Much has been written about the terrible fate of the representatives of the Russian imperial family of the Romanovs. But there is still no clarity on this issue, despite the fact that in the Peter and Paul Cathedral of St. Petersburg, in the tsar's tomb, there are remains that allegedly belong to Nicholas II and his family, and the Russian Orthodox Church has recently canonized these people.
Nicholas II abdicated the throne on March 2, 1917, both for himself and for his heir, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, by transferring power to his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. On March 8, the former emperor was transported as an arrested person by order of the Provisional Government to Tsarskoe Selo, to the Alexander Palace. The wife and children of Nicholas II, who were arrested on March 8, were also placed there - Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, Tsarevich Alexei, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.
In August the Romanovs were transported to Tobolsk, and in the early spring of 1918 to Yekaterinburg. It was there, in the notorious Ipatiev house, on the night of July 16-17, all of them were brutally killed. The bodies of the last emperor and his family were transported by representatives of the new government to a mine near the village of Koptyaki in the tract of the Four Brothers (near Yekaterinburg) and burned, then pouring several cans of sulfuric acid on the charred remains "for loyalty" …
During that troubled time, many representatives of the imperial house were destroyed. Thus, after being arrested and exiled to Perm, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich was killed by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 12-13, 1918, at the Motovilikha plant, which is adjacent to Perm; together with the Grand Duke, his secretary Nikolai Nikolaevich Johnson also accepted death.
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, princes John, Constantine and Igor Konstantinovich, Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley (son of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich from his marriage to Princess Olga Valerianovna Paley) experienced exile in Vyatka, and then in Yekaterinburg. In the summer of the same terrible for the Romanovs of 1918, these persons were kept for some time in the city of Alapaevsk in the Verkhotursky district of the Perm province.
On the night of July 18, the exiled members of the imperial family were taken along the road to Sinyachikha, on both sides of which there were old abandoned mines. In one of them, the unfortunates found their last refuge: all of them, with the exception of the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich (he was killed by a shot in the head, throwing a dead body into the mine), were thrown down alive. Then the shaft of the mine was pelted with grenades …
Already in our time, the examination has established that most of the prisoners did not die immediately. Death was caused by tissue tears and hemorrhages caused by being thrown into the mine and from the shock wave.
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In January 1919 (the exact date is unknown), after a long imprisonment without trial and investigation in the Peter and Paul Fortress, Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich, who was sick with tuberculosis (he was carried out on a stretcher), was shot and buried in the courtyard, in a common grave, Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich (he has repeatedly stated that the grand dukes of the Romanov family must themselves renounce those high posts that they held by tradition), the grand dukes Nikolai and Georgy Mikhailovich.
By the way, Nikolai Mikhailovich was a member of the French Entomological Society (he edited a nine-volume edition of Memoirs of Lepidoptera), chairman of the Russian Geographical and Historical Societies, Doctor of Philosophy at Berlin University and Doctor of Russian History at Moscow University. A close acquaintance of L. Tolstoy, this man in his political views was distinguished by the greatest radicalism, recognizing the need for a reformist path of development for Russia and advocating a constitutional monarchy.
Georgy Mikhailovich, adjutant general, lieutenant general at the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, was a well-known numismatist, author of the publication "Russian coins of the 18th and 19th centuries", which was highly appreciated by specialists of that time. With his own money, he also prepared the publication of a 15-volume collection of documentary numismatic work on the history of monetary circulation in Russia - "Corps of Russian coins of the 18th-19th centuries." In addition, Georgy Mikhailovich was the head of the Museum of Emperor Alexander III, later known as the Russian Museum.
It is noteworthy that one of the killed, Pavel Alexandrovich, refused the plan of salvation offered to him: the fact is that he needed to change into the military uniform of a state hostile to Russia, to which the Grand Duke said that it would be better if he went to be shot.
The only one who managed to escape from the dungeons of the Peter and Paul Fortress was the 30-year-old Grand Duke Gabriel Konstantinovich; in the same year 1919 he emigrated abroad.
Fortunately, the rest of the members of the imperial house of the Romanovs, deprived of their property and the right to participate in the public life of the state, in one way or another managed to leave the country engulfed in the “Red Terror”. Some of the emigrants died in extreme poverty, someone lived a well-to-do life.
Currently, the relatives of the last emperor of Russia live in many countries of the world. And, oddly enough, they are still trying to find out what really happened to the family of Nicholas II. After all, this tragic page of history is still covered with darkness.
It makes no sense to spread again and again about the versions according to which Nikolai Romanov himself, his children and his wife were saved by the efforts of the European royal houses or the German government and lived out their days abroad (according to other assumptions, in the USSR).
We will also not touch on the story of the allegedly surviving Anastasia Nikolayevna Romanova or her brother Alexei, the version of the "cut off heads" (they wrote repeatedly about the fact that in Lenin's office after the death of the leader of the proletariat they found a jar with the head of Nicholas II in alcohol).
All these assumptions, in fact, are based on dubious documents and evidence. But we will be interested in recent materials concerning the mysterious case of the royal family.
I must say that it is difficult to find such an unlucky person as the last Russian emperor was. Nicholas II did not have peace in this world, he has no luck even after his death. Yes, back in 1998, the mournful remains of the unfortunate family were transferred from Yekaterinburg with honors to St. Petersburg and buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
However, this controversy on whether the king is resting there or not, does not subside to this day. There were many opponents of the official version, armed with documents and results of examinations. They argue that it is not Nikolai Romanov and his relatives who are buried in the cathedral, and they intend to defend their opinion in court.
I must say that at the end of May 2006 the skeptics received one more proof of their possible correctness; The results of the genetic analysis of the relics of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, who was the sister of the last Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and was brutally murdered in 1918, played into the hands of the opposition.
Well-known specialists from the USA and the Russian doctor of sciences, an employee of the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences L. Zhivotovsky took part in a series of analyzes. It is noteworthy that none of the researchers doubts the final verdict: Princess Elizabeth's DNA has nothing to do with the genetic makeup of a woman buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. It follows from this that the remains transported from Yekaterinburg cannot belong to the wife of Nicholas II.
A counter question immediately arose: could the relics, considered the remains of Elizaveta Fedorovna, belong to another person? Maybe the remains from which DNA samples were taken are also mixed up? But here the supporters of the official version were disappointed. The fact is that the body of a tsarist relative was found in a mine near Alapaevsk in the fall of 1918. Then he was identified by several people, including the confessor of the Grand Duchess, Father Seraphim. The identification of the body, by the way, was carried out in the presence of members of the White Guard investigation commission.
Over the next several years, the priest relentlessly followed the coffin of Elizabeth Feodorovna through Eastern Siberia and Shanghai to Jerusalem, where the remains of the Grand Duchess were finally buried. It should be said that the confessor carefully documented all the way from Alapaevsk, so there is no reason to doubt the identity of the source of the DNA taken for the samples.
In general, the history of the identification of the remains of the last imperial family in Russia does not look very clear. Actually, it began with an international scandal, not particularly advertised by the Soviet media.
It all started with the fact that in 1989 the leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, went on a visit to Great Britain and invited the Queen of England to the Soviet Union. However, the royal lady, who is a close relative of the deceased imperial family, indignantly rejected this invitation, saying that she did not want to visit a country that had not figured out what happened to her relatives. And here…
As soon as Gorbachev had time to return home, screenwriter Geliy Ryabov officially announced: he and several other persons discovered the remains of nine skeletons with numerous injuries, allegedly belonging to the Romanov family and several close associates of the emperor. Then, Soviet officials categorically argued that there was simply no doubt about the identity of the remains.
But Russian emigrants, who were perfectly familiar with the methods of work of former compatriots, seriously doubted this and created a Russian foreign expert commission to clarify the issue to investigate the fate of the remains of members of the Russian Imperial House, killed by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918 (this, by the way, is the full name of the mentioned organizations).
Opponents of the official version raised such a fuss that in 1993 the Russian Prosecutor General ordered the institution of a criminal case to investigate the murder of the royal family. Nevertheless, the recognition of the skeletons found near Yekaterinburg as the remains of the Romanovs, according to foreign experts, was simply "pushed through" by the government commission, which until 1998 was unable to understand this case.
Indeed, there were so many inconsistencies in the work of the commission that it is too early to put an end to the murder of the imperial family. So, on the skull, according to Soviet experts, which belonged to Nicholas II, for some reason there is no callus, which was formed in the monarch after the attempt on his life in Japan. Most of the experts are convinced that this trail could not disappear even if such a long time passed. After all, a knotty thickening was clearly visible on the emperor's head until his death!
But what about the protocol, in which Yurovsky claimed that he shot Nicholas II in the head point-blank? And this despite the fact that the skull buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral has neither entrance nor exit bullet holes!
By the way, Ryabov and his team did not find two children's skulls in the burial. Presumably, they should belong to Maria and Anastasia Romanov. However, later it turned out that it was, rather, about the disappearance of the heir to the throne, Alexei and his sister Maria, since the remains, allegedly belonging to the Tsarevich, could not have been them. After all, the boy, as you know, suffered from a hereditary disease - hemophilia, traces of which scientists have not been able to find in the investigated remains.
There were so many such "inconsistencies" that even some members of the state commission risked voting against its conclusions, and many experts considered it necessary to express a dissenting opinion. Nevertheless, Russia loudly announced that the fate of the members of the last royal family of the Russian Empire was established.
Today, members of the Foreign Expert Commission demand that hearings be held in the State Duma on the problem of the tsar's remains. Otherwise, they are going to go to court with a claim to review the case on the burial of the emperor. The "oppositionists" are striving for only one thing: the Russians must admit that not the Romanovs are buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, but the unnamed victims of the Civil War.
Perhaps the “suitable” family of a local resident really died in the Ipatiev House on that terrible July night? Presumably, it could be the family of a certain Filatov, which, by the way, "lacked" one little girl; maybe that's why the remains of Maria Nikolaevna were not found near Yekaterinburg? But in this case, the question will again arise about what actually happened to Nicholas II, his wife, daughters and son.
And again, a version will emerge, according to which the leaders of the USSR "saved" the Romanov family in an emergency, considering these people an important trump card that can be used in the future in some political game. Then, perhaps, there is something in the information that the emperor and his family lived their lives in the USSR under false names.
According to some reports, the last Russian monarch died only in the mid-50s in Sukhumi. However, most likely, the authentic remains of the Romanovs, according to foreign experts, will never be found, because after the execution they were carefully destroyed, crushing into dust what remained after careful acid treatment. By the way, it is also impossible to refute this version, as well as to prove it.
And one more curious fact. When in 1998 the “Yekaterinburg remains” were buried in the imperial tomb in the cathedral of the city on the Neva, the names of those who rested in it were not mentioned at the ceremony, since the Russian Orthodox Church politely denies that the buried bones belonged to members of the last imperial family of Russia.
From the book "Famous mystical phenomena"