Diary of Tsarevna Anastasia Nikolaevna. Anastasia Romanova: the mystery of the Grand Duchess

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna (Romanova Anastasia Nikolaevna ) (June 5 (18), 1901, Peterhof - on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) - the fourth daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna.

Shot along with her family in Ipatiev’s house. The murder plan was developed by Sverdlov and he personally controlled the progress of the destruction of the Tsar’s family.

After her death, about 30 women declared themselves “the miraculously saved Grand Duchess,” but sooner or later they were all exposed as impostors. She was glorified along with her parents, sisters and brother in the Cathedral of the New Martyrs of Russia as a passion-bearer at the anniversary Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000. Earlier, in 1981, they were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Memory - July 4th according to the Julian calendar.

Born June 5 (18), 1901 in Peterhof. By the time of her appearance, the royal couple already had three daughters - Olga, Tatyana and Maria. The absence of an heir aggravated the political situation: according to the Act of Succession to the Throne, adopted by Paul I, a woman could not ascend the throne, therefore the younger brother of Nicholas II, Mikhail Alexandrovich, was considered the heir, which did not suit many, and first of all, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In an attempt to beg God 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 wrote in his diary:

At about 3 o'clock Alix began to feel 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 entry in the emperor's diary contradicts the statements of some researchers who believe that Nicholas, disappointed by the birth of his daughter, did not dare to visit his newborn and his wife for a long time.

Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the reigning Emperor, also celebrated the event:

What a disappointment! 4th girl! They named her Anastasia. Mom telegraphed me about the same thing and writes: “Alix gave birth to a daughter again!”

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 after the Emperor pardoned and reinstated the students of St. Petersburg University who took part in the recent unrest, since the name “Anastasia” itself means “returned to life,” the image of this saint usually contains chains torn in half.

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

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.

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.

Sundays were especially looked forward to - on this day the Grand Duchesses attended children's balls at their aunt Olga Alexandrovna's. The evening was especially interesting when Anastasia was allowed to dance with the young officers.

The girls enjoyed every minute, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna recalled. - My dear goddaughter Anastasia was especially happy, believe me, I can still hear her laughter ringing in the rooms. Dancing, music, charades - she plunged into them headlong.

Letter from Grand Duchess Anastasia to cousin Dick: “May 17, 1910. My dear Dick. I want to see you. How is the weather there? Are you all alone in London now? When will you be able to meet your sisters?”

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 his refusal, she gave these flowers to the Russian language teacher, Pyotr Vasilyevich Petrov.

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

In mid-June, the family went on trips on the imperial yacht "Standard", 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.

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.

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

As you know, Grigory Rasputin was presented to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna on November 1, 1905. The Tsarevich’s illness was kept secret, so the appearance at court of a “man” who almost immediately acquired significant influence there caused speculation and rumors. Under the influence of their mother, all five children became accustomed to completely trusting the “holy elder” and sharing their experiences and thoughts with him.

It seemed to me that all the children were very attached to him,” noted the Grand Duchess. “They had complete confidence in him.

The same mutual trust and affection is seen in the letters of “Elder Gregory” that he sent to the imperial family. Here is an excerpt from one of the letters, dated 1909:

Dear children! Thank you for the memory, for the sweet words, for the pure heart and for the love for God’s people. Love God's nature, all of His creation, especially the light. The Mother of God was always busy with flowers and handicrafts.

Anastasia wrote to Rasputin:

My beloved, precious, only friend.

How I want to meet you again. Today I saw you in a dream. I always ask Mom when you will visit us next time, and I am happy that I have the opportunity to send you this congratulation. Happy New Year to you and may it bring you health and happiness.

I always remember you, my dear friend, because you have always been kind to me. I haven’t seen you for a long time, but every evening I certainly remembered you.

I wish you all the best. Mom promises that when you come again, we will definitely meet at Anya’s. This thought fills me with joy.

Yours, Anastasia.

The governess of the imperial children, Sofya Ivanovna Tyutcheva, was shocked that Rasputin had unlimited access to the children's bedrooms and reported this to the tsar. The Tsar supported her demand, but Alexandra Feodorovna and the girls themselves were completely on the side of the “holy elder.”

“I’m so afraid that S.I. will say something bad about our friend,” Tatyana wrote to her mother on March 8, 1910. - I hope that our nanny will be kind to him. Grand Duchess Anastasia

At the insistence of the Empress, Tyutcheva was fired. In all likelihood, the “holy elder” did not allow himself any liberties, but rumors so dirty spread around St. Petersburg that the emperor’s brothers and sisters took up arms against Rasputin, and Ksenia Alexandrovna sent her brother a particularly harsh letter, accusing Rasputin of “Khlystyism,” protesting against that this “lying old man” has unrestricted access to children. Significant letters and cartoons were passed from hand to hand, which depicted the elder’s relationship with the empress, girls and Anna Vyrubova. In order to put out the scandal, to the great displeasure of the empress, Nicholas was forced to temporarily remove Rasputin from the palace, and he went on a pilgrimage to holy places. Despite the rumors, the imperial family's relationship with Rasputin continued until his assassination on December 17, 1916.

A. A. Mordvinov recalled that after the murder of Rasputin, all four Grand Duchesses “seemed quiet and noticeably depressed, they sat closely huddled together” on the sofa in one of the bedrooms, as if realizing that Russia had come into a movement that would soon become uncontrollable. An icon signed by the Emperor, Empress and all five children was placed on Rasputin’s chest. Together with the entire imperial family, on December 21, 1916, Anastasia attended the funeral service. It was decided to build a chapel over the grave of the “holy elder,” but due to subsequent events this plan was not realized.

World War I

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, following her mother and older sisters, Anastasia wept 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, the emperor’s youngest daughter became his honorary commander (colonel), about which Nicholas made a corresponding entry in his diary. From now on the regiment began to be officially called 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.

Grand Duchess Anastasia (1916)

Today I sat next to our soldier and taught him to read, he really likes it,” noted Anastasia Nikolaevna. - He began to learn to read and write here in the hospital. Two unfortunate people died, and just yesterday we were sitting next to them.

I remember how we visited the hospital a long time ago. I hope all our wounded survived in the end. Almost everyone was later taken away from Tsarskoye Selo. Do you remember Lukanov? He was so unhappy and so kind at the same time, and always played like a child with our bracelets. His business card remained in my album, but the album itself, unfortunately, remained in Tsarskoe. Now I’m in the bedroom, writing on the table, and on it there are photographs of our beloved hospital. You know, it was a wonderful time when we visited the hospital. We often think about this, and our evening conversations on the phone and everything else...

Under house arrest

Tatiana and Anastasia with the dog Ortino. Tsarskoye Selo Park (spring 1917)

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.

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.

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.

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; Dr. Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin - Russian language; Alexandra Fedorovna - God's Law.

Anastasia, Olga, Alexey, Maria and Tatyana after measles (June 1917)

The eldest, Olga, despite the fact that her education was completed, was often present at lessons and read a lot, improving on what she had already learned.

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.

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 the siding in the strictest secrecy.

Tobolsk

From left to right - Olga, Nikolai, Tatiana, Anastasia. Tobolsk (winter 1917)

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.

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 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.

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... The iconostasis was terribly well set up 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.

She wrote to her sister Maria on Easter week 1917.

"Bouquet". Watercolor drawing of the Grand Duchess

These days we have sun almost all the time, and it’s already starting to warm up, so nice! Therefore, we try to be outside more. - We don’t ride down the mountain anymore (although it’s still standing), since it was ruined and a ditch was dug across it so that we wouldn’t go, well, so be it; It seems that they have calmed down on this for now, since for a long time it seems to be an eyesore for many. Terribly stupid and weak, really. - Well, now we have found a new activity. We saw, chop and chop wood, it's useful and a lot of fun to work with. It's already coming out pretty good. And with this we help many more, and for us it’s entertainment. We are also cleaning the paths and entrance, we have turned into janitors. - I have not yet turned into an elephant, but this may yet happen in the near future, I don’t know why suddenly, there may be little movement, although I don’t know. - I apologize for the terrible handwriting, my hand doesn’t move well. This week we are all fasting and singing at home. We were finally in church. And you can also take communion there. - Well, how are you all doing and what are you doing? We don't have anything special to write about. Now we need to finish, because now we will go to our yard, work, etc. - Everyone hugs you tightly, and I too, and everyone else too. All the best, Auntie darling.

These are lines from another letter addressed to Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna.

Ekaterinburg

July 13, 1918 in Ipatiev’s house. The last photograph of Grand Duchess Anastasia was taken (copyright reserved and there is no access to the photo)

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 included taking care of her sick brother, Tatyana’s responsibility was to run the household, and Anastasia’s was to “entertain everyone.” However, in 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 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.

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.

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.

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

Basement of the Ipatiev House. The photograph was taken during the investigation into the murder of the Royal Family by investigator Sokolov

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.

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 Tsar’s 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. 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.

Character. Contemporaries about Anastasia

Anastasia in another mime scene

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Anastasia was small and dense, with reddish-brown hair, and large blue eyes, inherited from her father. The girl had a light and cheerful character, loved to play rounders, forfeits, and serso, and could tirelessly run around the palace for hours, playing hide and seek. She easily climbed trees, and often, out of pure mischief, refused to go down to the ground. She was inexhaustible in her inventions; for example, she loved to paint the cheeks and noses of her sisters, brother and young ladies-in-waiting with fragrant carmine and strawberry juice. With her light hand, it became fashionable to weave flowers and ribbons into her hair, which little Anastasia was very proud of. She was inseparable from her older sister Maria, adored her brother, and could entertain him for hours when another illness put Alexei to bed. Anna Vyrubova recalled that “Anastasia seemed to be made of mercury, and not of flesh and blood.” Once, when she was just a baby, three or four years old, at a reception in Kronstadt, she climbed under the table and began to pinch the legs of those present, pretending to be a dog - for which she received an immediate severe reprimand from her father.

She also had a clear talent as a comic actress and loved to parody and imitate those around her, and she did it very talentedly and funny. One day Alexey told her:

Anastasia, you need to perform in the theater, it will be very funny, believe me!

To which I received an unexpected answer that the Grand Duchess cannot perform in the theater, she has other responsibilities. Sometimes, however, her jokes became harmless. So she tirelessly teased her sisters, once playing in the snow with Tatyana, she hit her in the face, so hard that the eldest could not stay on her feet; however, the culprit herself, scared to death, cried for a long time in her mother’s arms. Grand Duchess Nina Georgievna later recalled that little Anastasia did not want to forgive her high stature, and during games she tried to outwit, trip her leg, and even scratch her rival.

With Tatiana and Maria (1908)

She constantly reached the dangerous edge with her jokes, recalled Gleb Botkin, the son of a physician who was killed along with the royal family. - She constantly risked being punished.

Little Anastasia was also not particularly neat and loving of order. Hallie Reeves, the wife of an American diplomat accredited at the court of the last emperor, recalled how little Anastasia, while in the theater, ate chocolate, not bothering to take off her long white gloves, and desperately smeared herself face and hands. Her pockets were constantly filled with chocolates and Creme Brulee sweets, which she generously shared with others.

She also loved animals. At first, she lived with a Spitz named Shvybzik, and many funny and touching incidents were also associated with him. So, the Grand Duchess refused to go to bed until the dog joined her, and once, having lost her pet, she called him with a loud bark - and succeeded, Shvybzik was found under the sofa. In 1915, when the Pomeranian died of an infection, she was inconsolable for several weeks. Together with his sisters and brother, they buried the dog in Peterhof, on Children's Island. Then she had a dog named Jimmy.

She loved to draw, and did it quite well, enjoyed playing the guitar or balalaika with her brother, knitted, sewed, watched movies, was fond of photography, which was fashionable at that time, and had her own photo album, loved to use the phone, read or just lie in bed . During the war, she began to smoke, with her older sisters keeping her company.

The Grand Duchess was not in good health. Since childhood, she suffered from pain in her feet - a consequence of congenital curvature of the big toes, the so-called lats. hallux valgus- a syndrome by which she would later begin to be identified with one of the impostors, Anna Anderson. She had a weak back, despite the fact that she did her best to avoid the massage required to strengthen her muscles, hiding from the visiting masseuse in the cupboard or under the bed. Even with small cuts, the bleeding did not stop for an abnormally long time, from which the doctors concluded that, like her mother, Anastasia was a carrier of hemophilia.

As General M.K. Diterichs, who participated in the investigation into the murder of the royal family, testified:

Drawing of Grand Duchess Anastasia

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, despite her seventeen years, was still a perfect child. She made this impression mainly with her appearance and her cheerful character. She was short, very dense, “a little girl,” as her sisters teased her. Her distinctive feature was to notice people's weaknesses and skillfully imitate them. He was a natural, gifted comedian. She always used to make everyone laugh, maintaining an artificially serious appearance.

She read the plays of Schiller and Goethe, loved Malo and Moliere, Dickens and Charlotte Bronte. She played the piano well and willingly performed four-handed pieces by Chopin, Grieg, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky with her mother.

French teacher Gilliard recalled her this way:

She was a spoiled person - a flaw from which she corrected over the years. Very lazy, as is sometimes the case with very bright 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 them began, remembering the nickname given to her mother at the English court, to call her “Sunbeam.”

Discovery of remains

Cross over Ganina Pit

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.

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, in Porosenkovo Log near Yekaterinburg, at a depth of just over one meter, remains were found that were identified as the bodies of the royal family and servants. The body, which probably belonged to Anastasia, was marked with number 6. 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 The Empress, commenting on the figure of her sixteen-year-old daughter, wrote in a letter to Anna Vyrubova 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 of the remains of a young girl and boy in Porosenkovo Log, 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. However, a group of well-known geneticists (who took part in all these DNA tests) led by Dr. Michael D. Coble write in the resulting article in 2009 (section "Discussion", translated from English):

It should be noted that the widely publicized debate about whether the remains of Maria or Anastasia were found in the second burial cannot be resolved based on the results of the DNA analysis. In the absence of specification of DNA data for each of the sisters, we can only definitively identify Alexei - only the son of Nikolai and Alexandra.

And also, in the “Background Information” section of this article (in the commentary to Fig. S1):

It was not possible to identify (the remains) exactly Maria or exactly Anastasia using DNA analysis. False Anastasia

The most famous of the false Anastasias is Anna Anderson

Rumors that one of the Tsar's daughters managed to escape - either by running away from Ipatiev's house, or even before the revolution, by being replaced by one of the servants - began to circulate among Russian emigrants almost immediately after the execution of the Tsar's family. Attempts by a number of people to use the belief in the possible salvation of the younger princess Anastasia for selfish purposes led to the appearance of over thirty false Anastasias. One of the most famous impostors was Anna Anderson, who claimed that a soldier named Tchaikovsky managed to pull her wounded from the basement of Ipatiev’s house after he saw that she was still alive. 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.

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 traumatized 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, the Viennese tailor Heinrich Kleibenzetl (German. Heinrich Kleibenzetl) testified that he allegedly saw the wounded Anastasia shortly after the murder in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918. The girl was looked after by his landlady, Anna Baudin. Anna Baoudin), in the building directly opposite the Ipatiev 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.

The last of the false Anastasias, Natalya Bilikhodze, died in 2000.

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

Rumors of a “miraculous rescue,” which seemed to have 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 point above i The bodies of Alexei and Maria were found in the same tract in 2007, and anthropological and genetic examinations were carried out, which finally confirmed that there could not have been any saved among the royal family.

Canonization

Icon of the Holy Martyr Anastasia New Martyr Anastasia Nikolaevna

The canonization of the family of the last tsar in the rank of new martyrs was first undertaken by the foreign Orthodox Church (1981). Preparations for canonization in Russia began in the same 1991, when excavations in the Ganina Pit were resumed. With the blessing of Archbishop Melchizedek, a Worship Cross was installed in the tract on July 7. On July 17, 1992, the first bishop's religious procession took place to the burial site of the remains of the royal family.

A new cross with an icon case was installed here by the Brotherhood in the name of the Holy Royal Martyrs.

On the night of July 17, 1995, the first Divine Liturgy, now held every year, was celebrated at the cross.

In 2000, the decision on canonization was made by the Russian Orthodox Church. In the same year, with the blessing of the patriarch, the construction of the Ganina Yama monastery began.

We hope that the construction of a monastery on the site of the destruction of the bodies of the Royal Passion-Bearers in the Ganina Pit, where church prayer will also soon be offered, will erase the consequences of the terrible crimes committed on the long-suffering Ural soil.

On October 1, 2000, His Eminence Vincent, Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye, laid the first stone for the foundation of the future church in honor of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers. The monastery is built mainly of wood, it contains seven main churches in particular - the main temple in honor of the holy royal passion-bearers, the temple of St. Seraphim of Sarov and others.

About the Holy Reign of the Great Martyr, Queen Alexandra, Princess Olgo, Tatiano, Maria, Anastasia, together with Tsarevich Alexy and the Venerable Martyrs Elizabeth and Varvara! Receive from our repentant hearts this warm prayer brought to you, and ask us from the All-Merciful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for forgiveness for the permission of the Regicide, against us and our father who fell, even to the seventh generation. Just as in your earthly life you have done innumerable mercies to your people, so now have mercy on us, sinners, and save us from fierce sorrows, from mental and physical ailments, from the elements that arise against us by God’s permission, from the battles of the enemy and internecine and brotherly bloodshed. Strengthen our faith and hope and ask the Lord for patience and everything useful in this life and useful for spiritual salvation. Comfort us, the grieving, and lead us to salvation. Amen.

Poem by Nikolai Gumilyov

The Russian poet N. S. Gumilyov, being an ensign in the Russian army during the First World War and being in the Tsarskoye Selo hospital in 1916, dedicated the following poem to Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna on her birthday:

Today is Anastasia's day,And we want that through usLove and affection from all RussiaI thanked you.

What a joy it is for us to congratulateYou, the best image of our dreams,And put a modest signatureBelow are the welcome verses.

Forgetting that the day beforeWe were in fierce battlesWe are the fifth of June holidayLet's celebrate in our hearts.

And we take off to a new battleHearts full of delightRemembering our meetingsIn the middle of the Tsarskoye Selo Palace. Films about Anastasia

In the USA, feature films about Anastasia “Clothes Make the Woman” (1928), “Anastasia” (1956) and “Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna” (1986) were shot, as well as the cartoons “Anastasia” (1997), “Anastasia’s Secret”, based on based on Anna Anderson's version. Also appears as a cameo character in the anime Blood+.

Anastasia is mentioned in The Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil".
Anastasia is also mentioned in the film Titanic (1997)
Anastasia is mentioned in Zhanna Bichevskaya’s song “Song of the Holy Royal Martyrs”
Anastasia is mentioned in Yuri Morozov’s song “In Yekaterinburg-City”
Dmitry Bogachev said that a musical about Anastasia is planned to be staged in Moscow.
Anastasia is one of the playable characters in the role-playing game Shadow Hearts 2: Covenant for Playstation 2.
Anastasia is mentioned in the series "Nikita" (2010)

In her honor, in 1902, the village of Anastasievka, Black Sea province, was named. History of the formation of villages in the Tuapse region. Dictionary of villages

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the fourth daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, was born on June 5 (18), 1901 in Peterhof.

Tsar Nicholas wrote in his diary: “At 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 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 pod” - 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.

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 Empress Catherine I. When the girls were small, buckets of water were carried to the bathroom by servants; when they grew up, this was their responsibility. There were two baths - the first large one, left over from the reign of Emperor 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.

Sundays were especially looked forward to - on this day the Grand Duchesses attended church, and then children's balls at their aunt, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. “The girls enjoyed every minute,” recalled Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. - My dear goddaughter Anastasia was especially happy, believe me, I can still hear her laughter ringing in the rooms. Dancing, music, charades - she plunged into them headlong."

Basically, the family lived in the Alexander Palace, occupying only part of several dozen rooms. Sometimes they moved to the Winter Palace.

We also rested in 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.

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

Despite the widespread campaign of slander against Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, Anastasia, like all the royal children, completely trusted the elder and shared her experiences and thoughts with him.

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna recalled how one day, accompanied by the Tsar, she went into the children's bedrooms, where Rasputin blessed the Grand Duchesses, dressed in white nightgowns, for the coming sleep. “It seemed to me that all the children were very attached to him,” noted the Grand Duchess. “They had complete confidence in him.”

The same mutual trust and affection is seen in the letters of Elder Gregory, which he sent to the imperial family. Here is an excerpt from one of the letters dated 1019: “Dear children! Thank you for the memory, for the sweet words, for the pure heart and for the love for God’s people. Love God's nature, all of His creation, especially the light. The Mother of God was always busy with flowers and needlework.”

Anastasia wrote to Rasputin: “My beloved, precious, only friend. How I want to meet you again. Today I saw you in a dream. I always ask Mom? when you visit us next time, and I am happy that I have the opportunity to send you this congratulation. Happy New Year to you and may it bring you health and happiness. I always remember you, my dear friend, because you have always been kind to me. I haven’t seen you for a long time, but every evening I certainly remembered you. I wish you all the best. Mom promises that when you come again, we will definitely meet at Anya’s. This thought fills me with joy. Your Anastasia"

The enemies of the Russian Autocracy organized such dirty rumors in St. Petersburg that the brothers and sisters of the emperor took up arms against Rasputin, and Ksenia Alexandrovna sent her brother a particularly harsh letter, accusing Rasputin of “Khlystyism”, protesting that this “lying old man” has unrestricted access to children . Significant letters and cartoons were passed from hand to hand, which depicted the elder’s relationship with the empress, girls and Anna Vyrubova. But the treachery of attackers and envious people did not affect the relationship of the imperial family towards Rasputin and continued until his brutal murder on December 17, 1916.

A. A. Mordvinov recalled that after the murder of Rasputin, all four Grand Duchesses “seemed quiet and noticeably depressed, they sat closely huddled together” on the sofa in one of the bedrooms, as if realizing that Russia had come into a movement that would soon become uncontrollable. An icon signed by the Emperor, Empress and all five children was placed on Rasputin’s chest. Together with the entire imperial family, on December 21, 1916, Anastasia attended the funeral service. It was decided to build a chapel over the elder’s grave, but due to subsequent events this plan was not realized.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, following her mother and older sisters, Anastasia sobbed bitterly on the day the 1914 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 1911, after her birth, the name of St. Anastasia the Pattern Maker received the Caspian 148th Infantry Regiment 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 M.F. Verzhbitsky. At 14, the emperor’s youngest daughter became his honorary commander (colonel), about which Nicholas 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, wrote letters home under their dictation, and in the evenings entertained them with telephone conversations, sewed linen, prepared bandages and lint.

“Today I sat next to our soldier and taught him to read, he really likes it,” noted Anastasia Nikolaevna. - He began to learn to read and write here in the hospital. Two unfortunate people died, and just yesterday we were sitting next to them.”

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: “I remember how we visited the hospital a long time ago. I hope all our wounded survived in the end. Almost everyone was later taken away from Tsarskoye Selo. Do you remember Lukanov? He was so unhappy and so kind at the same time, and always played like a child with our bracelets. His business card remained in my album, but the album itself, unfortunately, remained in Tsarskoe. Now I’m in the bedroom, writing on the table, and on it there are photographs of our beloved hospital. You know, it was a wonderful time when we visited the hospital. We often think about this, and our evening conversations on the phone and everything else..."

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Anastasia was small and dense, with reddish-brown hair, and large blue eyes, inherited from her father. The girl had a light and cheerful character, loved to play lapta, forfeits, and serso, and could tirelessly run around the palace for hours, playing hide and seek. She easily climbed trees, and often, out of pure mischief, refused to go down to the ground. She was inexhaustible in her inventions; for example, she loved to paint the cheeks and noses of her sisters, brother and young ladies-in-waiting with fragrant carmine and strawberry juice. With her light hand, it became fashionable to weave flowers and ribbons into her hair, which little Anastasia was very proud of. She was inseparable from her older sister Maria, adored her brother, and could entertain him for hours when another illness put Alexei to bed. Anna Vyrubova recalled that “Anastasia seemed to be made of mercury, and not of flesh and blood.” Once, when she was just a baby, three or four years old, at a reception in Kronstadt, she climbed under the table and began to pinch the legs of those present, pretending to be a dog - for which she received an immediate severe reprimand from her father.

She also had a clear talent as a comic actress and loved to parody and imitate those around her, and she did it very talentedly and funny. One day Alexey told her: “Anastasia, you need to perform in the theater, it will be very funny, believe me!”

“She constantly reached the dangerous edge with her jokes,” recalled Gleb Botkin, the son of a physician who was killed along with the royal family. “She was constantly at risk of being punished.”

Drawing of Grand Duchess Anastasia

The Grand Duchess was not in good health. Since childhood, she suffered from pain in her feet - a consequence of congenital curvature of her big toes. She had a weak back, despite the fact that she did her best to avoid the massage required to strengthen her muscles, hiding from the visiting masseuse in the cupboard or under the bed. Even with small cuts, the bleeding did not stop for an abnormally long time, from which the doctors concluded that, like her mother, Anastasia was a carrier of hemophilia.

As General M.K. testified. Dieterichs, who participated in the investigation of the murder of the royal family, “Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, despite her seventeen years, was still a perfect child. She made this impression mainly with her appearance and her cheerful character. She was short, very dense, “a little girl,” as her sisters teased her. Her distinctive feature was to notice people's weaknesses and skillfully imitate them. He was a natural, gifted comedian. She always used to make everyone laugh, maintaining an artificially serious look.”

French teacher Pierre Gilliard recalled her this way: “She was a spoiled person - a flaw from which she corrected herself over the years. Very lazy, as is sometimes the case with very bright 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 them began, remembering the nickname given to her mother at the English court, to call her “Sunbeam”

Alexandra Feodorovna intended to “hide the truth from them for as long as possible.” At 9 o'clock on March 2, they learned about the forced abdication of the Tsar.

On Wednesday, March 8, Count Pavel Benkndorf 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.

On March 9, the children were informed about their father’s removal from power. A few days later Tsar Nicholas 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 mob. Provocateurs and bloodthirsty traitors to Russia often watched through the bars of the fence as a family walked in the park and sometimes greeted it with whistling and swearing, so the walks had to be shortened.

Despite everything, the children's education continued. The entire process was led by Pierre Gilliard, a French teacher; Nikolai himself taught the children geography and history; Baroness Bexhoeveden took over English and music lessons; Mademoiselle Schneider taught arithmetic; Countess Gendrikova - drawing; Dr. Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin - Russian language; Alexandra Fedorovna - God's Law.

The eldest, Olga, despite the fact that her education was completed, was often present at lessons and read a lot, improving on what she had already learned.

At this time, there was still hope for the family of the former king to go abroad; but the English King George V, the Tsar’s cousin, decided not to risk it and chose to sacrifice the royal family, thereby causing shock in his own cabinet.

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. Alexey wrote in his diary that on that day he managed to push his older sister Olga into the water. On August 12, 1917, a train flying the flag of the Japanese Red Cross mission departed from a siding in the strictest secrecy.

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.

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 pass with age...

Anastasia wrote to Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna: “These days we have the sun almost all the time, and it’s already starting to warm up, it’s so nice! Therefore, we try to be outside more. - We don’t ride down the mountain anymore (although it’s still standing), since it was ruined and a ditch was dug across it so that we wouldn’t go, well, so be it; It seems that they have calmed down on this for now, since for a long time it seems to be an eyesore for many. Terribly stupid and weak, really. - Well, now we have found a new activity. We saw, chop and chop wood, it's useful and a lot of fun to work with. It's already coming out pretty good. And with this we help many more, and for us it’s entertainment. We are also cleaning the paths and entrance, we have turned into janitors. - I have not yet turned into an elephant, but this may yet happen in the near future, I don’t know why suddenly, there may be little movement, although I don’t know. - I apologize for the terrible handwriting, my hand doesn’t move well. This week we are all fasting and singing at home. We were finally in church. And you can also take communion there. - Well, how are you all doing and what are you doing? We don't have anything special to write about. Now we need to finish, because now we will go to our yard, work, etc. - Everyone hugs you tightly, and I too, and everyone else too. All the best, Aunt Darling"

In the empty house, life continued slowly and sadly. We 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.

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 manage their medications” - 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.

On May 22, the ship arrived in Tyumen, and then the four children were taken to Yekaterinburg on a special train. At the same time, Anastasia maintained an excellent mood; in the letter telling about the trip, one can hear notes of humor: “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. Your Anastasia"

On May 23 at 9 a.m. the train arrived in Yekaterinburg. Here, the French teacher Gilliard, 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.

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.Ya. 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 “testimony” 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.

After the brutal murder, the last drawing made by Anastasia’s hand was found in the room of the grand duchesses - a swing between two birch trees.

The place where the royal bodies were destroyed was the Four Brothers tract, 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.

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

The canonization of the family of the last tsar in the rank of new martyrs was first undertaken by the foreign Orthodox Church in 1981. Preparations for canonization in Russia began in 1991. With the blessing of Archbishop Melchizedek, a Worship Cross was installed in the tract on July 7. On July 17, 1992, the first bishop's religious procession took place to the burial site of the remains of the royal family.

In 2000, the decision to canonize the Royal Family was made by the Russian Orthodox Church. In the same year, with the blessing of the patriarch, the construction of the Ganina Yama monastery began.

On October 21, 2000, His Eminence Vincent, Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye, laid the first stone for the foundation of the future church in honor of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers. The monastery is built mainly from wood and contains seven main churches.

Russian poet N.S. Gumilyov, being an ensign in the Russian army during the First World War and being in the Tsarskoye Selo infirmary in 1916, dedicated the following poem to Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna on her birthday:

Today is Anastasia's day, And we want that through us Love and affection from all Russia I thanked you. What a joy it is for us to congratulate You, the best image of our dreams, And put a modest signature Below are the welcome verses. Forgetting that the day before We were in fierce battles We are the fifth of June holiday Let's celebrate in our hearts. And we take off to a new battle Hearts full of delight Remembering our meetings In the middle of the Tsarskoye Selo Palace.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, daughter of the last Russian emperor, would have turned 105 years old on June 18, 2006. Or is it still turned? This question haunts historians, researchers, and... swindlers.

The life of the youngest daughter of Nicholas II ended at 17 years old. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, she and her relatives were shot in Yekaterinburg. From the memoirs of contemporaries it is known that Anastasia was well educated, as befits the daughter of an emperor, she knew how to dance, knew foreign languages, participated in home performances... She had a funny nickname in her family: “Shvibzik” for her playfulness. In addition, from an early age she took care of her brother, Tsarevich Alexei, who was sick with hemophilia.

In Russian history, there have been cases of “miraculous salvation” of murdered heirs before: just remember the numerous False Dmitrys who appeared after the death of the young son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. In the case of the royal family, there are serious reasons to believe that one of the heirs survived: members of the Yekaterinburg District Court Nametkin and Sergeev, who investigated the case of the death of the imperial family, came to the conclusion that the royal family was at some point replaced by a family of doubles . It is known that Nicholas II had seven such twin families. The version of the doubles was soon rejected; a little later, researchers returned to it again - after the memoirs of those who participated in the massacre in the Ipatiev House in July 1918 were published.

In the early 90s, the burial of the royal family near Yekaterinburg was discovered, but the remains of Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei were not found. However, another skeleton, “number 6,” was later found and buried as belonging to the Grand Duchess. Only one small detail casts doubt on its authenticity - Anastasia had a height of 158 cm, and the buried skeleton was 171 cm... Moreover, two judicial determinations in Germany, based on DNA examinations of the Yekaterinburg remains, showed that they completely correspond to the Filatov family - doubles of the family of Nicholas II...

In addition, there is little factual material left about the Grand Duchess; perhaps this also provoked the “heiresses.”

Two years after the execution of the royal family, the first contender appeared. On one of the streets of Berlin in 1920, a young woman Anna Anderson was found unconscious, who, when she came to her senses, called herself Anastasia Romanova. According to her version, the miraculous rescue looked like this: along with all the murdered family members, she was taken to the burial place, but on the way the half-dead Anastasia was hidden by some soldier. She reached Romania with him, they got married there, but what happened next was a failure...

The strangest thing in this story is that Anastasia was recognized in it by some foreign relatives, as well as Tatyana Botkina-Melnik, the widow of Dr. Botkin, who died in Yekaterinburg. For 50 years, talk and court cases continued, but Anna Anderson was never recognized as the “real” Anastasia Romanova.

Another story leads to the Bulgarian village of Grabarevo. “A young woman with an aristocratic bearing” appeared there in the early 20s and introduced herself as Eleanor Albertovna Kruger. A Russian doctor was with her, and a year later a tall, sickly-looking young man appeared in their house, who was registered in the community under the name Georgy Zhudin.

Rumors that Eleanor and George were brother and sister and belonged to the Russian royal family circulated in the community. However, they did not make any statements or claims about anything. George died in 1930, and Eleanor died in 1954. However, Bulgarian researcher Blagoy Emmanuilov claims that he has found evidence that Eleanor is the missing daughter of Nicholas II, and George is Tsarevich Alexei, citing some evidence:

“A lot of information reliably known about Anastasia’s life coincides with Nora from Gabarevo’s stories about herself.” - researcher Blagoy Emmanuilov told Radio Bulgaria.

“Towards the end of her life, she herself recalled that the servants bathed her in a golden trough, combed her hair and dressed her. She talked about her own royal room, and about her children’s drawings drawn in it. There is another interesting piece of evidence. At the beginning of the 50- In the 1980s, in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Balchik, a Russian White Guard, describing in detail the life of the executed imperial family, mentioned Nora and Georges from Gabarevo... In front of witnesses, he said that Nicholas II ordered him to personally take Anastasia and Alexei out of the palace and hide them in the provinces. After long wanderings, they reached Odessa and boarded the ship, where, in the general turmoil, Anastasia was overtaken by bullets from red cavalrymen. All three went ashore at the Turkish pier of Tegerdag. Further, the White Guard claimed that by the will of fate, the royal children ended up in a village near the city of Kazanlak.

In addition, comparing photographs of 17-year-old Anastasia and 35-year-old Eleanor Kruger from Gabarevo, experts have established significant similarities between them. The years of their birth also coincide. Contemporaries of George claim that he was sick with tuberculosis and talk about him as a tall, weak and pale young man. Russian authors also describe the hemophiliac Prince Alexei in a similar way. According to doctors, the external manifestations of both diseases are the same."

The website Inosmi.ru cites a report from Radio Bulgaria, which notes that in 1995 the remains of Eleonora and George were exhumed from their graves in an old rural cemetery, in the presence of a forensic doctor and an anthropologist. In the coffin of George they found an amulet - an icon with the face of Christ - one of those with which only representatives of the highest strata of the Russian aristocracy were buried.

It would seem that the appearance of the miraculously saved Anastasia should have ended after so many years, but no - in 2002 another contender was presented. At that time she was almost 101 years old. Oddly enough, it was her age that made many researchers believe in this story: those who appeared earlier could count, for example, on power, fame, money. But is there any point in chasing wealth at 101?

Natalia Petrovna Bilikhodze, who claimed to be considered Grand Duchess Anastasia, of course, counted on the monetary inheritance of the royal family, but only in order to return it to Russia. According to representatives of the Interregional Public Charitable Christian Foundation of Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova, they had data from “22 examinations carried out by commission and judicial procedure in three states - Georgia, Russia and Latvia, the results of which were not refuted by any of the structures.” According to these data, Georgian citizen Natalya Petrovna Bilikhodze and Princess Anastasia have “a number of matching features that can only occur in one out of 700 billion cases,” stated members of the Foundation. A book by N.P. was published. Bilikhodze: “I am Anastasia Romanova,” containing memories of life and relationships in the royal family.

It would seem that the solution is close: they even said that Natalia Petrovna was going to come to Moscow and speak in the State Duma, despite her age, but later it turned out that “Anastasia” died two years before she was declared the heir.

In total, since the murder of the royal family in Yekaterinburg, about 30 pseudo-Anastasius have appeared in the world, writes NewsRu.Com. Some of them did not even speak Russian, explaining that the stress they experienced in the Ipatiev House made them forget their native speech. A special service was created at the Bank of Geneva to “identify” them, an exam which none of the former candidates could pass.

21 October 2009, 18:54

Ladies and Gentlemen, Ladies and Gentlemen, how much can you read about silicones, Baysarovs, Lopezes, etc.???? It's time to remember the mysterious story of the Grand Russian Princess. Review Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna (Romanova Anastasia Nikolaevna) (June 5 (18), 1901, Peterhof - on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) - the fourth daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna. Shot along with her family in Ipatiev’s house. After her death, about 30 women declared themselves “the miraculously saved Grand Duchess,” but sooner or later they were all exposed as impostors. She was glorified along with her parents, sisters and brother in the Cathedral of the New Martyrs of Russia as a passion-bearer at the anniversary Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000. Earlier, in 1981, they were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Memory - July 4th according to the Julian calendar. In her honor, in 1902, the village of Anastasievka, Black Sea province, was named. Birth and disappointment of the royal family Born June 5 (18), 1901 in Peterhof. By the time of her appearance, the royal couple already had three daughters - Olga, Tatyana and Maria. The absence of an heir aggravated the political situation: according to the Act of Succession to the Throne, adopted by Paul I, a woman could not ascend the throne, therefore the younger brother of Nicholas II, Mikhail Alexandrovich, was considered the heir, which did not suit many, and first of all, 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 wrote in his diary: At about 3 o'clock Alix began to feel 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 entry in the emperor's diary contradicts the statements of some researchers who believe that Nicholas, disappointed by the birth of his daughter, did not dare to visit his newborn and his wife for a long time. Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the reigning emperor, also celebrated this event: What a disappointment! 4th girl! They named her Anastasia. Mom telegraphed me about the same thing and writes: “Alix gave birth to a daughter again!” 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 reinstated the students of St. Petersburg University who took part in the recent unrest, since the name “Anastasia” itself means “returned to life,” the image of this saint usually contains chains torn in half. Life in the Palace 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 pod” - for her small height (157 cm .) and a round figure and a “shvybzik” - for his mobility and inexhaustibility in inventing pranks and pranks. 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. 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. Sundays were especially looked forward to - on this day the Grand Duchesses attended children's balls at their aunt Olga Alexandrovna's. The evening was especially interesting when Anastasia was allowed to dance with the young officers. Like other children of the emperor, Anastasia was educated at home. Education began at the age of eight, the program included French and English, history, geography, the law of God, natural sciences, drawing, grammar, as well as dancing and lessons in good manners. Anastasia was not known for her diligence in her studies; she hated grammar, wrote with horrific errors, and with childish spontaneity called arithmetic “sinishness.” The royal family and Grigory Rasputin. With Princess Tatiana
War Period According to the memoirs of contemporaries, following her mother and older sisters, Anastasia wept bitterly on the day war was declared. 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 in the evenings entertained them with telephone conversations, 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. With Princess Maria Execution of the royal family 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. 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 Tsar’s 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 the dog Ortipo here. 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. The basement of the Ipatiev House, where the royal family was shot The last photo of Anastasia 3 days before the bloody massacre Drawings of the princess Stories with the rescue of the crown prince and the Grand Duchess or false Anastasia Anna Anderson Rumors that one of the Tsar's daughters managed to escape - either by running away from Ipatiev's house, or even before the revolution, by being replaced by one of the servants - began to circulate among Russian emigrants almost immediately after the execution of the Tsar's family. Attempts by a number of people to use the belief in the possible salvation of the younger princess Anastasia for selfish purposes led to the appearance of over thirty false Anastasias. One of the most famous impostors was Anna Anderson, who claimed that a soldier named Tchaikovsky managed to pull her wounded from the basement of Ipatiev’s house after he saw that she was still alive. 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 at that time was the British Consul General in Yekaterinburg, rejected such fabrications. Despite the fact that Anderson defended her “royal” origin until the end of her life, she wrote the book “I, Anastasia” and fought litigation 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. Eugenia Smith Another false Anastasia was Evgenia Smith (Evgenia Smetisko), an artist who published “memoirs” in the USA about her life and miraculous salvation. She managed to attract significant attention to her person and seriously improve her financial situation, capitalizing on the public’s interest.” Natalia Bilikhodze The last of the false Anastasias, Natalya Bilikhodze, died in 2000. 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 The story of Anna Anderson was made into an animated film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. The Grand Duchess was canonized in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and in 2000 in Russia.

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova is the daughter of Nicholas II, who, along with the rest of the family, was shot in July 1918 in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg. In the early 20s of the 20th century, numerous impostors began to appear in Europe and the United States, declaring themselves to be the surviving Grand Duchess. The most famous of them, Anna Anderson, was even recognized as the youngest daughter by some surviving members of the imperial house. Litigation lasted for several decades, but did not resolve the issue of its origin.

However, the discovery in the 90s of the remains of the executed royal family put an end to these proceedings. There was no escape, and Anastasia Romanova was still killed that night in 1918. This article will be devoted to the short, tragic and suddenly cut short life of the Grand Duchess.

Birth of a princess

Public attention was riveted to the next, already fourth, pregnancy of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The fact is that according to the law, only a man could inherit the throne, and the wife of Nicholas II gave birth to three daughters in a row. Therefore, both the king and the queen counted on the appearance of their long-awaited son. Contemporaries recall that Alexandra Feodorovna at this time was increasingly immersed in mysticism, inviting people to the court who could help her give birth to an heir. However, on June 5, 1901, Anastasia Romanova was born. The daughter was born strong and healthy. She received her name in honor of the Montenegrin princess, who was a close friend of the queen. Other contemporaries claimed that the girl was named Anastasia in honor of the pardon of students who participated in the unrest.

And although the relatives were disappointed by the birth of another daughter, Nikolai himself was glad that she was born strong and healthy.

Childhood

Parents did not spoil their daughters with luxury, instilling in them modesty and piety from early childhood. Anastasia Romanova was especially friendly with her older sister Maria, whose age difference was only 2 years. They shared a room and toys together, and the younger princess often wore the clothes of the elders. The room in which they lived was also not luxurious. The walls were painted gray and decorated with icons and family photographs. Butterflies were painted on the ceiling. The princesses slept in camp folding beds.

The daily routine in childhood was almost the same for all sisters. They got up early in the morning, took a cold bath, and had breakfast. They spent their evenings doing embroidery or playing charades. Often at this time the emperor read aloud to them. Judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, Princess Anastasia Romanova especially loved the Sunday children's balls at her aunt Olga Alexandrovna. The girl loved to dance with young officers.

From early childhood, Anastasia Nikolaevna was distinguished by poor health. She often suffered from pain in her feet because her big toes were too crooked. The princess also had a rather weak back, but she flatly refused a strengthening massage. In addition, doctors believed that the girl had inherited the hemophilia gene from her mother and was its carrier, since even after small cuts her bleeding did not stop for a long time.

Character of the Grand Duchess

From early childhood, Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova was significantly different in character from her older sisters. She was overly active and mobile, loved to play, and was constantly playing pranks. Because of her violent temper, her parents and sisters often called her “little egg” or “shvybzik”. The latter nickname appeared due to her short stature and tendency to be overweight.

Contemporaries recall that the girl had a cheerful character and got along with other people very easily. She had a high and deep voice, she loved to laugh loudly, and smiled often. She was her closest friend to Maria, but was close to her brother Alexei. She could often entertain him for hours when he was lying in bed after illness. Anastasia was a creative person, she was constantly inventing something. At her instigation, it became fashionable at court to braid ribbons and flowers into hair.

Anastasia Romanova, according to contemporaries, also had the talent of a comic actress, because she really loved to parody her loved ones. However, sometimes she could be too harsh, and her jokes could be offensive. Her pranks were not always harmless either. The girl was also not very neat, but she loved animals and was good at drawing and playing the guitar.

Training and education

Due to her short life, the biography of Anastasia Romanova was not full of bright events. Like the other daughters of Nicholas II, the princess began home schooling at the age of eight. Specially hired teachers taught her French, English and German. But she was never able to speak the last language. The princess was taught world and Russian history, geography, religious dogmas, and natural sciences. The program included grammar and arithmetic - the girl did not particularly like these subjects. She was not known for her perseverance, did not learn the material well, and wrote with errors. Her teachers remembered that the girl was cunning, sometimes she tried to bribe them with small gifts in order to get a higher grade.

Anastasia Romanova was much better at creative disciplines. She always enjoyed attending art, music and dance classes. The Grand Duchess was fond of knitting and sewing. As she grew up, she took up photography seriously. She even had her own album in which she kept her works. Contemporaries recalled that Anastasia Nikolaevna also loved to read a lot and could talk on the phone for hours.

World War I

In 1914, Princess Anastasia Romanova turned 13 years old. Together with her sisters, the girl cried for a long time when she learned about the declaration of war. A year later, according to tradition, Anastasia received patronage over the infantry regiment, which now bore her name.

After the declaration of war, the Empress organized a military hospital within the walls of the Alexander Palace. There, together with the princesses Olga and Tatiana, she regularly worked as sisters of mercy, caring for the wounded. Anastasia and Maria were still too young to follow their example. Therefore, they were appointed patronesses of the hospital. The princesses donated their own funds to buy medicine, prepared dressings, knitted and sewed things for the wounded, and wrote letters to their families and loved ones. Often the younger sisters simply entertained the soldiers. In her diaries, Anastasia Nikolaevna noted that she taught the military to read and write. Together with Maria, they often gave concerts in the hospital. The sisters carried out their duties with pleasure, diverting from them only for the sake of lessons.

Until the end of her life, Anastasia Nikolaevna fondly remembered her work at the hospital. In letters to her loved ones from exile, she often mentioned wounded soldiers, hoping that they would subsequently recover. On her table were photographs taken in the hospital.

February Revolution

In February 1917, all the princesses became seriously ill with measles. At the same time, Anastasia Romanova was the last to fall ill. The daughter of Nicholas II did not know that there were riots in Petrograd. The Empress planned to hide news about the flaring revolution from her children until the last moment. When armed soldiers surrounded the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, the princesses and the crown prince were told that military exercises were being held nearby.

Only on March 9, 1917, the children learned about their father's abdication and house arrest. Anastasia Nikolaevna had not yet fully recovered from the illness and suffered from otitis media, so she completely lost her hearing for a while. Therefore, her sister Maria described in detail what happened on paper especially for her.

House arrest in Tsarskoe Selo

Judging by the memoirs of a contemporary, house arrest did not greatly change the measured life of members of the royal family, including Anastasia Romanova. The daughter of Nicholas II continued to devote all her free time to studying. Her father taught her and her younger brother geography and history, her mother taught her religious dogmas. The remaining disciplines were taken over by the retinue loyal to the king. They taught French and English, arithmetic, and music.

The Petrograd public had an extremely negative attitude towards the former monarch and his family. Newspapers and magazines harshly criticized the Romanovs' way of life and published offensive cartoons. A crowd of visitors from Petrograd often gathered at the Alexander Palace, who gathered at the gates, shouted offensive curses and booed the princesses walking in the park. In order not to provoke them, it was decided to reduce the walking time. I also had to give up many dishes on the menu. Firstly, because the government was cutting funding for the palace every month. Secondly, because of the newspapers, which regularly published detailed menus of former monarchs.

In June 1917, Anastasia and her sisters were completely shaved bald, as after a serious illness and taking a large number of drugs, their hair began to fall out significantly. In the summer, the Provisional Government did not prevent the royal family from leaving for Great Britain. However, Nicholas II's cousin, George V, fearing unrest in the country, refused to accept his relative. Therefore, in August 1917, the government decided to send the family of the former tsar into exile in Tobolsk.

Link to Tobolsk

In August 1917, the royal family, in the strictest secrecy, was sent by train, first to Tyumen. From there they were transported to Tobolsk on the steamer "Rus". They were supposed to be accommodated in the former governor's house, but it was not prepared before their arrival. Therefore, all family members lived on the ship for almost a week and only then were transported under escort to their new home.

The Grand Duchesses settled in a corner bedroom on the second floor on camp beds that they brought with them from Tsarskoe Selo. It is known that Anastasia Nikolaevna decorated her part of the room with photographs and her own drawings. Life in Tobolsk was quite monotonous. Until September they were not allowed to leave the premises of the house. Therefore, the sisters, together with their younger brother, looked at passers-by with interest and studied. Several times a day they could go for short walks outside. At this time, Anastasia loved to collect firewood, and in the evenings she sewed a lot. The princess also took part in home performances.

In September they were allowed to attend church on Sundays. Local residents treated the former monarch and his family well; fresh food was regularly brought to them from the monastery. At the same time, Anastasia began to gain a lot of weight, but she hoped that over time, like her sister Maria, she would be able to return to her previous shape. In April 1918, the Bolsheviks decided to transport the royal family to Yekaterinburg. The emperor and his wife and daughter Maria were the first to go there. The other sisters and their brother had to stay in the city.

The photo below shows Anastasia Romanova with her father and older sisters Olga and Tatyana in Tobolsk.

Relocation to Yekaterinburg and the last months of life

It is known that the attitude of the guards of the house in Tobolsk towards its residents was hostile. In April 1918, Princess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova and her sisters burned their diaries, fearing searches. Only at the end of May did the government decide to send the remaining Romanovs to their parents in Yekaterinburg.

Survivors recalled that life in the house of engineer Ipatiev, where the royal family was housed, was quite monotonous. Princess Anastasia, together with her sisters, was engaged in everyday activities: sewing, playing cards, walking in the garden next to the house, and in the evenings reading church literature to her mother. At the same time, girls were taught to bake bread. In June 1918, Anastasia celebrated her last birthday; she turned 17 years old. They were not allowed to celebrate it, so all family members played cards in the garden in honor of this and went to bed at the usual time.

Execution of a family in Ipatiev's house

Like other members of the Romanov family, Anastasia was shot on the night of July 17, 1918. It is believed that until recently she was unaware of the guard’s intentions. They were woken up in the middle of the night and ordered to urgently go down to the basement of the house because of the shooting that was taking place in the streets nearby. Chairs were brought into the room for the empress and the sick crown prince. Anastasia stood behind her mother. She took with her her dog Jimmy, who accompanied her during her exile.

It is believed that after the first shots, Anastasia and her sisters Tatyana and Maria were able to survive. The bullets could not hit because of the jewelry that was sewn into the corsets of the dresses. The Empress hoped that with their help they would, if possible, be able to buy their own salvation. Witnesses to the murder said that it was Princess Anastasia who resisted the longest. They could only wound her, so after that the guards had to finish off the girl with bayonets.

The bodies of the royal family members were wrapped in sheets and taken out of the city. There they were first doused with sulfuric acid and thrown into the mines. For many years the burial place remained unknown.

The appearance of the false Anastasius

Almost immediately after the death of the royal family, rumors about their salvation began to appear. Over the course of several decades of the 20th century, more than 30 women claimed to be the surviving Princess Anastasia Romanova. Most of them failed to attract attention.

The most famous impostor posing as Anastasia was the Polish woman Anna Anderson, who showed up in Berlin in 1920. Initially, due to her external resemblance, she was mistaken for the surviving Tatyana. To establish the fact of kinship with the Romanovs, she was visited by many courtiers who were well acquainted with the royal family. However, they did not recognize her as either Tatiana or Anastasia. However, the trials lasted until Anna Anderson’s death in 1984. Essential evidence was the curvature of the big toes, which both the impostor and the deceased Anastasia had. However, Anderson’s origins could not be accurately determined until the remains of the royal family were discovered.

Discovery of remains and their reburial

The story of Anastasia Romanova, unfortunately, did not receive a happy continuation. In 1991, unknown remains were discovered in Ganina Yama, which allegedly belonged to members of the royal family. Initially, not all the bodies were found - one of the princesses and the crown prince was missing. Scientists came to the conclusion that they could not find Maria and Alexei. They were discovered only in 2007 near the burial place of the remaining relatives. This discovery put an end to the story of numerous impostors.

Several independent genetic examinations determined that the remains found belonged to the emperor, his wife and children. Thus, they were able to conclude that there could be no survivors of the shooting.

In 1981, the Russian Church Abroad officially canonized Princess Anastasia along with the rest of the deceased family members. In Russia, their canonization took place only in 2000. Their remains, after all the necessary research, were reburied in the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the site of Ipatiev’s house, where the execution took place, the Temple on the Blood is now built.