider the phenomenon of imposture using the example of Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.
The life of the youngest daughter of Nicholas II ended at the age of 17. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, she and her relatives were shot in Yekaterinburg.
Or not shot? In the early 90s, the burial of the royal family near Yekaterinburg was discovered, but the remains of Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei were not found. However, another skeleton, "number 6", was later found and buried as belonging to the Grand Duchess. However, a small detail casts doubt on its authenticity - Anastasia was 158 cm tall, and the buried skeleton was 171 cm.
According to the official point of view: all members of the family of Nicholas II and he himself were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918, and no one managed to escape. This official point of view is contradicted by facts and evidence that do not allow Anastasia to be considered dead along with the entire royal family on the night of July 17, 1918:
There is an eyewitness account who saw the wounded but alive Anastasia in the house on Voskresensky Prospekt in Yekaterinburg in the early morning of July 17, 1918; it was Heinrich Kleinbezetl. He saw her at the Baudin house in the early morning of July 17, a few hours after the brutal massacre in the basement of the Ipatiev house. It was brought by one of the guards (probably from the former more liberal guards - Yurovsky did not replace all the former guards), - one of those few young guys who had long sympathized with the girls, the royal daughters;
There is confusion in the testimonies, reports and stories of the participants in this bloody massacre - even in different versions of the stories of the same people;
It is known that the "Reds" were looking for the missing Anastasia for several months after the murder of the royal family;
It is known that one (possibly two) women's corsets were not found;
It is known that the Bolsheviks held secret negotiations with the Germans on the issue of the Russian tsarina and her children in exchange for Russian political prisoners in Germany after the tragedy in Yekaterinburg.
It is known that in 1925 Anna Anderson met with Olga Alexandrovna Romanova-Kulikovskaya, Anastasia's own aunt, who could not help but recognize her niece. Olga Alexandrovna treated her with kindred warmth. “I am unable to grasp this with my mind,” she said after the meeting, “but my heart tells me that this is Anastasia!” Later, the Romanovs decided to abandon the girl, declaring her an impostor.
Until now, the archives of the Cheka-KGB-FSB about the murder of the Royal Family and about what the security officers led by Yurovsky in 1919 and the MGB officers in 1946 did in the Koptyakov forest have not been opened. All documents on the execution of the royal family known so far (including Yurovsky's Note) were obtained from other state archives.
If all members of the royal family were killed, then why do we still not have answers to all these questions?
The first contender for the name of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova is Fraulein Unbekant. Under this name, in the protocol of the Berlin police on February 17, 1920, a girl saved from a suicide attempt was registered. She had no documents with her and refused to give her name. She had blond hair with a brown sheen and piercing gray eyes. She spoke with a pronounced Slavic accent, so her personal file was marked as “unknown Russian”.
That evening, February 17, she was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital in Lützowstrasse. At the end of March, she was transferred to the neurological clinic in Dahldorf with a diagnosis of mental illness of a depressive nature, where she lived for two years. In Dahldorf, when examined on March 30, she admitted that she had tried to kill herself, but declined to give a reason or comment. During the examination, her weight was recorded - 50 kilograms, height - 158 centimeters. During the examination, the doctors found that six months ago she had a childbirth. For a girl "under the age of twenty", this was an important circumstance.
On the chest and abdomen of the patient, they saw numerous scars from lacerations. On the head behind the right ear was a scar 3.5 cm long, deep enough for a finger to enter, as well as a scar on the forehead at the very roots of the hair. There was a characteristic scar on the foot of the right leg from a penetrating wound. It fully corresponded to the shape and size of the wounds inflicted by the bayonet of the Russian rifle. There are cracks in the upper jaw. The day after the examination, she admitted to the doctor that she was afraid for her life: “It makes it clear that she does not want to name herself, fearing persecution. An impression of restraint born of fear. More fear than restraint." In the medical history it is also recorded that the patient has a congenital orthopedic foot disease hallux valgus of the third degree.
The disease discovered in the patient by the doctors of the clinic in Dahldorf absolutely coincided with the congenital disease of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. The girl had the same height, foot size, hair and eye color, and a portrait resemblance to the Russian princess, and from the data of the medical record it can be seen that the traces of the Fraulein Unbekant injuries fully correspond to those that, according to the investigator Tomashevsky, were inflicted on Anastasia in the basement of the Ipatiev house . The scar on the forehead also matches. Anastasia Romanova had such a scar since childhood, so she was the only one of the daughters of Nicholas II who always wore hairstyles with bangs.
In the end, the girl called herself Anastasia Romanova. According to her version, the miraculous rescue looked like this: along with all the killed family members, she was taken to the burial place, but some soldier hid the half-dead Anastasia along the way. With him, she got to Romania, where they got married, but what happened next was a failure.
For the next 50 years, conversations and court cases about whether Anna Anderson was Anastasia Romanova did not subside, but in the end she was never recognized as a "real" princess. Nevertheless, fierce debate about the mystery of Anna Anderson continues to this day.
Since March 1927, opponents of recognizing Anna Anderson as Anastasia have put forward a version that the girl who pretended to be the escaped Anastasia was in fact a native of a peasant family (from East Prussia) named Franziska Shantskovskaya.
This view is supported by a 1995 examination by the Department of Forensic Medicine at the British Home Office. According to the results of the examination, studies of the mitochondrial DNA of "Anna Anderson" will convincingly prove that she is not Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. According to the conclusion of a group of British geneticists in Aldermaston, led by Dr. Peter Gill, Mrs. Anderson's DNA does not match either the DNA of female skeletons recovered from a grave near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and presumably belonged to the Empress and her three daughters, nor with the DNA of Anastasia's maternal and paternal relatives. lines living in England and elsewhere. At the same time, a blood test of Karl Mauger, the great-nephew of the disappeared factory worker Franziska Schanzkowska, found a mitochondrial match, suggesting that Franziska and Anna Anderson are the same person. Tests in other laboratories looking at the same DNA led to the same conclusion. Although there are doubts about the source of Anna Anderson's DNA samples (she was cremated, and the samples were taken from the residual materials of a surgical operation carried out 20 years before the examination).
These doubts are exacerbated by the testimonies of people who knew Anna-Anastasia personally:
“… I have known Anna Anderson for more than a decade and have known almost everyone who has been involved in her struggle for recognition over the past quarter of a century: friends, lawyers, neighbors, journalists, historians, representatives of the Russian royal family and the royal families of Europe , Russian and European aristocracy - by a wide range of competent witnesses, who did not hesitate to recognize her as the royal daughter. My knowledge of her character, all the details of her case, and, it seems to me, probability and common sense, all convince me that she was a Russian Grand Duchess.
This belief of mine, although disputed (by DNA research), remains unshakable. Not being an expert, I cannot question Dr. Gill's findings; if these results only revealed that Mrs. Anderson was not a member of the Romanov family, I might perhaps be able to accept them - if not with ease now, then at least in time. However, no amount of scientific evidence or forensic evidence will convince me that Ms. Anderson and Franziska Shantskowska are the same person.
I categorically affirm that those who knew Anna Anderson, who lived next to her for months and years, treated her and looked after her during her many illnesses, whether they were a doctor or a nurse, who observed her behavior, posture, demeanor, - cannot believe that she was born in a village in East Prussia in 1896 and was the daughter and sister of beetroot farmers” - Peter Kurt.
Anastasia in Anna, in spite of everything, was recognized by some foreign relatives of the Romanov family, as well as Tatyana Botkina-Melnik, the widow of Dr. Botkin, who died in Yekaterinburg.
Supporters of recognizing Anna Anderson as Anastasia draw attention to the fact that Franziska Shantskovskaya was five years older than Anastasia, taller, wore shoes four sizes larger, never gave birth to children and did not have orthopedic foot diseases. In addition, Franziska Schanzkowska disappeared from the house at a time when "Fräulein Unbekant" was already in the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse.
The first graphological examination was made at the request of the Gessenskys in 1927. It was carried out by an employee of the Institute of Graphology in Prysna, Dr. Lucy Weizsäcker. Comparing the handwriting on the recently written samples with the handwriting on the samples written by Anastasia during the life of Nicholas II, Lucy Weizsacker came to the conclusion that the samples belong to the same person.
In 1960, by decision of the Hamburg Court, a graphologist Dr. Minna Becker was appointed as a graphological expert. Four years later, reporting on her work to the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Senate, the gray-haired Dr. Becker said: "I have never seen so many identical signs in two texts written by different people." Another important remark of the doctor is worth mentioning. Handwriting samples were provided for examination in the form of texts written in German and Russian. In her report, speaking about the Russian texts of Mrs. Anderson, Dr. Becker noted: "It seems that she again fell into a familiar environment."
Due to the inability to compare fingerprints, anthropologists were involved in the investigation. Their opinion was considered by the court as "probability close to certainty". Research carried out in 1958 at the University of Mainz by Dr. Eickstedt and Klenke, and in 1965 by the founder of the German Anthropological Society, Professor Otto Rehe, led to the same result, namely:
1. Ms. Anderson is not a Polish factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska.
2. Mrs. Anderson is Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.
Opponents pointed to the discrepancy between the shape of Anderson's right ear and the ear of Anastasia Romanova, referring to an examination made back in the twenties.
These doubts were resolved by one of the most famous forensic experts in Germany, Dr. Moritz Furtmeier. In 1976, Dr. Furtmayer discovered that, in an absurd coincidence, experts used a photograph of Dahldorf's patient, taken from an inverted negative, to compare the auricles. That is, the right ear of Anastasia Romanova was compared with the left ear of "Fräulein Unbekant" and, of course, they received a negative result for identity. When comparing the same photograph of Anastasia with a photograph of the right ear of Anderson (Tchaikovsky), Moritz Furtmayer received a match in seventeen anatomical positions. To recognize identification in a West German court, the coincidence of five positions out of twelve was quite enough.
One can only guess how her fate would have developed if not for that fatal mistake. Even in the sixties, this error formed the basis of the decision of the Hamburg Court, and then the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Senate.
V last years to the riddle of identifying Anna Anderson as Anastasia, another important consideration was added, previously ignored for some unknown reason.
We are talking about congenital deformity of the feet (Hallux valgus), which was known from the childhood of the Grand Duchess and which Anna Anderson also had. The fact is that this is a very rare disease. Hallux valgus, as a rule, appears in women who have reached the age of 30-35 years. As for cases of congenital disease, they are isolated and extremely rare. For the 142 million inhabitants of Russia, only eight cases of this disease have been registered over the past ten years.
This statistic refutes the negative results of DNA tests conducted with the remains of tissue materials in 1994-1997, since the reliability of DNA studies does not exceed 1:6000 - three thousand times less reliable than Anna-Anastasia's hallux valgus statistics. At the same time, the statistics of congenital "hallux valgus" is actually the statistics of artifacts, while DNA research is a complex procedure in which the possibility of accidental genetic contamination of the original tissue materials, or even their malicious substitution, cannot be ruled out.
Why did some members of the Romanov dynasty in Europe and their relatives from the royal dynasties of Germany almost immediately, in the early 1920s, turn out to be sharply opposed to Anna-Anastasia? There are several possible reasons.
Firstly, Anna Anderson spoke sharply about the Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich ("he is a traitor"), while the latter claimed the empty throne.
Secondly, she unintentionally revealed a big state secret about the arrival of her uncle Ernie of Hesse to Russia in 1916. The visit was connected with the intention to persuade Nicholas II to a separate peace with Germany. This failed, and when leaving the Alexander Palace, Ernie even told his sister, Empress Alexandra: “You are no longer the sun for us,” as all German relatives called Alix in her childhood. In the early twenties, it was still a state secret, and Ernie Gessensky had no choice but to accuse Anastasia of slander.
Thirdly, by the time she met her relatives in 1925, Anna-Anastasia herself was in a very difficult physical and psychological state. She was ill with tuberculosis. Her weight barely reached 33 kg. The people surrounding Anastasia believed that her days were numbered. But she survived, and after meeting with Aunt Olya and other close people, she dreamed of meeting her grandmother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. She waited for the recognition of her relatives, but instead, in 1928, on the second day after the death of the Dowager Empress, several members of the Romanov family publicly disowned her, declaring that she was an impostor. The inflicted insult led to a break in relations.
In addition, in 1922, in the Russian diaspora, the question of who would lead the dynasty and take the place of the "Emperor in Exile" was being decided. The main contender was Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov. He, like most Russian emigrants, could not even imagine that the rule of the Bolsheviks would drag on for a long seven decades. The appearance of Anastasia in the summer of 1922 in Berlin caused confusion and division of opinion in the ranks of the monarchists. The following information about the physical and mental illness of the princess, and the presence of an heir to the throne, born in an unequal marriage, did not contribute to her immediate recognition, not to mention the consideration of her candidacy for the head of the dynasty.
This could complete the story of the missing Russian princess. It is amazing that for more than 80 years no one has thought to know the medical statistics of hallux valgus foot deformity. It is strange that the results of an absurd examination of the comparison of “Anastasia Romanova’s right ear with the left ear of “Fräulein Unbekant” served as the basis for fateful court decisions, despite multiple handwriting examinations and personal testimonies. It is surprising that serious people can seriously discuss the issue of the “identity” of an illiterate Polish peasant woman with a Russian princess, and believe that Francis could mystify those around her for so many years without revealing her true origin. And lastly, it is known that Anastasia gave birth to a son in the fall of 1919, somewhere on the border with Romania. What is the fate of this son? Really, no one was interested? Perhaps it is his DNA that should be compared with the DNA of the Romanov relatives, and not dubious “tissue materials”?
Among the many obvious impostors, apart from Anna Anderson, there are several other contenders.
In the early 1920s, a young woman with an aristocratic posture appeared in the Bulgarian village of Grabarevo. She introduced herself as Eleanor Albertovna Kruger. A Russian doctor was with her, and a year later a tall, sickly-looking young man appeared in their house, who was registered in the community under the name of Georgy Zhudin. Rumors that Eleanor and Georgy were brother and sister and belonged to the Russian royal family circulated in the community. However, they did not express any statements or claims for anything.
George died in 1930, and in 1954 - Eleanor. Bulgarian researcher Blagoy Emmanuilov believes that Eleanor is the missing daughter of Nicholas II, and George is Tsarevich Alexei. In his conclusions, he relies on Eleanor's memories of how “the servants bathed her in a golden trough, combed her hair and dressed her. She told about her own royal room, and about her children's drawings drawn in it.
In addition, in the early 50s in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Balchik, a Russian White Guard, describing in detail the life of the executed imperial family, told witnesses that Nicholas II ordered him to personally take Anastasia and Alexei out of the palace and hide them in the province. He also claimed to have taken the children to Turkey. Comparing the pictures of 17-year-old Anastasia and 35-year-old Eleonora Kruger from Gabarevo, experts have established a significant similarity between them. The years of their birth also match. Contemporaries of George claim that he was ill and talk about him as a tall, weak and pale young man. Russian authors also describe Prince Alexei, a patient with hemophilia, in a similar way. In 1995, the remains of Eleonora and George were exhumed in the presence of a forensic doctor and an anthropologist. In the coffin of George, they found an amulet - an icon with the face of Christ - one of those with which only representatives of the highest strata of the Russian aristocracy were buried.
The next impostor is Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilyeva. In April 1934, a young woman, very thin and poorly dressed, entered the Church of the Resurrection at the Semyonovsky cemetery. She came to confession, and Hieromonk Athanasius (Alexander Ivanshin) sent her.
During the confession, the woman announced to the priest that she was the daughter of the former Tsar Nicholas II - Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. When asked about how she managed to escape from execution, the stranger replied: “You can’t talk about it.”
She was prompted to ask for help by the need to get a passport in order to try to leave the country. They managed to get a passport, but someone reported to the NKVD about the activities of the “counter-revolutionary monarchist group”, and everyone who helped the woman was arrested.
Case No. 15977 is still kept in the State Archives Russian Federation(GARF) and is not subject to disclosure. A woman who called herself Anastasia, after endless prisons and concentration camps, was sent to a mental hospital for compulsory treatment by the verdict of the Special Council of the NKVD. The sentence turned out to be indefinite, and in 1971 she died in a psychiatric hospital on the island of Sviyazhsk. Buried in an unknown grave.
Ivanova-Vasilyeva spent almost forty years in the walls of medical institutions, but she was never tested for a blood type. Not a single questionnaire, not a single protocol contains the date and month of birth. Only the year and place, which match the data of Anastasia Romanova. The investigators, speaking of the defendant in the third person, called her "Princess Romanova", and not an impostor. And knowing that the woman lives on a fake passport filled out with her own hand, the investigators never asked her a question about her real name.
No less interesting is the personality of Natalia Petrovna Bilikhodze, who lived in Sukhumi, then Tbilisi. In 1994 and 1997, she applied to the Tbilisi court for recognition as Anastasia. However, court hearings did not take place due to her failure to appear. She claimed that the entire family was saved. She died in 2000. A post-mortem genetic examination did not confirm her relationship with the royal family (more precisely, with the remains buried in 1998 in St. Petersburg).
Yekaterinburg researcher Vladimir Viner believes that Natalia Belikhodze was a member of the understudy family (Berezkins) who lived in Sukhumi. This explains her outward resemblance to Anastasia and the positive results of "22 examinations carried out in a commission-judicial order in three states - Georgia, Russia and Latvia." According to them, there were "such a number of matching signs that there can be only one in 700 billion cases." Perhaps the story with the recognition was started with the expectation of the monetary inheritance of the royal family in order to return it to Russia.
So did Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanovna survive after the execution? Unfortunately, it is impossible to give a definitive answer to this question. There are many facts, conjectures and versions. What exactly to believe in is the individual choice of each of us. And I would like to end my work with the words of the great writer Mark Twain: “Fiction must remain within the boundaries of the possible. The truth is no."
Bibliography:
1. The Romanovs // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes. - St. Petersburg. 1890-1907.
2. Lobashkova, T. A. The Romanov dynasty: a bio-bibliographic index. - M.: Russian Cultural Fund; Russian archive; TRITE, 2007.
3. Konyaev N. M. The true history of the Romanov dynasty. - M.: Veche, 2009.
4. History of the birth of the Russian nobility: In 2 books. / aut.-stat. P. N. PETROV - M.: Sovremennik; Lexicon, 1991.
5. Peter Kurt. Anastasia. Mystery of the Grand Duchess. – M.: Zakharov, 2005 .
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.
The history of any human tragedy is always dramatic, it forces one to look for answers to hypothetical questions: why did it all happen? Could the disaster have been avoided? Who's guilty? Definitive answers do not always help understanding, because they are based on causal factors. Knowledge, unfortunately, does not lead to understanding. Indeed, what can the history of the short life of the daughter of the last Russian emperor, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, give us?
She flashed like a shadow on the historical horizon during the years of the most serious trials of her country, along with her family, being a victim of the terrible Russian revolution. She was not (and could not be) a politician, she could not influence the course of state affairs. She simply lived, by the will of Providence, being a member of the royal family, wanting only one thing: to live in this family, sharing with her all the joys and sorrows. The history of Anastasia Nikolaevna is the history of the family of Emperor Nicholas II, the history of good human relations of the closest people who sincerely, to the depths of their hearts, believe in God and His good will.
Precisely because the family was crowned, the story of the life and death of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna (as her sisters and brother) acquires fundamental significance for the Christian consciousness. The Romanovs by their fate confirmed the truth of the gospel thought about the senselessness of acquiring "the whole world" at the cost of harming one's own soul (Mark 9:37). This was also confirmed by Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, who, along with her whole family, was killed in the basement of the Ipatiev house on the night of July 16-17, 1918 ...
Sunray
She was born on June 5, 1901 in Peterhof (in the New Palace). The bulletins about the condition of the newborn and her crowned mother were most favourable. After 12 days, the christening took place, at which, according to the tradition already established by that time, the first among the godparents was Empress Maria Feodorovna. The recipients were also Princess Irina of Prussia, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. The birth of the fourth daughter was, of course, a great joy for the royal family, although both the emperor and the empress were very hopeful for the appearance of an heir. It is not difficult to understand crowned bearers: according to the Fundamental Laws Russian Empire the throne was to be inherited by the son of the autocrat. Anastasia Nikolaevna and her sister Maria were considered “small” in the family, in contrast to the older or “large” ones - Olga and Tatiana. Anastasia was an active child, and, as the closest friend of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna A.A. Vyrubova recalled, “she constantly climbed, hid, made everyone laugh with her antics, and it was not easy to keep track of her.” Once, at an official dinner on the imperial yacht Shtandart, she, then a five-year-old child, quietly climbed under the table and crawled there, trying to pinch some important person who did not dare appearance express displeasure. The punishment came immediately: realizing what was the matter, the sovereign pulled her out from under the table by the scythe, "and she got it hard." Such uncomplicated entertainment of the royal children, of course, did not annoy those who, by chance, turned out to be their “victim”, but Nicholas II tried to suppress such liberties, finding them inappropriate. And yet the children, respecting and honoring their parents, were not at all afraid of them, considering it natural to play pranks with guests. It must be admitted that the tsar did not seriously engage in the upbringing of his daughters: this was the prerogative of Alexandra Feodorovna, who spent many hours in the classroom when the children were growing up. The empress spoke English with the children: the language of Shakespeare and Byron was the second native language in the royal family. But the tsar's daughters did not know French enough: reading it, they never learned to speak fluently (for some reason, perhaps not wanting to see anyone between herself and her daughters, Alexandra Feodorovna did not want to take them a French governess). In addition, the empress, who loved needlework, taught her daughters this business.Physical education It was built in the English style: the girls slept in large children's beds, on camp beds, almost without pillows and covered themselves with small blankets. In the morning it was supposed to take a cold bath, in the evening - a warm one. Alexandra Feodorovna sought to educate in such a way that her daughters knew how to behave evenly with everyone, without showing their advantage to anyone in anything. However, the empress failed to achieve sufficient education for the imperial daughters. The sisters did not show any particular taste for their studies, being, according to the mentor of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich Pierre Gilliard, who were in close contact with them, "rather gifted with practical qualities."
Sisters, almost devoid of external entertainment, found joy in close family life. The "big ones" were sincere towards the "small ones", they paid them in return; later they even invented a common signature "OTMA" - according to the first letters of the names, according to seniority: Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia. OTMA sent general gifts, wrote general letters. But at the same time, each daughter of Nicholas II was an independent person, with her own merits and characteristics. Anastasia Nikolaevna was the funniest, she liked to joke good-naturedly. “She was a darling,” Pierre Gilliard recalled in the early 1920s, “a flaw from which she corrected herself over the years. Very lazy, as sometimes happens with very capable children, she had an excellent pronunciation French and acted out small theatrical scenes with real talent. She was so cheerful and so able to disperse the wrinkles of anyone who was out of sorts that some of those around her began, remembering the nickname given to her mother at the English court, to call her "Sunshine" - "Sunbeam". This characteristic is very indicative from a psychological point of view, especially if we bear in mind that, while entertaining loved ones, the Grand Duchess liked to imitate their voices and demeanor. Life in the circle of her beloved family was perceived by Anastasia Nikolaevna as a holiday, she, like her sisters, fortunately, did not know her wrong side.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna at the age of 3 years.
"Thank God, nothing..."
On August 1, 1917, together with her entire family and servants, she forever left those places where she had spent the happy years of her short life. Soon she saw Siberia: she was to spend several months in Tobolsk with her family. Anastasia Nikolaevna did not lose heart, trying to find pluses in her new position. In her letters to A.A. Vyrubova, she assures that they are comfortable (all four live together): “It is nice to see small mountains covered with snow from the windows. We sit a lot on the windows and have fun, looking at the walkers. Later, in the winter months of the new year 1918, she again assures her confidante that they live, thank God, "nothing", put on plays, walk in their "fence", arranged a small hill for skiing. The leitmotif of the letters is to convince A.A. Vyrubova that everything is fine with them, that there is nothing to worry about, that life is not so hopeless... She is illuminated by faith, hope for the best and love. No indignation, no resentment for humiliation, for being locked up. Long-suffering, wholeness of the Christian worldview and surprising inner calm: everything is the will of God!
In Tobolsk, the school classes of the Grand Duchess also continued: since October, Claudia Mikhailovna Bitner, the former head of the Tsarskoye Selo Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium, began to study with the royal children (with the exception of the eldest Olga Nikolaevna). She taught geography and literature. The schooling of the Tsarevich and the Grand Duchesses did not satisfy KMBitner. “There is much to be desired,” she said to the Commissioner of the Provisional Government for the protection of the royal family, V.S. Pankratov. “I did not expect what I found at all. Such adult children already know so little Russian literature, they are so poorly developed. They read little Pushkin, Lermontov even less, but they had not heard of Nekrasov. I don't even talk about others.<...>What does it mean? How were they dealt with? There was a full opportunity to furnish the children the best teachers– and it was not done.”
It can be assumed that such “underdevelopment” was the price for home isolation, in which the Grand Duchesses grew up, completely cut off from the world of their peers. Naive and pure girls, unlike their mother, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, did not have deep philosophical knowledge, although they were, apparently, well-read in theological literature. Their main educator and teacher - the mother - cared more about proper upbringing (as she understood it) than about the full education of her daughters and heir. Was this the result of a conscious pedagogical policy of the empress or her oversight? Who knows... The Yekaterinburg tragedy closed this question forever.
Earlier, in April 1918, part of the family was moved to Yekaterinburg. Among those who moved was the emperor, his wife and Grand Duchess Maria. The rest of the children (together with the sick Alexei Nikolaevich) remained in Tobolsk. The family was reunited in May, and Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna was among those who arrived. She celebrated her last birthday - her 17th birthday - in the House of Special Purpose in Yekaterinburg. Like the sisters, Anastasia Nikolaevna at that time studied with the royal cook I.M. Kharitonov to cook; together with them in the evenings she kneaded flour, and in the mornings she baked bread. In Yekaterinburg, the life of prisoners was regulated more strictly, total control was exercised over them. But even in this situation, we do not notice despondency: faith allows us to live, to hope for the best even when there are no more reasons for hope.
History of imposters
On the night of July 17, 1918, Anastasia Nikolaevna remained alive longer than others doomed to death. This was partly due to the fact that the Empress sewed jewelry into her dress, but only partly. The fact is that she was finished off with bayonets and shots to the head. The executioners in their circle said that after the first volleys, Anastasia Nikolaevna was alive. This played a role in the spread of myths that the youngest daughter of Nicholas II did not die, but was rescued by the Red Army and later managed to go abroad. As a result, the story of Anastasia's rescue for many years became the subject of various kinds of manipulations, both by sincerely mistaken naive people and rogues. How many of them were posing as Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna! Rumors spread about Anastasia of Africa, Anastasia of Bulgaria, Anastasia of Volgograd. But the most famous was the story of Anna Anderson, who lived in the family of relatives of Dr. E.S. Botkin, who was killed along with the royal family. For a long time, these people believed that A. Anderson was Anastasia Nikolaevna who had survived. Only in 1994, after the death of the impostor, with the help of a genetic examination, it was possible to establish that she had nothing to do with the Romanovs, being a representative of the Polish peasant family of Schwantsowski (who recognized A. Anderson as their relative back in 1927).To date, the fact of the death and burial of Anastasia Nikolaevna in a common grave with those killed on the night of July 16-17, 1918 can be considered established. The discovery of the grave, many years of work on the identification of the so-called Yekaterinburg remains is a separate issue. We emphasize only one point: unfortunately, for many Orthodox, who are not familiar with the problem of discovering and determining the truth of the royal remains near Yekaterinburg, the remains of Emperor Nicholas II, his wife, children and servants, solemnly buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in the summer of 1998, are not genuine. Accordingly, they do not believe in the authenticity of the relics of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna. This kind of skeptics are not convinced by the fact that in 2007, next to the former burial place, they found (according to both historians and medical experts) the relics of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria. Thus, the remains of all those who were shot in the Special Purpose House were discovered. One can only hope that evaluative maximalism will gradually decrease, and the biased attitude towards the indicated problem will remain in the past ....
In 1981, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna was canonized by ROCOR along with all the Romanovs and their servants who died in Yekaterinburg. Almost 20 years later, at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church also canonized the royal family as saints (as passion-bearers and martyrs). This glorification must be recognized as a landmark event, a symbolic act that religiously reconciles us with the past and points to the truth of the well-known expression: "Good is not born from evil, it is born from good." This should not be forgotten, remembering today one of the innocent victims of the terrible past - the cheerful "comforter" of her family, the youngest daughter of the last Russian emperor, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.
Author Sergey Firsov, professor at St. Petersburg State University. Magazine "Water of Life" №6 2011.
Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna, can be considered the most famous of the royal daughters. After her death, about 30 women declared themselves miraculously saved Grand Duchess.
Why "Anastasia"?
Why was the youngest daughter of the royal family named Anastasia? There are two versions of this. According to the first, the girl was named after a close friend of the Russian Empress Anastasia (Stana) Nikolaevna, a Montenegrin princess.
Montenegrin princesses, who were disliked at the imperial court for their addiction to mysticism and called "Montenegrin spiders", had a great influence on Alexandra Feodorovna.
It was they who introduced the royal family to Grigory Rasputin.
The second version of the choice of name was presented by Margaret Eager, who wrote the memoirs Six Years at the Russian Imperial Court. She claimed that Anastasia was named after the pardon granted by Nicholas II in honor of the birth of her daughter to students of St. Petersburg University who participated in anti-government unrest. The name "Anastasia" means "returned to life", the image of this saint usually has chains torn in half.
The unexpected daughter
When Anastasia was born, the royal couple already had three daughters. Everyone was waiting for the boy-heir. According to the Act of Succession, a woman could take the throne only after the termination of all male lines of the ruling dynasty, so the heir to the throne (in the absence of the prince) was the younger brother of Nicholas II, Mikhail Alexandrovich, which did not suit many.
Dreaming of a son, Alexandra Fedorovna, with the assistance of the already mentioned "Montenegrins", meets a certain Philip, who introduces himself as a hypnotist and promises to provide the royal family with the birth of a boy.
As you know, the boy in the imperial family will be born - three years later. Now, on June 5, 1901, a girl was born.
Her birth caused a mixed reaction in court circles. Some, such as Princess Xenia, sister of Nicholas II, wrote: “What a disappointment! 4th girl! They named her Anastasia. My mother telegraphed me about the same and writes: “Alix again gave birth to a daughter!”
The emperor himself wrote the following in his diary about the birth of his fourth daughter: “About 3 o’clock, Alix began to experience severe pain. At 4 o'clock I got up and went to my room and got dressed. Exactly at 6 am daughter Anastasia was born. Everything happened under excellent conditions quickly and, thank God, without complications. Because it all started and ended while everyone was still sleeping, we both had a sense of calm and solitude.”
"Schvibz"
Anastasia from childhood was distinguished by a difficult character. At home, for her cheerful irrepressible childishness, she even received the nickname "Schwiebs". She had an undoubted talent as a comic actress. General Mikhail Diterikhs wrote: “Her distinguishing feature was to notice the weaknesses of people and imitate them with talent. It was a natural, gifted comedian. Forever, it happened, she made everyone laugh, while maintaining an artificially serious look.
Anastasia was very playful. Despite her physique (short, thick), for which the sisters called her "pod", she deftly climbed trees and often refused to climb down out of mischief, she loved to play hide and seek, round shoes and other games, played the balalaika and guitar, introduced fashion among their sisters to weave flowers and ribbons into their hair.
Anastasia did not differ in her diligence in her studies, she wrote with errors, and called arithmetic "disgusting".
English teacher Sydney Gibbs recalled that the younger princess once tried to "bribe" him with a bouquet of flowers, then gave the bouquet to the Russian teacher Petrov.
The maid of honor of the Empress Anna Vyrubova, in her memoirs, recalled how once, during a formal reception in Kronstadt, a very small three-year-old Anastasia climbed on all fours under the table and began to bite those present on the legs, imitating a dog. For which she immediately received a reprimand from her father.
Of course she loved animals. She had a Spitz Shvibzik. When he died in 1915, the Grand Duchess was inconsolable for several weeks. Later she got another dog - Jimmy. He accompanied her during the exile.
Army bunk
Despite her playful disposition, Anastasia nevertheless tried to observe the customs accepted in the royal family. As you know, the emperor and the empress tried not to spoil the children, therefore, in some matters, discipline in the family was observed almost Spartan. So, Anastasia slept on an army bed. Significantly, the princess took the same bed with her to the Livadia Palace when she left for the holidays. She slept on the same army bed during her exile.
The daily routine of the princesses was quite monotonous. In the morning it was supposed to take a cold bath, in the evening warm, to which a few drops of perfume were added.
The younger princess preferred Kitty's perfume with the scent of violets. Such a “bath tradition” has been observed in the royal dynasty since the time of Catherine the Great. When the girls grew up, the duty to carry buckets of water to the bath began to be imputed to them, before that the servants were responsible for this.
The first Russian "selfie"
Anastasia was fond of not only pranks, but was also not indifferent to newfangled trends. So, she was seriously interested in photography. Many unofficial photos of the royal family were taken by the younger Grand Duchess.
One of the first "selfies" in world history and probably the first Russian "selfie" was made by her in 1914 with a Kodak Brownie camera. In a note to her father dated October 28, which she attached to the picture, it was written: “I took this photo looking at myself in the mirror. It wasn't easy because my hands were shaking.” To stabilize the image, Anastasia placed the camera on a chair.
Patroness Anastasia
During the First World War, Anastasia was only fourteen. Due to her infancy, she could not, like her older sisters and mother, be a sister of mercy. Then she became the patroness of the hospital, gave her own money to purchase medicines for the wounded, read aloud to them, gave concerts, wrote letters to their relatives under dictation, played with them, sewed their linen, prepared bandages and lint. Their photographs were then kept at her house, she remembered the wounded by their first and last names. She taught some illiterate soldiers to read and write.
False Anastasia
After the execution of the royal family, three dozen women appeared in Europe, declaring that they were miraculously saved by Anastasia. One of the most famous imposters was Anna Anderson, she claimed that the soldier Tchaikovsky managed to pull her wounded out of the basement of the Ipatiev house after he saw that she was still alive.
At the same time, Anna Anderson, according to the testimony of Duke Dimitry of Leuchtenberg, whom she visited in 1927, knew neither Russian, nor English, nor French. She spoke only German with a North German accent. I did not know Orthodox worship. Dimitri Leuchtenbergsky also wrote: “Doctor Kostritsky, a dentist of the Imperial Family, testified in writing that Mrs. Tchaikovsky’s teeth, a cast of which, made by our family dentist in 1927, we sent him, have nothing to do with the teeth of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.”
In 1995 and 2011, genetic analysis confirmed already existing assumptions that Anna Anderson was in fact Franziska Shantskowska, a Berlin factory worker who received a mental shock during an explosion at the factory, from which she could not recover for the rest of her life.
Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova - daughter of Nicholas II, who, along with the rest of the family, was shot in July 1918 in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg. In the early 20s of the 20th century, numerous impostors began to appear in Europe and the USA, who declared themselves to be the surviving Grand Duchess. The most famous of them, Anna Anderson, was generally recognized as the youngest daughter by some surviving members of the imperial house. Litigation lasted for several decades, but did not resolve the issue of its origin.
However, the discovery in the 90s of the remains of the executed royal family put an end to these proceedings. There was no escape, and Anastasia Romanova was still killed that night in 1918. This article will be devoted to the short, tragic and suddenly cut short life of the Grand Duchess.
Birth of a princess
By the next, already the fourth pregnancy of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, public attention was riveted. The fact is that, according to the law, only a man could inherit the throne, and the wife of Nicholas II gave birth to three daughters in a row. Therefore, both the king and the queen counted on the appearance of a long-awaited son. Contemporaries recall that Alexandra Feodorovna at that time was increasingly immersed in mysticism, inviting people to the court who could help her give birth to an heir. However, on June 5, 1901, Anastasia Romanova was born. The daughter was born strong and healthy. She received her name in honor of the Montenegrin princess, who was a close friend of the queen. Other contemporaries claimed that the girl was named Anastasia in honor of pardoning students who participated in the unrest.
And although the relatives were disappointed with the birth of another daughter, Nikolai himself was glad that she was born strong and healthy.
Childhood
Parents did not spoil their daughters with luxury, instilling in them modesty and piety from early childhood. Anastasia Romanova was especially friendly with her older sister Maria, whose age difference was only 2 years. They shared a room and toys together, and the younger princess often wore clothes for the elders. The room in which they lived was also not luxurious. The walls were painted gray and decorated with icons and family photographs. Butterflies were painted on the ceiling. The princesses slept in folding folding beds.
The daily routine in childhood for all the sisters was almost the same. They got up early in the morning, took a cold bath, had breakfast. They spent their evenings embroidering or playing charades. Often at this time, the emperor would read aloud to them. Judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, Princess Anastasia Romanova especially loved Sunday children's balls with her aunt, Olga Alexandrovna. The girl loved to dance with young officers.
From early childhood, Anastasia Nikolaevna was distinguished by poor health. She often suffered from pain in her feet, as she had overly crooked big toes. The princess also had a rather weak back, but she flatly refused a firming massage. In addition, doctors believed that the girl inherited the hemophilia gene from her mother and was its carrier, since even after small cuts her blood did not stop for a long time.
The character of the Grand Duchess
Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova from early childhood differed significantly in character from her older sisters. She was too active and agile, loved to play, constantly played pranks. Because of her violent temper, her parents and sisters often called her a pod or "shvybzik". The last nickname came from her short stature and tendency to be overweight.
Contemporaries recall that the girl was distinguished by a cheerful character and very easily converged with other people. She had a high and deep voice, she loved to laugh out loud, often smiled. She was best friends with Maria, but she was close with her brother Alexei. She was often able to entertain him for hours when he lay in bed after an illness. Anastasia was a creative person, she constantly invented something. With her filing at court, it became fashionable to braid ribbons and flowers in her hair.
Anastasia Romanova, according to contemporaries, also had the talent of a comic actress, because she loved to parody her loved ones. However, she could sometimes be too blunt and her jokes hurtful. Her pranks weren't always harmless either. The girl was also not very neat, but she loved animals and drew well, played the guitar.
Training and education
Due to the short life, the biography of Anastasia Romanova was not full of bright events. Like other daughters of Nicholas II, from the age of eight, the princess began to be educated at home. Specially hired teachers taught her French, English and German. But in the latter language, she could not speak. The princess was trained by the world and Russian history, geography, religious dogmas, natural sciences. The program included grammar and arithmetic - the girl especially did not like these subjects. She did not differ in perseverance, poorly absorbed the material, wrote with errors. Her teachers recalled that the girl was cunning, sometimes trying to bribe them with small gifts in order to get a higher grade.
Much better than Anastasia Romanova were given creative disciplines. She always enjoyed attending drawing, music and dance classes. The Grand Duchess was fond of knitting and sewing. As she grew older, she took up photography in earnest. She even had her own album in which she kept her work. Contemporaries recalled that Anastasia Nikolaevna also loved to read a lot and could talk on the phone for hours.
World War I
In 1914, Princess Anastasia Romanova turned 13 years old. Together with her sisters, the girl cried for a long time when she learned about the declaration of war. A year later, according to tradition, Anastasia received patronage of the infantry regiment, which now bore her name.
After the declaration of war, the empress organized a military hospital within the walls of the Alexander Palace. There, together with Princesses Olga and Tatyana, she regularly worked as sisters of mercy, taking care of the wounded. Anastasia, along with Maria, were still too young to follow their example. Therefore, they were appointed patronesses of the hospital. The princesses donated their own funds to buy medicines, prepared dressings, knitted and sewed things for the wounded, wrote letters to their families and loved ones. Often the younger sisters simply entertained the soldiers. In her diaries, Anastasia Nikolaevna noted that she taught the military to read and write. Together with Maria, they often gave concerts in the hospital. The sisters performed their duties with pleasure, being distracted from them only for the sake of lessons.
Anastasia Nikolaevna recalled her work in the hospital with warmth until the end of her life. In letters to her relatives from exile, she often mentioned wounded soldiers, hoping that they would later be able to recover. On the table she had photographs taken in the hospital.
February Revolution
In February 1917, all the princesses became seriously ill with measles. At the same time, Anastasia Romanova was the last to fall ill. The daughter of Nicholas II did not know that riots were taking place in Petrograd. The Empress planned to hide the news of the flaring revolution from her children until the last. When armed soldiers surrounded the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, the princesses and the Tsarevich were told that military exercises were being held nearby.
Only on March 9, 1917, did the children learn about their father's abdication and house arrest. Anastasia Nikolaevna had not yet fully recovered from her illness and suffered from otitis media, so for a while she completely lost her hearing. Therefore, her sister Maria, especially for her, described in detail what happened on paper.
House arrest in Tsarskoye Selo
Judging by the memoirs of a contemporary, house arrest did not greatly change the measured life of members of the royal family, including Anastasia Romanova. The daughter of Nicholas II continued to devote all her free time to studying. Her father taught her and her younger brother geography and history, and her mother taught religious dogmas. The remaining disciplines were taken over by the retinue loyal to the king. They taught French and English, arithmetic, music.
The public of Petrograd had an extremely negative attitude towards the former monarch and his family. Newspapers and magazines harshly criticized the way of life of the Romanovs, published offensive cartoons. A crowd of visitors from Petrograd often gathered at the Alexander Palace, who gathered at the gates, shouted insulting curses and booed the princesses walking in the park. In order not to provoke them, it was decided to reduce the time of walks. I also had to give up many dishes on the menu. Firstly, because the government cut the funding of the palace every month. Secondly, because of the newspapers, which regularly published a detailed menu of former monarchs.
In June 1917, Anastasia and her sisters were completely shaved baldly, because after a serious illness and taking a large number of drugs, their hair began to fall out badly. In the summer, the Provisional Government did not prevent the royal family from leaving for Great Britain. However, the cousin of Nicholas II, George V, fearing unrest in the country, refused to receive his relative. Therefore, in August 1917, the government decided to send the family of the former tsar into exile in Tobolsk.
Link to Tobolsk
In August 1917, the royal family, under the strictest secrecy, was sent by train, first to Tyumen. From there, already on the ship "Rus" they were transported to Tobolsk. They were supposed to be settled in the former governor's house, but they did not have time to prepare it before their arrival. Therefore, for almost a week, all family members lived on the ship and only then, under escort, were transported to their new home.
The Grand Duchesses settled in the corner bedroom on the second floor on camp beds, which they brought with them from Tsarskoye Selo. It is known that Anastasia Nikolaevna decorated her part of the room with photographs and her own drawings. Life in Tobolsk was rather monotonous. Until September, they were not allowed to leave the grounds of the house. Therefore, the sisters, together with their younger brother, looked at the passers-by with interest, and were engaged in training. Several times a day they could go for short walks outside. At this time, Anastasia loved to prepare firewood, and in the evenings she sewed a lot. The princess also took part in home performances.
In September they were allowed to attend church on Sundays. The locals treated the former monarch and his family well; they were regularly brought fresh food from the monastery. Anastasia at the same time began to gain a lot of weight, but she hoped that over time, like her sister Maria, she would be able to return to her previous form. In April 1918, the Bolsheviks decided to move the royal family to Yekaterinburg. The emperor and his wife and daughter Maria were the first to go there. The other sisters, along with their brother, were to stay in the city.
The photo below shows Anastasia Romanova with her father and older sisters Olga and Tatyana in Tobolsk.
Relocation to Yekaterinburg and the last months of life
It is known that the attitude of the guards of the house in Tobolsk towards its inhabitants was hostile. In April 1918, Princess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova burned her diaries with her sisters, fearing searches. Only at the end of May did the government decide to send the remaining Romanovs to their parents in Yekaterinburg.
Survivors recalled that life in the house of the engineer Ipatiev, in which the royal family was accommodated, was rather monotonous. Princess Anastasia, along with her sisters, was engaged in everyday activities: sewing, playing cards, walking in the garden next to the house, and in the evenings reading church literature to her mother. At the same time, the girls were taught how to bake bread. In June 1918, Anastasia celebrated her last birthday, she was 17 years old. They were not allowed to celebrate it, so all the family members played cards in the garden in honor of this and went to bed at the usual time.
Execution of a family in the Ipatiev house
Like other members of the Romanov family, Anastasia was shot on the night of July 17, 1918. It is believed that until the last she did not suspect the intentions of the guards. They were awakened in the middle of the night and ordered to urgently go down to the basement of the house because of the shooting that took place in the streets nearby. Chairs were brought into the room for the empress and the sick crown prince. Anastasia stood behind her mother. She took her dog Jimmy with her, who accompanied her during her exile.
It is believed that after the first shots, Anastasia and her sisters Tatyana and Maria were able to survive. The bullets failed to hit because of the jewels that were sewn into the corsets of the dresses. The Empress hoped that with their help they would, if possible, be able to buy their salvation. Witnesses to the murder said that it was Princess Anastasia who resisted the longest. They could only wound her, so after the guards had to finish off the girl with bayonets.
The bodies of members of the royal family were wrapped in sheets and taken out of the city. There they were previously doused with sulfuric acid and thrown into the mines. For many years the place of burial remained unknown.
The appearance of false Anastasius
Almost immediately after the death of the royal family, rumors began to appear about their salvation. Over the course of several decades of the 20th century, more than 30 women declared themselves to be the surviving Princess Anastasia Romanoff. Most of them failed to attract attention.
The most famous impostor, who introduced herself as Anastasia, was the Polish woman Anna Anderson, who showed up in Berlin in 1920. Initially, due to external resemblance, she was mistaken for the surviving Tatyana. To establish the fact of kinship with the Romanovs, she was visited by many courtiers who were well acquainted with the royal family. However, they did not recognize in her either Tatiana or Anastasia. However, the legal proceedings lasted until the death of Anna Anderson in 1984. Significant evidence was the curvature of the big toes, which both the impostor and the deceased Anastasia had. However, the exact origin of Anderson could not be determined until the remains of the royal family were discovered.
Discovery of the remains and their reburial
The story of Anastasia Romanova, unfortunately, did not receive a happy continuation. In 1991, unknown remains were discovered in Ganina Yama, which allegedly belonged to members of the royal family. Initially, not all the bodies were found - one of the princesses and the crown prince were missing. Scientists came to the conclusion that they could not find Maria and Alexei. They were discovered only in 2007 near the burial place of the remaining relatives. This find put an end to the story of numerous impostors.
Several independent genetic examinations determined that the remains found belonged to the emperor, his wife and children. Thus, they were able to conclude that there could not have been any survivors of the execution.
In 1981, the Russian Church Abroad officially canonized Princess Anastasia along with the rest of the deceased family members. In Russia, their canonization took place only in 2000. Their remains, after carrying out all the necessary research, were reburied in the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the site of the Ipatiev house, where the execution took place, the Church on the Blood is now built.
One of the most mysterious fates among all members of the Romanov family - Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. She was resurrected 33 times, but it is still not known whether she managed to escape, or whether she suffered a bitter fate, the same as her parents, sisters and brother. Subsequently, many years later, the Romanov family was canonized for their torment and innocence in the punishment they had suffered.
Birth of the fourth daughter in the imperial family
Before the birth of Anastasia Romanova, Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna had already had three daughters: Olga, Tatyana and Maria. The absence of an heir greatly worried the imperial family, since, by right of succession, Mikhail Alexandrovich, his younger brother, was to rule the empire next after Nicholas.
Against the background of these circumstances, Alexandra Fedorovna fell into mysticism. Under the influence of the Montenegrin sisters, princesses Milica and Anastasia Nikolaevna, Alexandra Fedorovna invited a hypnotist of French origin named Philip to the court. He predicted the birth of an heir at the time of the fourth pregnancy of the Empress, thereby encouraging her.
On June 18, 1901, Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova was born, named, as historians suggest, in honor of the Montenegrin princess, a close friend of Alexandra Feodorovna. Here is what Nicholas II writes in his diary:
At about 3 o'clock Alix began to experience severe pain. At 4 o'clock I got up and went to my room and got dressed. Exactly at 6 am daughter Anastasia was born. Everything happened under excellent conditions quickly and, thank God, without complications. Because it all started and ended while everyone was still sleeping, we both had a sense of calm and solitude! After that, he sat down to write telegrams and notify relatives in all parts of the world. Luckily Alix is doing well. The baby weighs 11.5 pounds and is 55 cm tall.
According to an already established tradition, Nicholas II, in honor of the birth of his children, assigned one of the regiments the name of his daughter. In 1901, some time after the birth of Anastasia, the 148th Caspian Infantry Regiment of Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia was named in her honor.
Childhood
As soon as the girl was born, she was given the title "Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia Nikolaevna." But in ordinary life he was never used, preferring to call him affectionately Nastya and Nastasya, and the comic nicknames "Shvybzik" for his mischievous character and "pod" for his full figure.
Contrary to popular belief, children in the imperial family were not spoiled for luxury. All four girls occupied only two rooms, lived two in each. Older sisters Olga and Tatyana shared one room, while Maria and Anastasia lived in another.
Gray walls with hung icons and photographs that family members loved so much, and painted butterflies on the ceiling, white and green furniture and an army couch - that's how you can describe the almost Spartan interior in which the girls lived.
These army bunks accompanied them everywhere until the very end. In hot weather, they could even be moved to the balcony to sleep in the fresh air, and in winter they were moved to the most lit and warm part of the room. These beds accompanied them on trains to the Crimea to the Livadia Palace, and even during their exile to Siberia.
The daily routine was pretty simple. At 8 am, awakening and hardening in a cold bath. After the morning toilet, breakfast followed. At noon, the whole family had lunch in the dining room. Tea time is at five o'clock in the evening, as in all decent families. Dinner was at eight o'clock, after which family members spent the rest of the day together playing musical instruments, reading aloud, solving charades, embroidering and other entertainment. Before going to bed, it was obligatory to take a hot bath with drops of perfume. While the children were small, the servants carried water to the bath. Later, when they grew up, the girls collected water on their own. Weekends were looked forward to with particular impatience, since these days they attended children's balls, which were organized in her estate by their aunt Olga Alexandrovna, the younger sister of Nicholas II.
Studies
All the offspring of the imperial family received home education, which began at the age of eight. The training program included foreign languages: French, English, German. As well as grammar, arithmetic and geometry, history, geography, the law of God, natural sciences, music, singing and dancing.
Anastasia Romanova was not distinguished by a special zeal for learning, like many capable children. She did not like grammar and arithmetic lessons. She even called the second subject "stinking", and made many mistakes in grammar.
Her English teacher Sidney Gibbs recalled that the girl once tried to bribe a teacher to raise her grade. She tried with childish spontaneity to give him flowers, but when he refused, she gave this bouquet to the grammar teacher.
The appearance of the young princess Anastasia
The advent of cameras allows us now to see what Anastasia Romanova looked like. Numerous photographs from the family's archives suggest that they were very fond of being photographed. Anastasia, at an older age, was seriously passionate about the art of photography and took numerous pictures of her family and close circle.
She was short, about 157 centimeters, and of a dense build. It was for this that Anastasia in the Romanov family was nicknamed the "pod". But at the same time, her figure was extremely feminine: wide hips and voluminous breasts, combined with a graceful waist, gave the girl a certain lightness.
Big blue eyes and blond hair with a slight golden tint made her face look like her father. She had a pretty appearance, like the rest of the children, but unlike her older sisters, she looked rather rustic. We can say that genetically she was the only one who inherited the features of her father to a greater extent - high cheekbones and an oval elongated face shape.
Poor health Anastasia inherited from her mother. Constant complaints of pain in the feet due to crooked big toes, pain in the back. At the same time, she diligently avoided therapeutic massage, which helps relieve symptoms and alleviate the condition. Presumably, she also suffered from hemophilia, like her brother Alexei, since even small wounds healed for a very long time.
Character
Like many small children born in a loving family, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova was distinguished by a cheerful character. She loved outdoor games, such as hide-and-seek, serso and bast shoes, easily climbed trees and did not want to get off for a long time, which she loved to do in her free time. She constantly risked being punished because of her antics.
Anastasia spent a lot of time with her older sister Maria and was practically inseparable from her. She could entertain her younger brother for hours when another illness knocked him down and chained him to bed. She possessed artistry and often parodied the courtiers and loved ones, playing comical scenes. At the same time, it was not very accurate.
Anastasia had great love for animals. At first, she had a small Spitz dog named Shvybzik, with whom many cute and funny stories were associated. He died in 1915, in connection with which the youngest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II was inconsolable for several weeks. Then the dog Jimmy appeared in the family.
She liked to draw, play stringed musical instruments with her brother, play pieces by famous composers on the piano with her mother, watch movies and chat on the phone for hours. During the First World War, she became addicted to smoking along with her older sisters.
Life during World War I
When it became known about the beginning of the war in 1914, Anastasia, along with her sisters and Alexandra Fedorovna, wept for a long time. When she was 14 years old, Anastasia received command of the 148th Caspian Infantry Regiment, named in honor of St. Anastasia the Setter of Patterns, which celebrates its day on December 22.
Alexandra Fedorovna donated many rooms of the palace in Tsarskoe Selo to create a hospital. Olga and Tatyana began to play the role of sisters of mercy, while Maria and Anastasia, due to their young age, were patronesses of the hospital.
The younger sisters devoted a lot of time to the wounded soldiers, entertaining them in every possible way during the daytime by reading books, learning to read and write, playing musical instruments, theatrical sketches, and so on. The girls gave their own savings to buy medicine, wrote letters home on behalf of the wounded, played board games, provided the hospital with bandages and linen, and in the evenings spent a lot of time on the phone with soldiers, trying to distract them from physical and moral pain. Anastasia until the end of her days remembered this period in her life.
House arrest of the royal family
In 1917 the revolution began. It was during this period that all the daughters of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna fell ill with measles. Under the influence of disease and strong drugs, everyone begins to lose their hair. In this regard, it was decided to shave the heads of all bald. Together with them, Alexei, the youngest son, also expresses a desire to shave, to which Alexandra Fedorovna reacted very sharply. In the story of Anastasia Romanova, there is even a picture that shows imperial children with a bald head.
At this time, Nicholas II was in Mogilev. They tried to hide from the children as long as possible the true cause of the shots outside the palace, explaining this by ongoing exercises. On March 2, 1917, the Emperor renounced the title of Tsar. Already on March 8, the Provisional Government decided to place the Romanov family under house arrest.
Living within the palace proved to be quite tolerable. However, they had to cut their diet so as not to cause discontent among the workers, since the menu of the royal family was publicized daily. And also to reduce the time spent in the courtyard of the palace. Passers-by often peered through the bars of the fence, and one could hear swear words addressed to all family members.
Despite the unfolding events in the Empire, life went on as usual. Children did not stop receiving education even in a confined space. At that time, the hope was not yet extinguished of leaving together abroad to England, to a safer place. But George V, King of Great Britain, to the surprise of the ministry, did not support his cousin in this matter.
In August 1917, the Provisional Government decided to transfer the family of Nikolai Alexandrovich to Tobolsk. On August 12, a train under the flag of the Japanese Red Cross mission left the siding in the strictest confidence.
Link to Siberia
Exactly two weeks later, on August 24, a steamer arrived at the platform of Tobolsk. But the house intended for imprisonment was not yet ready, so the Romanovs lived on the ship for several days. As soon as the work in the building was completed, the whole family was escorted to the house, forming a living corridor of soldiers so that passers-by could not see them.
Life in Tobolsk was quite boring and monotonous. All the same, the education of children continued, the father taught them history and geography, the mother taught them the law of God. Surprisingly, they did not live at all like a royal couple, but rather looked like ordinary people who did not indulge in frills. Moreover, in conditions of exile, the way of life became even simpler.
In the biography of Anastasia Romanova, it is mentioned that the girl suddenly quickly began to gain excess weight, thereby causing concern to her mother.
In April 1918, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the fourth convocation decides to try the tsar in Moscow. Together with Nikolai, Alexandra Fedorovna is going on the road together with Maria to support her husband. The remaining members of the family stayed to wait in Tobolsk. The moment of wires was rather sad.
As a result, on the road it became clear that they would not reach Moscow. It was decided to stay in Yekaterinburg, in the house of the engineer Ipatiev. And since the further route was not possible, Olga, Tatyana, Anastasia and Alexei were subsequently sent to Yekaterinburg by steamer with a transfer to the train in Tyumen. On the trip, the children were accompanied by ladies-in-waiting, the French teacher Zhillard and the sailor Nagorny, who was traveling in the same cabin with Tsarevich Alexei. At that time, Alexei felt better, but the guards locked the cabins and did not let even a doctor inside.
On May 23, the train arrived at the station platform in Yekaterinburg. Here the children were taken away from the escorts and sent to the Ipatiev house. Life in Yekaterinburg was even more monotonous.
On June 18, Anastasia celebrated her last birthday. On that day, she was only 17 years old. The weather was excellent, and only in the evening clouds pulled over and a thunderstorm broke out. They baked bread for the holiday, and the celebration continued in the yard. In the evening the whole family played cards after dinner. They went to bed at the usual time, at half past ten in the evening.
The death of Anastasia Romanova and the entire royal family
According to official data, the decision on the death penalty for the imperial family was taken on July 16 by the Ural Council. The Council came to this decision in connection with suspicions of a conspiracy to save the family of Emperor Nicholas II and the capture of the city by the White Guard troops.
On the night of this date, the commander of the detachment P.Z. Ermakov was given an order to be shot. At this time, all family members were already sleeping in their rooms. They were awakened and sent to the basement of the Ipatiev house under the pretense of being saved during a possible shootout.
As far as historians now know, the executed did not even suspect about the execution, and obediently went down to the basement. Two chairs were brought into the room, on which Nikolai with his sick son Alexei in his arms and Alexandra Fedorovna were placed. The rest of the children and attendants stood behind. The girls took with them several reticules and Jimmy the dog, which accompanied them throughout the exile.
According to the data, after a survey of the "executioners", Anastasia, Tatyana and Maria did not die immediately. They were protected from the first shots by jewels sewn into corsets. Anastasia resisted the longest and remained alive, so she was finished off with bayonets and rifle butts.
The corpses were taken outside the city and buried in the Four Brothers tract. The bodies, wrapped in sheets, were thrown into one of the mines, having previously been doused with sulfuric acid and mutilated beyond recognition. Until now, professionals and history buffs are arguing whether Anastasia Romanova managed to survive or not. The body of Anastasia was never found in the general burial.
"Resurrected" Anastasia
According to rumors, Anastasia managed to escape the death penalty. Either she ran away before the arrest, or she was replaced by one of the maids. After all, as you know, the emperor's family had several doubles. On this basis, a lot of impostors appeared, calling themselves the saved princess Anastasia.
The most famous false Anastasia claimed that she managed to escape thanks to a soldier named Tchaikovsky. Her name was Anna Anderson. According to her, this soldier managed to pull the wounded princess out of the basement of the Ipatiev house and helped her escape. Her similarity with the princess was evidenced by identical foot diseases. Anna Anderson even wrote the book "I, Anastasia" and until the end of her life claimed that she was the daughter of the king.
So, thanks to rumors of a miraculous salvation, 33 women officially claimed that they were the same Anastasia. Some close relatives of the Romanovs recognized the tsar's daughter in different girls. However, it was not possible to prove their relationship. Such excitement was connected, most likely, with the multimillion-dollar inheritance of the emperor.
Icon of the Holy Martyr Anastasia
In 1981, the Russian Church Abroad decided to canonize the family of the Russian tsar in the rank of new martyrs. Preparations for the canonization of the Romanov family took place in 1991. Archbishop Melchizedek blessed the Four Brothers tract for installation at the burial site of the Poklonny Cross. Later, on October 1, 2000, the Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye laid the foundation stone for the future church in honor of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers.