Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia

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Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, 1910.
Born	June 18, 1901 Peterhof, Russia
Died	July 17, 1918 Yekaterinburg, Russia
Parents	Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse

Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (Anastasia Nikolaievna Romanova, (in Russian: Великая Княжна Анастасия Николаевна Романова, Velikaya Knyazhna Anastasiya Nikolaievna Romanova), sometimes called Anastasie or nicknamed Nastya, Nastas, or Nastenka, (June 5 (O.S.)/June 18 (N.S.) 1901 — July 17, 1918), was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra, the last autocratic rulers of Imperial Russia.

Anastasia was a younger sister of Grand Duchess Olga, Grand Duchess Tatiana and Grand Duchess Maria, and was an elder sister of the haemophiliac Alexei Nikolaievitch, Tsarevitch of Russia. She is presumed to have been murdered with her family on July 17, 1918, by forces of the Bolshevik secret police. However, rumors have persisted of her possible escape since 1918.

Several women have claimed to have been Anastasia; the most famous of whom was Anna Anderson. Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984. Despite support for her claim from several people who knew Anastasia, DNA testing in 1994 on pieces of Anderson's tissue and hair seemed to prove that Anderson was not the Grand Duchess. ^[1]

Contents 1 Life and Childhood 2 Captivity and Execution 3 From Mystery to Legend 4 Influence on Culture 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Life and Childhood

When Anastasia was born, her parents and extended family were disappointed to have a fourth daughter instead of the greatly desired male heir to the throne. Tsar Nicholas II went for a long walk to compose himself before going to visit Tsarina Alexandra and the infant Anastasia for the first time.^[2] Anastasia grew into a vivacious and energetic child, described as short and inclined to be chubby, with blue eyes ^[3] and blonde hair. ^[4] Margaret Eagar, a governess to the four Grand Duchesses, said one person commented that the toddler Anastasia had the greatest personal charm of any child he had ever seen. ^[5] While often described as gifted and bright, she was never interested in the restrictions of the school room, according to her tutors Pierre Gilliard and Sidney Gibbes.

"(She) was very roguish and almost a wag," recalled her French tutor, Gilliard, in his memoirs. "She had a very strong sense of humour, and the darts of her wit often found sensitive spots ... She was also extremely idle, though with the idleness of a gifted child ... She was so lively and her gaiety so infectious ..." ^[6] Tatiana Botkina, the daughter of the family physician Yevgeny Botkin, remembered Anastasia as "lively, rough, mischievous, a real tomboy," ^[7] while Lilli Dehn, a friend of the Tsarina, recalled Anastasia's sense of humor and her acting ability. "She was a very clever mimic," wrote Dehn. "... She was very fond of acting; indeed, Anastasie would have made an excellent comedy actress."^[8] On the other hand, Anna Vyrubova, another friend of Tsarina Alexandra, wrote that not everyone enjoyed Anastasia's well-developed sense of humor. (She was) "a sharp and clever child ... (and) a very monkey for jokes, some of them at times almost too practical for the enjoyment of others," wrote Vyrubova. ^[4]

Anastasia's daring occasionally exceeded the limits of acceptable behavior. "She undoubtedly held the record for punishable deeds in her family, for in naughtiness she was a true genius," said Gleb Botkin, brother of Tatiana Botkina. ^[9] Anastasia sometimes tripped the servants and played pranks on her tutors. As a child, she sometimes climbed trees and refused to come down. Once, during a snowball fight at the family's Polish estate, Anastasia rolled a rock into a snowball and threw it at her older sister Tatiana, knocking her to the ground. ^[4] A distant cousin, Princess Nina Georgievna, recalled that "Anastasia was nasty to the point of being evil," and cheated, kicked and scratched her playmates during games. She was affronted because the younger Nina was taller than she was. ^[10]

Hallie Erminie Rives, a best-selling author and the wife of American diplomat Post Wheeler, encountered the ten-year-old Anastasia during the annual Military Concert at the St. Petersbug Opera House in 1911. Anastasia, seated in the imperial box opposite Rives and her husband, was eating chocolates without having removed her white gloves, which were smudged with the candy. "She was not a beautiful child, but there was something frank and winning about her," Rives wrote. "Her hair was drawn back in a one-sided whorl, perhaps to hide a small scar whose edge I fancied I saw under its dark loop." Anastasia offered Rives a chocolate from her box, which was wrapped in silver wrapping paper. She hummed along to the tune played by the orchestra, a song she told Rives was about a little girl who had lost her doll. ^[11]

Anastasia and her older sister Maria were known within the family as "The Little Pair." The two girls shared a room, often wore variations of the same dress, and spent much of their time together. Their older sisters Olga and Tatiana also shared a room and were known as "The Big Pair." The four girls sometimes signed letters using the group name, OTMA, which was derived from the first letters of their first names. ^[12]

During World War I she, along with her sister Maria, visited wounded soldiers at a private hospital on the grounds at Tsarskoye Selo. The two teenagers, too young to become Red Cross nurses like their mother and elder sisters, played games of checkers and billiards with the soldiers and tried to uplift their spirits. Felix Dassel, who was treated at the hospital and knew Anastasia, recalled that the grand duchess had a "laugh like a squirrel," and walked rapidly "as though she tripped along." ^[13]

Despite her energy, Anastasia's physical health was sometimes poor. The grand duchess suffered from the painful medical condition hallux valgus (bunions), which affected the joints of both her big toes. ^[14] Anastasia and her family doted on Tsarevich Alexei, or "Baby," who suffered frequent attacks of haemophilia and nearly died several times. Anastasia's older sister Maria also reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to remove her tonsils, according to her paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, who was interviewed later in her life. The doctor performing the operation was so unnerved that he had to be ordered to continue by Maria's mother, Tsarina Alexandra. Olga Alexandrovna said she believed all four of her nieces bled more than was normal and believed they were carriers of the haemophilia gene like their mother. ^[15]

In February 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne and Anastasia and her family were placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo during the Russian Revolution. As the Bolsheviks approached, Alexander Kerensky of the Provisional Government had them moved to Tobolsk, Siberia. ^[16] After the Bolsheviks seized majority control of Russia, Anastasia and her family were moved to the Ipatiev House, or House of Special Purpose, at Yekaterinburg ^[17].

The stress and uncertainty of captivity took their toll on Anastasia as well as her family. "Goodby," she wrote to a friend in the winter of 1917. "Don't forget us." ^[18] At Tobolsk, she wrote a melancholy theme for her English tutor, filled with spelling mistakes, about Evelyn, a poem by Robert Browning about a young girl: "When she died she was only sixteen years old," Anastasia wrote. "Ther(e) was a man who loved her without having seen her but (k)new her very well. And she he(a)rd of him also. He never could tell her that he loved her, and now she was dead. But still he thought that when he and she will live [their] next life whenever it will be that ..." ^[19]

At Tobolsk, she and her sisters sewed jewels into their clothing in hopes of hiding them from their captors. She, Olga, and Tatiana were harassed by guards looking for the hidden jewels aboard the Rus, a steamship that ferried them to Yekaterinburg to join their parents and sister Maria in May 1918. Her English tutor, Sidney Gibbes, recalled hearing the grand duchesses screaming in terror and was haunted by his inability to help them. ^[20] On July 14, 1918, local priests at Yekaterinburg conducted a private church service for the family and reported that Anastasia and her family, contrary to custom, fell on their knees during the prayer for the dead.^[21]

However, even in the last months of her life, she found ways to enjoy herself. She and other members of the household performed plays for the enjoyment of their parents and others in the spring of 1918. Anastasia's performance made everyone howl with laughter, according to her tutor Sidney Gibbes. ^[22] In his memoirs, one of the guards at the Ipatiev House, Alexander Strekotin, remembered Anastasia as "very friendly and full of fun," while another guard said Anastasia was "a very charming devil! She was mischievous and, I think, rarely tired. She was lively, and was fond of performing comic mimes with the dogs, as though they were performing in a circus." ^[23] Yet another of the guards, however, called the youngest grand duchess "offensive and a terrorist" and complained that her comments sometimes caused tension in the ranks. ^[24]

She was, according to most accounts, murdered along with her family by a firing squad in the early morning of July 17, 1918. The extra-judicial execution was carried out by forces of the Bolshevik secret police under the command of Yakov Yurovsky.

[edit] Captivity and Execution

After Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in 1917, Russia quickly disintegrated into civil war. Negotiations for the release of the Romanovs between their Bolshevik (commonly referred to as 'Reds') captors and their extended family, many of whom were prominent members of the Royal Houses of Europe, stalled. ^[25] As the Whites (loyalists still faithful to the Tsar and the principles of autocracy) advanced toward Yekaterinburg the Reds were in a precarious situation. The Reds knew Yekaterinburg would fall to the better manned and equipped White Army. When the Whites reached Yekaterinburg, the Imperial Family had simply disappeared. The most widely accepted account was that the family had been executed. This was due to an investigation by White Army Investigator Nicholas Sokolov, who came to the conclusion based on items that had belonged to the family being found thrown down a mine shaft.^[26]

The "Yurovsky Note," an account of the event filed by Yurovsky to his Bolshevik superiors following the execution, was found in 1989 and detailed in Edvard Radzinsky's 1992 book The Last Tsar.

According to the note, on the night of the murders the family was awakened and told to dress. When they asked why, they were informed that they were being moved to a new location to ensure their safety in anticipation of the violence that might ensue when the White Army reached Yekaterinburg. Once dressed, the family and the small circle of servants and caregivers that had remained with them were herded into a small room in the house's sub-basement and told to wait. Alexandra and Alexei were allowed to sit in chairs provided by guards at the request of the Tsarina. After several minutes, the executioners entered the room, led by Yurovsky. With no hesitation, Yurovsky quickly informed the Tsar and his family that they were all to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only "What?" and turn to his family before he was assassinated with a bullet to the head. The Tsarina and her daughter Olga tried to make the sign of the cross, but were also killed in the initial volley of bullets fired by the executioners, both suffering gunshot wounds to the head. The rest of the Imperial retinue were shot in short order, with the exception of Anna Demidova, Alexandra's maid. Demidova survived the initial onslaught, but was quickly murdered against the back wall of the basement, stabbed to death while trying to defend herself with a small pillow she had carried into the sub-basement that was filled with precious gems and jewels. ^[27]

The "Yurovsky Note" further reported that once the thick smoke that had filled the room from so many weapons being fired in such close proximity cleared, it was discovered that the executioners' bullets had ricocheted off the corsets of two or three of the Grand Duchesses. The executioners later came to find out that this was because the family's crown jewels and diamonds had been sewn inside the linings of the corsets to hide them from their captors. The corsets thus served as a form of "armor" against the bullets. Anastasia and Maria were said to have crouched up against a wall, covering their heads in terror, until they were shot down by bullets, recalled Yurovsky. However, another guard, Peter Ermakov, told his wife that Anastasia had been finished off with bayonets. As the bodies were carried out, one or several of the girls cried out, and were clubbed on the back of the head, wrote Yurovsky. ^[28]

[edit] From Mystery to Legend

The legend of Anastasia's possible survival and escape begins here. Anna Anderson, the most famous Anastasia claimant, would claim that she had feigned death amongst the bodies of her family members and servants, and that she was able to make her escape with the help of a compassionate guard who rescued her from amongst the corpses after noticing that she was still alive. ^[29]

These rumors were further fueled by various contemporary reports of trains and houses being searched for 'Anastasia Romanov' by Bolshevik soldiers and secret police. ^[30] When she was briefly imprisoned at Perm in 1918, Princess Helena Petrovna, the wife of Anastasia's distant cousin, Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia, reported that a guard brought a girl who called herself Anastasia Romanova to her cell and asked if the girl was the daughter of the Tsar. Helena Petrovna said she didn't recognize the girl and the guard took her away. ^[31] Although other witnesses in Perm later reported that they saw Anastasia, her mother Alexandra Fyodorovna and sisters in Perm after the murder, that story is now widely discredited as nothing more than a rumor. ^[32]

According to some accounts, there may have been an opportunity for one or more of the guards to rescue a survivor. Yakov Yurovsky demanded that the guards come to his office and turn over items they had stolen following the murder. There was reportedly a span of time when the bodies of the victims were left largely unattended in the truck, in the basement and in the corridor of the house. Some guards who had not participated in the murders and had been sympathetic to the grand duchesses were reportedly left in the basement with the bodies. ^[33]

During a 1964-1967 German trial regarding the identity of Anna Anderson, Viennese tailor Heinrich Kleinbetzl testified that he saw a wounded Anastasia immediately following the murders at Yekaterinburg. The girl was being treated by his landlady, Anna Baoudin, in a building directly opposite from the Ipatiev House.

"The lower part of her body was covered with blood, her eyes were shut and she was pale as a sheet," he testified. "We washed her chin, Frau Annouchka and me, then she groaned. The bones must have been broken ... Then she opened her eyes for a minute." Kleinbetzl testified that the wounded girl remained in his landlady's home for three days before a Red Guard, the same man who had brought her, came to take her away. Kleinbetzl knew no more about her fate. ^[34]

Anastasia's possible survival was one of the celebrated mysteries of the 20th century. In 1922, as rumors spread that one of the grand duchesses or that all of the family had survived, a woman who later came to call herself Anna Anderson appeared in Germany and claimed to be Anastasia. She created a life-long controversy and made headlines for decades, with some surviving relatives believing she was Anastasia and others not. Indeed, it was she who made Anastasia and her legend famous. Her battle for recognition continues to be the longest running case that was ever heard by the German courts, where the case was officially filed. It began in 1938, and a final verdict was not handed down until 1970. The final decision of the court was that while it could not prove that Anderson was in fact Anastasia, it could also not prove that she wasn't.^[35]

Anderson died in 1984 and her body was cremated. DNA tests conducted in 1994 on a tissue sample from Anderson located in a hospital and the blood of a close Romanov relative demonstrated that it was extremely unlikely that she was Anastasia as she had claimed, and more likely that she was a missing Polish factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska. ^[36]

In 1991, bodies believed to be those of the Imperial Family and their servants were finally exhumed from a mass grave in the woods outside Yekaterinburg. The grave had been found nearly a decade earlier, but was kept hidden by its discoverers from the Communists who still ruled Russia when the grave was originally found. Once opened, the excavators realized that instead of eleven sets of remains (Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Tsarevitch Alexei, the four Grand Duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; the family's doctor, Yevgeny Botkin; their valet, Alexei Trupp; their cook, Ivan Kharinotov; and Alexandra's maid, Anna Demidova) the grave held only nine. Alexei and, according to the late forensic expert Dr. William Maples, Anastasia were missing from the family's grave. Russian scientists contested this, however, claiming that it was the body of the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia that was missing. The Russians identified Anastasia by using a computer program to compare photos of the youngest grand duchess with the skulls of the victims from the mass grave. They estimated the height and width of the skulls where pieces of bone were missing. American scientists found this method inexact. ^[37]

American scientists thought the missing body to be Anastasia because none of the female skeletons showed the evidence of immaturity, such as an immature collarbone, undescended wisdom teeth, or immature vertebrae in the back, that they would have expected to find in a seventeen year old. In 1998, when the bodies of the Imperial Family were finally interred, a body measuring approximately 5'7" was buried under the name of Anastasia. Photographs taken of her standing beside her three sisters up until six months before the murders demonstrate that Anastasia was several inches shorter than all of them. Scientists considered it unlikely that she could have grown so much in the last months of her life. Her actual height was approximately 5'2" ^[38]

DNA testing confirmed these were the remains of the Imperial Family and their servants, although the fate of the two missing children remains a mystery. Some historians believe the account of the "Yurovsky Note" that two of the bodies were removed from the main grave and cremated at an undisclosed area. The rationale was that this action would create doubt that these were the remains of the Tsar and his retinue should the grave be discovered by the Whites because the body count would not be correct. However, some forensic experts believe the complete burning of two bodies in that short amount of time would have been impossible given the environment and materials possessed by Yurovsky and his men. ^[39] Numerous searches of the area in subsequent years have also failed to turn up a cremation site or the remains of the two missing Romanov children. ^[40]

In 2000, the family was canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church. The family had previously been canonized in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad as holy martyrs. ^[41]

[edit] Influence on Culture

The possible survival of Anastasia has been the subject of both theatrical and made-for-television films. The earliest, made in 1928, was called Clothes Make the Woman. The story followed a woman who turns up to play the part of a rescued Anastasia for a Hollywood film, and ends up being recognized by the Russian soldier who originally rescued her from her would-be assassins.

The most famous is probably the highly fictionalized 1956 Anastasia starring Ingrid Bergman as Anna Anderson, Yul Brynner as General Bounine (a fictional character based on several actual men), and Helen Hayes as the Dowager Empress Marie, Anastasia's paternal grandmother. The film tells the story of a woman from an asylum who appears in Paris in 1928 and is captured by several Russian emigrés who feed her information so that they can fool Anastasia's grandmother into thinking Anderson actually is her granddaughter in order to obtain a Tsarist fortune. As time goes by they begin to suspect that this "Madame A. Anderson" really is the missing Grand Duchess.

In 1986, NBC broadcast a mini-series loosely based on a book published in 1983 by Peter Kurth called Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson. The movie, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna was a two-part series which began with the young Anastasia Nicholaievna and her family being sent to Yekaterinburg, where they are executed by Bolshevik soldiers. The story then moves to 1923, and while taking great liberties, fictitiously follows the claims of the woman known as Anna Anderson. Amy Irving portrays the adult Anna Anderson. The movie also featured appearances by many veteran movie and TV actors, most notably Omar Sharif as Tsar Nicholas II.

The most recent film is 1997's Anastasia, an animated musical adaptation of the story of Anastasia's escape from Russia and her subsequent quest for recognition that took even greater liberties with historical fact than the 1956 film of the same name.

In The Romanov Prophecy, a 2004 novel by Steve Berry, the wounded Anastasia and Alexei are rescued by guards and spirited away to the United States, where they live under assumed names with a family of loyalists paid by Felix Yussupov. In the novel, both children died of illnesses in the 1920s, but not before Alexei married and fathered a son.

Anastasia's survival is also the subject of the song "Yes Anastasia" by contemporary musician Tori Amos. The band Innocence Mission also sings of the Anastasia/Anna Anderson legend in their song "I Remember Me". Anastasia is mentioned in the 1968 Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil" in the line "Anastasia screamed in vain."

Anastasia appears as a playable character in the 2004 PlayStation 2 Console role-playing game Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Peter Christopher, Peter Kurth, and Edvard Radzinsky, Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra.
• Margaret Eagar, Six Years at the Russian Court, 1906 [1]
• Lili Dehn, The Real Tsaritsa, 1922. [2]
• Pierre Gilliard, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court [3]
• Greg King and Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 2003.
• Peter Kurth, Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, 1983.
• James Blair Lovell, Anastasia: The Lost Princess, Regnery Gateway, 1991.
• Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967.
• Robert K. Massie, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, 1995.
• Edvard Radzinsky, The Last Tsar, 1992.
• Maxim Shevchenko, "The Glorification of the Royal Family," a May 31, 2000 article in the Nezavisemaya Gazeta, [[4]
• Ian Vorres, The Last Grand Duchess, 1965
• Anna Vyrubova, Memories of the Russian Court, [5]

[edit] External links

• Anastasia: Myth or reality? The story of Anastasia
• www.livadia.org/ana Livadia.org
• The Murder of Russia's Imperial Family Nicolay Sokolov. Investigation of the murder of the Romanov Imperial Family in 1918, in Russian.
• FrozenTears.org A media presentation of the last Imperial family
• Anastasia Information A web site dealing with the controversy surrouding Anastasia's death.
• Could Anna Anderson be Anastasia? A web site with articles about Anastasia and her famous claimant, "Anna Anderson."
• The Glorification of the Royal Family
• Hemophilia A (Factor VIII Deficiency)