Anna daughter of Nicholas 2. Biography of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna

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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 undoubted gift for mime. She knew how to find the funny side in everything.

During the revolution, Anastasia was only sixteen - in the end, not so hot, what an advanced age! She was pretty, but her face was intelligent, and her eyes shone with remarkable intelligence.

The “tomboyish” girl, “Shvibz,” as her relatives called her, maybe she would like to correspond to the girl’s house-building ideal, but she could not. But, most likely, She simply did not think about it, because the main feature of Her not fully revealed character was cheerful childishness.

Anastasia Nikolaevna was ... a big minx, and not without cunning. She quickly grasped the funny side of everything; it was difficult to fight against Her attacks. She was a darling - a flaw from which She corrected herself over the years. Very lazy, as is sometimes the case 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 disperse wrinkles from 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.

She was 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 heated up 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, the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In an attempt to beg Providence for a son, at this time she is more and more immersed in mysticism. With the assistance of the Montenegrin princesses Milica 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

Nikolay wrote in his diary: “About 3 o’clock, Alix began to experience severe pain. At 4 o'clock I got up and went to my room and got dressed. Exactly at 6 am daughter Anastasia was born. Everything happened under excellent conditions quickly and, thank God, without complications. Because it all started and ended while everyone was still sleeping, we both had a sense of calm and solitude! After that, he sat down to write telegrams and notify relatives in all parts of the world. Luckily Alix is doing 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 a failed prophecy, immediately predicted to her “an amazing life and a special fate.” Margaret Eager, author of the memoirs Six Years at the Russian Imperial Court, recalled that Anastasia was named after the fact that the emperor 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 contains chains torn in half.

Childhood.

Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia Nikolaevna in 1902

The full title of Anastasia Nikolaevna sounded like Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, however, they did not use it, in an official speech calling her by her first name and patronymic, and at home they called her “little, Nastaska, Nastya, egg pod” - for her small height (157 cm .) and a round figure and a "shvybzik" - for mobility and inexhaustibility in the invention of pranks and pranks.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the children of the emperor were not spoiled with luxury. Anastasia shared a room with her older sister Maria. The walls of the room were gray, the ceiling decorated with images of butterflies. There are icons and photographs on the walls. The furniture is white and green, the decor is simple, almost Spartan, a couch with embroidered cushions, and an army bunk on which the Grand Duchess slept all year round. This bunk moved around the room in order to find itself 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 you could take a break from stuffiness and heat. The same bunk was taken with them on holidays to the Livadia Palace, on which the Grand Duchess slept 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 am, second breakfast at 13.00 or 12.30 on Sundays. At five o'clock - tea, at eight - a common dinner, and the food was quite simple and unpretentious. In the evenings, the girls solved charades and embroidered 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's perfume with the smell of violets. This tradition has been preserved since the time of Catherine I. When the girls were small, the servants carried buckets of water to the bathroom, when they grew up, this was a duty for them. There were two baths - the first large one, left over from the time of the reign of Nicholas I (according to the preserved tradition, everyone who bathed 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, science, drawing, grammar, arithmetic, as well as dance and music. Anastasia did not differ in diligence in her studies, she could not stand grammar, she wrote with terrifying mistakes, and called arithmetic with childlike immediacy "svin". English teacher Sidney Gibbs recalled that once she tried to bribe him with a bouquet of flowers to increase her grade, and after he refused, she gave these flowers to a Russian language teacher, Petrov.

Grand Duchess Anastasia

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia

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

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

We also rested in the Livadia Palace. The main premises housed the imperial family, while the outbuildings housed several courtiers, guards and servants. They swam in the warm sea, built fortresses and sand towers, sometimes went to the city to ride a carriage through the streets or visit shops. In St. Petersburg, this could not be done, since any appearance of the royal family in public created a crowd and excitement.

Visit to Germany

They sometimes visited the Polish estates belonging to the royal family, where Nikolai liked to hunt.

Anastasia with sisters Tatyana and Olga.

World War I

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 the fourteenth anniversary, according to tradition, each of the daughters of the emperor became an honorary commander of one of the Russian regiments.

In 1901, after her birth, the name of St. Anastasia of the Pattern Resolver in honor of the princess received the Caspian 148th Infantry Regiment. He began to celebrate his regimental holiday on December 22, the day of the saint. 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 medicines, read aloud to the wounded, knitted things for them, played cards and checkers, wrote letters home under their dictation, and in the evenings entertained them with telephone conversations, sewed linen, prepared bandages and lint.

Maria and Anastasia gave concerts to the wounded and did their best to distract them from their heavy thoughts. They spent their days in the hospital, reluctantly breaking away from work for the sake of lessons. Anastasia, until the end of her life, recalled these days:

Under house arrest.

According to the memoirs of Lily Den (Julia Alexandrovna von Den), a close friend of Alexandra Feodorovna, in February 1917, at the very height of the revolution, the children fell ill with measles one by one. Anastasia was the last to fall ill, when the Tsarskoye Selo palace was already surrounded by the insurgent troops. The tsar was at that time at the headquarters of the commander-in-chief, in Mogilev, only the empress with her children remained in the palace. .

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia looking at photographs

On the night of March 2, 1917, Lily Den stayed overnight in the palace, in the Crimson Room, together with Grand Duchess Anastasia. So that they would not worry, they explained that the troops surrounding the palace and the distant shots were the result of the exercises. Alexandra Feodorovna intended to "hide the truth from them for as long as possible." At 9 o'clock on March 2, they learned about the abdication of the king.

On Wednesday, March 8, Count Pavel Benkendorf appeared at the palace with the message that the Provisional Government had decided to subject the imperial family to house arrest in Tsarskoye Selo. It was proposed to draw up a list of people wishing to stay with them. Lily Dan immediately offered her services.

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

On March 9, the children were informed about the father's abdication. Nicholas returned a few days later. Life under house arrest was quite bearable. I had to reduce the number of dishes during dinner, since the menu of the royal family was announced publicly from time to time, and it was not worth giving an extra reason to provoke an already angry crowd. The curious often looked through the bars of the fence as the family walked in the park and sometimes met her with whistling and swearing, so the walks had to be shortened.

On June 22, 1917, it was decided to shave the heads of the girls, as their hair fell out due to the persistent temperature and strong medicines. Alexei insisted on being shaved too, thus causing extreme displeasure in his mother.

Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Anastasia

Despite everything, the education of children continued. The whole process was led by Zhillard, a teacher of French; Nicholas himself taught the children geography and history; Baroness Buxhoeveden took over the 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, often attended classes and read a lot, improving in what had already been 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 take risks and preferred 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 departure, they had time to say goodbye to the servants, to visit their favorite places in the park, ponds, 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. On August 12, 1917, a train flying the flag of the Japanese Red Cross mission departed in the strictest confidence from the siding.

Tobolsk.

On August 26, the imperial family arrived in Tobolsk on the ship "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 to live from now on. The girls were given a corner bedroom on the second floor, where they were all placed on the same army bunks captured from the Alexander Palace. Anastasia additionally decorated her corner with her favorite photographs and drawings.

Life in the governor's mansion was fairly monotonous; the main entertainment is to watch passers-by from the window. From 9.00 to 11.00 - lessons. An hour break for a walk with my father. Again lessons from 12.00 to 13.00. Dinner. From 14.00 to 16.00 walks and simple entertainment like home performances, or in winter - skiing from a slide built by oneself. Anastasia, in her own words, enthusiastically harvested firewood and sewed. Further on the schedule followed the evening service and going to bed.

In September, they were allowed to go to the nearest church for the morning service. Again, the soldiers formed a living corridor all the way to the church doors. The attitude of local residents to the royal family was rather benevolent.

The news that Nicholas II, exiled to Tobolsk, and the royal family was going to see the monument to Yermak, swept not only around the city, but also around the region. The Tobolsk photographer Ilya Efimovich Kondrakhin, who was keen on photography, hurried to capture this moment with his bulky apparatus - a great rarity in those days. And here we have a photograph showing how several dozen people climb 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 (the photographer's grandson) took a picture from the original photo

Tobolsk

Unexpectedly, 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 grown fat and looks exactly like Maria a few years ago - the same huge waist and short legs ... Let's hope this will pass with age ... "

From a letter to Sister Maria.

“The iconostasis was arranged terribly well for Easter, everything is in the Christmas tree, as it should be here, and flowers. We filmed, I hope it will come out. I continue to draw, they say - not bad, very pleasant. Swinging on a swing, that's when I fell, it was such a wonderful fall! .. yes! I told my sisters so many times yesterday that they are already tired, but I can tell 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, he bows. That was the weather! It was possible to scream directly from pleasantness. I tanned most of all, oddly enough, just an acrobat! And these days are boring and ugly, it’s cold, and we froze this morning, although of course we didn’t go home ... I’m very sorry, I forgot to congratulate you all my loved ones on the holidays, not three kisses, but a lot of times All. Thank you all, my dear, 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 in order to try him. After long hesitation, Alexandra decided to accompany her husband, "for help" Maria had to leave with her.

The rest had to wait for them in Tobolsk, Olga's duties were to take care of her sick brother, Tatyana's to run the household, Anastasia's to "entertain everyone." However, at the beginning, the entertainment was tight, on the last night before departure no one closed their eyes, and when, finally in the morning, peasant carts for the tsar, tsarina and accompanying people were brought to the doorstep, three girls - "three figures in gray" with tears saw off the departing up to the gate.

In the courtyard of the governor's house

In the empty house, life went on slowly and sadly. They guessed from books, read aloud to each other, walked. Anastasia was still swinging, painting and playing with her sick brother. According to the memoirs of Gleb Botkin, the son of a medical doctor 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. Apr-May 1918

On May 3, 1918, it became clear that for some reason, the departure of the former tsar to Moscow was canceled and instead Nikolai, Alexandra and Maria were forced to stay in the house of the engineer Ipatiev in Yekaterinburg, requisitioned by the new government specifically in order to accommodate the royal family . In a letter marked with this date, the Empress ordered her daughters to “properly dispose of medicines” - this word meant jewelry that they managed to hide and take with them. Under the guidance of her elder sister Tatyana, Anastasia sewed the remaining jewelry into her dress corset - with a good combination of circumstances, it was supposed to buy her way to salvation for them.

On May 19, it was finally decided that the remaining daughters and Alexei, who had grown strong enough by that time, would join their parents and Maria in the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg. The next day, on May 20, all four boarded the steamer "Rus" again, which delivered them to Tyumen. According to eyewitnesses, the girls were transported in locked cabins, Alexei rode with his batman named Nagorny, access to them was forbidden even for a doctor.

"My dear friend,

I'll tell you how we drove. We got off early in the morning, then got on the train and I fell asleep, and everyone else followed me. We were all very tired because we had not slept the whole night before. The first day was very stuffy and dusty, and we had to draw 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, 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 at this story for a long time. In general, there was a lot of fun along the way, and if there is time, I will tell you about the journey from beginning to end. Farewell, don't forget me. Everyone kisses you.

Your Anastasia.

On May 23 at 9 am the train arrived in Yekaterinburg. Here, the French teacher Zhillard, the sailor Nagorny and the ladies-in-waiting, who 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 Alexei were finally taken to the house of engineer Ipatiev.

Ipatiev house

Life in the "house of special purpose" was monotonous, boring - but nothing more. Wake up 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 in the evening. Anastasia, together with her sisters, sewed, 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 devoted themselves to this activity with enthusiasm.

The dining room, the door visible in the picture leads to the Princess's 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. Lilac and lungwort bloomed. The girls baked bread, then Alexei was taken to the garden, and the whole family joined him. At 8 pm we had dinner, played several games of cards. Went to bed at the usual time, at 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 allegedly discovered conspiracy to save the royal family. On the night of July 16-17, at 11:30 pm, two special commissioners from the Ural Council handed over a written order of execution to the commander of the security detachment P. Z. Ermakov and the commandant of the house, Commissioner of the Extraordinary Investigation Commission Ya. M. Yurovsky. After a brief dispute about the method of execution, the royal family was awakened and, under the pretext of a possible shootout and the danger of being killed by bullets ricocheting off the walls, they were asked to go down to the corner basement room.

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

Anastasia holding dog Jimmy

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

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 corpse 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 birches.

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 his pits was chosen by Yurovsky's team for the burial of 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 the road to Yekaterinburg passed literally next to the tract, early in the morning the procession was seen by a peasant woman from the village of Koptyaki Natalya Zykova, and then several more people. The Red Army men, threatening with weapons, drove them away.

Later, on the same day, grenade explosions were heard in the tract. Interested in a strange incident, the locals, a few days later, when the cordon had already been removed, came to the tract and managed to find 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 the villagers.

Photo by Gilliard: Nikolai Sokolov in 1919 near Yekaterinburg.

From June 6 to July 10, on the orders 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, in Ganina Yama, at a depth of just over one meter, remains were found, identified as the bodies of the royal family and servants. The body, which probably belonged to Anastasia, was marked with the number 5. Doubts arose about it - the entire left side of the face was smashed into pieces; Russian anthropologists tried to put the fragments found together, and put together the missing part of them. The result of rather painstaking work was doubtful. Russian researchers tried to proceed from the growth of the found skeleton, however, the measurements were taken from photographs and were questioned by American experts.

American scientists believed that the missing body belonged to Anastasia 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" long body was buried under the name of Anastasia. Photos of the girl standing next to her sisters, taken six months before the assassination, 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 desperation, has grown fat and looks exactly like Maria a few years ago - the same huge waist and short legs ... Let's hope, with with age it will pass ... "Scientists consider it unlikely that in the last months of her life she grew much. Her real height was approximately 5'2".

The doubts were finally resolved in 2007, after the discovery in the so-called Porosenkov Log of the remains of a young girl and a boy, later identified as Tsarevich Alexei and Maria. Genetic examination 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, saying that an examination of the remains found in 2007 on the old Koptyakovskaya road established that the discovered remains belong to Grand Duchess Maria and Tsarevich Alexei, who was the heir to the emperor.

Fireplace with “charred wooden parts”

Another version of the same story was presented by the former Austrian prisoner of war Franz Svoboda at the trial, in which Anderson tried to defend her right to be called the Grand Duchess and gain access to the hypothetical inheritance of her “father”. Svoboda proclaimed himself Anderson's savior, and, according to his version, the wounded princess was transported to the house of "a neighbor who was in love with her, a certain X." This version, however, contained quite a lot of clearly implausible details, for example, about curfew violations, which was unthinkable at that moment, about posters announcing the escape of the Grand Duchess, allegedly pasted up all over the city, and about general searches, which, fortunately didn't give anything. Thomas Hildebrand Preston, who at that time was the British Consul General in Yekaterinburg, 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 litigation for several decades, no final decision was made during her lifetime.

Genetic analysis has now confirmed previous assumptions that Anna Anderson was in fact Franzska Schanzkowska, a worker in a Berlin explosives factory. As a result of an accident at work, she was seriously injured and received a mental shock, from the consequences of which she could not get rid of for the rest of her life.

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

Eugene Smith. the photo

Rumors about the rescue of Anastasia were fueled by news of trains and houses that the Bolsheviks searched 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 the guards brought a girl to her cell, who called herself Anastasia Romanova, and asked if the girl was the daughter of the Tsar. Elena Petrovna replied that she did not recognize the girl, and the guards took her away. The other report 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 a railway station at Alternate Route 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 traumatized girl he was examining at the headquarters of the Cheka in Perm told him: "I am the ruler's daughter, Anastasia."

At the same time, in mid-1918, there were several reports of young people in Russia posing as the escaped Romanovs. Boris Solovyov, the husband of Rasputin's daughter Maria, deceived money from noble Russian families for the allegedly escaped Romanov, in fact, wanting to go to China with the proceeds. Solovyov also found women who were willing to impersonate grand duchesses and thus contributed to the introduction of deception.

However, there is a possibility that indeed one or more guards could 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 corridor of the house. Some guards who did not participate in the killings and sympathized with the Grand Duchesses, according to some information, remained in the basement with the bodies.

In 1964-1967, during the Anna Anderson case, the Viennese tailor Heinrich Kleibenzetl (German: Heinrich Kleibenzetl) testified that he allegedly saw the wounded Anastasia shortly after the murder in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918. The girl was cared for by his landlady, Anna Baudin, in a building directly opposite the Ipatiev house.

“The lower part of her body was covered in blood, her eyes were closed, and she was white as a sheet,” he testified. “We washed her chin, Frau Annushka and I, then she groaned. The bones must have been broken… Then she opened her eyes for a minute.” Kleibenzetl claimed that the wounded girl remained at his landlady's house for three days. The Red Army soldiers allegedly came to the house, but they knew his landlady too well and in fact did not begin to 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, came to take the girl. Kleibenzetl knew nothing more about her future fate.

Rumors revived again after the publication of Sergo Beria’s book “My Father is Lavrenty Beria”, where the author casually recalls a meeting in the foyer 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 subsided 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 among the bodies found (it was assumed that it was Maria) and Tsarevich Alexei. However, according to another version, Anastasia, who was a little younger than her sister and almost as complex, might not have been among the remains, so an identification mistake seemed likely. This time, Nadezhda Ivanova-Vasilyeva claimed the role of the saved Anastasia, who spent most of her life in the Kazan psychiatric hospital, where she was assigned by the Soviet authorities, who allegedly feared the surviving princess.

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

In my memory, there were from 12 to 19 self-proclaimed Anastasius. 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 wasn't her.

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

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova - the mystery of the great

Princesses.

July 17 "href="/text/category/17_iyulya/" rel="bookmark"> July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) - Grand Duchess, fourth daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna. Shot with her family in the Ipatiev house. After her death about 30 women declared themselves "the miraculously saved Grand Duchess", but sooner or later they were all exposed as impostors. She was glorified together with her parents, sisters and brother in the Cathedral of the New Martyrs of Russia as a martyr at the anniversary Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000. Earlier, in 1981, they were also canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad Commemorated on July 4 according to the Julian calendar.

Birth

She was born on June 5 (18), 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 heated up 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 - the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In an attempt to beg God for a son, at this time she is more and more immersed in mysticism. With the assistance of the Montenegrin princesses Milica 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, Anastasia, was born. Nicholas wrote in his diary:

The entry in the emperor's diary contradicts the statements of some researchers who believe that Nikolai, disappointed by the birth of his daughter, for a long time did not dare to visit the newborn and his wife.

Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the reigning emperor, also commemorated the event:

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 to her "an amazing life and a special fate." Margaret Eager, author of the memoir Six Years at the Russian Imperial Court, recalled that Anastasia was named after the fact that the emperor pardoned and reinstated the students of St. Petersburg University who took part in the recent unrest, since the very name "Anastasia" meaning "returned to life", the image of this saint usually has chains torn in half.

The full title of Anastasia Nikolaevna sounded like Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, however, they did not use it, in an official speech calling her by her first name and patronymic, and at home they called her “little, Nastaska, Nastya, pod” - for her small height (157 cm ) and a round figure and a “shvybzik” - for mobility and inexhaustibility in the invention of pranks and pranks.

The life of the Grand Duchesses was quite monotonous. Breakfast at 9 am, second breakfast at 13:00 or 12:30 on Sundays. At five o'clock - tea, at eight - a common dinner, and the food was quite simple and unpretentious. In the evenings, the girls solved charades and embroidered while their father read aloud to them.

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's perfume with the smell of violets. This tradition has been preserved since the time of Catherine I. When the girls were small, the servants carried buckets of water to the bathroom, when they grew up - this was a duty for them. There were two baths - the first large one, left over from the time of the reign of Nicholas I (according to the preserved tradition, everyone who bathed in it left their autograph on the side), the other - smaller - was intended for children.

Sundays were awaited with special impatience - on this day the Grand Duchesses attended children's balls with their aunt, Olga Alexandrovna. Particularly interesting was the evening when Anastasia was allowed to dance with young officers.

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, science, drawing, grammar, arithmetic, as well as dance and music. Anastasia did not differ in diligence in her studies, she could not stand grammar, she wrote with terrifying mistakes, and called arithmetic with childlike immediacy "svin". English teacher Sydney Gibbs recalled that once she tried to bribe him with a bouquet of flowers to increase her grade, and after he refused, she gave these flowers to a Russian teacher, Pyotr Vasilyevich Petrov.

Basically, the family lived in the Alexander Palace, occupying only a part of several dozen rooms. Sometimes they moved to the Winter Palace, despite the fact that it was very large and cold, the girls Tatyana and Anastasia often got sick here.

We also rested in the Livadia Palace. The main premises housed the imperial family, in the annexes - several courtiers, guards and servants. They swam in the warm sea, built fortresses and sand towers, sometimes went to the city to ride a carriage through the streets or visit shops. In St. Petersburg, this could not be done, since any appearance of the royal family in public created a crowd and excitement.

They sometimes visited the Polish estates belonging to the royal family, where Nikolai liked to hunt.

World War I was a disaster for the Russian Empire and for the Romanov dynasty. By February 1917, having lost hundreds of thousands of dead, the country trembled. In the capital, Petrograd, the people organized hunger riots, students joined the striking workers, and the troops sent to restore order themselves rebelled. Tsar Nicholas II, hastily summoned from the front, where he personally commanded the imperial army, was given an ultimatum: abdication. For the sake of himself and his sickly 12-year-old son, he gave up the throne that his dynasty had occupied since 1613.
The provisional government placed the family of the former emperor under house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, a comfortable ensemble of palaces near Petrograd. Together with Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Tsarevich Alexei, there were four daughters of the Tsar, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia, the eldest of whom was 22 years old, and the youngest - 16 years old. With the exception of constant supervision, the family experienced practically no hardships during their imprisonment in Tsarskoye Selo.
By the summer of 1917, conspiracies began to worry Kerensky: on the one hand, the Bolsheviks sought to remove the former tsar; on the other hand, the monarchists, who remained loyal to the tsar, wanted to save Nicholas II and return the throne to him. For safety's sake, Kerensky decided to send his royal captives to Tobolsk, a remote Siberian town more than 1,500 kilometers east of the Ural Mountains. On August 14, Nicholas II, his wife and five children, accompanied by about 40 servants, set off from Tsarskoye Selo for a six-day journey on a heavily guarded train.
... In November, the Bolsheviks seized power and concluded a separate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in March 1918). The new leader of Russia, Vladimir Lenin, faced many problems, including what to do with the former tsar, who had now become his prisoner.
In April 1918, as the White Army, supporters of the Tsar, advanced towards Tobolsk along the Trans-Siberian Railway, Lenin ordered that the Tsar's family be transported to Yekaterinburg, at the western end of the road. Nicholas II and his family were settled in the two-story residence of the merchant Ipatiev, giving it the ominous name "House of Special Purpose".
The guards, most of whom were former factory workers, were commanded by the uncouth and often drunk Alexander Avdeev, who liked to call the former Tsar Nicholas the Bloody.
In early July 1918, Avdeev was replaced by Yakov Yurovsky, head of the local Cheka detachment. Two days later, a courier arrived from Moscow with orders to prevent the former tsar from falling into the hands of the whites. The pro-monarchist army, united with the 40,000-strong Czech corps, steadily moved west towards Yekaterinburg, despite the resistance of the Bolsheviks.
Somewhere after midnight, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Yurovsky woke up the members of the royal family, ordered them to get dressed and ordered them to gather in one of the rooms on the first floor. Chairs were brought to Alexandra and the sick Alexei, Nicholas II, the princesses, Dr. Botkin and four servants remained standing. After reading out the death sentence, Yurovsky shot Nicholas II in the head - this was a signal to other participants in the execution to open fire on pre-specified targets. Those who did not die immediately were stabbed with bayonets.
The bodies were thrown into a truck and taken to an abandoned mine outside the city, where they were mutilated, doused with acid and thrown into an adit. On July 17, the government in Moscow received a coded message from Yekaterinburg: "Inform Sverdlov that all members of the family suffered the same fate as its head. Officially, the family died during the evacuation."
At the July 18 meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, its chairman announced a telegram received by direct wire about the execution of the former tsar.
On July 19, the Council of People's Commissars published a decree on the confiscation of the property of Nikolai Romanov and members of the former imperial house. All their property was declared the property of the Soviet Republic. The execution of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg was officially published on July 22. On the eve of this, a message was made at a workers' meeting in the city theater, met with a stormy expression of delight ...
Almost immediately, rumors arose about how true this report was. The version that Nicholas II was indeed executed on the night of July 16-17 was actively discussed, but the former queen, her son and four daughters were saved. However, since the former queen and her children never appeared anywhere, the conclusion about the death of the entire family became generally accepted. True, from time to time there were applicants for the role of survivors of this terrible tragedy. They were considered impostors, and the legend that not all the Romanovs died that night was regarded as a fantasy.
... In 1988, with the advent of glasnost, sensational facts were revealed. The son of Yakov Yurovsky gave the authorities a secret report detailing the location and circumstances of the burial of the bodies. From 1988 to 1991 there were searches and excavations. As a result, nine skeletons were found at the specified location. After careful computer analysis (comparison of skulls with photographs) and comparison of genes (the so-called comparison of DNA prints), it became clear that five skeletons belonged to Nicholas II, Alexandra and three of the five children. Four skeletons - to three servants and Dr. Botkin - a family doctor.
The discovery of the remains lifted the veil of secrecy, but also added fuel to the fire. Two skeletons were missing from the burial found near Yekaterinburg. The experts came to the conclusion that there are no remains of Tsarevich Alexei and one of the Grand Duchesses. Whose skeleton is missing, Mary or Anastasia, is not known. The question remains open: fifty-fifty.

The memoirs of contemporaries testify that Anastasia was well educated, knew how to dance, knew foreign languages, participated in home performances ... She had a funny nickname in the family: "Shvibzik" for playfulness. She seemed to be made of quicksilver rather than flesh and blood, was very witty, and possessed an undoubted gift for mime. She was so cheerful and so able to disperse wrinkles from anyone who was out of sorts that some of those around her began to call her "Sunbeam"
... The life of the youngest daughter of Nicholas II ended at the age of 17. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, she and her relatives were shot in Yekaterinburg.
Or not 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. True, a small detail makes one doubt its authenticity - Anastasia was 158 cm tall, and the buried skeleton was 171 cm ... Well, the princess didn’t grow up in the grave?
There are other inconsistencies that allow us to hope for a miracle ...

Despite the apparent transparency of the history of the death of the family of the last Russian Tsar, there are still white spots in it. Too many people were not interested in finding out the truth, but in creating the illusion of truth. Multiple examinations carried out in different laboratories in different countries of the world brought to the matter not so much clarity as confusion.
It is well known that in the early 1990s the burial of the royal family near Yekaterinburg was discovered, but the remains of Anastasia (or Mary) 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 was 158 cm tall, and the buried skeleton was 171 cm...
It is less known that Nicholas II had seven twin families, and their fate is not clear. Two judicial rulings in Germany, based on the examination of the DNA of the Ekaterinburg remains, showed that they are one hundred percent consistent with the Filatov family - the twins of the family of Nicholas II ... So, it may still be clear whose remains are buried under the name of Grand Duchess Anastasia in St. Petersburg in July 1998 (there are doubts about other remains buried then), and whose remains were found in the summer of 2007 in the Koptyakov forest.
The official point of view: ALL members of the family of Nicholas II and he himself were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918, and no one managed to escape. Applicants for the "role" of the surviving Anastasia and Alexei are swindlers and impostors with a vested interest in obtaining foreign bank deposits of Nicholas II. According to various estimates, the amount of these deposits in England ranges from 100 billion to 2 trillion dollars.
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 the house on Voskresensky Prospekt in Yekaterinburg (almost opposite the Ipatiev house) in the early morning of July 17, 1918; it was Heinrich Kleinbezetl, a tailor from Vienna, an Austrian prisoner of war, who in the summer of 1918 worked in Yekaterinburg as an apprentice to the tailor Baudin. He saw her at the Baudin house in the early morning of July 17, a few hours after the brutal massacre in the basement of the Ipatiev house. It was brought by one of the guards (probably from the former more liberal guards - Yurovsky did not replace all the former guards), - one of those few young guys who had long sympathized with the girls, the royal 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" were looking for the missing Anastasia for several months after the murder of the Royal Family;
- It is known that one (or two?) women's corsets were not found.
- It is known that the Bolsheviks held secret negotiations with the Germans on the issue of the Russian tsarina and her children in exchange for Russian political prisoners in Germany after the tragedy in Yekaterinburg!
- In 1925, A. Anderson met with Olga Alexandrovna Romanova-va-Kulikovskaya, the sister of Nicholas II and Anastasia's own aunt, who could not help but recognize her niece. Olga Alexandrovna treated her with kindred warmth. “I am unable to grasp 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 Tsar's family and about what the Chekists led by Yurovsky did in 1919 (a year after the execution) and officers of the MGB (Beria's department) in 1946 in the Koptyakovsky forest have not yet been opened. All documents about the execution of the Royal Family known so far (including Yurovsky's "Note") were obtained from other state archives (not from the archives of the FSB).
If all members of the Royal Family were killed, then why do we still not have answers to all these questions?

Fraulein Unbekannt (Unbekannt - unknown)

On February 17, 1920, under the name Fraulein Unbekant, a girl saved from a suicide attempt was registered in the protocol of the Berlin police. She had no documents with her and refused to give her name. She had blond hair with a brown sheen and piercing gray eyes. She spoke with a pronounced Slavic accent, so her personal file was marked as “unknown Russian”.
Since the spring of 1922, dozens of articles and books have been written about her. Anastasia Chaikovskaya, Anna Anderson, later - Anna Manahan (by her husband's last name). These are the names of the same woman. The last name written on her gravestone is Anastasia Manahan. She died on February 12, 1984, but even after her death, her fate haunts neither her friends nor her enemies.
... That evening, February 17, she was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. At the end of March, she was transferred to the neurological clinic in Dahldorf 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 kill herself, but declined to give a reason or comment. During the examination, her weight was recorded - 50 kilograms, height - 158 centimeters. During the examination, the doctors found that six months ago she had a childbirth. For a girl "under the age of twenty", this was an important circumstance.
On the chest and abdomen of the patient, they saw numerous scars from lacerations. On the head behind the right ear was a scar 3.5 cm long, deep enough for a finger to enter, as well as a scar on the forehead at the very roots of the hair. There was a characteristic scar on the foot of the right leg from a penetrating wound. It fully corresponded to the shape and size of the wounds inflicted by the bayonet of the Russian rifle. There are cracks in the upper jaw. The day after the examination, she admitted to the doctor that she was afraid for her life: “It makes it clear that she does not want to name herself, fearing persecution. An impression of restraint born of fear. More fear than restraint." In the medical history it is also recorded that the patient has a congenital orthopedic foot disease hallux valgus of the third degree.
The disease discovered in the patient by the doctors of the Dahldorf clinic absolutely coincided with the congenital disease of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. The girl had the same height, foot size, hair and eye color, and a portrait resemblance to the Russian princess, and from the data of the medical record it can be seen that the traces of the Fraulein Unbekant injuries fully correspond to those that, according to the investigator Tomashevsky, were inflicted on Anastasia in the basement of the Ipatiev 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 hairstyles with bangs.
In the end, the girl called herself Anastasia Romanova. According to her version, the miraculous rescue looked like this: along with all the killed family members, she was taken to the burial place, but some soldier hid the half-dead Anastasia along the way. With him, she got to Romania, where they got married, but what happened next was a failure ...
For the next 50 years, conversations and court cases about whether Anna Anderson was Anastasia Romanova did not subside, 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 ...
Opponents: Since March 1927, opponents of recognizing Anna Anderson as Anastasia have put forward the version that the girl who pretended to be the escaped Anastasia was in fact a native of a peasant family (from East Prussia) named Franziska Shantskovskaya.
This view is supported by a 1995 examination by the Department of Forensic Medicine at the British Home Office. According to the results of the examination, studies of the mitochondrial DNA of "Anna Anderson" will convincingly prove that she is not Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. According to a group of British geneticists at 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 presumably belonged to the Tsarina and her three daughters, nor the DNA of Anastasia's maternal relatives. and paternal line living in England and elsewhere. At the same time, a blood test of Karl Mauger, the great-nephew of the disappeared factory worker Franziska Schanzkowska, found a mitochondrial match, suggesting 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 exacerbated by the testimonies of people who knew Anna-Anastasia personally:
“… I have known Anna Anderson for more than a decade and have known almost everyone who has been involved in her struggle for recognition over the past quarter of a century: friends, lawyers, neighbors, journalists, historians, representatives of the Russian royal family and the royal families of Europe , Russian and European aristocracy - by a wide range of competent witnesses, who did not hesitate to recognize her as the royal daughter. My knowledge of her character, all the details of her case, and, it seems to me, probability and common sense, all convince me that she was a Russian Grand Duchess.
This belief of mine, although disputed (by DNA research), remains unshakable. Not being an expert, I cannot question Dr. Gill's results; if these results only revealed that Mrs. Anderson was not a member of the Romanov family, I might perhaps 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 Shantskowska are the same person.
I categorically affirm that those who knew Anna Anderson, who lived next to her for months and years, treated her and looked after her during her many illnesses, whether they were a doctor or a nurse, who observed her behavior, posture, demeanor, “cannot believe that she was born in a village in East Prussia in 1896 and was the daughter and sister of beetroot farmers.”
Peter Kurt, author of Anastasia. The Mystery of Anna Anderson" (in Russian translation "Anastasia. The Mystery of the Grand Duchess")

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 Dr. Botkin, who died in Yekaterinburg.
Supporters: Supporters of recognizing Anna Anderson as Anastasia draw attention to the fact that Franziska Shantskovskaya was five years older than Anastasia, taller, wore shoes four sizes larger, never gave birth to children and did not have orthopedic foot diseases. In addition, Franziska Schanzkowska disappeared from the house 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 carried out by an employee of the Institute of Graphology in Prysna, 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 Weizsacker came to the conclusion that the samples belong to the same person.
In 1960, by decision of the Hamburg Court, a graphologist Dr. Minna Becker was appointed as a graphological expert. Four years later, reporting on her work to the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Senate, the gray-haired Dr. Becker said: "I have never seen so many identical signs in two texts written by different people." Another important remark of the doctor is worth mentioning. Handwriting samples were provided for examination in the form of texts written in German and Russian. In her report, speaking of Russian texts, Ms. Anderson, Dr. Becker noted: "It seems as if she again fell into a familiar environment."
Due to the inability to compare fingerprints, anthropologists were involved in the investigation. Their opinion was considered by the court as "probability close to certainty". Research carried out in 1958 at the University of Mainz by Dr. Eickstedt and Klenke, and in 1965 by the founder of the German Anthropological Society, Professor Otto Rehe, led to the same result, namely:
1. Ms. Anderson is not a Polish factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska.
2. Mrs. Anderson is Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.
Opponents pointed to the discrepancy between the shape of Anderson's right ear and the ear of Anastasia Romanova, referring to an examination made back in the twenties.
These doubts were resolved by one of the most famous forensic experts in Germany, Dr. Moritz Furtmeier. In 1976, Dr. Furtmayer discovered that, in an absurd coincidence, 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 the right ear of Anderson (Tchaikovsky), Moritz Furtmayer received a match in seventeen anatomical positions. To recognize identification in a West German court, the coincidence of five positions out of twelve was quite enough.
One can only guess how her fate would have developed if not for that fatal mistake. Even in the sixties, this error formed the basis of the decision of the Hamburg Court, and then the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Senate.
... In recent years, another important consideration has been added to the mystery of Anna Anderson's identification as Anastasia, previously ignored for an incomprehensible reason.
We are talking about a congenital deformity of the feet, 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. As a rule, this disease appears in women who have reached the age of 30-35 years. As for cases of congenital disease, they are isolated and extremely rare. For the 142 million inhabitants of Russia, only eight cases of this disease have been registered over the past ten years.
Simply put, the statistics of a congenital case is approximately 1:17. Thus, with a probability of 99.9999947, Anna Anderson really was Grand Duchess Anastasia!
This statistic refutes the negative results of DNA tests carried out with the remains of tissue materials in years, since the reliability of DNA studies does not exceed 1:6000 - three thousand times less reliable than the statistics of Anna-Anastasia! At the same time, the statistics of a congenital disease is actually the statistics of artifacts (there is no doubt about it), while DNA research is 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.

Possible reasons for non-recognition
Why did some members of the Romanov dynasty 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.
Firstly, Anna Anderson spoke sharply about the Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich ("he is a traitor"), while the latter claimed 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 connected with the intention to persuade Nicholas II to a separate peace with Germany. This failed, and when leaving the Alexander Palace, Ernie even told his sister, Empress Alexandra: “You are no longer the sun for us,” as all German relatives called Alix in her childhood. In the early twenties, it was still a state secret, and Ernie Gessensky 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 state. She was ill with tuberculosis. Her weight barely reached 33 kg. The people surrounding Anastasia believed that her days were numbered. But she survived, and after meeting with Aunt Olya and other close people, she dreamed of meeting her grandmother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. She waited for the recognition of her relatives, and instead, in 1928, on the second day after the death of the Dowager Empress, several members of the Romanov family publicly disowned her, declaring that she was an impostor. The inflicted insult led to a break in relations.
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 rule of the Bolsheviks would drag on for a long seven decades. The appearance of Anastasia in the summer of 1922 in Berlin caused confusion and division of opinion in the ranks of the monarchists. The following information about the physical and mental illness of the princess, and the presence of an heir to the throne, who was born in an unequal marriage (either from a soldier, or from a lieutenant of peasant origin), all this did not contribute to her immediate recognition, not to mention the consideration of her candidacy to the head of the dynasty.
... This could be the end of the story of the missing Russian princess. It is amazing that for more than 80 years no one thought to know the medical statistics of hallux valgus foot deformity! It is strange that the results of an absurd examination of the comparison of “Anastasia Romanova’s right ear with the left ear of “Fräulein Unbekant” (!), served as the basis for fateful court decisions, despite multiple handwriting examinations and personal evidence. 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 Francisca could mystify others for so many years without revealing her true origin ... And the last thing, it is known that Anastasia gave birth to a son in the fall of 1919 , somewhere on the border with Romania (at that time she was hiding from the Reds under the name Chaikovskaya, after the name of the person who saved her and took her to Romania). What is the fate of this son? Really, no one was interested? Perhaps it is his DNA that should be compared with the DNA of the Romanov relatives, and not dubious “tissue materials”?

FACTS ONLY:
During the time since the murder of the royal family in Yekaterinburg, about 30 pseudo-Anastasius appeared in the world (according to the data). Some of them did not even speak Russian, explaining that the stress experienced in the Ipatiev House made them forget their native language. A special service was set up in the Bank of Geneva to "identify" them, and none of the candidates could pass the exam. True, the bank's interest in identifying the heiress of the amount of approximately $500 billion is also not obvious.
Among the many obvious impostors, apart from Anna Anderson, there are several other contenders.

ELEANOR KRUGER
In the early 1920s, a young woman with an aristocratic posture 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 of Georgy Zhudin. Rumors that Eleanor and Georgy were brother and sister and belonged to the Russian royal family circulated in the community. However, they did not express any statements or claims for anything.
George died in 1930, and in 1954 - Eleanor. 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 told 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, told witnesses that Nicholas II ordered him to personally take Anastasia and Alexei out of the palace and hide them in the province. He also claimed to have taken the children to Turkey. Comparing the pictures of 17-year-old Anastasia and 35-year-old Eleonora Kruger from Gabarevo, experts have established a significant similarity between them. The years of their birth also match. Contemporaries of George claim that he was ill and talk about him as a tall, weak and pale young man. Russian authors also describe Prince Alexei, a patient with hemophilia, in a similar way. In 1995, the remains of Eleonora 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.

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilyeva
In April 1934, a young woman, very thin and poorly dressed, entered the Church of the Resurrection at the Semyonovsky cemetery. She came to confession, and Hieromonk Athanasius (Alexander Ivanshin) sent her.
During the confession, the woman announced to the priest that she was the daughter of the former Tsar Nicholas II - Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. When asked about how she managed to escape from execution, the stranger replied: “You can’t talk about it.”
She was prompted to ask for help by the need to get a passport in order to try to leave the country. They managed to get a passport, but someone reported to the NKVD about the activities of the “counter-revolutionary monarchist group”, and everyone who helped the woman was arrested.
Case No. 000 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 the Special Council 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-Vasilyeva spent almost forty years within the walls of medical institutions, but she was never tested for a blood type (!). Not a single questionnaire, not a single protocol contains the date and month of birth. Only the year and place, which match the data of Anastasia Romanova. The investigators, speaking of the defendant in the third person, called her “Princess Romanova”, and not an impostor. And knowing that the woman lives on a fake passport filled out with her own hand, the investigators never asked her a question about her real name.

Natalia Petrovna Bilikhodze
N. Bilikhodze lived in Sukhumi, then in Tbilisi. In 1994 and 1997, she applied to the Tbilisi court for recognition as Anastasia. However, court hearings did not take place due to her failure to appear. She claimed that the ENTIRE family was saved. She died in 2000. A post-mortem genetic examination 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 the understudy family (Berezkins) who lived in Sukhumi. This explains her outward resemblance to Anastasia and the positive results of "22 examinations carried out in a commission-judicial order in three states - Georgia, Russia and Latvia." cases". Perhaps the story with the recognition was started in the calculation of the monetary inheritance of the royal family, in order to return it to Russia.

“Where is the truth,” you ask. I will answer: “The truth is somewhere out there ...”, because it is “Fiction must remain within the boundaries of the possible. Truth is not” (Mark Twain).

She signed her letters to freedom in the name of Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.

This story has haunted me for nearly twenty years now. Ever since the history of Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilyeva, who pretended to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova, turned yellow with time, was discovered in the archives of the Kazan Psychiatric Hospital with intensive surveillance. There were many false princesses, but none of them were treated so cruelly by the authorities. Her life has become a series of ongoing torments in camps and prison mental hospitals.

And here is another call from the past. More recently, in the archives of Pompolit (“E.P. Peshkova. Help for political prisoners”), her letters to Stalin and Ekaterina Peshkova were discovered.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.

Moscow. Kremlin. The Red Square. Joseph Vissarionovich personally to Stalin. Urgently.

“Dear Joseph Vissarionovich! Forgive me for disturbing you, but I want to speak to you urgently. I'll be waiting. This is written to you by the former daughter of Nicholas II, the youngest Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. Then I must inform you that my relative, the former King of England Edward Georgievich, is to come to me. I wrote him a letter and am waiting for his arrival. I warn you, Iosif Vissarionovich, that I have been arrested, I have been suffering for 20 years in prisons, in concentration camps, in exile. I was in Solovki and now I am in the special corps of the NKVD. However, all my life, from the age of 15, as a girl, as I was saved from death by a Red Guard commander, wounded, since then I have been suffering only for my origin. And so I wrote to my relatives and I want an end to my suffering and they take me away from the borders of the Soviet Union. I am sending this letter through Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova, Maxim Gorky's wife. Respectfully yours, A. Romanova. June 22, 1938, Kazan.

Moscow, Kuznetsky Most, 24. Help for political prisoners. Ekaterina Pavlovna personally Peshkova.

“Hello, beloved, dear Ekaterina Pavlovna! I send you my heartfelt greetings. Forgive me for disturbing you, but I decided to make a small request. I beg you, do not refuse, if you can, help me in view of the fact that some things were stolen from me in the clothing warehouse where I am, and there is no one to ask from ... When I was in Moscow in 1934, I received foreign things through the Swedish embassy from my friend Gretty Janson... Kindly send me, if you can, a coat and a stocking as soon as possible, for which I will be sincerely grateful and will try to thank you at the first opportunity...

The daughter of the former Nicholas II is writing to you, 20 years ago I was saved from death, wounded, a 15-year-old girl ... Now I am 36 years old. I personally suffered a lot, I experienced horror. And now I'm glad that my relatives found out about me, and we should be together. I don't know if they'll give me up or not. I am sitting for only one of my origins, I am not to blame for anything else. I had a fake passport in the name of Ivanova-Vasilyeva, but for this I left ...

These letters were found in Pompolit's archive by Leah Dolzhanskaya, a historian, archivist, employee of the Memorial research and information and educational center and author of a book about the life of Ekaterina Peshkova, Maxim Gorky's first wife.

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilyeva wrote dozens of letters and petitions. All of them are filed in her medical history and, of course, did not go beyond the closed institution. She, of course, guessed that she was writing to nowhere, because she never received an answer. The prisoner tried to smuggle her letters through the nurses, as evidenced by the entry in the medical history, and once miraculously succeeded. There was a man who believed in the story of the “queen” so much that he was not afraid to violate the strict rules of the special corps and take letters out of the regime institution, and then deliver them to Moscow. It was a courageous act, fraught with enormous risk. The leaflets from the dungeons, written in flying handwriting, reached the addressee - Ekaterina Peshkova. And they went to the archive.

The strange patient, who stood out from the surrounding friends in misfortune and appearance, and manners, and stories about royal life, was believed. As, however, in the short period of her life outside the prison and hospital walls, when, according to the investigation, a counter-revolutionary group of monarchist-minded believers formed around her.

Nun Valeria Makeeva, who shared a ward with Ivanova-Vasilyeva, told me that the hospital did not consider Nadezhda Vladimirovna an impostor, and every year on her name day, January 4, tea was even arranged in the building. Nurses and nannies brought pastries from home with the words: “Today the queen is celebrating!” The head physician once asked Valeria: “What do you think, maybe our patient is Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna?”

A participant in the Great Patriotic War, Antonina Mikhailovna Belova, who ended up in a prison hospital for “seditious diary entries” and from 1952 to 1956 was also in the same ward with the “queen”, wrote in a letter to the editor: “Knowing a lot about “treatment”, I silent on leaving the hospital about everything. But, having heard about your article, I decided to tell about my face-to-face meeting with Anastasia. I was driven by the duty of being a Christian. She was the true youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. She had an almost non-Russian face: almost oval in shape, her nose was longer than usual, with a slight hump. Dark eyebrows are shifted to the bridge of the nose, eyes are large, sharp. What amazed me most of all was the out-of-date, beautiful, high hairstyle... Anastasia told me about her miraculous salvation, about the fact that an earring with diamonds had been torn out of her ear. She lifted a strand of her hair: her ear was half ugly torn off from below ... I was numb. There was no doubt left in me that there was a great prisoner in section 9.”

Anastasia said: “I lost consciousness and then I don’t remember anything. I woke up in a basement. In such a tragic way, one of the entire House of Romanov, to my sorrow, I survived; more than once, envying the members of the executed family, she asked for death.

Moscow, Kuznetsky Most, 24, - Pompolit's address, like a password, was passed from hand to hand. It was the last hope for the "enemies of the people" and their families.

For fifteen years, until July 1938, a service legally operated in the USSR, which tried in every possible way to alleviate the fate of people who fell under the millstones of repression! Of course, unlike the political Red Cross, which existed until 1922, Pompolit could not provide legal protection, but still his help was invaluable. He supported the prisoners and their families with money, food, clothes, medicines, petitioned for a review of the case, reducing the term of imprisonment. For the past six months, the organization has practically not worked. In 1937, Ekaterina Pavlovna's assistant Mikhail Vinaver was given 25 years, and Peshkova was powerless. She couldn't help anyone anymore.

On the letter of Ivanova-Vasilyeva there is a handwritten note by Ekaterina Pavlovna: “Mentally ill. E.P.” This meant that the letters would not be given a go and they would remain under wraps. But was it possible to do anything at all at that time without risking, at best, being branded crazy?

I first met the name of Ivanova-Vasilyeva in the investigation file of A.F. Ivanshin. This is the case of the underground church-monarchist organization of 1934, - says Leah Dolzhanskaya. - Several letters from Ivanova-Vasilyeva were found in Pompolit's archive. Thus, a letter from “Romanova Anastasia Nikolaevna” from the Vishera concentration camp (1933) has been preserved, where she asks to inform her aunt Ksenia Alexandrovna Dolgorukova, who lives in Germany, so that she would provide her with material support. Why did Ekaterina Pavlovna make a note "mentally ill"? There may be two options. Perhaps it seemed to her, and it is very likely that the author of the letters really suffers from a mental illness (after all, the royal family was shot, and this is a well-known fact). At the same time, Ekaterina Pavlovna understood that it was possible to save the life of a long-suffering prisoner only by declaring her "mentally ill." This note is only on the last letters, dated 1938, when Pompolit had almost finished his work.

Who was this strange Ivanova-Vasilyeva? Why did she carry, like a cross, someone else's name, realizing that she would never be released?

Sick impostor or Grand Duchess?

Only last year in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF) I was first issued case No. 15977. Previously, all my attempts to break through to the case of a political prisoner ended in a constant refusal.

I flip through the pages. Records of interrogations, testimonies of witnesses. In the column “place of service and position”, the arrested woman indicated that she was a teacher of a foreign language, when asked about her property status she answered “not available”, and she refused to give information about her father’s property. In the paragraph "social origin" it says "from the nobility." The interrogation was signed succinctly: "A. Romanova."

It is amazing and inexplicable that the investigators, having established the fact that the prisoner lives on a false passport, did not even try to find out her real name.

In the case, a thick paper envelope with the inscription "Confidential" is hemmed. What is there: photographs, secret documents? The criminal case is nearly 80 years old...

Journalistic curiosity makes you look at the envelope in the light, but, alas, nothing is visible. It remains only to write an official letter to the leadership of the GARF with a request to reveal the secret contained in the envelope. The answer is disappointing: there is a medical certificate in the envelope.

I have already seen this document in the archives of the Kazan Psychiatric Hospital. Here are some fragments: “The test subject is of medium height, asthenic build, looks much older than the indicated age ... In the lower third of both bones of the shoulder there are extensive soft scars, according to the conclusion of a specialist, of gunshot origin ... In the upper jaw, most of the teeth are missing.” The act also noted that “communication is possible only within the framework of a conversation about her supposedly royal origin. She is completely filled with delusional thoughts about her origin from the Romanov family ... This nonsense cannot be corrected in any way.

Combined portrait. On the right - Grand Duchess Anastasia, on the left - Nadezhda Ivanova-Vasilyeva.

After rehabilitation, Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilyeva was transferred to a clinical psychiatric hospital, and then out of sight - to a boarding school for psychochronics on the island of Sviyazhsk, where she ended her days. She was buried as ownerless. It is only known in which part of the village cemetery.

Could the Grand Duchess have survived? An eyewitness account is described who allegedly saw the wounded but alive Anastasia in the house on Voskresensky Prospekt in Yekaterinburg (almost opposite the Ipatiev house) in the early morning of July 17, 1918. It was a certain Heinrich Kleinbezetl, a tailor from Vienna, an Austrian prisoner of war, who in the summer of 1918 worked in Yekaterinburg as an apprentice with the tailor Baudin. In the early morning of July 17, a few hours after the brutal massacre in the basement of the Ipatiev house, the princess was brought to this house by one of the guards, who probably sympathized with the family.

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the Viennese tailor's testimony is just a figment of the imagination. And this is quite understandable. A murder committed under mysterious circumstances always generates rumors. Especially when the victims are famous people, especially crowned persons. Different people claimed their rights to the role of members of the royal family. Most of all there were false Alekseev and pseudo-Anastasy. When the remains of two people were missing in a burial near Yekaterinburg, rumors of a miraculous rescue began to spread with renewed vigor.

But, as you know, only in 2007, half a kilometer from the main burial place, were the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. Experts confirmed their authenticity back in 2008, but these fragments still remain unburied and await their final resting place in the safe of the State Archives of Russia.

The official point of view: all members of the family of Nicholas II and he himself were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918, and no one managed to escape. And all the contenders for the role of Anastasia and Alexei who survived are impostors.

Having canonized all members of the royal family as saints, the Russian Orthodox Church has not yet recognized the results of the genetic examination and has not officially participated in the burial ceremony of the remains of the royal family in the tomb of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998. In 2000, the murdered Romanovs were glorified as martyrs for the faith. To clarify the current position of the Church, I called the Moscow Patriarchate.

We do not accuse anyone of falsification and trust the scientific conclusions, if only because the Church is not a research institute that can verify the results of the examination, - explains Vakhtang Kipshidze, head of the analytical department of the Synodal Information Department of the Russian Orthodox Church, - but our reserved position regarding the remains is connected with the fact that when collecting samples for research there was not enough openness. The royal family has been canonized, that is, canonized, and people want to be sure that the relics they will worship are the remains of those same people. And we cannot afford uncertainty. Doubts are easily removed by re-examining samples taken in a more public way.

The riddle of the mysterious prisoner left with her. And we will probably never know who she really was. A noblewoman with a broken psyche? Or Anastasia?

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna

During the revolution, Anastasia was only sixteen - in the end, not so hot, what an advanced age! She was pretty, but her face was intelligent, and her eyes shone with remarkable intelligence.

Birth.

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

Childhood.

Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia Nikolaevna in 1902

Princesses Maria and Anastasia

Grand Duchess Anastasia

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia

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

Visit to Germany

They sometimes visited the Polish estates belonging to the royal family, where Nikolai liked to hunt.

Anastasia with sisters Tatyana and Olga.

World War I

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 the fourteenth anniversary, according to tradition, each of the daughters of the emperor became an honorary commander of one of the Russian regiments.

Under house arrest.

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia looking at photographs

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

Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Anastasia

The eldest, Olga, despite the fact that her education was completed, often attended classes and read a lot, improving in what had already been learned.

Grand Duchesses Olga and Anastasia

Nicholas II and George V

Tobolsk.

On August 26, the imperial family arrived in Tobolsk on the ship "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

Tobolsk

Unexpectedly, 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 grown fat and looks exactly like Maria a few years ago - the same huge waist and short legs ... Let's hope this will pass with age ... "

From a letter to Sister Maria.

In the courtyard of the governor's house

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

"My dear friend,

Your Anastasia.

Ipatiev house

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

Room of the Sovereign, Empress and Heir.

Execution

Anastasia holding dog Jimmy

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 birches.

Drawings of Grand Duchess Anastasia

Anastasia over Ganina Yama

Discovery of remains

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

Photo by Gilliard: Nikolai Sokolov in 1919 near Yekaterinburg.

From June 6 to July 10, on the orders of Admiral Kolchak, excavations of the Ganina Pit began, which were interrupted due to the retreat of the whites from the city.

Fireplace with “charred wooden parts”

Eugene Smith. the photo

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

On the night of July 16-17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg, in the Ipatiev house at 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 was shot along with his wife, children and servants The last Russian Emperor Nicholas II. The testimonies of contemporaries The testimonies of contemporaries preserved the details of the story - from touching to eerie: Grand Duchess Anastasia did not part with her beloved dog Jimmy until the last, and it was not possible to kill her and her sisters right away - the bullets bounced off the corsages of the girls, where the jewels were sewn. Princess Anastasia took the longest to finish off with rifle butts. Perhaps for this reason, soon after the execution, rumors spread: Anastasia did not die. Either the girl managed to escape, or she was replaced, or she, wounded, was taken out of the house by some soldier ... As you know, people most of all believe in what they want to believe - and Russian emigrants wanted to believe that 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 off a bridge. Suicides happen daily, sometimes law enforcement officers manage to prevent them, but the story that the failed suicide told was, frankly, 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 policemen supposed to think - especially considering that the girl did not answer questions, looked exhausted and did not have any documents with 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 with a diagnosis of “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, the same was the case with the Polish language. One day a nurse brought a newspaper into the ward with the headline: "Is One of the Tsar's Daughters Alive?" It seemed to Maria Poitert, a neighbor in the ward, that Unbekant looked like one of the Grand Duchesses in the photograph, but she kept saying: “Be quiet!”

The situation made an impression on M. Poitert. After leaving the clinic, she met with Russian emigrants - officer M. Shvabe, Zinaida Tolstaya - 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 prevent the emigrants from making sure that this was Grand Duchess Tatyana, suffering from amnesia. This confidence was dispelled by another emigrant, Baroness S. Buksgevden: it turned out that the alleged Grand Duchess did not know English, which Tatiana spoke perfectly ... But interest in the mysterious person had already been aroused.

After discharge, unknown for 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 somehow. 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 name - Tchaikovsky. It is noteworthy that among the guards of the Ipatiev house there was not a single person with such a surname ...

However, the alleged Anastasia did not come across so stupidly so often - she was very smart. So, once a visitor mentioned that she should remember the china 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 her more than once - for example, her mother's former valet Alexei Volkov. His "verdict" 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 educator of imperial children: the real Anastasia had a straight short nose, a small mouth and thin lips, and this woman had an upturned nose, a large mouth, plump lips ... maybe tuberculosis of the bones, which she was ill with in that time, as well as a blow to the face, which she could receive during the execution of the royal family, and are able to distort her appearance - but not to the same extent! “A hysterical and terrible actress,” F. Yusupov called her.

Despite such an abundance of testimonies from people who knew the real Anastasia, many continued to believe this woman, also known as Anna Anderson (this is how she checked into a hotel in the USA). The main argument was a twisted 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, bequeathed to write on the gravestone: “Anastasia Romanova. Anna Anderson.

The point in her case was already put in the 90s: Anna Anderson's tissue samples, stored in an American hospital, were compared by 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, it really was about a mentally ill woman.

This is just 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, some consciously wanted to improve their financial situation. The discovery of the remains of the royal family in 1991 stirred up these rumors again - there were no remains of a 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 someone another from the royal family did not escape execution.

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