From left to right, Grand Duchesses Anastasia and Olga; Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarevich Alexei, Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Maria with Cossacks in 1916. Courtesy: Beinecke Library.
Afterwards, a number of people came forward claiming to have survived the execution. All were impostors, as the skeletal remains of the Imperial family have since been recovered and identified through DNA testing. To this day, a number of people still falsely claim to be members of the Romanov family, often using false titles of nobility or royalty.
DNA testing
In 1991, nine sets of human remains were found in the forest outside Yekaterinburg. They have been identified through DNA testing as belonging to the Tsar and Tsarina, three of their daughters, the Tsarina's ladies' maid, and the family's doctor, cook and footman. In 1998, the Romanovs and their servants were buried in St. Petersburg and have been declared passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church. However, two sets of remains were missing from the mass grave. Scientists identified the missing family members as Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia, who was a few weeks short of his fourteenth birthday at the time of the killing, and either Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia or Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, who were seventeen and nineteen respectively at the time of the killings. The report of two missing bodies continued until the late 2000s to fuel speculation that one or more members of the family could have survived.
On August 23, 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site near Yekaterinburg that appeared to match the site described in Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three years old. Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber." The bones were found using metal detectors and metal rods as probes.[1]
On January 22, 2008, Russian forensic scientists announced that preliminary testing indicated a "high degree of probability" that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters.[2] The Yekaterinburg region's chief forensic expert Nikolai Nevolin indicated the results would be compared against those obtained by foreign experts and a final report could be issued by April or May 2008.[citation needed] On April 30, 2008, Russian forensic scientists announced that DNA testing proved that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters.[3] With this result, all of the Tsar's family are accounted for, proving that none of them survived the execution. As of 2018[update] the Russian Orthodox Church has not yet recognized these remains as belonging to the imperial family; the House of Romanov has expressed openness to the possibility of having the remains exhumed for further analysis and confirmation of their identity.[4]
Anastasia's survival stories have always been the most famous, inspiring dozens of books and films.[5]
Anna Anderson, real name Franziska Schanzkowska, was, by far, the most famous impostor. She appeared in 1920 in Berlin, Germany, and died in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States in 1984;
Eugenia Smith, aka Eugenia Drabek Smetisko, appeared in Chicago, United States in 1963, had a book published titled Autobiography of HIH Anastasia Nicholaevna of Russia that year, and died in Rhode Island in 1997.
Author, Michael Gray, (an alias adopted by a Northern Irish teacher) claimed in his book Blood Relative that the Tsarevich escaped with the Dowager Empress aboard the warship HMS Marlborough in 1919 and later assumed the name Nikolai Chebotarev. In the book, Gray claims he is the son of the Tsarevich and Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, and they had secretly married in the late 1940s.[9]
Suzanna Catharina de Graaff was a Dutch woman who claimed to be the fifth daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, born in 1903 when Alexandra was reported to have had a "hysterical pregnancy".[13] There are no official or private records of Alexandra giving birth to any child at this time.
Michael Romanoff, actually a Lithuanian-born eccentric named Harry F. Gerguson, claimed for decades before his death in 1971 that he was the nephew of the last Tsar. Though his story and assumed name were discredited quickly, he continued to be a minor celebrity in Hollywood, where he operated the highly popular Romanoff's Restaurant.
Caty Petersen is a Filipino woman who claims that her grandmother was Grand Duchess Anastasia. Her grandmother was named Tasia and claimed to have arrived in Manila in 1919, and to have had siblings named Maria and Alexei. She also said that they had to hide from Soviet Russia or else they would be "kill[ed]".[14]
The House of Romanov was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after Anastasia Romanovna married Ivan the Terrible, the first crowned tsar of all Russia. Nicholas II and his immediate family were executed in 1918, but there are still living descendants.
Alexandra Feodorovna, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, was the last Empress of Russia as the consort of Emperor Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917. A favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, she was, like her grandmother, one of the most famous royal carriers of haemophilia and bore a haemophiliac heir, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. Her reputation for encouraging her husband's resistance to the surrender of autocratic authority and her known faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy in its final years. She and her immediate family were all murdered while in Bolshevik captivity in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer.
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia was the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and of Tsarina Alexandra. She was born at Peterhof Palace, near Saint Petersburg.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.
Alexei Nikolaevich was the last Tsesarevich. He was the youngest child and only son of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. He was born with haemophilia, which his parents tried treating with the methods of peasant faith healer Grigori Rasputin.
Anna Anderson was an impostor who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was murdered along with her parents and siblings on 17 July 1918 by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Yekaterinburg, Russia, but the location of her body was unknown until 2007.
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia was the third daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Alexander Nikolayevich Avdonin is a Russian who was the first known person, in 1979, to begin exhuming the grave of the seven murdered Romanovs and four members of their household. He was born in Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union, where the Romanovs were murdered in 1918.
Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic and author, best known as the French language tutor to the five children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia from 1905 to 1918. In 1921, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he published a memoir, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family. In his memoirs, Gilliard described Tsarina Alexandra's torment over her son's hemophilia and her faith in the ability of starets Grigori Rasputin to heal the boy.
Larissa Feodorovna Tudor was the wife of Owen Frederick Morton Tudor, an officer of the 3rd Hussars. Following her death, it was rumoured that she was in truth Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, the second daughter of Nicholas II of Russia, and of Tsarina Alexandra.
The Church on Blood in Honour of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land is a Russian Orthodox church in Yekaterinburg. Being built on the site of the Ipatiev House where Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, and his family, along with members of the household, were murdered by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, the church commemorates the Romanov sainthood.
Marga Boodts was a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. She was one of a considerable number of Romanov pretenders who emerged from various parts of the world following the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Yekaterinberg on July 18, 1918. She stands out, however, as one of very few who claimed to have been Grand Duchess Olga, the Tsar's oldest daughter. She was also known as Maria Bottcher.
Anatoly Ionov is a Russian man who claims to be the son of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia.
Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, notable as one of several men responsible for carrying out the murder of the Romanov family, including the deposed Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, their children, and their retinue.
The Romanovs: An Imperial Family is a 2000 Russian historical drama film about the last days of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. The Russian title implies both the Imperial Crown of Russia and the crown of thorns associated with martyrs. The film premiered at the 22nd annual Moscow Film Festival. The film was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards, but it didn't make the final shortlist.
The Assassin of the Tsar is a 1991 Soviet drama film, starring Malcolm McDowell and Oleg Yankovsky. It was entered into the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. There are two versions. One is filmed in English which later was dubbed over the Russian actors, and one in Russian. Malcolm McDowell pretended to speak Russian in the other version and was later dubbed.
The Russian Imperial Romanov family were shot and bayoneted to death by Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Also murdered that night were members of the imperial entourage who had accompanied them: court physician Eugene Botkin; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and head cook Ivan Kharitonov. The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped, mutilated with grenades to prevent identification, and buried.
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia was the eldest child of the last Tsar of the Russian Empire, Emperor Nicholas II, and of Empress Alexandra of Russia.
Alexandra Alexandrovna Tegleva, also known as Shura Tegleva and Sasha Tegleva, was a Russian noblewoman who served as a nursemaid in the Russian Imperial Household. As nursemaid to the children of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, she went with the family into exile in Tobolsk following the abdication of Nicholas II during the February Revolution, but was ultimately prevented from staying with them during their house arrest at Ipatiev House. She survived the Russian Revolution and married Pierre Gilliard, a Swiss academic who served with her in the Imperial Household as the children's French tutor. She moved to Lausanne as a white émigré and remained there the rest of her life. Tegleva worked with her husband to investigate and debunk the claims made by Anna Anderson, a Romanov impostor who pretended to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.
Elizaveta Nikolaevna "Liza" Ersberg was a German-Russian parlormaid who served in the Russian Imperial Household. The daughter of a stoker employed by Emperor Alexander III, she was hired by Empress Maria Feodorovna as a parlormaid at the Alexander Palace in 1898. She used her post to obtain a position at court for her friend Anna Demidova, who became a lady-in-waiting to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
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