Grand Duchess Anastasia was killed along with her family in the Russian revolution.
For almost 100 years, there have been new rumors about her death.
Many fraudsters claimed that they are the heirs to the Russian throne.
Did Tsar Nicholas II feel that he would soon die?
Who knows. However, neither he nor other members of his family resisted when on the night of July 17, 1918, they were awakened by the order of the commandant Yakov Yurovsky. It struck midnight recently and the family heard the sounds of gunfire in the city. Therefore, they had to be taken to a safe place.
The Tsar and his family were kept in custody at the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks gave this place the ominous name "House of Special Purpose". That night, the royal family was allowed to dress and pack the essentials. Then Yurovsky took them to the basement.
Tsar Nicholas II, who abdicated the throne last year, walked first with the heir Alexei in his arms. He was followed by Tsarina Alexandra with princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Several servants were with them.
It was dark in the empty basement. The queen complained that there was nowhere to sit, and immediately two chairs were brought. But the good attitude ended there.
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A dozen armed guards entered the room, after which Yakov Yurovsky read out the death sentence. The Council of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers of the Urals decided that the whole family would be executed. There was no talk of the trial.
The king's last words were filled with surprise and fear.
"What? What?" - he could only utter.
And shots rang out, ending the Russian monarchy.
The king fell to the floor, shot in the chest by Yurovsky. The last monarch of Russia was dead.
A commotion arose in the basement. There was smoke everywhere. Members of the royal family and their servants were killed one by one. They say that the most difficult thing was to put an end to Anastasia and her sisters, because many diamonds were sewn into the girls' bodices, and they became a kind of shield against bullets and bayonets. In the end, the end, and they were killed - by shots to the head.
The bodies were rushed out of town to an abandoned mine. For the Bolsheviks, it was important that the bodies did not fall into the hands of the monarchist White Army, which would use them for propaganda purposes. It was necessary to prevent the emergence of the cult of the slain.
So all the valuables were taken away, and the bodies were stripped and disfigured beyond recognition. They were also doused with acid just in case. After that, everyone was thrown into the mine - with the exception of one of the princesses and Tsarevich Alexei. They were burned, and the ashes were buried in the distance.
Hard times in Russia
It's hard to say what exactly happened in the basement that night. There are points that historians argue about, and witnesses describe them in different ways. But the overall picture is clear.
There were hard and turbulent times in Russia. Participation in the First World War devastated the treasury, caused an economic crisis and food shortages. Discontent with the rule of Nicholas II was growing.
On March 8, 1917 (February 26, old style - approx. Trans.) The February Revolution began. St Petersburg residents took to the streets and the protests turned into disaster. From 1.5 to 2 thousand people were killed or injured. The protests had important consequences. The tsar abdicated the throne, a provisional government of liberals and socialists arose. The royal family remained under house arrest in the Alexander Palace near St. Petersburg, but after a while, for security reasons, they were transported to the Siberian city of Tobolsk.
Red and White Civil War
A civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks who seized power and the White Army, which wanted to return Nicholas. But, from the point of view of the Bolsheviks, Nikolai was dangerous in several respects at once.
If the whites managed to free the king and his family, this would be their symbolic victory. The closer the threat was, the stronger the determination to deal with the problem once and for all became. Lenin himself decided that the family must be executed.
Rumors spread quickly
A few days after Nicholas II and his family met their fate, a message spread about the death of the tsar. Not a word was said about the death of the entire family. A variety of rumors arose. Did someone from the Romanov family manage to hide from the executioners? There were no bodies or graves as evidence, so rumors spread more and more rapidly.
Gradually, people began to appear, posing as the surviving members of the royal family. Fraudsters most often pretended to be the heir to the throne Alexei or Grand Duchess Anastasia, but there were also “copies” of the other sisters.
However, it was Anastasia who received the greatest fame, many myths and legends arose around her. She was the youngest daughter of the king, at the time of execution she was barely 17 years old.
The birth of Anastasia on June 18, 1901 was a disappointment for Nikolai and Alexandra. The royal couple already had three daughters, and they dreamed of a son as the future heir to the Russian throne. The appearance of another girl caused real annoyance.
One face with the Grand Duchess
Anastasia was described as a lively and wayward girl, she had a sharp mind, but she was careless about her studies. Just like her mother and sisters, she had a weakness for Rasputin, a mystic and preacher who managed to penetrate the Tsar's inner circle. It was rumored that he had a sexual relationship with both the queen and her daughters. Special witches even drew cartoons in which Rasputin had sex with the queen in front of naked girls.
It is not completely clear whether there is some truth in these rumors. According to some sources, the tipsy Rasputin did brag about sexual escapades involving the queen and her daughters, but he had many reasons to spread such rumors. Gentle personal letters from the queen and the grand duchesses, including Anastasia, have survived. Even if there were no hints of an intimate relationship in them, it was these letters, which fell into the wrong hands, that started the cycle of rumors and cartoons.
Anastasia had a crooked toe on her right foot, the so-called hallux valgus. This fact was used by the most famous fraudsters posing as a princess. Anna Anderson, who appeared in Berlin in 1920, had a seemingly similar deformation. In addition, outwardly, she was strikingly similar to the Grand Duchess.
The world learned about Anna Anderson in connection with her suicide attempt. She refused to tell who she was or where she was from, so she was sent to an asylum. Given the lack of identity documents, her name was simply Fräulein Unbekannt ("Mistress Stranger"). After a while, she announced that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia. They believed her after the visit of Anastasia's aunt, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, accompanied by a former teacher of the royal children with his wife. Although all three were familiar with the real Anastasia, they could not immediately expose the liar. She was very similar to Anastasia, and the legs of the two girls were almost identical. But then Grand Duchess Olga nevertheless made a statement in which she claimed that the woman in Berlin was a fraud.
DNA as evidence
But it wasn't over yet. In 1928, "Mrs. Stranger" received an invitation from Princess Xenia Leeds, Anastasia's second cousin, who was then living in America. Ksenia Leeds was convinced that the girl from the German insane asylum was her relative of royal blood. In America, "Mrs. Stranger" received the name Anna Anderson, which she wore until the end of her days. She lived off her reputation and traveled to guests, visiting many houses of the German aristocracy.
Anna Anderson even opened a case in a German court, wishing to be officially recognized as Anastasia. The process stalled when World War II broke out in Europe. But in 1970, the court ruled that the words of Anna Anderson about her own origin can neither be proved nor refuted. More than ten years passed when, after her death in 1984, scientists, using a DNA test, were able to prove that Anna Anderson was not related to the Romanov family.
The legend still haunts the minds
Anderson was just one of many copycats. While there was no information about the bodies or graves of members of the royal family, the crooks were limited only by their own persuasion abilities.
The place of the last refuge of the royal family was kept secret. In 1979, a group of amateur researchers, who combed the area under the pretext of archaeological excavations, discovered the graves. They were afraid of falling into the hands of the KGB, so they limited themselves to taking three skulls with them to study them in the laboratory. But the fear only grew, so that the scientists, in the end, put the bones back in place. Only ten years later, one of the archaeologists told the press about the find.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Boris Yeltsin gave the green light to research. Human remains were found and DNA analysis showed they belonged to members of the same family.
In 1998, scientists were able to declare that we are talking about the remains of the king, queen and their daughters. But Alexei and one of the princesses, probably Anastasia, were never found.
But if it did give anyone new hope, all aspirations were disproved in 2007, when an amateur Russian archaeologist found the charred remains of the Tsarevich and his sister. After the genetic tests, there was no doubt. All members of the royal family lost their lives in 1918.
However, there are still different opinions. In 2014, Russian historian Veniamin Alekseev published a book in which he argued that Anna Anderson could really be Anastasia, who miraculously escaped death. Among other things, the historian wrote that genetic tests were unreliable and inaccurate.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the opinion about the tsar and his family changed radically. They were posthumously rehabilitated, and in 1998 Boris Yeltsin personally took part in the solemn ceremony of the final burial of Nikolai, Alexandra and three daughters in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
Later, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the royal family. In 2008, a symbolic verdict was passed. The fate of the tsar and his family was recognized as political persecution, the Romanovs were symbolically given back all their rights.
But the legend of Anastasia still excites the minds. Countless books have been written about her life, and even liars such as Anna Anderson are dedicated to individual works.
