The Last Czar

On July 17, 1918, the last Czar of Russia Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children were brutally murdered by revolutionaries known as the Bolsheviks. Though the Bolsheviks claimed to have murdered the entire family, their bodies were mutilated and subsequently buried in unmarked graves which led to speculation that the youngest daughter of the five Romanov children, Anastasia, had escaped.

The rumors seemed all but confirmed when just a few years later a mysterious woman appeared in Berlin and was admitted to a psychiatric facility. The legend of the escaped Grand Duchess and the notion that the mysterious woman could be none other than Anastasia swirled across Europe and continued well into the 1980s. But were the rumors true?

The Bolsheviks, whose revolution would eventually create the ruling communist party in Russia, sent the Romanov family to live in exile in a small house in the city of Yekaterinburg. For 78 days the family was held in five small rooms under constant surveillance as their captors grew increasingly paranoid about a possible rescue attempt.

On the morning of July 17th, the family was ushered into the basement where a bloodbath ensued. Overall, the executions had taken 20 minutes. The bodies were then stripped, burned by fire or in acid, and buried in an abandoned mineshaft. The family’s burial site remained hidden for 61 years following their execution. During this time, the anonymity of their burials and the knowledge that the children had jewels hidden in their clothing, led some to believe that a child could have escaped. Rumors spread and several impostors attempted to claim the royal fortune.

Perhaps the most famous impostor of Anastasia Romanov was an unstable young woman named Anna Anderson. In 1920, Anna attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge in Berlin. She survived and was brought to an asylum without any paperwork or identification.

For six months she refused to identify herself and didn’t speak a word to the hospital staff. When she eventually did speak, it was determined that she had a Russian accent. Combined with the distinct scars on her body and her withdrawn demeanor, this inspired theories among the hospital staff and the patients.

At least four other women would come forward all claiming to be the missing Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov. These women appeared in different corners of the world at varying times: one appeared in Russia in 1920, another in Chicago in 1963. But none were more famous or had a more believable case, than Anna Anderson.

When Anderson eventually left the hospital in Berlin, she was accosted by the press in an attempt to confirm whether or not she was the Grand Duchess. Since the fall of the Romanov dynasty, Russian aristocrats who were able to escape the Bolshevik takeover had spread all across Europe along with the rumors of Anastasia’s resurrection. Anderson was able to find housing with various aristocrats who had been friends to the Romanov family despite the fact that Anastasia’s former nursemaid, tutor, and many other former servants denied that she was the Grand Duchess.

In 1970, a judge ruled in court that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that Anderson was the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Anderson was eventually identified as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker who had gone missing shortly before Anderson turned up in Berlin. She died in 1984.

The burial site of the Romanovs was discovered in 1979, but this information wasn’t made public until 1991 because two bodies were still missing. One of the missing bodies was Alexei and the other was Maria, one of the Czar’s four daughters. But because the corpses were so damaged, the notion that the missing daughter could be Anastasia persisted.

That was until 2007 with the discovery of two more remains near the site. Their DNA showed that they were the bodies of Alexei and Maria with Anastasia having been identified among the bodies from the previous burial.

I came across a news article…actually, it was a few years ago…about the Russian government's desire to reunite the remains of their last imperial family in one place—the czar, czarina, and their five children. However, the mission was not without roadblocks, namely the need to satisfy skeptics about the validity of all the remains.

On September 23, 2015, Russian investigators exhumed the body of Czar Nicholas Romanov II and his wife, Alexandra, as part of an investigation into the family's death a hundred years ago—in 1918. It's part of the ongoing attempt to confirm that the remains really belong to Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children. Some of the family's remains were tested in the early 1990s (the early days of DNA testing) with the results being that the scientists were pretty confident that it's really them. The remains exhumed at that time included the czar, his wife, three of their children, and several servants. Two of the children, Alexei and Maria, were unaccounted for at that time. But the officials weren't able to convince the Russian Orthodox Church about the authenticity of the remains.

The church officials have not come out with their exact reasons for doubt. There had been some discussion about the Romanov family having been canonized in 2000 which made the remains holy relics which required a different way of treating them. In general, church leaders say they just aren't convinced. The church's approval is important for bringing the family's remains together.

The church did, somewhat reluctantly, allow the family's remains to be interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg where most of Russia's other czars are buried. But the church still had not accepted the family's identities in spite of the fact that several rounds of DNA testing had occurred.

When the remains of Alexei and Maria were subsequently located (their identities confirmed by DNA testing), those remains were left sitting on a shelf because the Russian Orthodox Church balked at the idea of adding them to the family tomb. The church says it believes the family's remains were destroyed and won't change their position until they are 100 percent sure in spite of the DNA confirmation.

In February 2016 the church once again blocked the reuniting of the remains. Currently, the most prevalent explanation is that the church hierarchy wants to avoid the decision because either choice would alienate key factions. Rejecting the bones will anger some Orthodox adherents, particularly those outside Russia, while accepting them will incense a conservative domestic faction that believes the Soviet government somehow faked the original burial at the time and those aren't the real remains of Czar Nicholas II and his family.

And the entire effort remains in limbo.

WHO WAS RASPUTIN?

This week my blog features the mystical advisor to the last Czar and Czarina of Russia—Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Many feel Rasputin played a pivotal role in the fall of the Romanov dynasty and the advent of the Russian Revolution. Rasputin, born in 1869 and assassinated in 1916, was known as The Mad Monk.

Born to a Siberian peasant family around 1869, Grigori Rasputin received little schooling and probably never learned to read or write. In his early years, some people of his village said he possessed supernatural powers, while others cited examples of extreme cruelty.

His early life was ordinary for the time and place but changed in 1892 when he spent months in a monastery although never took holy orders to become a monk. He left the monastery at age nineteen presumably to get married. He had five children although two died shortly after birth. Grigori Rasputin left his family and traveled to Greece and the Middle East, making several pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

In 1903, Rasputin's wanderings brought him to St. Petersburg, where he arrived with a reputation as a mystic and faith healer. Two years later, he was introduced to Russian Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna, who were seeking help for their sickly son, Alexis. Rasputin quickly gained their confidence by seemingly curing the boy of hemophilia. This action won him the passionate support of Alexandra.

Between 1906 and 1914, various politicians and journalists used Rasputin's association with the imperial family to undermine the dynasty's credibility and push for revolution. Rasputin helped their cause by claiming to be the Czarina's advisor. Accounts of his lewd behavior emerged in the press, solidifying contempt among state officials. In truth, Rasputin's influence at this time was limited to the health of Alexis.

As Russia entered World War I, Rasputin predicted that calamity would befall the country. Nicholas II took command of the Russian Army in 1915, and Alexandra took responsibility for domestic policy. Always Rasputin's defender, she dismissed ministers who were said to be suspicious of the mad monk. Government officials tried to warn her of Rasputin's undue influence, but she continued to defend him, giving the impression that Rasputin was her closest advisor.

On the night of December 29, 1916, a group of conspirators, including the czar's first cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and Prince Felix Yusupov, invited Rasputin to Yusupov's palace and fed him wine and cakes laced with cyanide. Though Rasputin eventually became rather drunk, the poison seemed to have no effect. This was refuted by a relative of Rasputin who said he didn't like sweets and wouldn't have eaten the cakes. Baffled but not deterred, the conspirators finally shot Rasputin multiple times. He was then wrapped in a carpet and thrown into the Neva River, where his body was discovered three days later.

His death was officially listed as December 30, 1916 (December 17^th on the Russian calendar in use at the time). Not only did he survive the initial poisoning, it was noted that water was found in his lungs indicating he also survived the shooting and actually died by drowning.

Although Rasputin was gone, the last of his prophecies still lingered. Shortly before his death, he told Nicholas that if he were killed by government officials, the entire imperial family would be killed by the Russian people. His prophecy came true fifteen months later, when the czar, his wife and all of their children were murdered by assassins during the Russian Revolution.