July 17 is the anniversary of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children, which took place in Yekaterinburg. More than 16 years have passed since the reburial of the royal family in St. Petersburg, but all doubts about the authenticity of the "Yekaterinburg remains" have not yet been removed …
Finding remains
After the shooting on the night of July 16-17, 1918, the bodies of members of the royal family and their entourage (11 people in total) were loaded into a car and sent in the direction of Verkh-Isetsk to the abandoned mines of Ganina Yama. At first, the victims were unsuccessfully tried to burn, and then they were thrown into the shaft of the mine and showered with branches.
However, the next day, almost all of Verkh-Isetsk knew about the incident. In addition, according to a member of the firing squad, Medvedev, "the ice water of the mine not only washed away the blood completely, but also froze the bodies so much that they looked like they were alive." The conspiracy has clearly failed.
Ganina's pit.
It was decided to quickly reburial the remains. The area was cordoned off, but the truck, having driven only a few kilometers, got stuck in the swampy area of Porosenkov's log. Without beginning to invent anything, one part of the bodies was buried right under the road, and the other - a little to the side, having previously filled them with sulfuric acid. Sleepers were placed on top for reliability.
It is interesting that the forensic investigator N. Sokolov, sent by Kolchak in 1919 to search for a burial, found this place, but did not think to raise the sleepers. In the area of Ganina Yama, he managed to find only a severed female finger. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the investigator was unambiguous: “This is all that remains of the August Family. Everything else was destroyed by the Bolsheviks with fire and sulfuric acid."
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Nine years later, it is possible that Vladimir Mayakovsky visited Porosenkov Log, which can be judged by his poem "The Emperor": "Here the cedar was torn with an ax, the notches at the root of the bark, at the root under the cedar is a road, and in it the emperor is buried."
It is known that the poet, shortly before his trip to Sverdlovsk, met in Warsaw with one of the organizers of the execution of the royal family, Pyotr Voikov, who could point him to the exact place.
Porosenkov Log - the place of discovery of the remains of members of the Romanov Royal family.
Ural historians found the remains in the Porosenkovy Log in 1978, but permission for excavation was obtained only in 1991. There were 9 bodies in the burial.
During the investigation, some of the remains were recognized as "royal": according to the experts, only Alexei and Maria were missing. However, many specialists were confused by the results of the examination, and therefore no one was in a hurry to agree with the conclusions. The House of Romanovs and the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the remains as genuine.
Alexey and Maria were found only in 2007, guided by a document drawn up from the words of the commandant of the "House of Special Purpose" Yakov Yurovsky. “Yurovsky's note” initially did not arouse much confidence, nevertheless, the place of the second burial in it was indicated correctly.
Falsifications and myths
Immediately after the execution, representatives of the new government tried to convince the West that members of the imperial family, or at least the children, were alive and in a safe place.
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs GV Chicherin in April 1922 at the Genoa conference when asked by one of the correspondents about the fate of the Grand Duchesses vaguely answered: “The fate of the tsar's daughters is not known to me. I read in the newspapers that they were in America."
"Transfer of the Romanov family to the Uralsovet". Artist V. N. Pchelin. 1927 year.
However, PL Voikov in an informal setting stated more specifically: "The world will never know what we have done with the royal family." But later, after the materials of Sokolov's investigation were published in the West, the Soviet authorities recognized the fact of the execution of the imperial family.
Falsifications and speculation around the execution of the Romanovs contributed to the spread of persistent myths, among which the myth of ritual murder and the severed head of Nicholas II, which was in the NKVD special security, was popular. Later, stories about the "miraculous salvation" of the Tsar's children - Alexei and Anastasia - were added to the myths. But all this remained myths.
Investigation and expertise
In 1993, investigator of the General Prosecutor's Office Vladimir Solovyov was entrusted with the investigation of the discovery of the remains. Considering the importance of the case, in addition to traditional ballistic and macroscopic examinations, additional genetic studies were carried out in conjunction with British and American scientists.
For these purposes, blood was taken from some of the Romanovs' relatives living in England and Greece for analysis. The results showed that the probability that the remains belonged to members of the royal family was 98.5 percent.
The investigation considered it insufficient. Solovyov managed to obtain permission to exhume the remains of the tsar's brother, George. Scientists have confirmed the "absolute positional similarity of mt-DNA" of both remains, which revealed a rare genetic mutation inherent in the Romanovs - heteroplasmy.
However, after the discovery in 2007 of the alleged remains of Alexei and Maria, new research and expertise was required. The work of the scientists was greatly facilitated by Alexy II, who, before the burial of the first group of royal remains in the tomb of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, asked investigators to remove the bone particles. "Science is developing, it is possible that they will be needed in the future," - these were the words of the Patriarch.
To remove the doubts of skeptics for new examinations, the head of the laboratory of molecular genetics at the University of Massachusetts, Evgeny Rogaev (insisted on by representatives of the House of Romanov), the chief geneticist of the US Army Michael Cobble (who returned the names of the victims of September 11), as well as an employee of the Institute of Forensic Medicine from Austria, Walter Parson.
Comparing the remains from the two burials, the experts once again double-checked the previously obtained data, and also conducted new studies - the previous results were confirmed. Moreover, the "blood-spattered shirt" of Nicholas II (the Otsu incident), found in the Hermitage funds, fell into the hands of scientists. And again a positive answer: the genotypes of the king "on blood" and "on bone" coincided.
Outcome
The results of the investigation into the shooting of the royal family have refuted some of the previously existing assumptions. For example, according to experts, "under the conditions in which the destruction of corpses was carried out, it was impossible to completely destroy the remains using sulfuric acid and combustible materials."
This fact excludes Ganina Yama as the final burial site. True, the historian Vadim Viner finds a serious gap in the conclusions of the investigation. He believes that some finds belonging to a later time, in particular coins of the 30s, were not taken into account. But as the facts show, information about the burial place very quickly "leaked" to the masses, and therefore the burial ground could be repeatedly opened in search of possible values.
Another revelation is offered by the historian SA Belyaev, who believes that “the family of the Yekaterinburg merchant could have been buried with imperial honors,” although without providing convincing arguments.
Z. K. Tsereteli. "Ipatiev Night". 2007. Sculptural composition dedicated to the execution of the Tsar's family.
However, the conclusions of the investigation, which were carried out with unprecedented scrupulousness using the latest methods, with the participation of independent experts, are unambiguous: all 11 remains clearly correlate with each of those shot in the Ipatiev house. Common sense and logic dictates that it is impossible to accidentally duplicate such physical and genetic correspondences.
In December 2010, a final conference was held in Yekaterinburg dedicated to the latest examination results. The reports were made by 4 groups of geneticists working independently in different countries. Opponents of the official version could also present their views, however, according to eyewitnesses, "after listening to the reports, they left the hall without uttering a word."
The Russian Orthodox Church still does not recognize the authenticity of the "Yekaterinburg remains", but many representatives of the House of Romanov, judging by their statements in the press, accepted the final results of the investigation.
Taras Repin