The fate of Anastasia Romanova, daughter of Nicholas II. Anastasia Romanova

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna was born on June 5/18, 1901. Having learned about the birth of his fourth daughter, the Tsar walked for a long time alone and was sad, because he expected that a boy would be born. But when he returned, he completely changed, with a smile he entered the empress’s room and kissed the newborn child.

Having been born instead of the expected heir, Anastasia, indeed, by the liveliness of her character, resembled a playful boy. “The youngest of the Grand Duchesses, Anastasia Nikolaevna, seemed to be made of mercury, and not of flesh and blood,” wrote Lily Dehn.

The youngest Princess was bolder than her sisters, very fast and witty, quick-witted and observant, and was considered the ringleader in all pranks. She had a pretty face, long blond hair and quick eyes sparkling with enthusiasm and fun. Many found that her facial features resembled her grandmother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the mother of the Sovereign Martyr.

Saint Princess Anastasia, like all the royal children, was brought up in the Russian Orthodox spirit, combining work and prayer, as well as Spartan conditions: a cold bedroom, a hard bed with small pillows, a cold shower in the morning, clothes are always simple, inherited, as a rule, from older sisters.

“All these three Grand Duchesses, except for Tatiana, played pranks and frolicked like boys, but in their manners they were reminiscent of the Romanovs,” recalls Anna Vyrubova. Anastasia Nikolaevna was always playing pranks, climbing, hiding, making everyone laugh with her antics, and it was not easy to spot her.

The Younger Princess was extremely cheerful, brave, very fast, witty and observant, and was considered the ringleader in all pranks. Grand Duchess Anastasia was also a lively and carefree child, intelligent and not without cunning. She always managed to turn everything in her own way. From early childhood, plans for various pranks arose in Her head, and later the Heir, always ready for pranks, joined Her. When the Tsarevich lacked boyish company, he was successfully replaced by the “bastard” Anastasia.

Her distinctive feature was to notice people's weaknesses and skillfully imitate them. “She was a natural, gifted comedian,” wrote M.K. Dieterichs. “It always happened that she made everyone laugh, maintaining an artificially serious appearance.”

The Empress Mother understood perfectly well that for the sake of her daughter, her irrepressible energy had to be restrained from time to time. But unlike many modern mothers, the wise Empress Alexandra Feodorovna did not at all want to remake the child’s nature to her own taste, or break it. She allowed her daughters, relying on the instilled rules of Christian piety, to develop depending on their God-given qualities. As a result, playfulness, a quality that could have degenerated into something unattractive, turned into a virtue for Grand Duchess Anastasia: the cheerfulness of the young girl not only pleased, but also consoled those around her

She also pleased the Queen Mother with her notes. Here is a typical example - a note from Anastasia Nikolaevna dated May 7, 1915: “My dear sweet Mother! I hope that you are not too tired. We will try not to quarrel, argue or fight, so sleep well. God bless you! loving daughter Nastenka."

The daughters also wrote to the Father, whom they also loved and honored immensely. Although these letters are confessional, the measure of love in them is no less expressive. In these letters, the children were more relaxed; they could write as they pleased, which was not possible in correspondence with Mom. The most lively and playful ones were written by Anastasia.
Here is her “message” dated October 28, 1914: “My golden, good, dear Dad! We have just had lunch. So I am sending you my beautiful postcard. I am sure you will like it. Today I sat with our soldier and helped him read , which made me very happy... Olga pushes Maria, and Maria screams like an idiot. Olga sends you a kiss again. I have already washed my face and must now go to bed. I will finish this letter tomorrow. ! Good morning! I’m going to drink tea. I slept well without my mother and sisters. Now I have a Russian lesson. Pyotr Vasilyevich is reading “Notes of a Hunter.” I wish you all the best, 1,000,000 kisses. 13 year old servant of God Anastasia God bless you."

The kind, loving heart of the youngest Princess, combined with her liveliness and wit, incredibly inspired all those who had the good fortune to communicate with her. During the war, visiting hospitals with her sister Maria, she cheered up the soldiers, making them forget about pain for a while, and consoled all those suffering with her kindness and tenderness. Even many years later, soldiers and officers who once lay in the Tsarskoe Selo infirmaries, when remembering the Tsar’s daughters, according to eyewitnesses, seemed to be illuminated by an unearthly light, brightly recalling those days when the Grand Duchesses leaned over them carefully and tenderly.

The wounded soldiers and officers were keenly interested in the fate of the princesses.

The Holy Martyr Tsarana Anastasia walked with her family the entire mournful path from the Tsarskoye Selo Palace to the basement of the Ipatiev House, which the Lord prepared for them to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the 1920s, a girl appeared in Berlin posing as Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova. The hope burned in the hearts of many Russian people that at least one of the daughters of the Sovereign Martyr had been saved. But these hopes did not come true. Neither the Tsarina's sister Irena of Prussia, nor Baroness Sophia Buchsgeven, nor the mentor of the royal children, Pierre Gilliard, recognized Anastasia in her. The girl turned out to be an impostor. Later, more and more impostors appeared. One of the reasons for these appearances was that the so-called. The “royal gold” was bequeathed by the emperor to his youngest daughter. And to this day, the desire to receive the “inheritance” kept by the Japanese emperor haunts many political adventurers who more than once wanted to profit from the tragedy of the Russian people - the betrayal of the Royal Family, which ended in regicide.

Reading the letters of Grand Duchess Anastasia and the memories of those close to her, you involuntarily come to the indisputable conclusion that under no circumstances would the Princess leave her beloved family. Even if she was given a chance to escape, she would never take it. Any of the Royal Martyrs would have done the same, since not one of them wanted to leave Russia and could not imagine himself without his family, where the souls and hearts of the Tsar, Queen, Tsarevich and Grand Duchesses were connected by an unbreakable thread, which even death could not break.

Anastasia was obedient to her parents and older sisters. A meek and silent spirit was inherent in her internally, and not externally, because Anastasia was humble. It is precisely humble, since the word “humility” attracts with the phrase “in peace” hidden in it. Accept everything in peace. Even the bullying of the Red “comrades” and executioners.

On the night of the martyrdom of the Royal Family, Blessed Maria of Diveyevo raged and shouted: "The princesses with bayonets! Damned Jews!" She raged terribly, and only then did they understand what she was screaming about. The wounded Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna was finished off with bayonets and rifle butts. The most innocent suffered the greatest torment, truly the Holy Lamb.

Melnik-Botkina’s memoirs mention a conversation between members of the Provisional Government commission to investigate the guilt of the Royal Family. One of its members asked why letters from the Empress and the Grand Duchesses have not yet been published. “What are you saying,” said another, “all the correspondence is here in my desk, but if we publish it, the people will worship them as saints.”

HOLY MARTYR QUEEN ANASTASIA, PRAY TO GOD FOR US!

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna

The youngest of the Grand Duchesses, Anastasia Nikolaevna, seemed to be made of mercury, and not of flesh and blood. She was very, extremely witty and had an undeniable gift for mime. She knew how to find the funny side in everything.

During the revolution, Anastasia turned only sixteen - after all, not such an old age! She was pretty, but her face was intelligent, and her eyes sparkled with remarkable intelligence.

The “tomboy” girl, “Schwibz,” as Her family called her, might have wanted to live up to the Domostroevsky ideal of a girl, but she couldn’t. But, most likely, She simply did not think about it, because the main feature of Her not fully developed character was cheerful childishness.

Anastasia Nikolaevna was... a big naughty girl, and not without guile. She quickly grasped the funny side of everything; It was difficult to fight against Her attacks. She was a spoiled person - a flaw from which She corrected herself over the years. Very lazy, as sometimes happens with very capable children, She had an excellent pronunciation of French and acted out small theatrical scenes with real talent. She was so cheerful and so able to dispel 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 “Sunbeam”

Birth.

Born on June 5, 1901 in Peterhof. By the time of her appearance, the royal couple already had three daughters - Olga, Tatyana and Maria. The absence of an heir aggravated the political situation: according to the Act of Succession to the Throne, adopted by Paul I, a woman could not ascend the throne, therefore the younger brother of Nicholas II, Mikhail Alexandrovich, was considered the heir, which did not suit many, and first of all, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In an attempt to beg Providence for a son, at this time she becomes more and more immersed in mysticism. With the assistance of the Montenegrin princesses Militsa Nikolaevna and Anastasia Nikolaevna, a certain Philip, a Frenchman by nationality, arrived at the court, declaring himself a hypnotist and a specialist in nervous diseases. Philip predicted the birth of a son to Alexandra Fedorovna, however, a girl was born - Anastasia.

Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna with daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia

Nikolai wrote in his diary: “About 3 o’clock Alix began to have severe pain. At 4 o'clock I got up and went to my room and got dressed. At exactly 6 am, daughter Anastasia was born. Everything happened quickly under excellent conditions and, thank God, without complications. Thanks to the fact that it all started and ended while everyone was still sleeping, we both had a sense of peace and privacy! After that, I sat down to write telegrams and notify relatives in all corners of the world. Fortunately, Alix is feeling well. The baby weighs 11½ pounds and is 55 cm tall.”

The Grand Duchess was named after the Montenegrin princess Anastasia Nikolaevna, a close friend of the Empress. The “hypnotist” Philip, not at a loss after the failed prophecy, immediately predicted her “an amazing life and a special destiny.” Margaret Eager, author of the memoir “Six Years at the Russian Imperial Court,” recalled that Anastasia was named in honor of the fact that the emperor pardoned and restored the rights of students of St. Petersburg University who took part in the recent unrest, since the very name “Anastasia” means “returned to life”; the image of this saint usually shows chains torn in half.

Childhood.

Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia Nikolaevna in 1902

The full title of Anastasia Nikolaevna sounded like Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, but it was not used, in official speech they called her by her first name and patronymic, and at home they called her “little, Nastaska, Nastya, little egg” - for her small height (157 cm .) and a round figure and a “shvybzik” - for his mobility and inexhaustibility in inventing pranks and pranks.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the emperor’s children were not spoiled with luxury. Anastasia shared a room with her older sister Maria. The walls of the room were gray, the ceiling was decorated with images of butterflies. There are icons and photographs on the walls. The furniture is in white and green tones, the furnishings are simple, almost Spartan, a couch with embroidered pillows, and an army cot on which the Grand Duchess slept all year round. This cot moved around the room in order to end up in a more illuminated and warmer part of the room in winter, and in summer it was sometimes even pulled out onto the balcony so that one could take a break from the stuffiness and heat. They took this same bed with them on vacation to the Livadia Palace, and the Grand Duchess slept on it during her Siberian exile. One large room next door, divided in half by a curtain, served the Grand Duchesses as a common boudoir and bathroom.

Princesses Maria and Anastasia

The life of the grand duchesses was quite monotonous. Breakfast at 9 o'clock, second breakfast at 13.00 or 12.30 on Sundays. At five o'clock there was tea, at eight there was a general dinner, and the food was quite simple and unpretentious. In the evenings, the girls solved charades and did embroidery while their father read aloud to them.

Princesses Maria and Anastasia

Early in the morning it was supposed to take a cold bath, in the evening - a warm one, to which a few drops of perfume were added, and Anastasia preferred Koti perfume with the smell of violets. This tradition has been preserved since the time of Catherine I. When the girls were small, servants carried buckets of water to the bathroom; when they grew up, this was their responsibility. There were two baths - the first large one, left over from the reign of Nicholas I (according to the surviving tradition, everyone who washed in it left their autograph on the side), the other, smaller, was intended for children.

Grand Duchess Anastasia

Like other children of the emperor, Anastasia was educated at home. Education began at the age of eight, the program included French, English and German, history, geography, the law of God, natural sciences, drawing, grammar, arithmetic, as well as dance and music. Anastasia was not known for her diligence in her studies; she hated grammar, wrote with horrific errors, and with childish spontaneity called arithmetic “pissiness.” English teacher Sydney Gibbs recalled that she once tried to bribe him with a bouquet of flowers to improve his grade, and after he refused, she gave these flowers to the Russian language teacher, Petrov.

Grand Duchess Anastasia

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia

In mid-June, the family went on trips on the imperial yacht “Standart”, usually along the Finnish skerries, landing from time to time on the islands for short excursions. The imperial family especially fell in love with the small bay, which was dubbed Standard Bay. They had picnics there, or played tennis on the court, which the emperor built with his own hands.

Nicholas II with his daughters -. Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia

We also rested at the Livadia Palace. The main premises housed the imperial family, and the annexes housed several courtiers, guards and servants. They swam in the warm sea, built fortresses and towers out of sand, and sometimes went into the city to ride a stroller through the streets or visit shops. It was not possible to do this in St. Petersburg, since any appearance of the royal family in public created a crowd and excitement.

Visit to Germany

They sometimes visited Polish estates belonging to the royal family, where Nicholas loved to hunt.

Anastasia with her sisters Tatyana and Olga.

First World War

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, following her mother and older sisters, Anastasia sobbed bitterly on the day war was declared.

On the day of their fourteenth birthday, according to tradition, each of the emperor’s daughters became an honorary commander of one of the Russian regiments.

In 1901, after her birth, the name of St. Anastasia the Pattern-Resolver received the Caspian 148th Infantry Regiment in honor of the princess. He began to celebrate his regimental holiday on December 22, the holy day. The regimental church was erected in Peterhof by the architect Mikhail Fedorovich Verzhbitsky. At 14, she became his honorary commander (colonel), about which Nikolai made a corresponding entry in his diary. From now on, the regiment became officially known as the 148th Caspian Infantry Regiment of Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia.

During the war, the empress gave many of the palace rooms for hospital premises. The older sisters Olga and Tatyana, together with their mother, became sisters of mercy; Maria and Anastasia, being too young for such hard work, became patronesses of the hospital. Both sisters gave their own money to buy medicine, read aloud to the wounded, knitted things for them, played cards and checkers, wrote letters home under their dictation, and entertained them with telephone conversations in the evenings, sewed linen, prepared bandages and lint.

Maria and Anastasia gave concerts to the wounded and tried their best to distract them from difficult thoughts. They spent days on end in the hospital, reluctantly taking time off from work for lessons. Anastasia recalled these days until the end of her life:

Under house arrest.

According to the memoirs of Lily Den (Yulia Alexandrovna von Den), a close friend of Alexandra Fedorovna, in February 1917, at the very height of the revolution, the children fell ill with measles one after another. Anastasia was the last to fall ill, when the Tsarskoye Selo palace was already surrounded by rebel troops. At that time the Tsar was at the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief in Mogilev; only the Empress and her children remained in the palace. .

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia look at photographs

On the night of March 2, 1917, Lily Den stayed overnight in the palace, in the Raspberry Room, with Grand Duchess Anastasia. So that they would not worry, they explained to the children that the troops surrounding the palace and the distant shots were the result of ongoing exercises. Alexandra Fedorovna intended to “hide the truth from them for as long as possible.” At 9 o'clock on March 2 they learned of the Tsar's abdication.

On Wednesday, March 8, Count Pavel Benckendorff appeared at the palace with the message that the Provisional Government had decided to subject the imperial family to house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo. It was suggested that they make a list of people who wanted to stay with them. Lily Dehn immediately offered her services.

A.A.Vyrubova, Alexandra Fedorovna, Yu.A.Den.

On March 9, the children were informed about their father’s abdication. A few days later Nikolai returned. Life under house arrest turned out to be quite bearable. It was necessary to reduce the number of dishes during lunch, since the menu of the royal family was announced publicly from time to time, and it was not worth giving another reason to provoke the already angry crowd. Curious people often watched through the bars of the fence as the family walked in the park and sometimes greeted it with whistling and swearing, so the walks had to be shortened.

On June 22, 1917, it was decided to shave the girls’ heads, since their hair was falling out due to persistent fever and strong medications. Alexei insisted that he be shaved too, thereby causing extreme displeasure in his mother.

Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Anastasia

Despite everything, the children's education continued. The entire process was led by Gillard, a French teacher; Nikolai himself taught the children geography and history; Baroness Buxhoeveden took over English and music lessons; Mademoiselle Schneider taught arithmetic; Countess Gendrikova - drawing; Alexandra taught Orthodoxy.

The eldest, Olga, despite the fact that her education was completed, was often present at lessons and read a lot, improving on what she had already learned.

Grand Duchesses Olga and Anastasia

At this time, there was still hope for the family of the former king to go abroad; but George V, whose popularity among his subjects was rapidly falling, decided not to risk it and chose to sacrifice the royal family, thereby causing shock in his own cabinet.

Nicholas II and George V

Ultimately, the Provisional Government decided to transfer the family of the former tsar to Tobolsk. On the last day before leaving, they managed to say goodbye to the servants and visit their favorite places in the park, ponds, and islands for the last time. Alexei wrote in his diary that on that day he managed to push his older sister Olga into the water. On August 12, 1917, a train flying the flag of the Japanese Red Cross mission departed from a siding in the strictest secrecy.

Tobolsk

On August 26, the imperial family arrived in Tobolsk on the steamship Rus. The house intended for them was not yet completely ready, so they spent the first eight days on the ship.

Arrival of the Royal Family in Tobolsk

Finally, under escort, the imperial family was taken to the two-story governor's mansion, where they were henceforth to live. The girls were given a corner bedroom on the second floor, where they were accommodated in the same army beds captured from the Alexander Palace. Anastasia additionally decorated her corner with her favorite photographs and drawings.

Life in the governor's mansion was quite monotonous; The main entertainment is watching passers-by from the window. From 9.00 to 11.00 - lessons. An hour break for a walk with my father. Lessons again from 12.00 to 13.00. Dinner. From 14.00 to 16.00 there are walks and simple entertainment such as home performances, or in winter - skiing down a slide built with one’s own hands. Anastasia, in her own words, enthusiastically prepared firewood and sewed. Next on the schedule was the evening service and going to bed.

In September they were allowed to go to the nearest church for morning services. Again, the soldiers formed a living corridor right up to the church doors. The attitude of local residents towards the royal family was rather favorable.

The news that Nicholas II, exiled to Tobolsk, and the royal family were going to see the monument to Ermak, spread not only throughout the city, but also throughout the region. Tobolsk photographer Ilya Efimovich Kondrakhin, passionate about photography, with his bulky cameras - a great rarity in those days - hastened to capture this moment. And here we have a photograph showing several dozen people climbing the slope of the hill on which the monument stands so as not to miss the arrival of the last Russian Tsar. Vladimir Vasilievich Kondrakhin (grandson of the photographer) took a photo from the original photograph

Tobolsk

Suddenly, Anastasia began to gain weight, and the process proceeded at a fairly rapid pace, so that even the empress, worried, wrote to her friend:

“Anastasia, to her despair, has gained weight and her appearance exactly resembles Maria a few years ago - the same huge waist and short legs... Let's hope this will go away with age...”

From a letter to sister Maria.

“The iconostasis was set up terribly well for Easter, everything is in the Christmas tree, as it should be here, and flowers. We were filming, I hope it comes out. I continue to draw, they say it’s not bad, it’s very pleasant. We were swinging on a swing, and when I fell, it was such a wonderful fall!.. yeah! I told my sisters so many times yesterday that they were already tired, but I can tell them a lot more times, although there is no one else. In general, I have a lot of things to tell you and you. My Jimmy woke up and coughs, so he sits at home, bows to his helmet. That was the weather! You could literally scream from pleasure. I was the most tanned, oddly enough, like an acrobat! And these days are boring and ugly, it’s cold, and we were freezing this morning, although of course we didn’t go home... I’m very sorry, I forgot to congratulate all my loved ones on the holidays, I kiss you not three, but a lot of times to everyone. Everyone, darling, thanks you very much for your letter."

In April 1918, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the fourth convocation decided to transfer the former tsar to Moscow for the purpose of his trial. After much hesitation, Alexandra decided to accompany her husband; Maria was supposed to go with her “to help.”

The rest had to wait for them in Tobolsk; Olga’s duties were to take care of her sick brother, Tatyana’s was to run the household, and Anastasia’s was to “entertain everyone.” However, at the beginning things were difficult with entertainment, on the last night before departure no one slept a wink, and when finally in the morning, peasant carts were brought to the threshold for the Tsar, Tsarina and those accompanying them, three girls - “three figures in gray” saw off those leaving with tears right up to the gate.

In the courtyard of the governor's house

In the empty house, life continued slowly and sadly. We told fortunes from books, read aloud to each other, and walked. Anastasia was still swinging on the swing, drawing and playing with her sick brother. According to the memoirs of Gleb Botkin, the son of a life physician who died along with the royal family, one day he saw Anastasia in the window and bowed to her, but the guards immediately drove him away, threatening to shoot if he dared to come so close again.

Vel. Princesses Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia () and Tsarevich Alexei at tea. Tobolsk, governor's house. April-May 1918

On May 3, 1918, it became clear that for some reason, the former Tsar's departure to Moscow was canceled and instead Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria were forced to stay in the house of engineer Ipatiev in Yekaterinburg, requisitioned by the new government specifically to house the Tsar's family . In a letter marked with this date, the empress instructed her daughters to “properly manage their medications” - this word meant the jewelry that they managed to hide and take with them. Under the guidance of her older sister Tatyana, Anastasia sewed the remaining jewelry she had into the corset of her dress - with a successful combination of circumstances, it was supposed to be used to buy her way to salvation.

On May 19, it was finally decided that the remaining daughters and Alexey, by that time quite strong, would join their parents and Maria at Ipatiev’s house in Yekaterinburg. The next day, May 20, all four boarded the ship “Rus” again, which took them to Tyumen. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the girls were transported in locked cabins; Alexey was traveling with his orderly named Nagorny; access to their cabin was prohibited even for a doctor.

"My dear friend,

I'll tell you how we drove. We left early in the morning, then got on the train and I fell asleep, followed by everyone else. We were all very tired because we hadn't slept the whole night before. The first day it was very stuffy and dusty, and we had to close the curtains at each station so that no one could see us. One evening I looked out when we stopped at a small house, there was no station there, and you could look outside. A little boy came up to me and asked: “Uncle, give me a newspaper if you have one.” I said: “I’m not an uncle, but an aunt, and I don’t have a newspaper.” At first I didn’t understand why he decided that I was “uncle,” and then I remembered that my hair was cut short and, together with the soldiers who accompanied us, we laughed for a long time at this story. In general, there were a lot of funny things along the way, and if there is time, I will tell you about the journey from beginning to end. Goodbye, don't forget me. Everyone kisses you.

Yours, Anastasia."

On May 23 at 9 a.m. the train arrived in Yekaterinburg. Here, the French teacher Gillard, the sailor Nagorny and the ladies-in-waiting, who had arrived with them, were removed from the children. Crews were brought to the train and at 11 o'clock in the morning Olga, Tatyana, Anastasia and Alexey were finally taken to the house of engineer Ipatiev.

Ipatiev House

Life in the “special purpose house” was monotonous and boring - but nothing more. Rise at 9 o'clock, breakfast. At 2.30 - lunch, at 5 - afternoon tea and dinner at 8. The family went to bed at 10.30 pm. Anastasia sewed with her sisters, walked in the garden, played cards and read spiritual publications aloud to her mother. A little later, the girls were taught to bake bread and they enthusiastically devoted themselves to this activity.

The dining room, the door visible in the picture leads to the Princesses' room.

Room of the Sovereign, Empress and Heir.

On Tuesday, June 18, 1918, Anastasia celebrated her last, 17th birthday. The weather that day was excellent, only in the evening a small thunderstorm broke out. Lilacs and lungwort were blooming. The girls baked bread, then Alexei was taken out to the garden, and the whole family joined him. At 8 pm we had dinner and played several games of cards. We went to bed at the usual time, 10.30 pm.

Execution

It is officially believed that the decision to execute the royal family was finally made by the Ural Council on July 16 in connection with the possibility of surrendering the city to the White Guard troops and the alleged discovery of a conspiracy to save the royal family. On the night of July 16-17, at 11:30 p.m., two special representatives from the Urals Council handed a written order to execute the commander of the security detachment, P.Z. Ermakov, and the commandant of the house, Commissioner of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission, Ya.M. Yurovsky. After a brief dispute about the method of execution, the royal family was woken up and, under the pretext of a possible shootout and the danger of being killed by bullets ricocheting off the walls, they were offered to go down to the corner semi-basement room.

According to the report of Yakov Yurovsky, the Romanovs did not suspect anything until the last moment. At the empress's request, chairs were brought to the basement, on which she and Nicholas sat with their son in her arms. Anastasia stood behind with her sisters. The sisters brought several handbags with them, Anastasia also took her beloved dog Jimmy, who accompanied her throughout her exile.

Anastasia holding Jimmy the dog

There is information that after the first salvo, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia remained alive; they were saved by jewelry sewn into the corsets of their dresses. Later, witnesses interrogated by investigator Sokolov testified that of the royal daughters, Anastasia resisted death the longest; already wounded, she “had” to be finished off with bayonets and rifle butts. According to materials discovered by historian Edward Radzinsky, Anna Demidova, Alexandra's servant, who managed to protect herself with a pillow filled with jewelry, remained alive the longest.

Together with the corpses of her relatives, Anastasia’s body was wrapped in sheets taken from the beds of the Grand Duchesses and taken to the Four Brothers tract for burial. There the corpses, disfigured beyond recognition by blows from rifle butts and sulfuric acid, were thrown into one of the old mines. Later, investigator Sokolov discovered the body of Ortino’s dog here.

Grand Duchess Anastasia, Grand Duchess Tatiana holding the dog Ortino

After the execution, the last drawing made by Anastasia’s hand was found in the room of the Grand Duchesses - a swing between two birch trees.

Drawings of Grand Duchess Anastasia

Anastasia over Ganina Yama

Discovery of remains

The “Four Brothers” tract is located a few kilometers from the village of Koptyaki, not far from Yekaterinburg. One of its pits was chosen by Yurovsky's team to bury the remains of the royal family and servants.

It was not possible to keep the place a secret from the very beginning, due to the fact that literally next to the tract there was a road to Yekaterinburg; early in the morning the procession was seen by a peasant from the village of Koptyaki, Natalya Zykova, and then several more people. The Red Army soldiers, threatening with weapons, drove them away.

Later that same day, grenade explosions were heard in the area. Interested in the strange incident, local residents, a few days later, when the cordon had already been lifted, came to the tract and managed to discover several valuables (apparently belonging to the royal family) in a hurry, not noticed by the executioners.

From May 23 to June 17, 1919, investigator Sokolov conducted reconnaissance of the area and interviewed village residents.

Photo by Gilliard: Nikolai Sokolov in 1919 near Yekaterinburg.

From June 6 to July 10, by order of Admiral Kolchak, excavations of the Ganina Pit began, which were interrupted due to the retreat of the Whites from the city.

On July 11, 1991, remains identified as the bodies of the royal family and servants were found in the Ganina Pit at a depth of just over one meter. The body, which probably belonged to Anastasia, was marked with number 5. Doubts arose about it - the entire left side of the face was broken into pieces; Russian anthropologists tried to connect the found fragments together and put together the missing part. The result of the rather painstaking work was in doubt. Russian researchers tried to proceed from the height of the found skeleton, however, the measurements were made from photographs and were questioned by American experts.

American scientists believed that the missing body was Anastasia's because none of the female skeletons showed evidence of immaturity, such as an immature collarbone, immature wisdom teeth or immature vertebrae in the back, which they expected to find in the body of a seventeen-year-old girl.

In 1998, when the remains of the imperial family were finally interred, the 5'7" body was buried under Anastasia's name. Photos of the girl standing next to her sisters, taken six months before the murder, show that Anastasia was several inches shorter than them Her mother, commenting on the figure of her sixteen-year-old daughter, wrote in a letter to a friend seven months before the murder: “Anastasia, to her despair, has grown fat and looks exactly like Maria a few years ago - the same huge waist and short legs... Let's hope, with. it will pass with age...” Scientists believe it is unlikely that she grew much in the last months of her life. Her actual height was approximately 5'2".

The doubts were finally resolved in 2007, after the discovery in the so-called Porosenkovsky ravine of the remains of a young girl and boy, later identified as Tsarevich Alexei and Maria. Genetic testing confirmed the initial findings. In July 2008, this information was officially confirmed by the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, reporting that an examination of the remains found in 2007 on the old Koptyakovskaya road established that the discovered remains belonged to Grand Duchess Maria and Tsarevich Alexei, who was the emperor's heir.

Fire pit with “charred wooden parts”

Another version of the same story was told by the former Austrian prisoner of war Franz Svoboda at the trial, at which Anderson tried to defend her right to be called a Grand Duchess and gain access to the hypothetical inheritance of her “father.” Svoboda proclaimed himself the savior of Anderson, and, according to his version, the wounded princess was transported to the house of “a neighbor in love with her, a certain X.” This version, however, contained quite a lot of obviously implausible details, for example, about violating the curfew, which was unthinkable at that moment, about posters announcing the escape of the Grand Duchess, allegedly posted all over the city, and about general searches, which, fortunately , they didn’t give anything. Thomas Hildebrand Preston, who was the British Consul General in Yekaterinburg at that time, rejected such fabrications. Despite the fact that Anderson defended her “royal” origin until the end of her life, wrote the book “I, Anastasia” and fought legal battles for several decades, no final decision was made during her lifetime.

Currently, genetic analysis has confirmed already existing assumptions that Anna Anderson was in fact Franziska Schanzkovskaya, a worker in a Berlin factory that produced explosives. As a result of an industrial accident, she was seriously injured and suffered mental shock, the consequences of which she could not get rid of for the rest of her life.

Another false Anastasia was Eugenia Smith (Evgenia Smetisko), an artist who published “memoirs” in the United States about her life and miraculous salvation. She managed to attract significant attention to her person and seriously improve her financial situation, capitalizing on the public's interest.

Eugenia Smith. photo

Rumors about Anastasia's rescue were fueled by news of trains and houses that the Bolsheviks were searching in search of the missing princess. During a brief imprisonment in Perm in 1918, Princess Elena Petrovna, the wife of Anastasia's distant relative, Prince Ivan Konstantinovich, reported that guards brought a girl into her cell who called herself Anastasia Romanova and asked if the girl was the Tsar's daughter. Elena Petrovna replied that she did not recognize the girl, and the guards took her away. Another account is given more credibility by one historian. Eight witnesses reported the return of a young woman after an apparent rescue attempt in September 1918 at the railway station at Siding 37, northwest of Perm. These witnesses were Maxim Grigoriev, Tatyana Sytnikova and her son Fyodor Sytnikov, Ivan Kuklin and Marina Kuklina, Vasily Ryabov, Ustina Varankina and Dr. Pavel Utkin, the doctor who examined the girl after the incident. Some witnesses identified the girl as Anastasia when they were shown photographs of the Grand Duchess by White Army investigators. Utkin also told them that the injured girl he examined at the Cheka headquarters in Perm told him: “I am the daughter of the ruler, Anastasia.”

At the same time, in mid-1918, there were several reports of young people in Russia posing as escaped Romanovs. Boris Solovyov, the husband of Rasputin's daughter Maria, deceitfully begged money from noble Russian families for the supposedly saved Romanov, in fact wanting to use the money to go to China. Solovyov also found women who agreed to pose as grand duchesses and thereby contributed to the deception.

However, there is a possibility that one or more guards could actually save one of the surviving Romanovs. Yakov Yurovsky demanded that the guards come to his office and review the things they stole after the murder. Accordingly, there was a period of time when the bodies of the victims were left unattended in the truck, in the basement and in the hallway of the house. Some guards who did not participate in the murders and sympathized with the grand duchesses, according to some sources, remained in the basement with the bodies.

In 1964-1967, during the Anna Anderson case, Viennese tailor Heinrich Kleibenzetl testified that he allegedly saw the wounded Anastasia shortly after the murder in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918. The girl was looked after by his landlady, Anna Baoudin, in a building directly opposite Ipatiev's house.

“Her lower body was covered in blood, her eyes were closed and she was white as a sheet,” he testified. “We washed her chin, Frau Annuschka and I, then she moaned. The bones must have been broken... Then she opened her eyes for a minute.” Kleibenzetl claimed that the injured girl remained in his landlady's house for three days. The Red Army soldiers allegedly came to the house, but knew its landlady too well and did not actually search the house. “They said something like this: Anastasia has disappeared, but she’s not here, that’s for sure.” Finally, a Red Army soldier, the same man who brought her, arrived to take the girl away. Kleibenzetl knew nothing more about her future fate.

Rumors were revived again after the release of Sergo Beria’s book “My Father - Lavrentiy Beria,” where the author casually recalls a meeting in the lobby of the Bolshoi Theater with the supposedly saved Anastasia, who became the abbess of an unnamed Bulgarian monastery.

Rumors of a “miraculous rescue,” which seemed to have died down after the royal remains were subjected to scientific study in 1991, resumed with renewed vigor when publications appeared in the press that one of the grand duchesses was missing from the bodies found (it was assumed that it was Maria) and Tsarevich Alexei. However, according to another version, among the remains there might not have been Anastasia, who was slightly younger than her sister and almost the same build, so a mistake in identification seemed likely. This time, Nadezhda Ivanova-Vasilieva, who spent most of her life in the Kazan psychiatric hospital, where she was assigned by the Soviet authorities, allegedly fearing the surviving princess, claimed the role of the rescued Anastasia.

Prince Dmitry Romanovich Romanov, great-great-grandson of Nicholas, summed up the long-term epic of impostors:

In my memory, the self-proclaimed Anastasias ranged from 12 to 19. In the conditions of the post-war depression, many went crazy. We, the Romanovs, would be happy if Anastasia, even in the person of this very Anna Anderson, turned out to be alive. But alas, it was not her.

The final dot to the i was the discovery of the bodies of Alexei and Maria in the same tract in 2007 and anthropological and genetic examinations, which finally confirmed that there could not have been any rescued among the royal family

The work was awarded by the jury for its 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 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 Nicholas II's father. In society, the newlyweds were condemned for such haste, but the desire of the lovers was above all conventions. In the first years, the happiness of the newlyweds was immeasurable. The mood was darkened only by the absence of an heir. Alexandra Feodorovna 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. Her parents couldn't be happier about her appearance. The girl distinguished herself by her abilities in studying science, loved solitude and books, was very smart, and had creative abilities. Olga behaved with everyone simply and naturally. The princess was amazingly responsive, sincere and generous. The first daughter of Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova inherited her mother’s facial features, posture, and golden hair. Olga, like her father, had an amazingly pure Christian soul. The princess was distinguished by an innate sense of justice and did not like lies.

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova was born on June 11, 1897 and was the second child of the Romanovs. Like Olga Nikolaevna, Tatyana looked like her mother, but her character was that of her father. She was less emotional than her sister. The princess's eyes were similar to the eyes of the Empress, her figure was graceful, and the color of her blue eyes harmoniously combined with her brown hair. Tatyana rarely played 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. Due to her mother’s illness, Tatiana Romanova often took charge of the household; this did not burden the Grand Duchess at all. She loved to do needlework and was good at embroidery and sewing. The princess had a sound mind. In cases requiring decisive action, she always remained herself.

Maria Nikolaevna Romanova was born on June 27, 1899, the third child in the family. Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna was a typical Russian girl. She was characterized by good nature, cheerfulness, and friendliness. Maria had a beautiful appearance and vitality. According to the recollections of some of her contemporaries, she was very similar to her grandfather Alexander III. The young girl loved her parents very much and was attached to them, much more than the other children of the royal couple.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova was born on June 18, 1901. The Emperor waited a long time for an heir, and when the long-awaited fourth child turned out to be a daughter, he was saddened. Soon the sadness passed, and the Emperor loved his fourth daughter no less than his other children. With her agility, the princess could give any boy a head start. She wore simple clothes inherited from her older sisters. The fourth daughter's bedroom was not richly decorated. Anastasia Nikolaevna made sure to take a cold shower every morning. It was not easy to keep track of her. As a child she was very nimble. In addition to cheerfulness, 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, born on August 12, 1904. Alexey inherited all the best from his father and mother. The parents loved the heir very much, he reciprocated them with great affection. The father was a real idol for the prince. The boy tried to imitate him in everything. The royal couple did not even think about what to name their newborn child. Nicholas II had long wanted to name his future heir Alexei. The Tsar said that “it’s time to break the line between Aleksandrov and Nikolaev.” Nicholas II was also attracted to the personality of Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, and the Emperor wanted to name his son in honor of his great ancestor.

With the advent of her children, Alexandra Fedorovna gave them all her attention. She spent a lot of time in the classroom, supervising their activities. She taught the Grand Duchesses handicrafts from childhood. The empress was completely alien to the empty atmosphere of St. Petersburg society, to whom 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 produce a known annual minimum of things for the poor. In addition, a society for industriousness, linen warehouses for the wounded, nursing homes with workshops, a folk art school for teaching handicrafts, and a society for collecting donations for the education and training of poor children in a profession were organized.

I consider this family truly Holy. It is difficult for a modern person to grow to understand their life. In essence, the entire 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; a cordial, attentive attitude towards all people, indifference to luxury, hard work and the 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 first floor. After reading out the death sentence, he shot Nicholas II in the head, which served as a signal to the other participants in the execution to open fire on pre-designated targets. Those who did not die immediately were bayoneted.

At a meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18, its chairman Ya. M. Sverdlov announced the execution of the imperial family. Almost immediately rumors appeared that Alexandra Feodorovna and her children had been spared their lives. Nevertheless, since the former queen and her children did not appear anywhere, the fact of the death of the Romanovs was considered generally accepted. From this time on, miraculously surviving children appeared; they were considered impostors.

As you know, imposture first appeared in Russia at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. What motivates impostors? Some people want to be famous, some want power, some love money, and some want everything at once. In this situation, applicants for the “role” of the saved Anastasia had a vested interest in receiving Nicholas II’s foreign bank deposits. I want to consider the phenomenon of impostor using the example of Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.

The life of the youngest daughter of Nicholas II ended at 17 years old. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, she and her relatives were shot in Yekaterinburg.

Or weren't they 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 had a height of 158 cm, and the buried skeleton was 171 cm.

According to the official point of view: all members of the family of Nicholas II and 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 a house on Voskresensky Prospekt in Yekaterinburg in the early morning of July 17, 1918; it was Heinrich Kleinbetzetl. He saw her in Baudin's house in the early morning of July 17, a few hours after the brutal massacre in the basement of Ipatiev's house. It was brought by one of the guards (probably still from the previous more liberal guard composition - Yurovsky did not replace all the previous guards), - one of those few young guys who had long sympathized with the girls, the Tsar’s 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” searched 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 conducted secret negotiations with the Germans about handing over the Russian Tsarina and her children to them 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 warmth and warmth. “I’m not able to comprehend 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.

The archives of the Cheka-KGB-FSB about the murder of the Royal Family and what the security officers led by Yurovsky in 1919 and MGB officers in 1946 did in the Koptyakovsky forest have not yet been opened. All documents known so far about the execution of the royal family (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 Fräulein Unbekant. Under this name, a girl rescued from a suicide attempt was registered in the Berlin police report on February 17, 1920. She had no documents with her and refused to give her name. She had light brown hair and piercing gray eyes. She spoke with a pronounced Slavic accent, so in her personal file there was an entry “unknown Russian”.

That evening, February 17, she was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. At the end of March she was transferred to a neurological clinic in Daldorf 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 commit suicide, but refused to give a reason or give any comments. During the examination, her weight was recorded - 50 kilograms, height - 158 centimeters. Upon examination, doctors discovered that she had given birth six months ago. For a girl “under the age of twenty,” this was an important circumstance.

They saw numerous scars from lacerations on the patient’s chest and stomach. On the head behind the right ear there was a 3.5 cm long scar, deep enough for a finger to go into it, as well as a scar on the forehead at the very roots of the hair. On the foot of his right leg there was a characteristic scar from a perforating wound. It fully corresponded to the shape and size of the wounds inflicted by the bayonet of a Russian rifle. There are cracks in the upper jaw. The next day after the examination, she admitted to the doctor that she was afraid for her life: “She makes it clear that she does not want to identify herself for fear of persecution. The impression of restraint born of fear. More fear than restraint." The medical history also records that the patient has congenital orthopedic foot disease hallux valgus of the third degree.

The disease discovered in the patient by the doctors of the clinic in Daldorf absolutely coincided with the congenital disease of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. The girl had the same height, foot size, hair and eye color and portrait resemblance to the Russian princess, and from the medical card data it is clear that the traces of injuries to “Fräulein Unbekant” fully correspond to those that, according to the forensic investigator Tomashevsky, were inflicted on Anastasia in the basement of Ipatiev’s 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 her hair with bangs.

In the end, the girl named herself Anastasia Romanova. According to her version, the miraculous rescue looked like this: together with all the murdered family members, she was taken to the burial place, but on the way, the half-dead Anastasia was hidden by some soldier. With him she reached Romania, there they got married, but what happened next was a failure.

Over the next 50 years, speculation and court cases continued about whether Anna Anderson was Anastasia Romanova, 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.

Beginning in March 1927, opponents of the recognition of Anna Anderson as Anastasia put forward the version that the girl posing as the saved Anastasia was in fact a native of a peasant family (from East Prussia) named Franziska Shantskovskaya.

This point of view is confirmed by a 1995 examination carried out by the Department of Forensic Medicine of the British Home Office. According to the results of the examination, studies of the mitochondrial DNA of “Anna Anderson” 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, Ms Anderson's DNA does not match either the DNA of female skeletons recovered from a grave near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and allegedly belonging to the queen and her three daughters, nor with the DNA of Anastasia's maternal and paternal relatives lines residing in England and elsewhere. At the same time, a blood test of Karl Mauger, the great-nephew of missing factory worker Franziska Schanckowska, revealed a mitochondrial match, leading to the conclusion 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 aggravated by the testimony of people who knew Anna-Anastasia personally:

“... I knew Anna Anderson for more than ten years and was familiar with almost everyone who was involved in her struggle for recognition over the past quarter century: friends, lawyers, neighbors, journalists, historians, representatives of the Russian royal family and the royal families of Europe , Russian and European aristocracy - a wide range of competent witnesses, who without hesitation recognized her as the tsar’s daughter. My knowledge of her character, all the details of her case and, as it seems to me, probability and common sense - everything convinces me that she was a Russian Grand Duchess.

This belief of mine, although challenged (by DNA research), remains unshakable. Not being an expert, I cannot question Dr. Gill's results; if only these results had revealed that Ms. Anderson was not a member of the Romanov family, I might be able to accept them—if not easily now, then at least in time. However, no amount of scientific evidence or forensic evidence will convince me that Ms. Anderson and Franziska Schanckowska are the same person.

I categorically assert that those who knew Anna Anderson, who lived with her for months and years, treated her and cared for her during her many illnesses, be it a doctor or a nurse, who observed her behavior, posture, demeanor, “They can’t believe that she was born in a village in East Prussia in 1896 and was the daughter and sister of beet farmers” - Peter Kurth.

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 Doctor Botkin, who died in Yekaterinburg.

Supporters of recognizing Anna Anderson as Anastasia point out that Franziska Shantskovskaya was five years older than Anastasia, taller, wore shoes four sizes larger, never gave birth to children and had no orthopedic foot diseases. In addition, Franziska Schanzkowska disappeared from home 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 performed by an employee of the Institute of Graphology in Prisna, 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 Weizsäcker came to the conclusion that the samples belong to the same person.

In 1960, by decision of the Hamburg Court, graphologist Dr. Minna Becker was appointed as a graphological expert. Four years later, reporting on her work before the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Senate, the gray-haired Dr. Becker said: “I have never seen so many identical features in two texts written by different people.” Another important note from the doctor is worth mentioning. Handwriting samples in the form of texts written in German and Russian were provided for examination. In her report, speaking about Ms. Anderson’s Russian texts, Dr. Becker noted: “It seems as if she was again in a familiar environment.”

Due to the inability to compare fingerprints, anthropologists were brought in to investigate. Their opinion was considered by the court as “probability approaching certainty.” Research carried out in 1958 at the University of Mainz by Doctors Eickstedt and Klenke, and in 1965 by the founder of the German Anthropological Society, Professor Otto Rehe, led to the same result, namely:

1. Mrs. Anderson is not the Polish factory worker Franziska Schanckowska.

2. Mrs. Anderson is Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.

Opponents pointed to the discrepancy between the shape of Anderson’s right ear and Anastasia Romanova’s ear, citing an examination done back in the twenties.

These doubts were resolved by one of the most famous forensic experts in Germany, Dr. Moritz Furthmeier. In 1976, Dr. Furthmeyer discovered that, by an absurd accident, experts used a photograph of Dahldorf's patient, taken from an inverted negative, to compare the ears. That is, the right ear of Anastasia Romanova was compared with the left ear of “Fräulein Unbekant” and, naturally, received a negative result for identity. When comparing the same photograph of Anastasia with a photograph of Anderson (Tchaikovsky)'s right ear, Moritz Furthmeier obtained a match in seventeen anatomical positions. To recognize the identification in a West German court, the coincidence of five positions out of twelve was quite sufficient.

One can only guess what her fate would have been like had it not been for that fatal mistake. Even in the sixties, this error formed the basis of the decision of the Hamburg court, and then of the highest appeal court in the Senate.

In recent years, another important consideration has been added to the mystery of identifying Anna Anderson as Anastasia, which was previously ignored for some unknown reason.

We are talking about congenital deformation 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 aged 30-35 years. As for cases of congenital disease, they are isolated and extremely rare. Out of 142 million people in 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 on 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” are actually statistics of artifacts, while DNA studies are 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 House of Romanov 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.

First, Anna Anderson spoke harshly about Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (“he is a traitor”), while the latter laid claim to 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 associated with the intention of persuading Nicholas II to a separate peace with Germany. This failed, and upon leaving the Alexander Palace, Ernie even said to his sister, Empress Alexandra: “You are no longer the sun for us” - that’s what all German relatives called Alix in her childhood. In the early twenties, this was still a state secret, and Ernie Hesse 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 condition. She was sick with tuberculosis. Her weight barely reached 33 kg. The people surrounding Anastasia believed that her days were numbered. But she survived, and after meetings with Aunt Olya and other close people, she dreamed of meeting her grandmother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. She was waiting for recognition from her family, but instead, in 1928, on the second day after the death of the Dowager Empress, several members of the Romanov dynasty publicly renounced her, declaring that she was an impostor. The insult led to a break in the relationship.

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 Bolshevik rule would drag on for seven long decades. Anastasia's appearance in Berlin in the summer of 1922 caused confusion and division of opinion among the monarchists. The subsequent information about the physical and mental ill health of the princess, and the presence of an heir to the throne who was born in an unequal marriage, all this did not contribute to her immediate recognition, not to mention the consideration of her candidacy for the place of head of the dynasty.

This could conclude the story of the missing Russian princess. It is amazing that for more than 80 years no one thought to find out the medical statistics of hallux valgus foot deformity. It is strange that the results of an absurd examination comparing “the right ear of Anastasia Romanova with the left ear of “Fräulein Unbekant” served as the basis for fateful court decisions, despite multiple graphological examinations and personal testimony. 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 Franziska 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 asked? Maybe it’s his DNA that should be compared with the DNA of the Romanov relatives, and not the dubious “tissue materials”?

Among the many obvious impostors, in addition to Anna Anderson, several more contenders stand apart.

In the early 20s, a young woman with an aristocratic bearing 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 Georgy Zhudin. Rumors that Eleanor and George were brother and sister and belonged to the Russian royal family circulated in the community. However, they did not make any statements or claims about anything.

George died in 1930, and Eleanor died in 1954. 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 talked 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, said in front of witnesses that Nicholas II ordered him to personally take Anastasia and Alexei out of the palace and hide them in the provinces. He also claimed to have taken the children to Turkey. Comparing photographs of 17-year-old Anastasia and 35-year-old Eleanor Kruger from Gabarevo, experts have established significant similarities between them. The years of their birth also coincide. Contemporaries of George claim that he was ill and talk about him as a tall, weak and pale young man. Russian authors also describe the hemophiliac Prince Alexei in a similar way. In 1995, the remains of Eleanor 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-Vasilieva. In April 1934, a young woman, very thin and poorly dressed, entered the Church of the Resurrection at the Semenovskoye cemetery. She came to confession, and Hieromonk Afanasy (Alexander Ivanshin) directed her.

During confession, the woman announced to the priest that she was the daughter of the former Tsar Nicholas II - Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. When asked how she managed to escape execution, the stranger replied: “You can’t talk about that.”

She was prompted to seek help by the need to get a passport to try to leave the country. They managed to get a passport, but someone reported to the NKVD about the activities of a “counter-revolutionary monarchist group,” and everyone who helped the woman was arrested.

Case No. 15977 is still kept in the State Archives of the 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 a Special Meeting 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-Vasilieva spent almost forty years within the walls of medical institutions, but she was never tested for her blood type. Not a single questionnaire, not a single protocol contains the date and month of birth. Only the year and place that coincide with the data of Anastasia Romanova. Investigators, speaking about the defendant in the third person, called her “Princess Romanova,” and not an impostor. And knowing that the woman was living on a fake passport filled out in 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 appealed to the Tbilisi court to have her recognized as Anastasia. However, the court hearings did not take place due to her failure to appear. She claimed that the entire family was saved. She died in 2000. Posthumous genetic testing 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 a backup family (the Berezkins) who lived in Sukhumi. This explains her external resemblance to Anastasia and the positive results of “22 examinations conducted by commission and judicial procedure in three countries - Georgia, Russia and Latvia.” According to them, there was “a number of matching features that can only occur in one out of 700 billion cases.” Perhaps the story of the recognition was started in anticipation of the financial inheritance of the royal family with the goal of returning 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, guesses and versions. What exactly to believe is an individual choice for each of us. And I would like to finish my work with the words of the great writer Mark Twain: “Fiction must remain within the boundaries of the possible. The truth is no."

List of used literature:

1. The Romanovs // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes. - St. Petersburg. 1890-1907.

2. Lobashkova, T. A. The Romanov Dynasty: biobibliographic index. - M.: Russian Cultural Foundation; Russian Archive; TRITE, 2007.

3. Konyaev N. M. The true history of the House of Romanov. - M.: Veche, 2009.

4. History of the families of the Russian nobility: In 2 books. /aut.-state P. N. Petrov. - M.: Contemporary; Lexika, 1991.

5. Peter Kurt. Anastasia. The mystery of the Grand Duchess. – M.: Zakharov, 2005.

The tragic fate of Princess Anastasia Romanova

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova; (born June 5 (18), 1901 - death July 17, 1918) - Grand Duchess, fourth daughter (three more daughters - Olga, Tatiana and Maria) and Alexandra Feodorovna. The Grand Duchess was named after the Montenegrin princess Anastasia Nikolaevna, a close friend of the empress. Anastasia Nikolaevna's full title is Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia Nikolaevna.

Anastasia Nikolaevna was shot along with her family in the house of engineer Ipatiev. After her death, approximately 30 women pretended to be the “miraculously saved Grand Duchess,” but sooner or later they were exposed as impostors.

The mystery of Grand Duchess Anastasia still haunts scientists, historians, and ordinary people to this day: was it really a miracle that she was able to stay alive in Yekaterinburg in the summer of 1918?

A young woman appeared in Western Europe, calling herself the Russian princess and Grand Duchess Anastasia. And throughout her long life she tried in every possible way to prove this.

But in the USSR not a word was said about this in any of the media. Of course, those “who were supposed to” knew about it. But even after the death of Princess Anastasia, in the new, “democratic” Russia, nothing is known about the mystery of this mysterious woman and her amazing story...

Contemporaries about Anastasia. Childhood years

From the memories of contemporaries, the imperial children were not spoiled with luxury. Anastasia shared a room with her older sister Maria. Like other children of the emperor, Anastasia was educated at home. Anastasia was not known for her diligence in her studies; she did not like grammar, wrote with terrible errors, and with childish spontaneity called arithmetic “disgusting.”

Anastasia was small and plump, with reddish brown hair, and large blue eyes, inherited from her father.

She inherited wide hips, a slender waist and a good bust from her mother. Anastasia was short, strongly built, but at the same time, she seemed somewhat airy. She was simple-minded in face and physique, inferior to the stately Olga and fragile Tatyana. Anastasia alone inherited her father's face shape - slightly elongated, with prominent cheekbones and a wide forehead. In general, she was very similar to her father. Large facial features - large eyes, a large nose, soft lips - made Anastasia look like young Maria Feodorovna - her grandmother. Anastasia had wavy hair, rather coarse.

Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. 1903

She spoke quickly but clearly. The voice was high and deep. She had a habit of laughing and laughing loudly. The girl had a light and cheerful character, loved to play rounders, forfeits, and serso, and could tirelessly run around the palace for hours, playing hide and seek. She also had a clear talent as a comic actress; she loved to parody and imitate those around her, and she did it very talentedly and funny.

The princess loved to draw, and did it quite well, willingly played the guitar or balalaika with her brother, knitted, sewed, watched movies, was fond of photography, which was fashionable at that time, and had her own photo album, loved to talk on the phone, read or just lie in bed .

Anastasia was not in good health. Since childhood, she suffered from pain in her feet - a consequence of congenital curvature of her big toes, for which she would later be identified with one of the impostors - Anna Anderson. She had a weak back, despite the fact that the little Grand Duchess did her best to avoid the massage necessary to strengthen her muscles, hiding from the visiting masseuse in the cupboard or under the bed. Even with minor cuts, the bleeding did not stop for an abnormally long time, from which doctors concluded that, like her mother, the girl was a carrier of hemophilia.

Revolution 1917

From the memoirs of Lili Den (Yulia Alexandrovna von Den), a close friend of Alexandra Fedorovna, in February 1917, at the very height of the revolution, the children fell ill with measles one after another. Anastasia was the last to fall ill, when the Tsarskoye Selo palace was already surrounded by rebel troops. At that time the Tsar was at the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief in Mogilev; only the Empress and her children remained in the palace.

On the night of March 2, 1917, Lily Dehn stayed overnight in the palace, in the Raspberry Room, with Grand Duchess Anastasia. So that they would not worry, they explained to the children that the troops surrounding the palace and the shots coming were the result of ongoing exercises. Alexandra Fedorovna intended to “hide the truth from them for as long as possible.” On March 2 at 9 o'clock they learned about the Tsar's abdication.

At this time there was still hope for the family of the former emperor to go abroad; but George V, whose popularity among his subjects was rapidly falling, decided not to risk it and chose to sacrifice the royal family, which caused a shock in his own cabinet.

As a result, the Provisional Government decided to transfer the family of the former emperor to Tobolsk. On the day before leaving, they managed to say goodbye to the servants and visit their favorite places in the park, ponds, and islands for the last time. Alexey wrote in his diary that on that day he managed to push his older sister Olga into the water. 1917, August 12 - a train flying the flag of the Japanese Red Cross mission departed from the siding in the strictest secrecy.

1918–1920

How are you feeling? - the doctor asked carefully when the woman came to her senses. - Do you remember your name, address?

“I have to make an important statement,” the stranger answered in a weak voice. - My name is Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. I am Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of Emperor Nicholas 2. I miraculously managed to avoid death in Yekaterinburg.

Royal Romanov family

This kind of statement, made even in war-ravaged Germany, could not but arouse enormous interest not only from doctors, but also from the press and various kinds of intelligence services - it’s not every day that Russian princesses are caught from Berlin canals! The statement of the unknown woman also became known in Moscow: the security officers had their own agents in Berlin.

They demanded explanations and evidence from the unknown young lady. And she told the amazing and mysterious story of her salvation. According to her, one of the Cheka officers or Red Guards guarding the house, named Tchaikovsky, fell in love with her and decided to save her. He managed to get Anastasia out of the house before the family was shot, and they fled together, leaving Yekaterinburg.

Anastasia had to become Tchaikovsky’s mistress, and together they made their way away from the Red Commissars. Finally, fate and the whirlwind of the Civil War brought them to Romania, where Anastasia’s partner died. The young woman was left alone, without funds or documents. For some time she wandered around various European countries, and then ended up in Germany, in Berlin. Unable to bear any more humiliation and suffering, the woman decided to commit suicide.

Who is she? False Anastasia or...

In Moscow, at Lubyanka, they considered the “Grand Duchess” a swindler. But just in case, they did not stop keeping an eye on her almost until death: if something serious might have arisen, back in the 1920s they would have probably tried to quickly eliminate the “pretender to the throne” by arranging for her to have a car accident, death under the wheels of a tram, or simply disappear without a trace . And suicide is easier - after all, she already tried to kill herself. But Anastasia was not liquidated.

The Germans are distrustful people and did not want to take the word of the “Russian princess”. There was a large colony of Russian emigrants in Berlin, many of whom had been to the royal court and knew the Romanov family well. Some representatives of the family of the Romanov house that ruled Russia also survived - they should recognize their relative! Besides, Europe is not so big: you can invite someone from other countries for identification.

Anna Anderson and Anastasia

The Germans and representatives of the intelligence services of various countries arranged for the miraculously saved Anastasia Nikolaevna to meet with relatives and people who personally knew members of the imperial family. Strange, enigmatic and mysterious, but... reviews and opinions turned out to be almost diametrically opposed! Rational Germans did not know what to think and do after this.

She is a 100% scammer! - said representatives of the former highest aristocracy of the Russian Empire.

She wants to compete for power in Russia when we return there,” said one representative of the House of Romanov.

She wants to get her hands on the royal inheritance left abroad! - said others. - What if this is a well-trained agent of Dzerzhinsky, whom they want to introduce into the holy of holies of the Russian emigration?

Why did the Bolsheviks conduct secret negotiations with the Germans about handing over the Russian Tsarina and her children to them in exchange for Russian political prisoners in Germany? This was after the tragedy in Yekaterinburg! Is it really all a bluff of the communists?

The Germans issued documents to the “Grand Duchess” in the name of Anna Andersen, not daring to either admit or completely reject her claims. 1925 - Anna met with Olga Alexandrovna Romanova-Kulikovskaya, the younger sister of Nicholas II, the real Anastasia’s aunt, who could not help but recognize her niece. Olga Alexandrovna visited Anna-Anastasia in the hospital and treated her with warmth and warmth. What they talked about remained a mystery.

“I’m not able to comprehend this with my mind,” Olga Alexandrovna said after the meeting, “but my heart tells me, this is Anastasia!”

To believe or not to believe the words of the younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II? 1928 - all the surviving Romanovs, who then numbered 12 people, as well as their relatives on the German side, decided at a family council to reject “Grand Duchess Anastasia,” recognizing her story as not trustworthy, and herself as an impostor. Moscow was very happy with this, but to suspect the GPU of collusion with the Romanovs was stupid, to say the least.

Later, Andersen released an autobiographical book “I am Anastasia,” which was not published in Russia. A film was made about her dramatic story starring Ingrid Bergman, who received an Oscar for it in 1956. Anna repeatedly tried to prove her case in court, and the last decision of a German court in 1970 stated: “Her claims cannot be neither proven nor disproven."

“Grand Duchess Anastasia,” aka Anna Andersen, died in Germany in 1984. On the monument erected on her grave, only one word is engraved: “Anastasia.”

What secrets did this mysterious woman take with her to the grave? During the excavations and discovery of remains recognized as the remains of members of the royal family and buried at the end of the 20th century in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, no fragments of bodies were found that could belong to Grand Duchess Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei...

On the night of July 16-17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg, in Ipatiev’s house on the corner of the former Voznesensky Prospekt and Voznesensky Lane, an event occurred that some consider a terrible crime, while others consider it a triumph of justice: the abdicated throne was shot along with his wife, children and servants. the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II. Testimonies of contemporaries, testimonies of contemporaries, preserved the details of the story - from touching to creepy: Grand Duchess Anastasia did not part with her beloved dog Jimmy until the very end, and it was not possible to kill her and her sisters right away - the bullets bounced off the corsages of the girls, where the jewelry was sewn. Princess Anastasia took the longest to finish off with rifle butts. Perhaps for this reason, rumors began to spread soon after the execution: Anastasia did not die. Either the girl managed to escape, or she was replaced, or she, wounded, was carried out of the house by some soldier... As you know, people believe most strongly in what they want to believe - and Russian emigrants wanted to believe in what at least someone from the royal family managed to escape.

...This story began in 1920 - not at all remarkable: a Berlin policeman saved a girl who was trying to throw herself from a bridge. Suicides happen every day, sometimes law enforcement officers manage to prevent them, but the story that the failed suicide told was, frankly speaking, atypical: the unfortunate woman found her aunt in Berlin, but she refused to recognize her. Everything would be fine, but the aunt turned out to be... Princess Irene - the sister of the last Russian empress. Well, what were the police supposed to think - especially considering that the girl did not answer questions, looked exhausted and had no documents on her? Of course, she was taken to a charity hospital, and from there to a psychiatric clinic.

In the hospital, where she spent a year and a half diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder of a depressive nature, she was called Unbekant (unknown). She recalled St. Basil's Cathedral, talked about Russian politics, understood Russian speech, but did not speak Russian, and the same was true with the Polish language. One day, a nurse brought a newspaper into the ward with the headline: “Is one of the king’s daughters alive?” It seemed to my roommate Maria Poitert that Unbekant looked like one of the Grand Duchesses in the photograph, but she kept repeating: “Be quiet!”

The situation made an impression on M. Peutert. After leaving the clinic, she met with Russian emigrants - officer M. Shvabe, Zinaida Tolstoy - and convinced them to visit the mysterious patient. They talked for a long time with the woman in the hospital, she did not answer questions and covered her face with a blanket - but this did not stop the emigrants from being convinced that it was Grand Duchess Tatiana, suffering from amnesia. This confidence was dispelled by another emigrant, Baroness S. Buxhoeveden: it turned out that the supposed Grand Duchess did not know English, which Tatiana spoke perfectly... But interest in the mysterious person was already aroused.

After discharge, the unknown woman spent some time in the house of the former police chief Kleist. Because she still refused to give her name, they called her Anna - after all, you have to call her something. And so, in the spring of 1922, the stranger finally told who she was: Grand Duchess Anastasia! The girl claimed that during the execution she managed to hide behind her sister’s back, and then a certain soldier carried her out and hid her in his house, and then she and the soldier’s wife left for Romania, and after her death she reached Germany alone - a very strange act , I must say, because the Romanian Queen Maria was also her aunt... She even named the soldier’s surname - Tchaikovsky. It is noteworthy that among the guards at Ipatiev’s house there was not a single person with that last name...

However, the supposed Anastasia did not come across so stupidly so often - she was very smart. So, one day a certain visitor mentioned that she should remember the porcelain dog that stood on the fireplace - and she very opportunely “remembered” this in a conversation with another visitor.

The further biography of “Princess Anastasia” is a story of endless wanderings with periodic placements in psychiatric clinics. People who knew the real Anastasia met with her more than once - for example, her mother’s former valet Alexey Volkov. His “sentence” was unequivocal: “Anastasia” did not recognize him, answered questions inappropriately, and did not speak Russian at all. The same conclusions were made by Pierre Gilliard, a former teacher of the imperial children: the real Anastasia had a straight short nose, a small mouth and thin lips, but this woman had an upturned nose, a large mouth, plump lips... maybe it was bone tuberculosis, which she suffered from in that time, as well as a blow to the face, which she could have received during the execution of the royal family, and are capable of distorting her appearance - but not to the same extent! F. Yusupov called her “hysterical and a terrible actress.”

Despite such an abundance of evidence from people who knew the real Anastasia, many continued to believe this woman, also known as Anna Anderson (as she checked into a hotel in the USA). The main argument was a crooked big toe - an anomaly, of course, rare, but not unique! But she definitely did not speak Russian and did not know Orthodox customs.

This woman died in 1984, bequeathing to write on the gravestone: “Anastasia Romanova. Anna Anderson."

The end to her case was reached already in the 90s: tissue samples of Anna Anderson, preserved in an American hospital, were compared using mitochondrial DNA with the exhumed remains of the royal family and the Duke of Edinburgh Philip, the grandson of the Empress Alexandra’s sister. In both cases the relationship was not confirmed. Obviously, we were really talking about a mentally ill woman.

This is only one false Anastasia, and there were more than thirty of them. We have already mentioned one impostor who called himself Tsarevich Alexei. There were other impostors - some of them were also mentally ill, others deliberately wanted to improve their financial situation. The discovery of the remains of the royal family in 1991 again stirred up these rumors - there were no remains of the boy and one of the princesses (presumably Mary), but in 2007 their remains were found, and now we can say with confidence: neither Anastasia nor anyone another from the royal family did not escape execution.