Anastasia Mystery
The Missing Romanov Princess
Tsar Nicholas II
Nicholass II
It's one the most notorious assassinations in modern history; the
murder of the Romanovs, Russia's ruling family. Their deaths would
inspire myths and legends that still remain unanswered nearly a century
later. At the height of his power, Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia with an
iron grip. His position seemed unassailable. However, the Russian
Revolution of 1917 overthrew the old order.
Tsar Nicholas II had been the richest, most powerful man in the
world, controlling one tenth of the earth's surface and a fortune worth
15 billion pounds. Greg King, author of The Fate of The Romanovs
explains: "Until the revolution, the Tsar was considered the anointed
of God. He controlled the government, was the supreme head of the
Orthodox Church, he was worshipped as a demigod by most of his subjects
and his word was considered law in every aspect of life".
By marrying Alexandra, a German princess and granddaughter of Queen Victoria,
Tsar Nicholas became an influential figure throughout the courts of
Europe. The Tsar and his family lived in opulence, their St Petersburg
palace boasted a thousand rooms and hundreds of servants attended their
every whim.
Behind the public smiles, the Romanovs were harbouring an explosive
secret. Thirteen year old Alexei, heir to the Romanov throne had been
diagnosed with a bleeding disorder called haemophilia. The slightest
injury could cause fatal blood-loss. John Kier, author of The Quest for
Anastasia tells us: "The empress, who'd had a series of very
difficult pregnancies, finally has an heir only to find he has
haemophilia. At the time, almost no-one who had haemophilia lived to
adulthood". The Romanov succession depended on keeping the young
prince alive; a 24 hour job.
Frances Welch authoress of A Romanov Fantasy, continues: "They had
to put pillows on trees in the palace gardens to protect him at all times.
If he cut himself, he bled terribly or his bruises led to internal
bleeding".
Rasputin
A desperate quest led the empress to a mystic healer named Rasputin.
His methods seemed to stabilise the boy and he quickly became one of the Tsarina's
closest advisors. But, the Russian people didn't trust him and their
mistrust would soon be turned toward the Tsarina herself.
The Tsar's reputation was also coming under fire. He earned the
nickname Bloody Nicholas when, in 1905, his soldiers gunned down
thousands of striking factory workers. The massacre caused outrage and
violent clashes. But, 10 years later, when World War I erupted along
Russia's Western Front, the country united against a new enemy.
By 1917, discontent turned to open rebellion. Radical new politics
spread like wildfire and the Tsarist government was overthrown. In a
series of bloody battles, the White Army - troops still loyal to the
Tsar, were defeated by the Bolshevik Rebels - The Reds. On the 15th
March 1917, Nicholas was forced to abdicate his throne and was held
under house-arrest before being sent into exile to Siberia.
The Romanov family were put into the drab Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg near
the Siberian border. The people of Yekaterinburg were known as the Wild
Siberian Comrades. They now had Nicholas The Bloody and they could
hardly wait to get rid of him. With the White Army advancing on
Yekaterinburg to rescue the Tsar and his family, the Siberians were
forced to react. They made a momentous and bloody decision; the Romanovs
must die.
Commandant Jacob Yurovsky and the guards, ordered the Romanovs and
several of their servants into the cellar of the house. Eleven gunmen
came in, each had been allotted one person to kill, but when the time
came to shoot they all shot the Tsar. In disarray, the gunmen were
ordered back to finish the job.
Lenin was convinced the Romanov deaths would crush any remaining
pro-monarchy resistance. He quickly claimed responsibility for the
Tsar's execution but, denied killing the German-born Tsarina and her
children, fearing that their deaths would inflame relations with
Germany. Instead, he insisted the rest of the family were being kept
alive in a secret location.
The case became an international scandal, outraging monarchists and
the extended Romanov family. In defiance of the Soviet authorities, the
Romanovs commissioned an independent enquiry. They chose judicial
investigator Nicholas Sokolov to lead it. When Sokolov's findings were
published, in 1924, they sent shockwaves around the world.
Princess Anastasia
Princess Anastasia
Sokolov had determined that the Tsar and all of his family had been
assassinated with some of the victims being stabbed and bludgeoned to
death. He believed that Yurovsky planned to hide the bodies in an
abandoned mineshaft, deep in the wood. He concluded that the bodies had
been hacked to pieces, then burnt with fire and acid until nothing
remained.
Sokolov's findings fuelled speculation of the royal family's fate.
Could their executioners actually have destroyed eleven bodies, half a
ton of flesh, in just a few hours? Or, given the lack of ready evidence,
could some of the family still be alive waiting to reclaim the Tsar's
fortune and his throne?
Of the many rumours, some claimed that the guards, young men of
similar age to the Tsar's daughters, had formed relationships with the
girls and allowed them to escape. Of the four young women, none captured
the public's imagination quite like Princess Anastasia, the Tsar's
seventeen year old daughter. People believed that if anyone could survive
the events of Ipatiev House, it would be the spirited Anastasia. Decades
after her presumed death, Anastasia continued to inspire tales of
escape.
Books and films promoted the idea that she had been rescued and
re-emerged to take her place among the royal families of Europe. But,
the truth would be stranger than fiction! In 1920, a young woman who had
attempted suicide by throwing herself off a bridge in Berlin, was
admitted to a mental hospital. She couldn't remember her name and had no
ID, so became Miss Unknown.
Frances Welch gives her opinion: "They had no idea who she was
until a fellow inmate suddenly turned to her, she'd got hold of a
magazine with pictures of the Romanovs in it, 'You're Tatiana'. For a
while Anna Anderson, as she had chosen to be called, was heralded as
Princess Tatiana.
News that one of the Romanov girls had reappeared, travelled fast;
friends of the family rushed to see her. They realised that the woman
lying before them was not nearly tall enough to be Tatiana. Some
believed she might be Anastasia, others were convinced she was an impostor
trying to inherit the 30 billion dollar fortune as estimated in the New
York Times of the 1920s.
Anna Anderson
There was plenty of evidence to suggest that she was indeed the
missing princess. She had a regal manner about her and an apparent
insider knowledge about the family and the Russian courts. There was
also strong physical evidence including a large bunion which caused the
big toe to deform. She shared the shape of the ears, a physical
signature often used to identify bodies before the discovery of DNA.
Anderson's body was covered with scars which many believed could have
been inflicted in the cellar of Ipatiev House. Sidney Gibbs, Anastasia's
English teacher from before the revolution, visited Anderson and cast a
vote for the doubters when he stated that she bore no resemblance to
Anastasia.
Anderson received another blow, when her Romanov opponents presented
new evidence unearthed by a private detective They claimed that Anderson
was actually a Polish factory worker named Franziska Schanzowska who
went missing at the same time Anna Anderson appeared. This was presented
to the court who the Romanovs hoped would finally declare the Tsar and
his family dead so that the estate could be settled. The court case
would drag on for nearly four decades before finally delivering a wholly
unsatisfactory verdict, The case was deemed to be unsolvable. The court
refused to acknowledge Anderson as Anastasia and further declared that
her opponents had failed to prove that she wasn't Anastasia.
Five decades on, Ipatiev House has been razed to the ground. The
Russian government had long since closed the book on the assassinations,
but some people still wanted answers.
Alexander Avdonin & Geli Ryabov
Two amateur historians felt that many questions still remained
unanswered. In 1978, Avdonin and Ryabov located the eldest son of Jacob
Yurovsky, the man who'd been in charge of the Romanov executions sixty
years before. They were stunned when he handed them a top-secret report
detailing his father's eye-witness account. Yurovsky claimed that he had
not destroyed the bodies as previously suggested by Sokolov, they had
simply been moved.
After discovering that some of his soldiers had betrayed the secret
location of the grave, Yurovsky and his men collected the bodies and set
off for another nearby mine. But, on the way, the truck broke down and
they were forced to bury the bodies in a shallow grave, covered with
planks, in the woods. On this occasion they did douse the bodies with
sulphuric acid.
In the spring of 1979, armed with this knowledge, Avdonin and Ryabov
headed for the Siberian woods where they hoped to find the Romanovs
final resting place. This was a highly dangerous venture. In cold war
Russia of the 60s and 70s dissent was forbidden. Protecting the image of
a unified Soviet Superpower was all-important to the communist regime.
Anyone who dared question the official version of the Romanov murders
risked the attention of the KGB.
After many weeks of searching they found the Romanov remains. The
skulls were bullet ridden and one of the jaws had gold teeth. The men
knew that if news of their discovery was leaked, they would be jailed,
or worse. They removed three of the skulls and began a discreet search
for a forensic expert to help them. The skulls remained in their
possession for over a year until, frustrated and fearful, the men went
back to Siberia and returned them to the grave.
Avdonin and Ryabov
Ten years later, President Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in a new era of
openness; Glasnost. The Soviet Union was dissolved and, finally, Ryabov
decided he could go public with his momentous discovery.
In 1991, Boris Yeltsin despatched a team of archaeologists to exhume
the skeletal remains from the mass grave in Siberia. After 73 years, the
fate of the Russian Royal Family might finally be resolved. At a nearby
laboratory, hundreds of bones were examined; the results were stark.
Eleven people were thought to have died in the murders, but only nine
skeletons were unearthed. Alexei the young heir was missing as was one
of the princesses. The question was which one? Forensic anthropologist,
Sergei Abramov began the painstaking process of identifying the
skeletons.
It seemed that one of the shattered corpses found in the Romanov
grave did belong to Princess Anastasia. Maria and Alexei were not in the
grave. For those who hoped Anastasia had escaped the massacre, this was
a huge blow. But, the Anastasia story was far from over.
Just weeks later, a rival American team began their own enquiry and
questioned the validity of Abramov's tests. The American experts weren't
convinced that the skulls had been reliably reconstructed. Instead, they
took a different approach. They chose to age the bones and claimed it
was Anastasia's body that was missing, not Maria's. They concluded that
none of the skeletons recovered from Yekaterinburg could possibly be
seventeen years old, the age at which Anastasia had disappeared.
This evidence renewed many people's beliefs in Anna Anderson and now
new technology was emerging that would reveal Anna's true identity. DNA
testing would finally prove, with samples from surviving Romanovs
including Prince Philip, that the bones really were the ill-fated
Romanov family. It would also prove that Anna Anderson was Franziska
Schanzowska as originally suspected. The bodies of Anastasia and Alexei
have still never been found.
Further Reading:
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The Fate of the
Romanovs - Greg King |
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A Romanov Fantasy
- Frances Welch |
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The Quest for
Anastasia - John Klier |
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Anastasia: Life of
Anna Anderson - Peter Kurth |
