Anastasia Romanova: the mystery of the Grand Duchess. The Tsar's daughter Anastasia

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

For almost twenty years this story has haunted me. Ever since, in the archives of the Kazan psychiatric hospital with intensive observation, the case history of Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilieva, who pretended to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova, was discovered, yellowed by time. There were many false princesses, but the authorities did not treat any of them so cruelly. Her life became a series of incessant torment in camps and prison mental hospitals.

And here again a call from the past. More recently, her letters to Stalin and Ekaterina Peshkova were discovered in the Pompolit archive (“E.P. Peshkova. Assistance to political prisoners”).

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.

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

“Dear Joseph Vissarionovich! Forgive me for disturbing you, but I wish to speak with 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 coming to see me. I wrote him a letter and am waiting for his arrival. I warn you, Joseph Vissarionovich, that I have been arrested and have been suffering for 20 years in prisons, concentration camps, and exile. I was in Solovki and am currently in the special corps of the NKVD. However, all my life, from the age of 15, as a girl, when I was saved from death by a Red Guard commander, wounded, since then I have suffered only for my origin. And so I wrote to my relatives and want an end to my suffering and to be taken away from the borders of the Soviet Union. I am sending this letter through Maxim Gorky’s wife Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova. Dear A. Romanova. June 22, 1938, Kazan.”

Moscow, Kuznetsky Most, 24. Assistance to 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 ask 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... When I was in Moscow in 1934, I received foreign things through the Swedish embassy from my friend Gretti Janson... Please, if you can, send me a coat and stockings as soon as possible, for which I will be sincerely grateful and will try to thank you as soon as possible...

The daughter of the former Nicholas II is writing to you, 20 years ago I was saved from death, a wounded 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 whether they will give me away or not. I am in prison only for my origin; I am not guilty of anything else. I had a fake passport in the name of Ivanova-Vasilieva, but for this I served...

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

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilieva wrote dozens of letters and petitions. All of them are filed in her medical history and, naturally, did not leave 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 one day she 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 orders of the special corps and take letters out of the regime institution, and then deliver them to Moscow. It was a courageous act that involved enormous risk. The leaves from the dungeons, covered with flying handwriting, reached the addressee - Ekaterina Peshkova. And they went into the archives.

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

Nun Valeria Makeeva, who shared a ward with Ivanova-Vasilyeva, told me that in the hospital Nadezhda Vladimirovna was not considered an impostor, and every year on her name day, January 4, tea was even held in the building. Nurses and nannies brought baked goods 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 was sent to a prison hospital for “seditious entries in her diary” 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 I was silent about everything after leaving the hospital. But, having heard about your article, I decided to talk about my face-to-face meeting with Anastasia. I was prompted by the duty of 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, the eyes are large and sharp. What amazed me most was the out-of-date, beautiful, high hairstyle... Anastasia told me about her miraculous salvation, about how an earring with diamonds was torn right out of her ear. She lifted a strand of hair: half of her ear from below was ugly torn off... I was numb. There is no doubt left in me that there is a great prisoner in department No. 9.”

Anastasia said: “I lost consciousness and don’t remember anything else. I woke up in some basement. In such a tragic way, I was the only one of the entire House of Romanov, to my grief, who survived; more than once, envying 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. This was the last hope for “enemies of the people” and members of their families.

For fifteen years, until July 1938, a service operated legally in the USSR, which tried in every possible way to alleviate the lot of people who had fallen under the millstone of repression! Of course, unlike the political Red Cross, which existed until 1922, Pompolit could not provide legal protection, but its help was still invaluable. He supported prisoners and their families with money, food, clothing, medicine, and petitioned for a review of the case and a reduction in the term of imprisonment. For the last 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 from Ivanova-Vasilieva there is a handwritten note from Ekaterina Pavlovna: “Mentally ill. E.P.” This meant that the letters would not be processed and would remain hidden. But was it even possible to do anything at that time without risking, at best, being branded crazy?

I first came across the name Ivanova-Vasilieva in the investigative file of A.F. Ivanshin. This is the work of an underground church-monarchist organization in 1934,” says Liya Dolzhanskaya. - Several letters from Ivanova-Vasilieva were found in the Pompolit 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 Aleksandrovna Dolgorukova, who lives in Germany, so that she can provide her with financial support. Why did Ekaterina Pavlovna mark it as “mentally ill”? There may be two options here. Perhaps it seemed to her, and this is very likely, that the author of the letters really suffered from mental illness (after all, the royal family was shot, and this is a known fact). At the same time, Ekaterina Pavlovna understood that it was possible to save the life of the long-suffering prisoner only by declaring her “mentally ill.” This note appears only on the last letters, dated 1938, when Pompolit practically completed his work.

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

Sick impostor or Grand Duchess?

Only last year the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF) gave me case No. 15977 for the first time. Previously, all my attempts to get into the case of a political prisoner ended in constant refusal.

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

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

The file contains an envelope made of thick paper with the inscription “Confidential”. What's there: photographs, secret documents? The criminal case is almost 80 years old...

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

I have already seen this document in the archives of the Kazan psychiatric hospital. Here are some fragments: “The subject is of average height, asthenic build, looks much older than the indicated age... In the area of ​​the lower third of both shoulder bones there are extensive soft scars, according to 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 origins from the Romanov family... This delusion cannot be corrected.”

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

After rehabilitation, Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilieva was transferred to a clinical psychiatric hospital, and then out of sight - to a boarding school for psychochronic patients on the island of Sviyazhsk, where she ended her days. She was buried as an ownerless one. It is only known in what part of the rural cemetery.

Could the Grand Duchess survive? An eyewitness account is described who allegedly saw the wounded but alive Anastasia in a house on Voskresensky Prospekt in Yekaterinburg (almost opposite Ipatiev’s house) in the early morning of July 17, 1918. It was a certain Heinrich Kleinbetzetl, 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. The princess was brought to this house in the early morning of July 17, a few hours after the brutal massacre in the basement of Ipatiev’s house, by one of the guards, who probably sympathized with the family.

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the testimony of the Viennese tailor is just a figment of the imagination. And this is quite understandable. A murder committed under mysterious circumstances always gives rise to rumors. Especially when the victims are famous people, especially crowned persons. Various people presented 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 from 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 site, the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria were found. Experts confirmed their authenticity back in 2008, but to this day these fragments 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 himself were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918, and no one managed to escape. And all the contenders for the role of the survivors Anastasia and Alexei are impostors.

Having canonized all members of the royal family, the Russian Orthodox Church has not yet recognized the results of the genetic examination and did not officially participate 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 passion-bearers - 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 scientific conclusions, if only because the Church is not a scientific 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 restrained position regarding the remains is connected with the fact that there was a lack of openness when collecting samples for the study. The royal family has been canonized, that is, canonized, and people want to be sure that the relics they will venerate 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 manner.

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

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

During the revolution, Anastasia turned only sixteen - after all, not such an old age! She was pretty, but her face was intelligent, and her eyes sparkled with remarkable intelligence.

The “tomboy” girl, “Schwibz,” as Her family called her, might have wanted to live up to the Domostroevsky ideal of a girl, but she couldn’t. But, most likely, She simply did not think about it, because the main feature of Her not fully developed character was cheerful childishness.

Anastasia Nikolaevna was... a big naughty girl, and not without guile. She quickly grasped the funny side of everything; It was difficult to fight against Her attacks. She was a spoiled person - a flaw from which She corrected herself over the years. Very lazy, as sometimes happens 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 dispel the wrinkles of 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.

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 aggravated the political situation: according to the Act of Succession to the Throne, adopted by Paul I, a woman could not ascend to the throne, therefore the younger brother of Nicholas II, Mikhail Alexandrovich, was considered the heir, which did not suit many, and first of all, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In an attempt to beg Providence for a son, at this time she becomes more and more immersed in mysticism. With the assistance of the Montenegrin princesses Militsa 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

Nikolai wrote in his diary: “About 3 o’clock Alix began to have severe pain. At 4 o'clock I got up and went to my room and got dressed. At exactly 6 am, daughter Anastasia was born. Everything happened quickly under excellent conditions and, thank God, without complications. Thanks to the fact that it all started and ended while everyone was still sleeping, we both had a sense of peace and privacy! After that, I sat down to write telegrams and notify relatives in all corners of the world. Fortunately, Alix is ​​feeling 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 the failed prophecy, immediately predicted her “an amazing life and a special destiny.” Margaret Eager, author of the memoir “Six Years at the Russian Imperial Court,” recalled that Anastasia was named in honor of the fact that the emperor pardoned and 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 shows chains torn in half.

Childhood.

Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia Nikolaevna in 1902

The full title of Anastasia Nikolaevna sounded like Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, but it was not used, in official speech they called her by her first name and patronymic, and at home they called her “little, Nastaska, Nastya, little egg” - for her small height (157 cm .) and a round figure and a “shvybzik” - for his mobility and inexhaustibility in inventing pranks and pranks.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the emperor’s children were not spoiled with luxury. Anastasia shared a room with her older sister Maria. The walls of the room were gray, the ceiling was decorated with images of butterflies. There are icons and photographs on the walls. The furniture is in white and green tones, the furnishings are simple, almost spartan, a couch with embroidered pillows, and an army cot on which the Grand Duchess slept all year round. This cot moved around the room in order to end up 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 one could take a break from the stuffiness and heat. They took this same bed with them on vacation to the Livadia Palace, and the Grand Duchess slept on it 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 o'clock, second breakfast at 13.00 or 12.30 on Sundays. At five o'clock there was tea, at eight there was a general dinner, and the food was quite simple and unpretentious. In the evenings, the girls solved charades and did embroidery 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 perfume with the smell of violets. This tradition has been preserved since the time of Catherine I. When the girls were small, servants carried buckets of water to the bathroom; when they grew up, this was their responsibility. There were two baths - the first large one, left over from the reign of Nicholas I (according to the surviving tradition, everyone who washed 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, natural sciences, drawing, grammar, arithmetic, as well as dance and music. Anastasia was not known for her diligence in her studies; she hated grammar, wrote with horrific errors, and with childish spontaneity called arithmetic “sinishness.” English teacher Sydney Gibbs recalled that she once tried to bribe him with a bouquet of flowers to improve his grade, and after he refused, she gave these flowers to the Russian language teacher, Petrov.

Grand Duchess Anastasia

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia

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

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

We also rested at the Livadia Palace. The main premises housed the imperial family, and the annexes housed several courtiers, guards and servants. They swam in the warm sea, built fortresses and towers out of sand, and sometimes went into the city to ride a stroller through the streets or visit shops. It was not possible to do this in St. Petersburg, since any appearance of the royal family in public created a crowd and excitement.

Visit to Germany

They sometimes visited Polish estates belonging to the royal family, where Nicholas loved to hunt.

Anastasia with her 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 their fourteenth birthday, according to tradition, each of the emperor’s daughters became an honorary commander of one of the Russian regiments.

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

Maria and Anastasia gave concerts to the wounded and tried their best to distract them from difficult thoughts. They spent days on end in the hospital, reluctantly taking time off from work for lessons. Anastasia recalled these days until the end of her life:

Under house arrest.

According to the memoirs of Lily Den (Yulia 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 after another. Anastasia was the last to fall ill, when the Tsarskoe Selo palace was already surrounded by rebel troops. At that time the Tsar was at the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief in Mogilev; only the Empress and her children remained in the palace. .

Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia look at photographs

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

On Wednesday, March 8, Count Pavel Benckendorff appeared at the palace with the message that the Provisional Government had decided to subject the imperial family to house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo. It was suggested that they make a list of people who wanted to stay with them. Lily Dehn immediately offered her services.

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

On March 9, the children were informed about their father’s abdication. A few days later Nikolai returned. Life under house arrest turned out to be quite bearable. It was necessary to reduce the number of dishes during lunch, since the menu of the royal family was announced publicly from time to time, and it was not worth giving another reason to provoke the already angry crowd. Curious people often watched through the bars of the fence as the family walked in the park and sometimes greeted her with whistling and swearing, so the walks had to be shortened.

On June 22, 1917, it was decided to shave the girls’ heads, since their hair was falling out due to persistent fever and strong medications. Alexei insisted that he be shaved too, thereby causing extreme displeasure in his mother.

Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Anastasia

Despite everything, the children's education continued. The entire process was led by Gillard, a French teacher; Nikolai himself taught the children geography and history; Baroness Buxhoeveden took over 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, was often present in lessons and read a lot, improving on what she had already 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 chose 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 leaving, they managed to say goodbye to the servants and visit their favorite places in the park, ponds, and islands for the last time. Alexei 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 from a siding in the strictest secrecy.

Tobolsk

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

Life in the governor's mansion was quite monotonous; The main entertainment is watching passers-by from the window. From 9.00 to 11.00 - lessons. An hour break for a walk with my father. Lessons again from 12.00 to 13.00. Dinner. From 14.00 to 16.00 there are walks and simple entertainment such as home performances, or in winter - skiing down a slide built with one’s own hands. Anastasia, in her own words, enthusiastically prepared firewood and sewed. Next on the schedule was the evening service and going to bed.

In September they were allowed to go to the nearest church for morning services. Again, the soldiers formed a living corridor right up to the church doors. The attitude of local residents towards the royal family was rather favorable.

The news that Nicholas II, exiled to Tobolsk, and the royal family were going to see the monument to Ermak, spread not only throughout the city, but also throughout the region. Tobolsk photographer Ilya Efimovich Kondrakhin, passionate about photography, with his bulky cameras - a great rarity in those days - hastened to capture this moment. And here we have a photograph showing several dozen people climbing 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 (grandson of the photographer) took a photo from the original photograph

Tobolsk

Suddenly, 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 gained weight and her appearance exactly resembles Maria a few years ago - the same huge waist and short legs... Let's hope this will go away with age...”

From a letter to sister Maria.

“The iconostasis was set up terribly well for Easter, everything is in the Christmas tree, as it should be here, and flowers. We were filming, I hope it comes out. I continue to draw, they say it’s not bad, it’s very pleasant. We were swinging on a swing, and when I fell, it was such a wonderful fall!.. yeah! I told my sisters so many times yesterday that they were already tired, but I can tell them 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, bows to his helmet. That was the weather! You could literally scream from pleasure. I was the most tanned, oddly enough, like an acrobat! And these days are boring and ugly, it’s cold, and we were freezing this morning, although of course we didn’t go home... I’m very sorry, I forgot to congratulate all my loved ones on the holidays, I kiss you not three, but a lot of times to everyone. Everyone, darling, thanks you very much 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 for the purpose of his trial. After much hesitation, Alexandra decided to accompany her husband; Maria was supposed to go with her “to help.”

The rest had to wait for them in Tobolsk; Olga’s duties were to take care of her sick brother, Tatyana’s was to run the household, and Anastasia’s was to “entertain everyone.” However, at the beginning things were difficult with entertainment, on the last night before departure no one slept a wink, and when finally in the morning, peasant carts were brought to the threshold for the Tsar, Tsarina and those accompanying them, three girls - “three figures in gray” saw off those leaving with tears right up to the gate.

In the courtyard of the governor's house

In the empty house, life continued slowly and sadly. We told fortunes from books, read aloud to each other, and walked. Anastasia was still swinging on the swing, drawing and playing with her sick brother. According to the memoirs of Gleb Botkin, the son of a life physician 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. April-May 1918

On May 3, 1918, it became clear that for some reason, the former Tsar's departure to Moscow was canceled and instead Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria were forced to stay in the house of engineer Ipatiev in Yekaterinburg, requisitioned by the new government specifically to house the Tsar's family . In a letter marked with this date, the empress instructed her daughters to “properly dispose of medicines” - this word meant the jewelry that they managed to hide and take with them. Under the guidance of her older sister Tatyana, Anastasia sewed the remaining jewelry she had into the corset of her dress - with a successful combination of circumstances, it was supposed to be used to buy her way to salvation.

On May 19, it was finally decided that the remaining daughters and Alexey, who was by then quite strong, would join their parents and Maria at Ipatiev’s house in Yekaterinburg. The next day, May 20, all four boarded the ship “Rus” again, which took them to Tyumen. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the girls were transported in locked cabins; Alexey was traveling with his orderly named Nagorny; access to their cabin was prohibited even for a doctor.

"My dear friend,

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

Yours, Anastasia."

On May 23 at 9 a.m. the train arrived in Yekaterinburg. Here, the French teacher Gillard, the sailor Nagorny and the ladies-in-waiting, who had 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 Alexey were finally taken to the house of engineer Ipatiev.

Ipatiev House

Life in the “special purpose house” was monotonous and boring - but nothing more. Rise 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 pm. Anastasia sewed with her sisters, 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 enthusiastically devoted themselves to this activity.

The dining room, the door visible in the picture leads to the Princesses' 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. Lilacs and lungwort were blooming. The girls baked bread, then Alexei was taken out to the garden, and the whole family joined him. At 8 pm we had dinner and played several games of cards. We went to bed at the usual time, 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 alleged discovery of a conspiracy to save the royal family. On the night of July 16-17, at 11:30 p.m., two special representatives from the Urals Council handed a written order to execute the commander of the security detachment, P.Z. Ermakov, and the commandant of the house, Commissioner of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission, Ya.M. Yurovsky. After a brief dispute about the method of execution, the royal family was woken up and, under the pretext of a possible shootout and the danger of being killed by bullets ricocheting off the walls, they were offered to go down to the corner semi-basement room.

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

Anastasia holding Jimmy the dog

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

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 body 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 birch trees.

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

Later that same day, grenade explosions were heard in the area. Interested in the strange incident, local residents, a few days later, when the cordon had already been lifted, came to the tract and managed to discover 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 village residents.

Photo by Gilliard: Nikolai Sokolov in 1919 near Yekaterinburg.

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

American scientists believed that the missing body was Anastasia's 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" body was buried under Anastasia's name. Photos of the girl standing next to her sisters, taken six months before the murder, 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 despair, has gained weight and her appearance exactly resembles Maria several years ago - the same huge waist and short legs... Let's hope with it will go away with age..." Scientists believe it is unlikely that she grew much in the last months of her life. Her actual height was approximately 5'2".

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

Fire pit with “charred wooden parts”

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

Currently, genetic analysis has confirmed already existing assumptions that Anna Anderson was in fact Franziska Schanzkovskaya, a worker in a Berlin factory that manufactured explosives. As a result of an industrial accident, she was seriously injured and suffered mental shock, the consequences of which she could not get rid of for the rest of her life.

Another false Anastasia was Eugenia 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, capitalizing on the public's interest.

Eugenia Smith. photo

Rumors about Anastasia's rescue were fueled by news of trains and houses that the Bolsheviks were searching 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 guards brought a girl into her cell who called herself Anastasia Romanova and asked if the girl was the Tsar's daughter. Elena Petrovna replied that she did not recognize the girl, and the guards took her away. Another account 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 the railway station at Siding 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 injured girl he examined at the Cheka headquarters in Perm told him: “I am the daughter of the ruler, Anastasia.”

At the same time, in mid-1918, there were several reports of young people in Russia posing as escaped Romanovs. Boris Solovyov, the husband of Rasputin's daughter Maria, deceitfully begged money from noble Russian families for the supposedly saved Romanov, in fact wanting to use the money to go to China. Solovyov also found women who agreed to pose as grand duchesses and thereby contributed to the deception.

However, there is a possibility that one or more guards could actually 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 hallway of the house. Some guards who did not participate in the murders and sympathized with the grand duchesses, according to some sources, remained in the basement with the bodies.

In 1964-1967, during the Anna Anderson case, Viennese tailor Heinrich Kleibenzetl testified that he allegedly saw the wounded Anastasia shortly after the murder in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918. The girl was looked after by his landlady, Anna Baoudin, in a building directly opposite Ipatiev's house.

“Her lower body was covered in blood, her eyes were closed and she was white as a sheet,” he testified. “We washed her chin, Frau Annuschka and I, then she moaned. The bones must have been broken... Then she opened her eyes for a minute.” Kleibenzetl claimed that the injured girl remained in his landlady's house for three days. The Red Army soldiers allegedly came to the house, but knew its landlady too well and did not actually 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, arrived to take the girl away. Kleibenzetl knew nothing more about her future fate.

Rumors were revived again after the release of Sergo Beria’s book “My Father - Lavrentiy Beria,” where the author casually recalls a meeting in the lobby of the Bolshoi Theater with Anastasia, who allegedly survived, and became the abbess of an unnamed Bulgarian monastery.

Rumors of a “miraculous rescue,” which seemed to have died down 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 from the bodies found (it was assumed that it was Maria) and Tsarevich Alexei. However, according to another version, among the remains there might not have been Anastasia, who was slightly younger than her sister and almost the same build, so a mistake in identification seemed likely. This time, Nadezhda Ivanova-Vasilieva, who spent most of her life in the Kazan psychiatric hospital, where she was assigned by the Soviet authorities, allegedly fearing the surviving princess, was claiming the role of the rescued Anastasia.

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

In my memory, the self-proclaimed Anastasias ranged from 12 to 19. 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 was not her.

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

Some of the most famous impostors in history were the False Dmitrys, swindlers who, in search of easy money, posed as the sons of Ivan the Terrible with varying degrees of success. Another “leader” in the number of “fake” children was Romanov family. Despite the tragic death of the imperial family in July 1918, many subsequently tried to pass themselves off as “surviving” heirs. In 1920, a girl appeared in Berlin claiming that she was the youngest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II, Princess Anastasia Romanova.

Based on materials from Commons.wikimedia.org

The mystery of the execution of the family of the last Emperor Nicholas II has not ceased to excite the minds of researchers throughout the 100 years that have passed since the date of execution. Were the members of the royal family actually shot, or did their doubles die in the basement of the Ipatiev House? Is it true that some of those sentenced to death were able to survive?

And were those who called impostors right those who tried to declare themselves as the miraculously saved children of Nicholas II? Of course, among the latter there were a lot of scammers, but sometimes the question still arises: what if one of them was telling the truth?

In 1993, Anatoly Gryannik, who worked at the Baltika Foundation, discovered Natalia Bilikhodze living there in Georgia, who admitted that she was the surviving daughter of Nicholas II, Anastasia Romanova. In 2000, the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova Foundation was created with headquarters in the State Duma of the Russian Federation. The goal of the foundation was to return royal values ​​to their homeland. In the imperial family, as stated, the youngest daughter Anastasia was given a special role. The Romanovs knew about several predictions of seers about the tragic fate of their family and believed them. Therefore, from an early age, Anastasia’s parents forced her to memorize account numbers in foreign banks, which made it possible, if Anastasia was the only one left alive, to receive for her what the Romanovs had placed abroad.

Princess from Georgia

One of the members of the foundation, Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladlen Sirotkin, is convinced that in 1918 the Bolsheviks shot not the Romanovs, but their doubles the Filatovs. Moreover, the Filatovs were not only doubles, but also distant relatives of the Romanovs - it was because of this, in his opinion, that examinations carried out in the 90s discovered their genetic similarity. In addition, Professor Sirotkin devoted 20 years of his life to the search for Russian values ​​abroad. It was he who discovered that the bulk of the royal inheritance was placed in European banks, and Russia gave 48,600 tons (according to Professor Vladlen Sirotkin) of gold to the US Federal Reserve System in trust for 99 years. In this regard, members of the Princess Anastasia Foundation planned to return the lost trillions to Russia with the help of the found princess, who, as stated, turned out to be Natalia Bilikhodze.

Bilikhodze told the story of her salvation. As she said, she was taken out of the Ipatiev House by Pyotr Verkhovsky, who at the court of Nicholas II was responsible for training doubles - understudies of members of the imperial family

The fund's organizers actively defended their idea in the media, proclaiming that in order to return gold to Russia, Bilikhodze needed support. The fact that Bilikhodze is Anastasia Romanova, according to members of the foundation, is evidenced by the results of 22 examinations. In addition, Bilikhodze herself told the story of her salvation. As she said, she was taken out of the Ipatiev House by Pyotr Verkhovsky, who at the court of Nicholas II was responsible for training doubles - understudies for members of the imperial family. Then Anastasia was taken from Yekaterinburg first to Petrograd, from there to Moscow, and then to Crimea, from where she and Verkhovsky arrived in Tbilisi. Here Anastasia was subsequently married to a certain citizen Bilikhodze and named Natalia Petrovna. In 1937, her husband came under a wave of repression and died, and then all documents in the name of Anastasia Romanova allegedly disappeared. However, it was difficult to verify this story, since the local KGB archive burned down, and no documents from the Tbilisi registry office about the marriage were found.

On this topic

After the death of her husband, Natalia Petrovna got a job at the Tsentrolit plant, where, at the insistence of the director who sympathized with her, she changed her year of birth from 1901 to 1918.

Then she married again - to a certain Kosygin, who later died in the 70s. It seems very likely that both husbands were secret service employees. How do we know about all this? From the book “I am Anastasia Romanova” - memoirs recorded from the words of Bilikhodze. The memoirs also describe the princess’s childhood stories against the backdrop of historical events, her escape from the Ipatiev House (by the way, during its destruction, a previously unknown underground passage was found, which Bilikhodze recalled) and life in Georgia. The main thing that Bilikhodze-Romanova asked was to return her name to her. For this, she was ready to transfer to the state everything that she could return from abroad.

22 "yes" and 1 "no"

As reported, 22 examinations were carried out in relation to Natalia Bilikhodze in Russia, Latvia and Georgia to identify her with Princess Anastasia. Experts compared literally everything: structural features of bones and ears, features of the skeleton and gait, biological age, handwriting, motor activity, blood, hereditary diseases, mental state, and also used photo and video materials depicting the daughter of the last Russian sovereign. According to representatives of the foundation, all researchers came to the conclusion: Natalia may well be the youngest daughter of Nicholas II. At the same time, the best psychiatrists in Georgia claimed that Bilikhodze is mentally healthy and does not have sclerosis. Based on the combination of matching signs between Natalia Bilikhodze and Princess Anastasia, this can only happen “in one out of 700 billion cases,” members of the fund said.

Subsequently, they transported Bilikhodze to the Moscow region. Moving from warm Georgia to not very good conditions in the middle zone led to the development of left-sided pneumonia and cardiac arrhythmia, for which reason in December 2000 she was hospitalized at the UDP Central Clinical Hospital. There she soon died. However, the death certificate was issued by the Kuntsevo registry office in Moscow only in February 2001. Anastasia’s body lay in the Central Clinical Hospital morgue for almost two months - at the initiative of members of the foundation, experts conducted a genetic study of Bilikhodze. The examination was carried out by Doctor of Biological Sciences Pavel Ivanov at the Russian Center for Forensic Medical Examination of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. The result of the DNA test was as follows: “The mitotype of Bilikhodze N.P., which characterizes the matrilineal (maternal) branch of her pedigree and should normally be present in all her blood relatives on the maternal side, does not coincide with the DNA profile (mitotype) of the Russian Empress A. F. Romanova (from the burial?). Origin of N.P. Bilikhodze from the maternal genetic line of Queen Victoria of England is not confirmed. On this basis, consanguinity on the maternal side in any capacity Bilikhodze N.P. and Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova is excluded...”

Queen Victoria was Anastasia Romanova's great-grandmother, that is, the comparison went through two generations. Why didn’t the geneticist take biomaterial from Anastasia’s mother’s sister, Elizaveta Fedorovna? It is also unclear who double-checked Ivanov’s conclusions, as well as what methodology he used. By the way, it is very likely that the conclusion could not have been different if we take as a basis the version according to which all those executed in the Ipatiev House, with the exception of Anastasia, were doubles of members of the royal family.

2 trillion dollars

This is what members of the foundation wrote to Vladimir Putin at one time. “Today foreign banks are ready at the request of A.N. Romanova to resolve issues with her personal funds and the funds and values ​​of the entire Romanov family. It is possible to receive about 2 trillion dollars. Anastasia Romanova is a legitimate key for returning funds through the US Federal Reserve. 12 of the world's largest banks formed the Federal Reserve System in 1913 with money belonging to the Russian Empire in the person of Tsar Nicholas II. Currently, their estimated commodity coverage is approximately $163 trillion.”

Why there is a problem with obtaining these funds was described in a letter sent to the State Duma Security Committee. “We believe that this situation has developed in connection with the possibility of receiving the specified financial resources by another applicant, namely Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain, mother (died in 2002), since she is a dynastic relative of A. Romanova. The English royal family repeatedly appealed to the USSR Government with a request to issue death certificates for the family of Nicholas II, but the response from the country's leadership was negative, since it knew about the availability of funds and the desire of the royal family to receive them. Things, for example, even got to the point where M.S. Gorbachev was given an ultimatum: “If you do not bury the family (which means confirming the fact of the death of the family), England will not support Russia.” But M.S. Gorbachev did not agree to this.”

Well, if all this is true, then the Russian side should collect all the documents and present them to the Western side in order to return the valuables. Probably, here it is necessary to involve the Western detective agencies “Kroll” and “Pinkerton Agency”, which have already carried out work to search for Russian valuables and, probably, are ready to present the materials they have on certain conditions. In particular, “Kroll” worked on the instructions of Yegor Gaidar in 1992, and the “Pinkerton Agency” - in the 20s of the last century on the instructions of People’s Commissar Leonid Krasin, apparently collecting a significant database on Russian values ​​abroad.