Encyclopedia
Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia , sometimes nicknamed Nastya, Nastas, or Nastenka, was the youngest daughter of Tsar
Nicholas II of Russia and
Empress Alexandra, the last autocratic rulers of Imperial Russia.
She was a younger sister of
Grand Duchess Olga,
Grand Duchess Tatiana and
Grand Duchess Maria, and was an elder sister of
Alexei Nikolaievitch, Tsarevitch of Russia.
Several women claimed to have been Anastasia, the most famous of which was
Anna Anderson. Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984. DNA testing on a surgical specimen retained since 1979 in a hospital and on hairs found in a book in 1994 determined that Anderson was not Anastasia.
Life and Childhood
She shared her name with Tsaritsa
Anastasia of Russia, a
16th century Russian aristocrat whose marriage to the first Tsar,
Ivan the Terrible, provided the
Romanov family with their claim to the throne. She and her older sister Maria were known within the family as "The Little Pair" and shared a room, much like their two older sisters. All four affectionately went by the group name, OTMA.
A tomboy and intelligent, she was reportedly comically good at wicked impersonations of those around her, and possessed a sharp wit and appreciation for sarcastic jokes. While often described as gifted and bright, she was never interested in the restrictions of school. She loved animals and always had her two dogs, Shvybzik and Jemmy, at her side. She spent her free time playing her record player, writing letters, watching movies, taking pictures , playing the balalaika with her brother Alexei and lying in the sun doing nothing. She suffered from stomach ailments much like her mother, and the painful medical condition
hallux valgus , which affected the joints of both her big toes.
In February 1917, she and her family were placed under house arrest at the
Alexander Palace in
Tsarskoe Selo during the Russian Revolution. As the
Bolsheviks approached,
Alexander Kerensky of the Provisional Government had them moved to
Tobolsk,
Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized majority control of Russia, she and her family were moved to
Yekaterinburg where they are presumed to have been executed by firing squad in the early morning of July 17 1918. While some witnesses later said they saw her, her mother Alexandra Fyodorovna and sisters in
Perm after the
execution, it is widely discredited as nothing more than a fanciful and highly dramatic rumor.
From Mystery to Legend
After Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in 1917, Russia quickly disintegrated into civil war and Anastasia and her family were placed under house arrest in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. They were soon transferred to the city of Tobolsk in Siberia and from there they, and a few servants, were moved to the mining town of
Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Negotiations for their release between their Bolshevik captors and their extended family, many of whom were prominent members of the Royal Houses of Europe, stalled. As the Whites advanced toward
Yekaterinburg the Reds were in a precarious situation. The Reds knew
Yekaterinburg would fall to the better manned and equipped White Army. Did they run the risk of having the Imperial Family liberated by the Whites, thus providing these loyalists with a 'rallying cry' that might renew their vigor to reinstate autocracy to Russia? Or did they do away with the Imperial Family in order to preserve their new and fragile hold on Russia?
History has always assumed that Anastasia was murdered along with her father and the rest of her family during the early morning hours of July 17, 1918 in a sub-basement room in the
Ipatiev House , where they were being sequestered during their imprisonment in
Yekaterinburg. The extra-judicial execution was carried out by forces of the
Bolshevik secret police under the command of
Yakov Yurovsky. According to the infamous "Yurovsky Note", an account of the event filed by Yurovsky to his Bolshevik superiors after the execution, just before dawn on the day of the murders the family was woken and told to dress. When they asked "why?" they were informed that they were being moved to a new location to ensure their safety in anticipation of the violence that might ensue when the White Army reached Yekaterinburg. Once dressed, the family and the small circle of servants and caregivers that had remained with them were herded into a small room in the house's sub-basement and told to wait. Alexandra and Alexei were allowed to sit in chairs provided by guards at the request of the Tsarina. After several minutes, the executioners entered the room, led by Yurovsky. With no hesitation, Yurovsky quickly informed the Tsar and his family that they were all to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only "What?" and turn to his family before he was assassinated with a bullet to the head. The Tsarina, who quickly made the sign of the cross before her, was the next to be assasinated. Olga and Tatiana were also killed in the initial volley of bullets fired by the weapons of the executioners, both suffering gunshot wounds to the head. The rest of the Imperial retinue were shot in short order, with the exception of Anna Demidova, Alexandra's lady-in-waiting. Demidova survived the initial onslaught, but was quickly murdered against the back wall of the basement, stabbed to death while trying to defend herself with a small pillow she had carried into the sub-basement that was filled with precious gems and jewels. The "Yurovsky Note" further reported that once the thick smoke that had filled the room from so many weapons being fired in such close proximity cleared, it was discovered that the executioners' bullets had ricocheted off the corsets of two of the Grand Duchesses. The executioners later came to find out that this was because the family's crowned
jewels and
diamonds had been sewn inside the linings of the corsets to hide them from their captors. The corsets thus served as a form of "armor" against the bullets. Because the bullets did not kill them, Anastasia and Marie were stabbed with the bayonets on the ends of the executioner's rifles.
The legend of Anastasia's possible survival and escape begins here. Feigning death, amongst the bodies of her family members and servants, it was claimed by nearly every Anastasia pretender that it was with the help of a compassionate guard who rescued her from amongst the corpses after noticing that she was still alive that she was able to make her escape. These rumors were fueled by later reports of trains and houses being searched for 'Anastasia Romanov' by Bolshevik soldiers and secret police. Strangely, there were also reports of a woman who claimed to be a daughter of the Tsar found pleading for help in the small villages around
Yekaterinburg. She is said to have claimed that she had been in the hands of guards who had rescued her after the massacre, and then beat and raped her. Shortly afterward, she is said to have disappeared.
Anastasia's possible survival was one of the celebrated mysteries of the 20th century. In 1922, as rumors spread that one of the grand duchesses had survived, a woman who later came to call herself
Anna Anderson appeared in Germany and claimed to be Anastasia. She created a life-long controversy and made headlines for decades, with some surviving relatives believing she was Anastasia and others not. Her battle for recognition continues to be the longest running case that was ever heard by the German courts, where the case was officially filed. The final decision of the court was that while it could not prove that Anderson was in fact Anastasia, it could also not prove that she wasn't. Anderson died in 1984 and her body was cremated. Another claimant, Eugenia Smith appeared in 1963, at the height of the 'Anastasia/Anna Anderson' controversy, but her story too had inconsistencies and she refused extensive testing.
In 1991, bodies believed to be those of the Imperial Family and their servants were finally exhumed from a mass grave in the woods outside
Yekaterinburg. The grave had been found nearly a decade earlier, but was kept hidden by its discoverers from the Communists who still ruled Russia when the grave was originally found. Once opened, the excavators realized that instead of eleven sets of remains the grave held only nine. Alexei and, according to the late forensic expert Dr. William Maples, Anastasia were missing from the family's grave. Russian scientists contested this however, claiming that it was the body of the
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia that was missing. In 1998, when the bodies of the Imperial Family were finally interred, a body measuring 5'7
was buried under the name of Anastasia, despite the fact that Anastasia was the shortest of the Grand Duchesses. Anastasia's actual height was only 5'2.
Most historians believe, and the lack of the two seemed to confirm, the account of the "Yurovsky Note" that two of the bodies were removed from the main grave and burned at an undisclosed location. The rationale was that this would create suspicion that these were the remains of the Tsar and his retinue should the grave be discovered by the Whites - the body count would not be correct. However, some forensic experts believe the complete burning of two bodies in that short amount of time would have been impossible given the environment and materials possessed by Yurovsky and his men.
In 2000, amidst low-key fanfare, the family was canonized by the
Russian Orthodox Church.
Influence on Culture
The possible survival of Anastasia has been the subject of both theatrical and made-for-television films. The earliest, made in 1928, was called
Clothes Make the Woman. The story followed a woman who turns up to play the part of a rescued Anastasia for a Hollywood film, and ends up being recognized by the Russian soldier who originally rescued her from her would-be assassins.
The most famous is probably the highly fictionalized 1956
Anastasia starring
Ingrid Bergman as
Anna Anderson,
Yul Brynner as General Bounine , and
Helen Hayes as the
Dowager Empress Marie, Anastasia's paternal grandmother. The film tells the story of a woman from an asylum who appears in
Paris in 1928 and is captured by several Russian emigrés who feed her information so that they can fool Anastasia's grandmother into thinking Anderson actually is her granddaughter in order to obtain a Tsarist fortune. As time goes by they begin to suspect that this "Madame A. Anderson" really is the murdered Grand Duchess.
In 1986, NBC broadcast a mini-series loosely based on a book published in 1983 by Peter Kurth called
Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson. The movie,
Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna was a two-part series which began with the young Anastasia Nicholaievna and her family being sent to Yekaterinburg, where they are executed by Bolshevik soldiers. The story then moves to 1923, and while taking great liberties, fictitiously follows the claims of the woman known as Anna Anderson. Amy Irving portrays the adult Anna Anderson. The movie also starred many veteran movie and TV actors, most notably, Omar Sharif as Tsar Nicholas II.
The most recent film is 1997's
Anastasia, a musical version of the story of Anastasia's escape from Russia and her subsequent quest for recognition that took even greater liberties with historical fact than the 1956 film of the same name. In this account, a young Anastasia, along with her grandmother, tries to escape a frenzied revolutionary mob and a devilish
Grigori Rasputin, who has started the Russian Revolution with a powerful and evil spell. They both exit through a secret door in a palace wall with the help of Dimitri, a kitchen-boy, and race to a train station, mobbed with autocrats and the socially elite who are trying to flee the Bolshevik forces that have taken control of St. Petersburg. Separated from her grandmother by the jostling mob, Anastasia rushes to catch-up with her, but is knocked to the ground where she hits her head. She loses her memory and ends up in an orphanage. She is released once she reaches legal age and meets up with two money-hungry Russians who attempt to teach her to be Anastasia. One of them is Dimitri, who comes to realize she is Anastasia. Dimitri and Anastasia eventually fall in love, and run away together.
Anastasia's survival is also the subject of the song "Yes Anastasia" by contemporary musician
Tori Amos. The band Innocence Mission also sings of the Anastasia/Anna Anderson legend in their song "I Remember Me." Anastasia is mentioned in the 1968
Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil" in the line "Anastasia screamed in vain."
Anastasia appears as a playable character in the 2004
PlayStation 2 Console role-playing game .
Older namesake
Another
Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia was the daughter of Grand Duke Mikhail of Russia. She was married to Grand Duke Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
External links
- - A website dedicated to the REAL Anastasia, including everything there is to know about Anastasia, from her birth in 1901 to her tragic death in 1918.
- - The story of Anastasia.
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- , Nicolay Sokolov. Investigation of murder of the Romanov Imperial Family in 1918. In Russian
- A media presentation of the last Imperial Family.
- - a web site dealing with the controversy surrounding Anastasia's death.
